guzey

Karma: 503

guzey 17 Nov 2019 16:23 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Smaug123’s comment on: Matthew Walker’s “Why We Sleep” Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors
(removed this comment)

guzey 18 Nov 2019 3:30 UTC
31 points
in reply to: Jonathan_Graehl’s comment on: Matthew Walker’s “Why We Sleep” Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors
I’m the author of this essay. I don’t believe your characterization of it is accurate.
1. You write:
Author advocates biphasic sleep totaling 6.3hr/day.
I don’t remember “advocating” biphasic sleep. I link to people I know who were able to adjust to it and I describe my personal experience. In fact, in the essay’s conclusion I write:
If you take one thing away from this entire essay, remember this: as long as you feel good, sleeping anywhere between 5 and 8 hours a night seems basically fine for your health
which contradicts your assertion.
2. You write:
Author claims http://jcsm.aasm.org/ViewAbstract.aspx?pid=31409 doesn’t support ‘smaller testes size for men who sleep less’. It does.
You add quote marks as if you’re quoting my essay. I never wrote that this paper doesn’t support ‘smaller testes size for men who sleep less’. I wrote: “It does not support either of Walker’s claims” Here are Walker’s claims:
Men who sleep 5 hours a night have significantly smaller testicles than those who sleep 8 hours or more. [from his 2017 talk at Google)
And:
Men who sleep 5 hours a night have significantly smaller testicles than those who sleep 7 hours or more. [from his 2019 TED Talk]
The paper in question finds a correlation between sleep and testicle size. Walker says that the difference between those sleeping 5 and those sleeping 8 hours or more (or 7 hours or more) is “significant”, by which he clearly means statistical significance. The paper never examines whether the difference between those two groups is statistically significant. It is true that it found a significant correlation. The paper however does not support either of Walker’s claims.
Anticipating comments that say that I’m nitpicking: the testicles thing is indeed nitpicking and it’s not important. I included it in one of the last appendices of the essay, mostly out of curiosity at the fact that Walker repeats the exact same phrases word for word in different talks but his numbers change in the process.
Finally, (even though I believe their reading of my essay is wrong), I’m glad that both of the OP’s concerns regard things he found in appendices to the essay and not in any of the main parts it.

guzey 25 Feb 2020 8:29 UTC
16 points
on: Book review: Why we sleep
Note that the book contains a multitude of basic scientific errors, misrepresentation of research, data manipulation, etc: https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/

guzey 7 Feb 2021 8:47 UTC
2 points
on: Massive consequences
I think Michael Huemer had an interesting take on a variant of this question—In Praise of Passivity:
Voters, activists, and political leaders of the present day are in the position of medieval doctors. They hold simple, prescientific theories about the workings of society and the causes of social problems, from which they derive a variety of remedies–almost all of which prove either ineffectual or harmful. Society is a complex mechanism whose repair, if possible at all, would require a precise and detailed understanding of a kind that no one today possesses. Unsatisfying as it may seem, the wisest course for political agents is often simply to stop trying to solve society’s problems.

guzey 8 Feb 2021 2:48 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Troy Macedon’s comment on: Massive consequences
Hm?

guzey 1 Mar 2021 11:55 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Gerald Monroe’s comment on: The slopes to common sense
the possible outcomes table for ‘hacking’ your sleep includes premature aging and dementia. I don’t think the inverse is true.
Why do you think that inverse is not true?
We eat as much as much as our body wants to, and the result is that >73% of US adults are overweight or obese.
Given that one of the hallmarks of depression is increased sleep and that short-term sleep deprivation is literally one of the most effective treatments for depression, you ought to at least consider the potential harms of sleep.

guzey 1 Mar 2021 18:30 UTC
1 point
in reply to: George3d6’s comment on: The slopes to common sense
Yeah a ton of bad things and stress tend to fuck up sleep and make us sleep less! That’s why there are all these correlations.. The rest of your arguments (bpm, cortisol..) apply fully to sports as well I believe.
re: not encountering info re dangers of oversleep: do you want to comment on the bit about sleep deprivation therapy? Isn’t this rather compelling evidence of sleep directly causing bad mood?

