I’ll second the suggestion that we should consider other options. While I know Vaniver personally and believe he would do an excellent job, I think Vaniver would agree that considering other candidates too would be a wise choice. (Narrow framing is one of the “villians” of decision making in a book on decision making he suggested to me, Decisive.) Plus, I scanned this thread and I haven’t seen Vaniver say he is okay with such a role.
btrettel
Karma: 621
According to 538′s survey more people reported that they comment to fix errors than anything else.
This doesn’t mean that you’re wrong, though, because it doesn’t seem 538 asked why people stop commenting (based on my skim of the article; feel free to correct me).
Good point about regulatory issues. I’ve been thinking a lot about working on standards committees and whatnot as they actually have influence and many standards/regulations/codes are bad.
Using waste streams is one of the more basic efficiency engineering approaches, and at this point I think if large gains were to be had from those, we’d have them already.
As for condensing CO2, there are tons of ideas along those lines, but I’m not sure carbon capture is worthwhile. I’d need to see more economic analysis of those ideas, or better yet, test implementations. That’s more or less my point. There are a ton of ideas, many of which could work technologically, but which would work economically/socially/etc. as well?
Let’s go back to biological systems. Even assuming that most people driving is a good idea (I don’t assume this), cars are somewhat irrational for that purpose. You can cut down drag (and consequently increase efficiency) a lot with relatively basic (and well known) modifications, e.g., boat tailing. It seems to me that cars aren’t built that way in the first place because even though people say they want fuel economy, etc., cars built that way won’t sell.
There used to be a really interesting interview along those lines with Bob Lutz (a well known car company executive) here, but it seems to have since gone offline. Here’s what I have quoted in my notes:
AlixPartners: I would love to hear your point of view on design. Is it becoming even more important or not?
Bob Lutz: If you look at the [auto] companies that are really successful today, they are heavily design-focused.
In an era of levelness in almost everything else—fuel consumption, safety (which is all mandated anyway), cost, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera—the one thing that sticks out that can give you a huge competitive advantage is design.
AlixPartners: There’s always a trade-off between the design side and the engineer. What are some of the key lessons you might want to pass on about that give and take?
Bob Lutz: Well, my key lesson learned, and I pass on to anybody who is in any position of responsibility in the automobile business, is if you look at the automobile as a collection of rational traits, like fuel economy, shoulder room, elbow room, hip room, rear H-point to dash, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera—and you get all that down on paper and the car is totally defined dimensionally, and then you hand it to the designers and say, “Put a wrapper on this, please,” you’re going to get a car that meets every rational, stated desire on the part of a potential customer—but nobody’s going to buy it! Because it is a fundamental mistake to look at cars and their attributes in a rational way.
We’re all rational people. but looking at cars as fulfilling rational needs and then designing to that is about as smart as designing men’s wristwatches for function only. They’re just not going to sell.
And it’s the same with cars. Tumblehome, side sloping in, fast windshield, roof height—[it was usually a] struggle to get what the designers wanted, in terms of not having a very stiff-looking car. And [the engineers would often] say, “Well, but what you’re doing is it’s going to deteriorate head swing lateral [if we] go down another half inch in roof height.”
And I would say, “Have you ever seen people in a showroom with tape measures, where the husband and wife are in there measuring and finally one of them says, ‘You know honey, this Chevrolet has a half inch less [room] than the Toyota Camry we saw before. Let’s go buy it.’”
That’s just not the way people behave. People won’t even be in the showroom unless the car fascinates them visually from ads or as seen on television or seen in the street, or whatever.
I’m interested in predicting future events to prioritize technology research. I’ve been thinking about getting speakers with expertise in the future of computing, trends of resource availability and utilization, climate change, and clean energy to start.
Previously I thought futurism was all about making optimistic predictions, but since then I’ve found more futurists who make predictions I think are credible. I track my own on PredictionBook and am going to start using Metaculus and GJOpen soon.
And despite working on a PhD in engineering, I’m actually quite skeptical of technology. Technological solutions to problems don’t have as good a track record as most believe, and I think this influences where I should focus my research. For example, I used to think clean energy research was very important, but I’ve since come to the conclusion that energy and climate change are social/economic, political, or even aesthetic problems, not so much technical problems. That’s not to say technology won’t play a role, but due to things like the Jevons paradox, technology’s role isn’t as obvious as people think it is. Improving efficiency can increase usage, not that even maximally efficient systems will necessarily solve the problem. You should get some idea of what the actual effect of the research will be rather than assuming the effect will be what you want. Similar things are frequently said about starting a business: Check if the market exists before starting the business.
