Sleep is also an interesting example of pathologies in American high schools. Why do they start so insanely early though every teacher knows that first period is a waste of time and every parent knows what happens to teenagers’ circadian rhythms? The answers always seem to come down to the incentives: high school isn’t actually about learning but is more about daycare and sports and the convenience of organized groups like teachers or parents, and when push comes to shove, the latter win.
Agreed. I think that Hanlon’s Razor also does an adequate job of explaining apparent suboptimalities. In general, it seems that most things just are, with no real effort on either side to make things bad or good, with our status quo merely being the aggregate results of lots of people attempting to do their thing.
it seems that most things just are, with no real effort on either side to make things bad or good
That’s absolutely not what I meant to convey. Most things are the result of a mix of different definitions of “good”, with plenty of effort on all sides toward their needs/wants (aka their definition of “goodness”). This conflict, however, is not zero-sum. There are plenty of behaviors that bring more value to some stakeholders than it costs the others.
School as learning is good for some, school as daycare is good for a different some, school as training to societal conformity good for a different subset. Both because the time can be spent doing all three, and because there’s overlap in some of these subsets, the result is that we get all three AT THE SAME TIME, not that we have to pick exactly one and prevent the rest.
Well over half of people who don’t expect to ever have an clerk-like job (including office clerks as well as retail clerks) are wrong. More importantly, this discipline is helpful in almost all jobs. It may be overrated by some, but you’re underrating it here.
Confirmed that application and focus is a somewhat different thing (though related, in my case at least), and we’re talking more about conformance to imposed schedules and external expectations of monitorable behavior.
Disagree that it’s not useful at IQ 140. It’s a lower proportion of success than for someone closer to the mean, but still a nice still to have and removes some barriers to establishing one’s talents.
Also, I’m comfortable with not having significant accommodation for distant outliers. Actually, for such people, the habits and skills of not getting killed by one’s “peers’ is pretty important. High school sucks for those it’s not evolved/equilibriated for, but it’s temporary.
The situation is not symmetric. I really want to accommodate far-right-tail outliers. They are what moves your science/tech/society forwards.
I think we’re going to disagree a bit here on what ‘accomodate’ means here. I want to mold and control the far-right-tail outliers (as well as the middle hump) so they are more likely to move science/tech/society forward in ways that I like.
I wrote that too quickly. Forcing geniuses to learn to operate when the less-gifted are in positions of power is good for the geniuses AND good for society (though incredibly frustrating for all participants). It doesn’t really fit on a “suppression vs relinquish control” axis.
Relatedly, I don’t believe it’s possible to identify the top 1⁄2 of 1% all that well, and even if we did, there’s so much individual variation that we wouldn’t be able to predict what differences we should accommodate vs allowing/forcing the student to figure out how to (appear to) comply.
I think you’re right that the top 1⁄2 of 1% are much more varied and idiosyncratic than the norm, because they are all going to be gifted in very unique and divergent ways.
However, honestly I think the best way to utilize them (and remove tremendous frustration on both their part and the part of people who would manage them) is treat them like a black box; tell them, “ok, go off and act as you would by default. We’ll make sure no one will bother you. Sink or swim on your own, though. Try to find something interesting. Good luck.
Some of them may not produce all that much of use, but it’s no big loss since they’re only a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population. And some of them will find and create very unique and interesting things, things that only they could find and create. And that more than offsets the losses from the ones that by chance don’t work out.
When I wrote “I want to accommodate” I meant “create conditions where they would be productive and effective”—it wasn’t really about command-and-control.
Forcing geniuses to learn to operate when the less-gifted are in positions of power is good
Again, sure, but no one is suggesting building some sort of a refuge for the gifted (Galt’s Gulch?) where they could be spared the ravages of the dumb normie society. The are forced to learn in any case.
The whole “show up neatly groomed and dressed” thing is teaching kids to emit particular social signals, it’s just that these signals are more suited (heh) for some situations (e.g. you’re applying for a sales clerk position at Macy’s) and less suited for others. If you are looking to hire a programmer and the candidate shows up in a fancy business suit (while showing all signs of being comfortable in it) with a carefully attended-to hairdo, I don’t think those signals would be well-received.
