For Hackers Who Don't Sleep | Hacker News Reader

For Hackers Who Don't Sleep

nytimes.com

63 pointsbearwithclaws36 comments

While its no more than an anecdote, I've found this to be true. I only seem to have trouble sleeping when I'm working on a project that keeps me thinking all day long. When I am, I sleep light, waking often, and frequently only sleep 5-6 hours and wake rested. On the other hand, after finishing the project, or in a lull when I'm waiting on something (parts to arrive, someone else to get back to me or the like), I tend to sleep deeply and need upwards of 10 hours a night.

On the other hand, I will once in a while get an opposite period, I'll be working on a project and not be able to get by without at least 10 hours of sleep, or I won't have anything to do and not be able to sleep more than 4 hours at a time.

Sleep just generally seems to not be worth losing sleep over...

>Why should lions get 15 hours a night and giraffes just 5 — >when it is the giraffes who will be running for their lives >come hunting time?

Lions also have to run for their lives come hunting time.

When you're running for your dinner, you get several tries.

When you're running for your life, you win or die.

You need to look at it from the genetic point of view, not the individual organism point of view.

Catching prey / avoiding being caught, is a matter of life and death for the gene pools on both sides.

Hence the "crazy" arms races amongst prey & hunter.

That one's pretty obvious. Giraffes are herbivores, so their caloric input is both less efficient and linear with time. Most herbivores spend a huge percentage of their time grazing.

Lions on the other hand need to be in tip-top shape only a few hours per day to cover their calories.

Most of this article pretty much flies in the face of everything that I've read on the physiologically restorative powers of sleep, including things like links between insomnia and alzheimer's.

As a "hacker" that hasn't slept well or regularly for about 15 years now, I'd dearly love to be able to fix my sleep lack-of-patterns. Sleep has become one of those imaginary, wistful things that sounds wonderful but is out-of-reach.

This is an honest question: how much exercise do you get? More general question: Any insomniacs out there that also happen to get cardio (running, yoga, whatever) at least 3 times a week for at least 30 minutes each time?

I get more than the average joe, but not as much as I need. I'm 30, and still childishly vault railings and fly down stairs and swing around corners on poles and the like.

But, no, I haven't been getting enough serious cardio exercise; thanks for the reminder. Thinking back to my time as a climbing instructor, I think my sleep patterns were a lot better. Still irregular, but better.

Yes. I've been training for long-distance cycling for about a month, and did at least 8-10 hours total last week. Although a strenuous workout will generally get me asleep sooner (and for longer) than normal on the day I do it, it doesn't seem to have any permanent effect on my sleep patterns (I'm a serious night person - I like to stay up until it starts getting light out - and seem to have a natural 25/26 hour circadian rhythm)

Yes, 3km swim sets 4 or 5 times a week. Doesn't seem to help mesleep at all. It does make me knackered, but sleep is still elusive!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome

Maybe it's this? It's very common among hackers, and easy to confuse with insomnia. Well, it's effectively the same if you have to wake up early.

The research described is about the adaptive benefits of sleep to species as a function of their ecological environment. This has no implications for the differences between individuals, even though the article desperately tries to make it seem that way.

If you're suffering from insomnia, get help. Don't be a smart-ass and fool yourself into thinking you're supremely adapted to your environment.

I wouldn't say I suffer from insomnia...

Right with you there. However, I do suffer from the people around me bitching about my sleep problems because they see me up at 7 AM after a long night of coding. If one more "helpful" printout with an "FYI" scribble on it mysteriously appears on my desk explaining how to fix a chronic sleep problem I swear I'm going to scream...

But "insomnia" probably isn't the right word for me. I get my eight hours like clockwork, I just take it whenever it suits me. A lot of people think that's a problem, but if it is, it's certainly not mine. I don't have a 9 to 5 for a reason (many, in fact), and I'm going to enjoy the benefits of that as long as I can.

There's just something so productive about that midnight to sunrise stretch that's impossible to replicate during the day...

please, would you do me the favor of catching these printout-droppers and whacking them over the head for me?

if my school and work didn't interfere, i'd try the 28-hour day... http://xkcd.com/320/

also: http://xkcd.com/571/

I've had better results with a siesta schedule -- 6 hours asleep at night, half-hour nap during the day, awake for both night life and morning obligations and nobody thinks you're crazy (as they would with the Everyman schedule).

The Wikipedia page on Sleep actually covers the current theories pretty well, including this article's hypothesis and a rebuttal to it.

For non-subscribers:

http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/0...

Or just clear your NY Times cookies.

As an aside, it bemuses me how someone does this for every NYT article posted here, when a repeated theme on HN is the death of old media.

Like the NYTs content, why not register? They need all the help they can get.

The last time I started to register I read the terms and they wanted me to bind myself to terms that they could unilaterally alter and still bind me!

