Why do you care about debunking this particular book? If this book influenced your decisions years ago, you should say so. If not, this probably shouldn’t cause you to reverse course. If you made your decision 3 years ago and the book was only published 2 years ago, probably not. Even 1 year ago, it sounded like you hadn’t read it (PS—you owe guzey $50).
More generally, why is this of interest to this community? Is this book popular in this community? I only see it really mentioned twice on lesswrong.com, that review I linked and this from last month. Is it standard in other channels, but no one talks about these topics on this site?
It’s a pretty widely influential book. While few people I talk to have directly read this book, I’ve had many of the claims in the book mentioned to me when discussing sleep, including many of the ones that guzey fact-checked and found to be lacking. As it often tends to go with very successful popular science books, a lot of the ideas tend to spread far beyond just the original readership of the book.
I found this of interest, if for no other reason than to trust claims made by the author of the ‘debunked’ book less. The details about the specific claims debunked were also (mildly) informative.
Why do you care about debunking this particular book? If this book influenced your decisions years ago, you should say so. If not, this probably shouldn’t cause you to reverse course. If you made your decision 3 years ago and the book was only published 2 years ago, probably not. Even 1 year ago, it sounded like you hadn’t read it (PS—you owe guzey $50).
More generally, why is this of interest to this community? Is this book popular in this community? I only see it really mentioned twice on lesswrong.com, that review I linked and this from last month. Is it standard in other channels, but no one talks about these topics on this site?
It’s a pretty widely influential book. While few people I talk to have directly read this book, I’ve had many of the claims in the book mentioned to me when discussing sleep, including many of the ones that guzey fact-checked and found to be lacking. As it often tends to go with very successful popular science books, a lot of the ideas tend to spread far beyond just the original readership of the book.
I appreciate any debunking, at least a little.
I found this of interest, if for no other reason than to trust claims made by the author of the ‘debunked’ book less. The details about the specific claims debunked were also (mildly) informative.