I don’t think that the “show up neatly groomed and dressed” thing is teaching kids to emit particular social signals that is less suitable to a programmer coming to an interview. Both scenarios are about conforming to social norms and for students that happens to be literally neatly groomed/dressed, which for the programmer means no business suit. It’s just more useful to use the phrase neatly groomed/dressed than socially appropriate because for most things socially appropriate is neatly groomed/dressed.
Being socially appropriate is not overrated conditional on IQ – you have already established that the programmer (presumably your high IQ example) is aware of the dangers of coming in like a weirdo in a business suit to an interview. Why wouldn’t the younger version of this person also want to not look like a weirdo to their peers while in school?
I think you are talking about a more sophisticated version (“being socially appropriate”) and in the context of schools teaching kids its’ considerably more basic (e.g. for boys “get a short, neat haircut, no one will hire if you look like a hippy”).
It’s been a long time since I was in high school (disclosure: I barely passed many classes, and was not in competition for a prestigious university, though I did manage to get 20 AP credits and aced the math SAT), but I don’t recall that the version of “groomed and dressed” then was a particularly different requirement than my current employment as a principal engineer at a large tech company.
Showing up on time for appointments remains rather important. Behaving compatibly with a range of others likewise. Truly bad grooming is, in fact, a hindrance. Formal coiffure and sartorial prowess isn’t particularly helpful, but is less of a hindrance than aggressively-casual (stained sweats and flip-flops).
If it was “show up acceptably groomed and dressed, and with a base level of politeness in behavior to people around you”, would you be happier with the description?
I don’t dispute that being able to meet middle-class social norms of dress and grooming is helpful. What I said is that I think it’s overrated (conditional on high IQ). Looking like everyone else is useful but not that useful.
(note I’m not trying to be that annoying guy who asks for statistics to try and win an argument if the other party fails to produce them; I really want to see info on people’s expected vs actual employment outcomes)
There’s a relationship between having regular habits and mental health, I believe. I can’t prove it off the top of my head but you’ll find similar ideas if you look into writing about for example keeping clean living-spaces, getting into the habit of dressing well, etc. and it aligns with my personal experiences. It seems to me the chief benefit is that forcing yourself to go through with things that aren’t fun but which are necessary for living above the level of an animal acts like acid to the narcissistic patterns of thought that provoke people to convince themselves that they’re too good for discipline.
There’s a relationship between having regular habits and mental health
At the extremes, yes. If your habits are very very regular and you are very very attached to them, you might have OCD :-P
the chief benefit is that forcing yourself to go through with things that aren’t fun but which are necessary for living above the level of an animal acts like acid to the narcissistic patterns of thought
That line of thought is well expressed in early Protestantism—see e.g. the Puritans.
Because I’ve seen the relationship between irregular lifestyle and depression in other people around me in my life. If there is research on the topic that you know about or some contrary observations you want to forward then feel free. But at this point this seems like this conversation is heading towards “well can you prove that” territory. And in short, no I cannot prove it.
I’ve seen the relationship between irregular lifestyle and depression in other people
And which way the causality arrow points?
In any case, I’m trying to say that there is a difference between saying “Orderly life helps some people I know manage their mental state” (which is a statement about some people you know) and “There’s a relationship between having regular habits and mental health” (which is a statement about how the world works).
The typical mind fallacy is also accompanied by the atypical mind fallacy—the idea that no one has the same mind or thoughts as you and you are unique.
And what is it other than the atypical mind fallacy if one regards himself as too far above the level of the plebes who work as clerks to subject himself to a schedule, unless he has some strong concrete evidence that basically compels him to acknowledge his own brilliance?