Thanks. I agree that those examples are problematic. Do you have the link for Trump being the most significant current existential risk? I think he’s a major risk, but relatively less important than many other things.
The biggest risk from him is starting a major war and/or using nuclear weapons, but as I recall from speaking with Vaniver, not everyone thinks he’s a higher risk than Clinton would be in that area.
I would have liked to, but they rejected my application. (Edit: I imagine I’m getting downvoted because I mentioned this. Note that this is not complaining. I tend to view application processes as close to lotteries, so I don’t take this personally.)
The topics of the conference interest me greatly. Right now I’m planning on hosting some futurist related discussions through the Austin LessWrong group while coordinating with a local futurist group.
If you will attend and have the opportunity, I’d be interested in seeing a summary of your experiences at the conference.
Can you give some examples? I haven’t paid much attention to this.
While we’re on the topic, “politics is the mind-killer” isn’t sufficiently broad in my opinion. People can frequently are “mind-killed” in other areas, especially when conflicts of interest are involved. My experience suggests certain topics like diet tend to go just as poorly as politics.
So I meant “p/s works” = “splitting sleep into multiple phases in certain ways does increase efficiency and makes you require less sleep”
This appears to be true if you must be sleep deprived. That is, if you want to operate at X% function, where X is less than 100, likely less than 70 or so, you would need to sleep a shorter duration on a polyphasic schedule than you would on a monophasic schedule. (“X% function” is somewhat vague, but I trust you understand what I mean.)
However, if you want high X% function (say, higher than 90%) then the required sleep durations appear to be the same in either case. This could easily make polyphasic sleep likely less efficient considering logistics (time spent getting into bed, etc.) and time to fall asleep.
I’d recommend taking a look at Stampi’s book for more information on polyphasic sleep being efficient for sleep deprivation but not so for normal levels of sleep. I also want to note that the estimated percentages I gave above are for illustration only. Look at Stampi’s book for more accurate information. I do not have a copy any longer.
You’re mixing things together. If I adapted a polyphasic schedule and also fixed real issues in the process, and have now significantly better sleep due to fixing those, then I am not “mildly deluded yourself and are avoiding disconfirming evidence.” [...] Instead, I am correctly observing better sleep and am just attributing it incorrectly. So those are different things.
You are correct. This is exactly what I meant by “I should have given these possibilities more consideration as well, and I do now.”. I should have also changed the earlier part of my post to back away more from the placebo and wishful thinking statements. The purpose of the elaboration was to explain my earlier statements in greater detail.
(note also that I am not avoiding any evidence because I have never encountered any evidence against p/s until today).
That is not what I meant. As an example, consider that you dropped a glass of water. Someone who was tired might attribute that to being tired, but someone who very strongly wanted to believe that polyphasic sleep worked would probably try to find an explanation other than that they were tired.
The argument is circular. You say that [...]
No, I think you are putting words into my mouth. My assessment of the weakness of evidence for short polyphasic sleep schedules is based primarily on the a) evidence that it does not work, including self-reported evidence (most people completely fail, and I see no reason to believe they all are “doing it wrong”, etc.) and b) the fact that the standard mechanisms by which it could work are not plausible. I actually started investigating polyphasic sleep thinking the idea was plausible, but the more evidence I encountered, the less I believed.
I believe I have discussed a in sufficient detail.
For b, polyphasic sleep proponents used to claim that polyphasic sleep allows you to go into REM quickly, and REM was all you need, therefore polyphasic sleep was more efficient. To be fair, some of this is true, but the general message is false. The studies I linked to in my posts from 2014 suggest that deep sleep is the most important, but there’s reason to believe all stages are important. With that said, as I recall (will need to dig up the study for this), certain antidepressants completely suppress REM and those people are doing fine best I can tell (at least compared against other folks on similar antidepressants without REM suppression). The technical term for a sleep period where one goes in to REM fast is SOREMP and it’s taken as a symptom of either severe sleep deprivation or narcolepsy, and not regarded as good thing.
So, a better argument would be that polyphasic sleep allows one to get the same or greater amount of deep sleep, while reducing time in less important stages of sleep. This by itself seemed plausible to me in 2014, so I looked more into it. Unfortunately, as I stated in my 2014 posts, in actual polyphasic sleep, you experience each stage of sleep in relatively the same proportion as you did before. Both REM and deep sleep decrease. (Please note that this is contrary to what the Polyphasic Society claims! Their claims: “The body can also change the first portion of a ‘core sleep’ from mostly stage 1 and 2, to mostly stage 3 (SWS)” and “Because you are sleeping more often and getting dream-full REM in your multiple sleeps, you will be dreaming more!”)