I sent them a note and received a nice phone call from a person that assured me they would never do that. Very impressive customer service, but thank you, no.

To be fair, this was probably 10 years ago and they may have a new policy.

It's a good bet it's not enforceable. The lawyers tend to be paranoid because it can help, and hurts very little (you're a minority).

I registered years ago, I can't even remember how long ago (5 years+ I'd guess, maybe even 10). I have not gotten a single email from them.

I don't understand why they want the registration, but at the same time it's not problem to do it.

I am speculating here, but I suspect it gives them a metric that is in some ways more reliable than just measuring unique IP addresses.

Most likely it is that metric they really want, but if you want to be cynical, they could be selling those addresses without ever sending a single message themselves.

It's a unique email address that no one else has. It has never received email.

Sorry for the stupid suggestion but Have you checked in your spam box?

I get mail from them but it is really quite infrequent. Perhaps it ends up in your spam folder?

My take-away from this: We don't know anything, for sure, about sleep yet so do what comes naturally.

Jerome Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, argues that sleep evolved to optimize animals’ use of time, keeping them safe and hidden when the hunting, fishing or scavenging was scarce and perhaps risky.

IIRC a character from "Beggars in Spain" (a Nancy Kress novella that she later expanded into a trilogy) makes a similar argument for why her clever genetic hack for creating children who never need to sleep will have no negative side effects. It seemed like an audacious handwave when I read it; I had no idea it had the backing of a Real Scientist.

Why should lions get 15 hours a night and giraffes just 5...

Lions are carnivores who eat huge amount of raw meat intermittently. They need lots of rest to save energy to digest that meat.

Giraffes are herivores who must continuously eat just to get enough calories. They don't have much time to sleep.

What's so difficult to understand?

That one of many possible explanations. Science relies on reductionist proof.

This Dr. Siegel guy makes no sense:

"as Dr. Siegel put it, sleepers are less vulnerable to harm than they would be if they were out on the street late at night"

Circular reasoning. If people didn't need sleep, there'd be just as many people on the street as during the day and it wouldn't be any riskier.

"argues that sleep evolved to optimize animals’ use of time, keeping them safe and hidden when the hunting, fishing or scavenging was scarce and perhaps risky"

... so if all the animals are asleep at night, we should be awake then, right? We can just walk up and bop them on the head from behind, Halo-style. Why don't lions hunt at night if it's got anything to do with that? Moreso, why does any creature at the top of its food chain need to sleep?

It's hard to imagine any scenario when asleep humans are more safe at night than awake humans. Even if there were giant nocturnal monsters all over the place, they could just hide .. in the same place they would be so safe sleeping, say.

Very unconvincing.

Circular reasoning. If people didn't need sleep, there'd be just as many people on the street as during the day and it wouldn't be any riskier.

No, what he is saying is that when you're sleeping in your bed, you are in a situation that are far less risky than being out on the street, driving your car, etc. How many people, statistically, die in their sleep, compared to "out on the streets" (especially when it is dark)?

That's not how I read it. But if so, if the safety of sleep is indeed an evolutionary pressure, why don't we sleep more? And why do we have to close our eyes and lose consciousness to get the benefit of this safety?

Well, try an experiment. Find a time of day when you are alert and well-rested, and lay still in your bed with no external entertainment for eight hours

I'm not saying the idea is correct, but your argument is sorely lacking in plausibility - creatures with complex nervous systems get bored staying still unless they lose consciousness (and actually, we spend a lot of sleep with our brains still active in dream-world). If evolution "wanted" to come up with a way to keep animals out of trouble for the part of the day they'd be vulnerable, sleep might be a reasonable and generic way of doing so

It wouldn't be lying in bed motionless. It would be sitting in the cave talking quietly instead of sleeping. Or whatever.

I don't think that being asleep is safer than being awake, even in the exact same place. Why do you think someone always stays awake to guard the camp?

Oh well, not like I know what the hell I'm talking about. I just thought Siegel's explanations were too cute by half. Of course we evolved to sleep, there's nothing about us that didn't evolve. But the idea that the state of being asleep makes us safer from predators, and that's the reason for the selection? Doesn't pass the smell test IMO. Could be wrong. Been wrong before.

It looks (to someone who has not done any of the necessary research to draw any real, useful conclusions) that they are proposing a balance of sorts. You are safest (in this theory) when sleeping. You are likely holed up some where, hidden from view, and relatively non-moving because you are unconscious. To cope with the inherent danger of being unconscious, you are especially alert to particular sounds which may signal a coming attack. While awake, you are out, moving around, and under danger of being attacked by a predator. However, there must be a balance between the two, because there are certain things you must do to keep living (find food, eat, create shelter for the next sleep period). Its seems fairly reasonable that there is a balance point in there some place, and that it would be different based on each animal, depending on the habits of not only their prey and predators, but also how much food they must bring into their body, what kind of shelter their environment requires for sleep, and all sort of other factors.

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