If John von Neumann or Paul Erdos woke up at 2 PM and argued that their brains worked better at night, I’d be inclined to take them seriously. If someone without anything to show for their irregular lifestyle nevertheless believed that keeping a schedule would damage their progress, that would be a delusion.
the chief benefit is that forcing yourself to go through with things that aren’t fun but which are necessary for living above the level of an animal acts like acid to the narcissistic patterns of thought
and ended with
one regards himself as too far above the level of the plebes who work as clerks to subject himself to a schedule
A fair bit of distance between the two, don’t you think?
No, I don’t agree. Rergarding yourself as superior to plebs and therefore as above routine is at least weak evidence for narcissism. In combination with absence of clear evidence for the idea that you are in fact superior, it would be strong evidence for narcissism.
Actually, there is no need for any evidence of general superiority. All you need is evidence that the disordered lifestyle works for you—regardless of your brilliance or dimness—and that would be quite sufficient.
Why so? If you assert—as I think you do—that ordered lifestyle helps, that implies that you can get evidence what kind of lifestyle helps and, presumably, the same evidence could point in a different direction.
Because if you’re depressed then your disordered lifestyle is not in fact working for you. Someone for who depression has become the water they swim in might fail to see it that way but depression isn’t the default state of mind for a human being.
Because if you’re depressed then your disordered lifestyle is not in fact working for you.
But isn’t the situation symmetric? I can say “if you’re depressed then your disciplined lifestyle is not in fact working for you” and that would have the same validity.
Yes that would be correct; and I can imagine how this could be the case for somebody like a very high-powered lawyer that wakes up at 4 AM, goes to bed at midnight and shows up to work dressed for success every day; but still feels the whole thing to be hollow and meaningless. Regularity/schedule/discipline may be necessary without being sufficient.
OK, so if the situation is symmetric, why do you believe that disciplined life helps (some) people, but are unwilling to believe that disordered life also helps (some) people?
I’m not unwilling to believe that a disordered life helps some people. I’m saying that, as an individual, each one of us has to be very careful into letting ourselves believe we are one of those people in the absence of strong counter-evidence; because the ( admittedly intuitively assessed on my part ) prior probability of that being the case is not great.
So basically you have a strong prior that disciplined life is considerably more helpful than disorganized one. I assume it’s based on your own experience and the experience of other people in your circle. That’s all fine. What I am doubtful about is how much does that generalize. “Induction” is not a good answer because it’s applicable to absolutely anything.
Why do they start so insanely early though every teacher knows that first period is a waste of time
Because if they didn’t the students’ sleep cycles would shift further and people like you would be complaining that the new first period (former second period) is a waste of time.
every parent knows what happens to teenagers’ circadian rhythms?
So what happens to them. I believe they tend to stay up late and be extremely night shifted. Wouldn’t starting school late only make the problem worse?
The phase-response curve of the circadian rhythm to light shifts with age, with the equilibrium position of the wake point latest in the late teens and earliest in early childhood and old age.
Sleep is also an interesting example of pathologies in American high schools. Why do they start so insanely early
As long as the “insanely early” hours do not involve starting school before dawn, this is a non-issue. Anyone can adjust their circadian rhythm by just going to sleep earlier, and/or by napping throughout the day in order to compensate for any sleep deficits; we should be raising awareness about these solutions among students. Simply starting school later would not have substantial effects in the long run, anymore than, say, changing to DST, or moving to a different timezone would.
Anyone can adjust their circadian rhythm by just going to sleep earlier, and/or by napping throughout the day in order to compensate for any sleep deficits; we should be raising awareness about these solutions among students.
No, they can’t. Students do nap during the day (that’s part of the problem!), and they can try but fail to just go to bed earlier. That’s why they don’t go to bed. If your claims were true, there would never be any problem and the experiments in changing school times would never show any benefit. There is a problem and the experiments do show benefits. You are just offering folk psychology speculation and fake willpower solutions which don’t work. People are not ghosts in the machine, they are the machine, and ‘just go to bed earlier’ doesn’t do anything about the zeitgebers and biology of the thing.
the experiments in changing school times would never show any benefit.
That’s not solid proof. What’s relevant is whether different school times can possibly affect things in the longer run, well after the effects of the transition itself are over.
