If I’m saying why I shouldn’t join, either of “I haven’t the time” or silence is fine. If I want to say why you shouldn’t join, we should set the bar high, so that if I use joining as a cheap shot against you I look bad. “You joined a website with a stupid font” is what people fear, and so that might be what we need to act against.
Incidentally, what timezone are you in and when do you sleep? I’m always a bit surprised to get responses from you in the morning...
That would be a serious offense, but it’s a joke in Eliezer’s case. A bad joke though, encouraging a serious problem. Loosing most of their productivity through inadequate sleep is a common nerdy error mode.
FWIW, my own experiments with polyphasic sleep have convinced me that they do work, but at the price of a distressing fraction of one’s brainpower & creativity.
As I’m sure you’re aware, a lot of anecdotal accounts of polyphasic sleep have suggested no loss of cognitive or creative function (after a 1-3 week adjustment period), but those are difficult to evaluate without an external metric; certain kinds of cognitive impairment can paradoxically make you feel you’re thinking more clearly (c.f., “I drive better with a couple drinks in me”).
I’ve been intrigued by the idea but have been held back by issues of work schedule, inability to spare two weeks for adjustment, and lack of a way to clearly measure how stupid it makes me.
As I’m sure you’re aware, a lot of anecdotal accounts of polyphasic sleep have suggested no loss of cognitive or creative function (after a 1-3 week adjustment period), but those are difficult to evaluate without an external metric; certain kinds of cognitive impairment can paradoxically make you feel you’re thinking more clearly (c.f., “I drive better with a couple drinks in me”).
Oh yes, I was well aware of that. What I did was play 20 rounds of GBrainy a day and look at my scores. (Why GBrainy? Because I didn’t have a few score of comparable IQ tests handy, and it was available in Ubuntu, and was reasonably fun to play.) I forget the exact stats, but it wasn’t uncommon for my score to drop by 1⁄3 compared to when I was sleeping normally. What seemed to be most hard-hit was working memory, which really hurt on the mental arithmetic ones.
(The obvious criticism is that I didn’t actually adjust, but I don’t think there’s any way to prove that either way.)
If I’m saying why I shouldn’t join, either of “I haven’t the time” or silence is fine. If I want to say why you shouldn’t join, we should set the bar high, so that if I use joining as a cheap shot against you I look bad. “You joined a website with a stupid font” is what people fear, and so that might be what we need to act against.
Incidentally, what timezone are you in and when do you sleep? I’m always a bit surprised to get responses from you in the morning...
Eliezer Yudkowsky does not sleep. He waits.
Mm. I don’t like ‘waits’; it sounds like he’s wasting his time, and it doesn’t have enough LW/OB injokes. Maybe ‘He updates priors.’?
It should be obvious from looking at the timestamps of my comments. I don’t sleep.
This worries me… sleepless in charge of the future of humanity is a serious offence
That would be a serious offense, but it’s a joke in Eliezer’s case. A bad joke though, encouraging a serious problem. Loosing most of their productivity through inadequate sleep is a common nerdy error mode.
Innit. I quite like the sleep deprivation high, but it’s not a good state for thinking straight. And I also love sleeping and dreaming.
There’s always polyphasic sleep schedules. Assuming those actually work, which is not at all well-established...
FWIW, my own experiments with polyphasic sleep have convinced me that they do work, but at the price of a distressing fraction of one’s brainpower & creativity.
As I’m sure you’re aware, a lot of anecdotal accounts of polyphasic sleep have suggested no loss of cognitive or creative function (after a 1-3 week adjustment period), but those are difficult to evaluate without an external metric; certain kinds of cognitive impairment can paradoxically make you feel you’re thinking more clearly (c.f., “I drive better with a couple drinks in me”).
I’ve been intrigued by the idea but have been held back by issues of work schedule, inability to spare two weeks for adjustment, and lack of a way to clearly measure how stupid it makes me.
Oh yes, I was well aware of that. What I did was play 20 rounds of GBrainy a day and look at my scores. (Why GBrainy? Because I didn’t have a few score of comparable IQ tests handy, and it was available in Ubuntu, and was reasonably fun to play.) I forget the exact stats, but it wasn’t uncommon for my score to drop by 1⁄3 compared to when I was sleeping normally. What seemed to be most hard-hit was working memory, which really hurt on the mental arithmetic ones.
(The obvious criticism is that I didn’t actually adjust, but I don’t think there’s any way to prove that either way.)
No one person is “in charge of the future of humanity”. I know you were probably being somewhat flippant, but still.