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guzey

285 karma · joined March 21, 2017

bio, econ, speeding up the future

https://newscience.org / https://guzey.com

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guzey··on Why is there only one Elon Musk? Why is there so much low-hanging fruit?
Boom (https://boomsupersonic.com/) was started by a software engineer without lots of wealth -- he just raised VC funds
guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
I did not look into his claims about road accidents but given that Walker misrepresents and so much of the research (and sometimes falsifies it) on sleep, I would not be willing to believe such claim simply based on him saying this in the book.
guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
I asked:

>Can you link to some pre-registered studies of impact of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance?

None of the studies you linked are pre-registered.

guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
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

guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
Ah.
guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
Thanks!
guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
Can you link to some pre-registered studies of impact of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance?
guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
If I had the opportunity, I would not only downvote you a 1000 times, I would outright ban you from Hacker News. Your comments are uncharitable, careless, and abrasive.

>you over-analyze a situation that is relatively obvious, with a sample of 1, and simply by doing so you effectively suggest to generalize its results - which is wrong.

>You dropping a caveat mid-page in a single sentence is also the same thing scummy tabloids do: make a big title about something, then state the opposite somewhere in the actual small-print article.

The title of my study is:

>The Effects on Cognition of Sleeping 4 Hours per Night for 12-14 Days: a Pre-Registered Self-Experiment

Which clearly tells the reader that this is a n=1 study. I'm not just dropping a caveat mid-page. If you somehow missed this, it's your problem, not mine.

guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
I'm the author of this study.

>It's the brogrammer equivalent of fake news: 22-yo kid "makes science" with a sample of 1, some videogames, and a few charts.

>You are 22 year old. Your body is at peak condition, built to go out and hunt for days on little food and little sleep. Of course it will work more or less fine for a few weeks.

I like this comment because its author can't decide whether my study is the "equivalent of fake news" or whether its results are obviously true.

guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
this is very interesting. Have you tried doing it again?
guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
PVT is a standard in psychology task used to assess sleepiness - no relation to video games

Note that the "getting lost in thought" happened when I slept 8 hours not 4. I think it just came to me taking hours upon hours of very similar tasks.

>I was extremely bored in the last 2 days of taking control measurements and sometimes got distracted and lost in thought, which resulted in me getting 3 and 4 lapses per session (as can be seen on Figure 1). I do not believe that these lapses represent my lack of alertness. ...

>The last low control score on the verbal section is a result of me becoming very bored with taking the SAT 5 days in a row, getting lost in thought for 10 minutes, and having to rush.

I will continue to experiment with sleep, mostly for myself :) and I'm planning to test memory and skill acquisition next time -- these are the two things people say are affected the most, so I'll try to figure out if that is true for me.

guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
Yes.
guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
>I would imagine the group of people who immediately accepted everything this book claimed as fact and went on to immediately adjust their lifestyles to match may have a strong correlation with the group of people who are more susceptible to the placebo effect.

This is a very interesting point.

guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
I spent the majority of my time coding (learning a lot of JS) and learning biology during the experiment.
guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
Yes, I believe that you should take this factor into account while reading my experiment. As I write:

>Lack of effect on cognitive ability is surprising and may reflect true lack of cognitive impairment, my desire to demonstrate lack of cognitive impairment due to chronic sleep deprivation and lack of blinding biasing the measurements, lack of statistical power, and/or other factors.

guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
Sure, I have nothing against getting enough sleep but the book's first 10 pages contain so much misinformation and given that Walker outright falsifies the data in the book (https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/#appendix-what-do-you-d...) I would struggle to call it anything other than bullshit.
guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
Thanks! I didn't notice any effects on mood but I wasn't measuring them either.
guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
Why did you stop?
guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
Exactly -- practice effects should have been averaged out by this.
guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
I hope to test skill acquisition during the next experiment!
guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
I don't know about chess but I coded a lot during the experiment (on day 7 I spent 11 hours coding, starting with a big block between 8am and 2pm) and felt great.
guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
>This should contain a big fat caveat, this appears to be a very young person, maybe early 20's based on photos?

The second sentence of the abstract:

>I’m a 22-year-old male and normally I sleep 7-8 hours.

guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
I'm not sure why you don't really believe this. I didn't really have to mention this, did I?..
guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
Actual amount of time.
guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/
guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
>It single handedly moved getting enough sleep from a similar category to “I should probably eat less salt” to “this is the single most important thing for my health” for me.

>That said, I don't think it detracts from the main argument of the book, or the main revelation for me, which is that most people don't realise how damaging lack of sleep is.

I don't get this. You find that the book you believe provides the arguments for the damaging effects of sleep and based on which you dramatically changed your life is bullshit but somehow this fact doesn't detract from its main argument and you are still going to recommend it to your friends?

guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
This gotta be my favorite comment in the entire thread. I take three tests: PVT, a video game, SAT -- and I get accused of "just playing video games" and told to perform a broader spectrum of assessments.
guzey··on The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
Even the wikipedia article you linked to in your comment mentions my critique of the book!
guzey··on Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?
Divvy works on Windows as well and is great.
guzey··on Discovering the brain’s nightly “rinse cycle”
There's no connection between Walker and the post you linked. It's not clear why you believe it was written by Walker.
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