You are just offering folk psychology speculation
“Folk psychology speculation” is a good way to describe the assumption that some teenagers are just “night owls” and cannot possibly manage to retrain their sleep cycle.
‘just go to bed earlier’ doesn’t do anything about the zeitgebers and biology of the thing.
“Just going to bed earlier” encompasses making reasonable efforts that might also involve changing these environmental cues and zeitgebers. Of course if your evening routine involves drinking strong coffee, “just going to bed earlier” might not work very well. The solution is to change that habit.
So, remind me, why does the West have that obesity epidemic going on?
Well, a simple conjecture is that many obese people in the West care more about their obesity being “accepted” in a way that’s fully open and free of “unwanted discrimination”, than about losing weight in the first place. (Many of them are also not too happy about being made aware of the clearly negative effect of being obese on their own health.) Such attitudes of entitlement seem to be a rather pervasive problem in contemporary Western culture.
“Anyone can just do x” is an insane and unrealistic way to frame solutions to a problem. Like saying “to stop the obesity epidemic we just need to tell people they have to eat less and exercise more.” or “we should tell people to save more money for retirement” the fact that you can frame a solution in simple terms does not in fact make it a non-issue.
also for much of the year in America going to school DOES in fact involve getting up well before dawn.
“to stop the obesity epidemic we just need to tell people they have to eat less and exercise more.”
Well, if by ‘obesity epidemic’ you mean “people complaining about how fat they are” (by analogy with the complaint about school starting too early), then yes, that’s exactly what should happen. Start exercising, reduce your intake of highly-processed foods/drinks, and you’ll be losing weight. Part of being rational involves being willing to shoulder responsibility for things that are quite easily under your direct control.
Part of being rational involves not trying the same thing over and over that doesn’t work. Giving people the factually correct, simple advice that you believe does not work.
Simply starting school later would not have substantial effects in the long run, anymore than, say, changing to DST, or moving to a different timezone would.
Wait… DST makes sunrises and sunsets later by civil clocks, so I would expect its effects to be quite the opposite of starting school later (and pretty similar to those of starting schools earlier). Did you mean to say something like “abolishing DST” instead, or am I missing something?
Anyone can adjust their circadian rhythm by just going to sleep earlier,
No, the circadian rhythm doesn’t work that way. Perhaps you don’t notice because your chronotype is earlier than your lifestyle required so you never had much trouble falling asleep even when going to bed relatively early, but people with later chronotypes if they go to bed earlier will just take more time to fall asleep.
Everyone has trouble falling asleep when they’re going to bed earlier than usual, at first. If you keep at it and are consistent about avoiding things like bright artificial lights, high general arousal, strong drugs like coffee and other adverse environmental cues later in the day, you’ll fall asleep and your “chronotype” will shift back as intended.
So how about some actual evidence for these claims?
I mean, the medical profession has terms like “advanced sleep phase disorder” and “delayed sleep phase disorder” and “non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder” and seems to take the view that “just go to bed later/earlier/regularly and it’ll sort itself out” is not a helpful response. Now, obviously, those are just doctors; what do they know? But it might be helpful to know how it is you know that they’re wrong.
Or, when you say “Anyone can …”, is it possible that you don’t actually mean anyone?
seems to take the view that “just go to bed later/earlier/regularly and it’ll sort itself out” is not a helpful response.
I don’t think this follows from what you said earlier. “Advanced sleep phase disorder” and “delayed sleep phase disorder” are indeed taken seriously as genuine problems, but they’re invariably ‘treated’ with lifestyle interventions, such as (in the ‘delayed’ case) avoiding bright/artificial light late in the day, and (conversely) letting sunlight into the bedroom some time before you’re scheduled to wake up. Sometimes these interventions are also aided by taking melatonin (or a comparable supplement), but come on, this is hardly a “medical treatment” in the usual sense!
In many towns in the US, high school sports (especially football) are not just a recreational activity for students, but rather a major social event for the whole community.
