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Comment by biophysboy | Hacker News Reader

Guzey had another blog post on Matthew Walker's sleep book posted on HN a while back. I thought it was a bad faith critique, from my own biophysics perspective. We had some back and forth, guzey seemed nice & respectful enough, but I still had my misgivings about the critique. Sleep is very much an open question.

HN seems to really love maximizing cognition and the overall efficiency of their life. That said, if you want to try this experiment yourself, know this: sleep also affects mood, memory, and longevity (e.g. dementia). Chronic sleep deprivation is not good for you.

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It's so strange to see "independent researchers" attempt to poke holes by any means in an argument meant to protect people from the ill effects of sleep deprivation, yet provide zero non-anecdotal evidence to support lack of sleep being beneficial.

Discounting Walker's argument with "he's not thorough" and then providing a "study" done by one person with no professional research experience appears fine for HN

Eh, I understand the motivation though - I think a lot of people on here are young, driven programmer-types who resent sleep because they see it as inefficient. I think they're mistaken, but the drive to experiment on yourself is understandable if you're in that cutthroat world.

I remember your arguments and they were bad. Here as well you claim the causal relationship between sleep and longevity while we have 0 good studies demonstrating it.

Those interested can look at our Why We Sleep discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21903746

I found the critique very convincing. What do you disagree with?

> Sleep is very much an open question.

Walker's book is very much at odds with that statement.

I guess it depends on what you mean by convincing. If by convincing you mean Walker played fast and loose with some of his data presentation, then I'd have a hard time disagreeing. He was also pushing the marketing circuit hard back when that blog post went up (NPR, Rogan, etc). Which can make him feel like a snake oil salesman. So I understand the suspicion

But if by convincing you mean that guzey brought us back to square one - that is, sleep might not be as important as we think - then I don't think its a convincing critique.

Yes by convincing I mean it convinced me that Walker is a quack. Way beyond suspicion. As an author he didn't only waste the time I spent reading his book. He put bullshit in my head. I can't fully protect myself against that, but I don't generally give people a second chance on it.

I didn't get a "sleep less" message from the critique. Just a "don't read Walker" message. It feels weirdly patronizing to suggest that the critique is wrong when you just fear people will sleep less after reading it. Why not say that right away?

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