There are also some arguments like “this is how our ancestors slept, therefore it’s how you should sleep too”. There are a few things I think about this. First, it does seem that many of our ancestors did do some sort of biphasic sleep, either with a gap in the middle of the night or a nap in the afternoon. I don’t think this was done to reduce sleep time, so it’s not an argument for those sorts of schedules. Also, while evolutionary arguments are okay for generating hypotheses, they also need to fit the evidence, and as I said, the evidence really isn’t a point in polyphasic sleep’s favor.
Consider my perspective for a moment. Polyphasic Society prophesied a bunch if one does X , I estimated that they were credible based on presentation, I did X, I got pretty much exactly what was promised in about as much time as I thought it would take. Now you come telling me that all improvements are due to side effects and p/s has actually zero benefits. That’s not impossible, but clearly less plausible. Why should I believe it?
You should believe me because the Polyphasic Society’s arguments are based on faulty understandings of sleep, and are contradicted by empirical studies, many of which were conducted by someone they hold in high regard, Claudio Stampi. See here for additional details.
And what is it about the presentation of the Polyphasic Society that makes them seem credible? Their assertions generally have no citations. They seem like your standard alt-med website, which I don’t consider credible.
If polyphasic sleep worked, you would see it advocated by sleep doctors and researchers, and also used by the military. These people are not unfamiliar with the idea. As I recall, the military is very interested in optimizing sleep, but they focus on things that actually work, like good sleep hygiene and getting physical exercise.
The paragraph reads stronger than the arguments actually are. Let me untangle them [...]
There are a very large number of possibilities. I mentioned consolidated sleep as an example because I know many people wake up frequently and this prevents them from having good sleep quality. Look up sleep hygiene. Any number of those pieces of advice could have had a big effect. Personally, I find having a regular schedule to be of the greatest help to me, but that might not be the case for others. I can not pin down what’s happening to you other than that I do not believe polyphasic sleep by itself is helping.
Honestly, this just seems silly. The experience of tiredness is subjective. What matters is how tired I feel, and I feel significantly less tired than previously (except in the morning, as I’ve said already, and this is improving).
Experience is subjective by definition. Why being tired is bad is not necessarily subjective, however. Does it matter if you subjectively “feel” awake if you’ll fall asleep if you sit down for 10 minutes? Does it matter if you subjectively “feel” awake if your cognitive performance is reduced?
See, you’re assuming here that the number is lower than what should be expected, and that needs explaining. I don’t think that’s true.
In my 2014 posts, I used a success rate which was based on numbers from a major polyphasic sleep proponent. Personally, I think this number is very high (i.e., the failure rate is lower than I would put it at), but I have not done the polyphasic sleep census I think would be necessary to figure out it more precisely. I choose this number as it was the only one I saw available, and I thought it would be hard to accuse me of trying to paint polyphasic sleep in a bad light if I used a number from a proponent, but I guess I was wrong.
– Most people try harder ones first (that already gives you a majority that’ll almost unanimously fail)
I am unsure. My own experience suggests that people gravitate towards the less extreme forms, as you did. I’m not aware of any polyphasic sleep census which would allow one to determine this.
– Most people probably don’t do it correctly
I’ve seen a wide variety of reasons given for why people fail, and it seems to be to basically be variations of the No true Scotsman fallacy or even straight up cherry picking. Sure, I’d expect many people who attempted polyphasic sleep to have done it wrong. I, however, see no reason to conclude that almost everyone who tried it did it wrong. The procedure does not seem that complicated and I do not think it’s particularly sensitive to many variables. The base rate for success for these sorts of things in general seems to be higher. I need a better explanation than just asserting that the majority of people do it wrong. Evidence for this assertion would be appreciated.
– Most people probably don’t try that hard (more controversially, most people are lazy to begin with)
I definitely do not believe that most people who try polyphasic sleep don’t try that hard. I’ve skimmed blogs where people tried this and the overwhelming impression I got was that they tried really really hard. And usually they seemed to think it would work up until they quit. This was my impression. I’d like to see some sort of polyphasic sleep census to help answer these questions, as I’ve said, that doesn’t exist.
One person I know tried polyphasic sleep, and as I recall, they definitely tried hard, but ultimately failed.
(addressing the [[]]): Now that’s a really bold statement. Do you have evidence?
I do not think this is a bold statement at all. It comes from my reading about polyphasic sleep over the years. I got the impression from people who failed that they did do exactly as they were told (or nearly so) and did try hard. That’s what I meant. Again, absent a polyphasic sleep census, I can’t give stronger evidence than pointing out a few of the blogs I recall skimming through. I’d be happy to do a few minutes of digging if you are interested.