Sleep is also an interesting example of pathologies in American high schools. Why do they start so insanely early though every teacher knows that first period is a waste of time and every parent knows what happens to teenagers’ circadian rhythms? The answers always seem to come down to the incentives: high school isn’t actually about learning but is more about daycare and sports and the convenience of organized groups like teachers or parents, and when push comes to shove, the latter win.
Beware false dichotomies. It can provide a different set of things to some stakeholders, without totally eliminating the value to others.
Agreed. I think that Hanlon’s Razor also does an adequate job of explaining apparent suboptimalities. In general, it seems that most things just are, with no real effort on either side to make things bad or good, with our status quo merely being the aggregate results of lots of people attempting to do their thing.
That’s absolutely not what I meant to convey. Most things are the result of a mix of different definitions of “good”, with plenty of effort on all sides toward their needs/wants (aka their definition of “goodness”). This conflict, however, is not zero-sum. There are plenty of behaviors that bring more value to some stakeholders than it costs the others.
School as learning is good for some, school as daycare is good for a different some, school as training to societal conformity good for a different subset. Both because the time can be spent doing all three, and because there’s overlap in some of these subsets, the result is that we get all three AT THE SAME TIME, not that we have to pick exactly one and prevent the rest.
Ah, okay. My bad for misinterpreting you above.
It’s also about learning discipline. Building the habit of showing up somewhere every day on time, well-dressed and well-groomed is valuable.
I think this value is overrated.
Necessary for a clerk. Less necessary if you don’t expect to be one.
Well over half of people who don’t expect to ever have an clerk-like job (including office clerks as well as retail clerks) are wrong. More importantly, this discipline is helpful in almost all jobs. It may be overrated by some, but you’re underrating it here.
I should have prefaced that by “Conditional on high IQ”.
If your IQ is 80, that’s a really useful habit. If your IQ is 140, not that much.
Note that being able to focus and apply yourself is a highly useful skill for everyone, but that’s not quite what we are talking about here.
Confirmed that application and focus is a somewhat different thing (though related, in my case at least), and we’re talking more about conformance to imposed schedules and external expectations of monitorable behavior.
Disagree that it’s not useful at IQ 140. It’s a lower proportion of success than for someone closer to the mean, but still a nice still to have and removes some barriers to establishing one’s talents.
Also, I’m comfortable with not having significant accommodation for distant outliers. Actually, for such people, the habits and skills of not getting killed by one’s “peers’ is pretty important. High school sucks for those it’s not evolved/equilibriated for, but it’s temporary.
Sure and that is perfectly compatible with being overrated :-)
The situation is not symmetric. I really want to accommodate far-right-tail outliers. They are what moves your science/tech/society forwards.
I think we’re going to disagree a bit here on what ‘accomodate’ means here. I want to mold and control the far-right-tail outliers (as well as the middle hump) so they are more likely to move science/tech/society forward in ways that I like.
Well, everyone does X-/
The interesting question is what happens when you find out you can’t. Double down on suppression or relinquish control?
I wrote that too quickly. Forcing geniuses to learn to operate when the less-gifted are in positions of power is good for the geniuses AND good for society (though incredibly frustrating for all participants). It doesn’t really fit on a “suppression vs relinquish control” axis.
Relatedly, I don’t believe it’s possible to identify the top 1⁄2 of 1% all that well, and even if we did, there’s so much individual variation that we wouldn’t be able to predict what differences we should accommodate vs allowing/forcing the student to figure out how to (appear to) comply.
I think you’re right that the top 1⁄2 of 1% are much more varied and idiosyncratic than the norm, because they are all going to be gifted in very unique and divergent ways.
However, honestly I think the best way to utilize them (and remove tremendous frustration on both their part and the part of people who would manage them) is treat them like a black box; tell them, “ok, go off and act as you would by default. We’ll make sure no one will bother you. Sink or swim on your own, though. Try to find something interesting. Good luck.
Some of them may not produce all that much of use, but it’s no big loss since they’re only a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population. And some of them will find and create very unique and interesting things, things that only they could find and create. And that more than offsets the losses from the ones that by chance don’t work out.