guzey 2 Mar 2021 5:42 UTC
1 point
in reply to: George3d6’s comment on: The slopes to common sense
re: bpm. yeah i’m not saying never sleep or always undersleep. but if you undersleep one time, you’re going to have higher bpm and then on the recovery day it’s going to be normal

guzey 29 Sep 2021 10:48 UTC
159 points
in reply to: Beth Barnes’s comment on: Common knowledge facts about Leverage Research 1.0
(deleted)

Theses on Sleep

guzey11 Feb 2022 12:58 UTC

112 points

104 comments34 min readLW link 2 reviews

guzey 12 Feb 2022 9:40 UTC
7 points
in reply to: Andy_McKenzie’s comment on: Theses on Sleep
I wrote:
I agree that driving while being sleepy is dangerous and I don’t want anyone to drive, to operate heavy machinery, etc. when they are sleepy.
Driving simply seems to be a monotonous task of the exact kind where falling asleep even for a few seconds is very dangerous, thus driving while being sleepy is dangerous

guzey 12 Feb 2022 9:42 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Max Ghenis’s comment on: Theses on Sleep
I have not looked into the evidence of sleep quality and life outcomes unfortunately.

guzey 12 Feb 2022 9:44 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Maxwell Peterson’s comment on: Theses on Sleep
Please be cautious and do not try cutting your sleep from 9 hours to 7 hours right away.
If you want to try experimenting with how much you sleep, try 8:30 and see how it goes first, make gradual changes, make sure you feel good, and take naps.

guzey 12 Feb 2022 9:48 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Theses on Sleep
Hmm, we seem to have very different subjective experiences around sleep. While I’m sure that I would also feel bad if my sleep was disrupted at random periods, I have no issue with alarms and I feel like I sleep better with an alarm, knowing that I will not just sleep through everything I wanted to do in the morning...

guzey 14 Feb 2022 16:58 UTC
2 points
in reply to: 860214’s comment on: Theses on Sleep
Thanks! Very interesting. Have you experimented with sleeping vs staying up all night resting to see if it’s sleep or just passage of time that helps with consolidation?

guzey 22 Feb 2022 19:44 UTC
15 points
in reply to: DirectedEvolution’s comment on: Theses on Sleep
lmao I started reading this comment and was like “oh no i’m about to be destroyed” and instead everything held up 😎
I guess showing drafts to literal dozens of people before publishing actually works haha.

guzey 22 Feb 2022 20:13 UTC
3 points
in reply to: velcro’s comment on: Theses on Sleep
Yep
1. He didn’t have a source in the book.
2. Multiple people asked him for a source and he never provided one
3. The dad is INCREDIBLY divergent from all other data we have. Literally all other data people sleep around 7 hours maybe more maybe less while his data shows almost 9 hours of sleep on average.
Given these three, and the fact that he did literally alter a graph in one other place in the book, I’m pretty sure he just faked this data. If you manage to find the source, I’ll edit the posts and will apologize to Walker.

guzey 22 Feb 2022 20:15 UTC
1 point
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Theses on Sleep
Yep, I sometimes manage to ask my body to wake up at a certain time and it does it when there’s something I care a ton about waking me up a few minutes before the alarm.

guzey 22 Feb 2022 20:50 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Gunnar_Zarncke’s comment on: Theses on Sleep
Have you done an explicit calculation of your perceived increased risk in Alzheimer’s and compared it to QALY (potentially) gained by decreasing amount of sleep?

guzey 23 Feb 2022 10:02 UTC
−2 points
in reply to: Andrew Vlahos’s comment on: Theses on Sleep
Yep, if someone was majorly undersleeping for a few days, they are probably going to be more sleepy and make more mistakes of attention/find it more difficult to concentrate and absorb the kind of information that they would need a tutor to absorb!

As an experiment—you can ask a couple of your students to take a coffee heading to you when they are underslept and see if they continue to make mistakes and learn poorly (in which case it’s the lack of sleep per se likely causing problems) or not (in which case it’s sleepiness)

guzey

Th­e­ses on Sleep

Theses on Sleep