I appreciate the detailed reply.
I don’t think that’s harmful to say, but I think you’re wrong. I’m doing it. It’s working. There is your evidence.
Your statements are evidence, but not particularly convincing evidence to me.
1| Wishful Thinking – what does that even mean? I am sleeping more than 2 hours less per day than I did for 99% of my life and am less tired than I was on average for the past 5 years. That is an observable fact. I’m not oversleeping constantly and pretending as if that wasn’t the case. You either take that as a fact, or think I am deliberately lying, or think I am insane and unable to count to ten. Or I guess that I’m so wishful that I don’t notice what by now must be massive sleep deprivation after a month of cutting much needed sleep.
I do not believe you or anyone else involved in polyphasic sleep are deliberately lying, rather, I believe you have mildly deluded yourself and are avoiding disconfirming evidence. Let me be clear: mild delusion. You can clearly count to ten, etc. Again, this is rude to say, but look at it from my perspective. Sleep is important, and polyphasic sleep folks seem to get so much wrong about it, and they encourage people to get so little sleep. So I hope you excuse the potential rudeness and see this as a sincere attempt to help you.
It can be difficult to know how impaired you are when you are tired. That is especially true when combined with the strong desire for polyphasic sleep to work.
There are many additional possibilities other than “polyphasic sleep is reducing my sleep need”. As ChristianKl suggested, perhaps having a more regular schedule is helping. Perhaps it’s not so much the regular schedule as it is reducing time spent in bed awake, which as I recall can correlate better with feelings of restfulness than total sleep duration. (Consolidating one’s sleep into more continuous blocks is frequently a goal of people with sleep trouble, and the therapy is basically sleep deprivation, not unlike what I believe you are doing to yourself.) Maybe you are actually a short sleeper who previously had poor sleep quality that a consolidated schedule has fixed. Perhaps it’s something other than any of these possibilities. Given that the evidence supporting polyphasic sleep is weak at best, I encourage you to take these other possibilities more seriously. I should have given these possibilities more consideration as well, and I do now. I think there’s a strong possibility that your apparent improved restedness is not from polyphasic sleep, rather, some other change you made recently.
I also would suggest conducting more objective studies into your sleepiness. A basic measure of sleepiness is the Epworth sleepiness scale, but it is entirely subjective and may be a poor measure. The MLST is the standard objective test for sleepiness, but requires equipment to measure the onset of sleep, and it can be misleading if one suffers from insomnia. One can look at other measures, like, for example, how quickly one enters REM sleep upon falling asleep. That can be a measure of sleep deprivation. (As I said in other posts, despite the volume of things polyphasic sleep folks have written about how entering REM quickly most of the time is the goal of polyphasic sleep, it’s generally regarded as a sign of sleep deprivation or narcolepsy. Occasionally entering REM fast is normal, doing so the majority of times is not.) Various cognitive tests are common as well.
Placebo Effect – over 2 hours a day due to placebo?
In part. Placebo sleep seems to be a fairly strong effect. Thinking that you slept well does actually seem to help you. So it stands to reason that thinking polyphasic sleep works would make you feel and act a bit more rested on a polyphasic schedule.
We are talking about two hours a day in extreme cases. No-one naturally sleeps just two hours a day. (If I am wrong here, correct me).
There are many cases in the literature of very short sleepers, even as short as you suggest would be unnatural. One individual comes to mind immediately: Al Herpin claimed to not sleep at all, and some evidence does support his claim. It’s not hard to find people who claim to sleep about 4 hours per day, and the short sleep does appear to at least partially be explained by genetics. While I am skeptical when someone claims to sleep that little, I don’t see any reason to doubt these claims more than the claims of people who claim to use polyphasic sleep to reduce sleep need dramatically. Many of these folks (i.e., claimed short sleepers and polyphasic sleepers) likely are true short sleepers, and many probably are victims of sleep state misperception.
The fact that most people who attempt polyphasic sleep fail is not some kind of covered-up fact or evidence against the concept. The website says so openly.
I never claimed polyphasic sleep folks cover this up. They engage in run-of-the-mill denialism. “Those people did polyphasic sleep wrong.” That’s possible, but given that many people have tried it and whether or not they fail doesn’t seem to have much to do with what specifically they did, the most likely explanation is that polyphasic sleep doesn’t work, especially the most extreme types. Most people who try polyphasic sleep seem very enthusiastic, and they want it to work. They are like you. They put a lot of willpower into it, and seem very interested in doing it right. I don’t doubt their sincerity or that they did what they were told. Indeed, I don’t doubt anyone’s sincerity here (as I said, I don’t think anyone is lying).