When I wrote “I want to accommodate” I meant “create conditions where they would be productive and effective”—it wasn’t really about command-and-control.
Again, sure, but no one is suggesting building some sort of a refuge for the gifted (Galt’s Gulch?) where they could be spared the ravages of the dumb normie society. The are forced to learn in any case.
The whole “show up neatly groomed and dressed” thing is teaching kids to emit particular social signals, it’s just that these signals are more suited (heh) for some situations (e.g. you’re applying for a sales clerk position at Macy’s) and less suited for others. If you are looking to hire a programmer and the candidate shows up in a fancy business suit (while showing all signs of being comfortable in it) with a carefully attended-to hairdo, I don’t think those signals would be well-received.
I don’t think that the “show up neatly groomed and dressed” thing is teaching kids to emit particular social signals that is less suitable to a programmer coming to an interview. Both scenarios are about conforming to social norms and for students that happens to be literally neatly groomed/dressed, which for the programmer means no business suit. It’s just more useful to use the phrase neatly groomed/dressed than socially appropriate because for most things socially appropriate is neatly groomed/dressed.
Being socially appropriate is not overrated conditional on IQ – you have already established that the programmer (presumably your high IQ example) is aware of the dangers of coming in like a weirdo in a business suit to an interview. Why wouldn’t the younger version of this person also want to not look like a weirdo to their peers while in school?
I think you are talking about a more sophisticated version (“being socially appropriate”) and in the context of schools teaching kids its’ considerably more basic (e.g. for boys “get a short, neat haircut, no one will hire if you look like a hippy”).
It’s been a long time since I was in high school (disclosure: I barely passed many classes, and was not in competition for a prestigious university, though I did manage to get 20 AP credits and aced the math SAT), but I don’t recall that the version of “groomed and dressed” then was a particularly different requirement than my current employment as a principal engineer at a large tech company.
Showing up on time for appointments remains rather important. Behaving compatibly with a range of others likewise. Truly bad grooming is, in fact, a hindrance. Formal coiffure and sartorial prowess isn’t particularly helpful, but is less of a hindrance than aggressively-casual (stained sweats and flip-flops).
If it was “show up acceptably groomed and dressed, and with a base level of politeness in behavior to people around you”, would you be happier with the description?
I don’t dispute that being able to meet middle-class social norms of dress and grooming is helpful. What I said is that I think it’s overrated (conditional on high IQ). Looking like everyone else is useful but not that useful.
I’d argue that this is not the case, since the vast majority of people who don’t expect to be “clerks” still end up in similar positions.
Have any stats on that?
(note I’m not trying to be that annoying guy who asks for statistics to try and win an argument if the other party fails to produce them; I really want to see info on people’s expected vs actual employment outcomes)
See my answer to Dagon.
There’s a relationship between having regular habits and mental health, I believe. I can’t prove it off the top of my head but you’ll find similar ideas if you look into writing about for example keeping clean living-spaces, getting into the habit of dressing well, etc. and it aligns with my personal experiences. It seems to me the chief benefit is that forcing yourself to go through with things that aren’t fun but which are necessary for living above the level of an animal acts like acid to the narcissistic patterns of thought that provoke people to convince themselves that they’re too good for discipline.
At the extremes, yes. If your habits are very very regular and you are very very attached to them, you might have OCD :-P
That line of thought is well expressed in early Protestantism—see e.g. the Puritans.
Does the fact that Puritans said it make it wrong?
The Puritans were very concerned with saving souls from eternal damnation. What are you very concerned with?
Saving my own psyche from limited damnation.
Sure. But why do you think this generalizes?
Because I’ve seen the relationship between irregular lifestyle and depression in other people around me in my life. If there is research on the topic that you know about or some contrary observations you want to forward then feel free. But at this point this seems like this conversation is heading towards “well can you prove that” territory. And in short, no I cannot prove it.
And which way the causality arrow points?
