Natália doesn’t set out to disprove all of your theses, but rather to put forth some counter-theses. She says:
I decided to write a post pointing out several of the mistakes I think he’s made, and reporting some of what the academic literature on sleep seems to show.
Read carefully, she neither claims that every point you’ve made is mistaken, nor to give a comprehensive review of the academic literature. So I don’t think you can fault her for not addressing the point about the use of sleep deprivation as a depression cure. She’s critiquing those theses of yours which she found weak, not issuing a comprehensive point-by-point criticism of your entire original post.
I think that you owe this level of care in interpreting her language, because you’re insisting that she offer you that same level of care. You said:
people who sleep just 6 hours a night might have the lowest mortality
And then you complain when she rephrases this as:
six hours of sleep being optimal for mortality, as Guzey has hypothesized before (as well as evidence against eight hours being optimal for mortality, of course).
To my eye, these reflect approximately equal levels of imprecision, thought that’s a purely subjective claim. I think you would both be in the right to object to each others’ misreporting of your exact claims. To put it in more collegial terms, I think this discussion can and will benefit from precise reading and deep consideration.
The obvious problem with that argument is that the set of things that cause acute bodily stress is much larger than the set of things that cause long-term benefits. Stubbing your toe, for example, causes acute bodily stress. Guzey’s argument works equally well for showing that occasional toe-stubbing is good for health as for showing that occasional acute sleep deprivation is. - Natália
As far as I know, there’s no evidence that stubbing depressed people’s toes relieves their depression in 50% of the cases, which combined with the relationship with mania in bipolar people, and the analogical reasoning to exercise and fasting leads me to believe that acute sleep deprivation is good. - Guzey
Here, I think that while it’s reasonable to desire Natália to have inferred that you think the utility of SD as a depression treatment is supporting evidence for it being a “good stressor,” you also did not specifically tie this in as a piece of evidence in the relevant section here. So I think Natália is more or less literally correct when she points out that this is “the entirety of [your] argument in that section” (emphasis mine), even if it’s not a maximally charitable synthesis of your post as a whole.
That aside, I think it’s clear that this is a crux, as others have brought up the question of why we intuit that some forms of acute stress (i.e. stubbing a toe) are just bad, while others (i.e. exercise and maybe sleep deprivation) can be good. I think it’s an interesting question, and worth carrying on the argument, as you’re doing here.
I’m looking forward to reading a more extensive response to Natália’s post!
That aside, I think it’s clear that this is a crux, as others have brought up the question of why we intuit that some forms of acute stress (i.e. stubbing a toe) are just bad, while others (i.e. exercise and maybe sleep deprivation) can be good.
FWIW, I don’t think the stubbed toe example is integral to the argument. The stubbed toe example was almost certainly just an analogy, not a knockdown argument, in regards to the more general point that the link between acute stress and health benefit seems to be weak.
I think a better way of phrasing this crux is that it’s unclear why this form of acute stress is beneficial, where this refers to sleep deprivation. It would be nice to get specific evidence regarding why sleep deprivation is the right type of acute stress to promote health, when the relationship does not hold in general.
I don’t think I’m objecting to your current summary of the debate necessarily, but I do think focusing on the stubbed toe example is mostly a distraction, and all parties are better off relying on different arguments.
I agree that stubbed toes needn’t be a central example of “acute stress,” and I would hope that most people are just using it as you suggest—a convenient analogy for a minor but pretty-clearly-bad form of injury, one that stands in contrast to plausibly beneficial stressors like exercise.
Natália doesn’t set out to disprove all of your theses, but rather to put forth some counter-theses. She says:
Read carefully, she neither claims that every point you’ve made is mistaken, nor to give a comprehensive review of the academic literature. So I don’t think you can fault her for not addressing the point about the use of sleep deprivation as a depression cure. She’s critiquing those theses of yours which she found weak, not issuing a comprehensive point-by-point criticism of your entire original post.
I think that you owe this level of care in interpreting her language, because you’re insisting that she offer you that same level of care. You said:
And then you complain when she rephrases this as:
To my eye, these reflect approximately equal levels of imprecision, thought that’s a purely subjective claim. I think you would both be in the right to object to each others’ misreporting of your exact claims. To put it in more collegial terms, I think this discussion can and will benefit from precise reading and deep consideration.
Here, I think that while it’s reasonable to desire Natália to have inferred that you think the utility of SD as a depression treatment is supporting evidence for it being a “good stressor,” you also did not specifically tie this in as a piece of evidence in the relevant section here. So I think Natália is more or less literally correct when she points out that this is “the entirety of [your] argument in that section” (emphasis mine), even if it’s not a maximally charitable synthesis of your post as a whole.
That aside, I think it’s clear that this is a crux, as others have brought up the question of why we intuit that some forms of acute stress (i.e. stubbing a toe) are just bad, while others (i.e. exercise and maybe sleep deprivation) can be good. I think it’s an interesting question, and worth carrying on the argument, as you’re doing here.
I’m looking forward to reading a more extensive response to Natália’s post!
FWIW, I don’t think the stubbed toe example is integral to the argument. The stubbed toe example was almost certainly just an analogy, not a knockdown argument, in regards to the more general point that the link between acute stress and health benefit seems to be weak.
I think a better way of phrasing this crux is that it’s unclear why this form of acute stress is beneficial, where this refers to sleep deprivation. It would be nice to get specific evidence regarding why sleep deprivation is the right type of acute stress to promote health, when the relationship does not hold in general.
I don’t think I’m objecting to your current summary of the debate necessarily, but I do think focusing on the stubbed toe example is mostly a distraction, and all parties are better off relying on different arguments.
I agree that stubbed toes needn’t be a central example of “acute stress,” and I would hope that most people are just using it as you suggest—a convenient analogy for a minor but pretty-clearly-bad form of injury, one that stands in contrast to plausibly beneficial stressors like exercise.