In any case, I’m trying to say that there is a difference between saying “Orderly life helps some people I know manage their mental state” (which is a statement about some people you know) and “There’s a relationship between having regular habits and mental health” (which is a statement about how the world works).
There’s a difference, but induction isn’t black magic.
It’s conceivable that it it can point both ways simultaneously. What is in a person’s power to alter is their actual behaviour.
The typical mind fallacy isn’t black magic either.
And what is it other than the atypical mind fallacy if one regards himself as too far above the level of the plebes who work as clerks to subject himself to a schedule, unless he has some strong concrete evidence that basically compels him to acknowledge his own brilliance?
If John von Neumann or Paul Erdos woke up at 2 PM and argued that their brains worked better at night, I’d be inclined to take them seriously. If someone without anything to show for their irregular lifestyle nevertheless believed that keeping a schedule would damage their progress, that would be a delusion.
It’s interesting how we started with
and ended with
A fair bit of distance between the two, don’t you think?
No, I don’t agree. Rergarding yourself as superior to plebs and therefore as above routine is at least weak evidence for narcissism. In combination with absence of clear evidence for the idea that you are in fact superior, it would be strong evidence for narcissism.
Actually, there is no need for any evidence of general superiority. All you need is evidence that the disordered lifestyle works for you—regardless of your brilliance or dimness—and that would be quite sufficient.
In the types of cases that I was referring to, where irregular lifestyle coincides with depression, that evidence too would be unavailable.
Why so? If you assert—as I think you do—that ordered lifestyle helps, that implies that you can get evidence what kind of lifestyle helps and, presumably, the same evidence could point in a different direction.
Because if you’re depressed then your disordered lifestyle is not in fact working for you. Someone for who depression has become the water they swim in might fail to see it that way but depression isn’t the default state of mind for a human being.
But isn’t the situation symmetric? I can say “if you’re depressed then your disciplined lifestyle is not in fact working for you” and that would have the same validity.
Yes that would be correct; and I can imagine how this could be the case for somebody like a very high-powered lawyer that wakes up at 4 AM, goes to bed at midnight and shows up to work dressed for success every day; but still feels the whole thing to be hollow and meaningless. Regularity/schedule/discipline may be necessary without being sufficient.
OK, so if the situation is symmetric, why do you believe that disciplined life helps (some) people, but are unwilling to believe that disordered life also helps (some) people?
I’m not unwilling to believe that a disordered life helps some people. I’m saying that, as an individual, each one of us has to be very careful into letting ourselves believe we are one of those people in the absence of strong counter-evidence; because the ( admittedly intuitively assessed on my part ) prior probability of that being the case is not great.
So basically you have a strong prior that disciplined life is considerably more helpful than disorganized one. I assume it’s based on your own experience and the experience of other people in your circle. That’s all fine. What I am doubtful about is how much does that generalize. “Induction” is not a good answer because it’s applicable to absolutely anything.
A prior probability is generalized by nature.
Because if they didn’t the students’ sleep cycles would shift further and people like you would be complaining that the new first period (former second period) is a waste of time.
So what happens to them. I believe they tend to stay up late and be extremely night shifted. Wouldn’t starting school late only make the problem worse?
http://www.oxfordsparks.ox.ac.uk/files/preferences.png
The phase-response curve of the circadian rhythm to light shifts with age, with the equilibrium position of the wake point latest in the late teens and earliest in early childhood and old age.
As long as the “insanely early” hours do not involve starting school before dawn, this is a non-issue. Anyone can adjust their circadian rhythm by just going to sleep earlier, and/or by napping throughout the day in order to compensate for any sleep deficits; we should be raising awareness about these solutions among students. Simply starting school later would not have substantial effects in the long run, anymore than, say, changing to DST, or moving to a different timezone would.
No, they can’t. Students do nap during the day (that’s part of the problem!), and they can try but fail to just go to bed earlier. That’s why they don’t go to bed. If your claims were true, there would never be any problem and the experiments in changing school times would never show any benefit. There is a problem and the experiments do show benefits. You are just offering folk psychology speculation and fake willpower solutions which don’t work. People are not ghosts in the machine, they are the machine, and ‘just go to bed earlier’ doesn’t do anything about the zeitgebers and biology of the thing.
Do you see why this comparison doesn’t work?
That’s not solid proof. What’s relevant is whether different school times can possibly affect things in the longer run, well after the effects of the transition itself are over.
“Folk psychology speculation” is a good way to describe the assumption that some teenagers are just “night owls” and cannot possibly manage to retrain their sleep cycle.
“Just going to bed earlier” encompasses making reasonable efforts that might also involve changing these environmental cues and zeitgebers. Of course if your evening routine involves drinking strong coffee, “just going to bed earlier” might not work very well. The solution is to change that habit.
So, remind me, why does the West have that obesity epidemic going on? Clearly, “the solution is to change the habit” so why isn’t it working?
Well, a simple conjecture is that many obese people in the West care more about their obesity being “accepted” in a way that’s fully open and free of “unwanted discrimination”, than about losing weight in the first place. (Many of them are also not too happy about being made aware of the clearly negative effect of being obese on their own health.) Such attitudes of entitlement seem to be a rather pervasive problem in contemporary Western culture.
this is why we need downvotes
“Anyone can just do x” is an insane and unrealistic way to frame solutions to a problem. Like saying “to stop the obesity epidemic we just need to tell people they have to eat less and exercise more.” or “we should tell people to save more money for retirement” the fact that you can frame a solution in simple terms does not in fact make it a non-issue.
also for much of the year in America going to school DOES in fact involve getting up well before dawn.
I for one had to get up at 5 AM and do homework until midnight most weekdays.
Well, if by ‘obesity epidemic’ you mean “people complaining about how fat they are” (by analogy with the complaint about school starting too early), then yes, that’s exactly what should happen. Start exercising, reduce your intake of highly-processed foods/drinks, and you’ll be losing weight. Part of being rational involves being willing to shoulder responsibility for things that are quite easily under your direct control.
Is it? Source of more information? Or do you have extended reasoning for that idea?
Edit: did you mean agency?
Part of being rational involves not trying the same thing over and over that doesn’t work. Giving people the factually correct, simple advice that you believe does not work.
Wait… DST makes sunrises and sunsets later by civil clocks, so I would expect its effects to be quite the opposite of starting school later (and pretty similar to those of starting schools earlier). Did you mean to say something like “abolishing DST” instead, or am I missing something?
No, the circadian rhythm doesn’t work that way. Perhaps you don’t notice because your chronotype is earlier than your lifestyle required so you never had much trouble falling asleep even when going to bed relatively early, but people with later chronotypes if they go to bed earlier will just take more time to fall asleep.
Everyone has trouble falling asleep when they’re going to bed earlier than usual, at first. If you keep at it and are consistent about avoiding things like bright artificial lights, high general arousal, strong drugs like coffee and other adverse environmental cues later in the day, you’ll fall asleep and your “chronotype” will shift back as intended.
So how about some actual evidence for these claims?
I mean, the medical profession has terms like “advanced sleep phase disorder” and “delayed sleep phase disorder” and “non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder” and seems to take the view that “just go to bed later/earlier/regularly and it’ll sort itself out” is not a helpful response. Now, obviously, those are just doctors; what do they know? But it might be helpful to know how it is you know that they’re wrong.
Or, when you say “Anyone can …”, is it possible that you don’t actually mean anyone?
I don’t think this follows from what you said earlier. “Advanced sleep phase disorder” and “delayed sleep phase disorder” are indeed taken seriously as genuine problems, but they’re invariably ‘treated’ with lifestyle interventions, such as (in the ‘delayed’ case) avoiding bright/artificial light late in the day, and (conversely) letting sunlight into the bedroom some time before you’re scheduled to wake up. Sometimes these interventions are also aided by taking melatonin (or a comparable supplement), but come on, this is hardly a “medical treatment” in the usual sense!
It is?
In many towns in the US, high school sports (especially football) are not just a recreational activity for students, but rather a major social event for the whole community.