And 3. Do you really think all the people doing polyphasic sleep don’t notice that they actually don’t sleep less than before? (This is the weakest point, I could believe that it were the case if evidence pointed in that direction).
No. It’s not a question of sleeping less than before, rather, of whether they achieve optimal levels of restedness. Standard advice is follow good sleep hygiene practices (most people don’t), treat sleep disorders, and sleep for a duration at which you feel rested. I doubt polyphasic sleep would work as well as that, and I think if one did a cost-benefit analysis, they’d find the costs of sleep deprivation outweigh the time benefits.
I could see someone pointing out a potential contradiction in my post in that I suggested people who use polyphasic sleep could suffer from sleep state misperception, but that they think they sleep a reduced amount. What I mean is that a polyphasic sleep proponent might believe they sleep only X hours, but they accidentally are asleep Y additional hours, which they are unaware of. For example, this could occur when they are reading or sitting down idly. As far as they are aware, they sleep less, but in reality they might sleep an amount closer to their previous amount than they believe. I don’t think this contradicts anything I’ve said.
Fair point. There likely are other possibilities as well.
The evidence that segmented sleep was the norm does not appear to be particularly strong, but it certainly has enough historical references to suggest it was common. Further, I don’t think segmented sleep was done for the purpose of reducing sleep need. Correct me if I’m wrong.
I strongly disagree about polyphasic sleep. Here’s a series of posts of mine here explaining why I don’t think polyphasic sleep works. I’m surprised how many rationalists seem to believe it works. The evidence supporting using polyphasic sleep to reduce sleep need is weak at best, and at worst the idea seems actively harmful. I suspect you are seeing some combination of a placebo effect and wishful thinking. Perhaps that’s impolite to say, but I think attempting to use polyphasic sleep to reduce sleep need is overall harmful to most people, and I want to highlight that.
Once I recall reading on the polyphasic sleep reddit that polyphasic sleep is a better way to manage sleep deprivation. That is to say, if you need to be sleep deprived, you’d do better on a polyphasic schedule. This seems reasonable to me. To be clear, it appears that to feel fully rested and get the full health benefits, you’d need to sleep a normal duration, regardless of how it’s broken up. Polyphasic might be more convenient, but the duration will be comparable.
Perhaps lucid dreaming or something similar could help you regain time “lost” to sleep. Or, you could look into what actually might reduce sleep need like the drugs I mentioned, or physical exercise.
I did a fair amount of research into various techniques for reducing sleep need.
There are certain drugs which increase deep sleep at the expense of other stages (preferably at the expense of light sleep). It is plausible these drugs could reduce sleep need. However, I should note that there are no studies into whether these actually reduce sleep need. This is purely speculation. Some candidates include ritanserin (available only for research purposes), trazodone (a common anti-depressant, used more commonly for insomnia), mirtazapine, pregabalin, gabapentin, and GHB. GHB is extremely highly regulated and is only available by prescription for narcolepsy. Moreover, it appears to be highly dangerous and I absolutely recommend against it. I should note that some of these drugs may have unacceptable side effects, or even unknown effects in the case of ritanserin. Ritanserin, however, is the strongest deep sleep booster I have seen.
With that being said, it’s not clear that the lighter stages of sleep are unnecessary, and there could be serious adverse affects from taking these drugs regularly for these purposes. I do not recommend taking these drugs for these purposes.
My impression from the research was that no stimulant actually reduces sleep requirements. And I would count the -afinils as stimulants; the promotional literature wants to believe otherwise, but I see no reason to justify that. Future narcolepsy treatments may perform much better than stimulants do in terms of feeling, by physically turning off sleep signals in the brain. However, I suspect this would be ill advised for long term use absent narcolepsy.
As for behavioral interventions, as I recall, there is reasonable evidence that exercise increases deep sleep.
If you are interested, I could dig up the studies on these topics again and give you some things to read.
Edit: I also want to add that the drugs I listed above are not anticholinergic, or are only mildly so (e.g., trazodone). Anticholinergic drugs could contribute to mental decline when taken for long periods of time. From what I understand many antihistamines which cause drowsiness also would increase deep sleep, but I would not recommend taking them for long periods of time due to the anticholinergic effects these drugs have. So taking benadryl daily to improve your sleep quality is probably a bad idea.
As an example, do you mean something like correctly understanding how to “abuse” mathematical notation in a way that remains rigorous?
Interesting point. Can you give an example of this knowledge?
I’m working on a PhD myself (in engineering), but the main things I feel I get from this are access to top scholars, mentoring, structure, and the chance to talk with others who are interested in learning more and research. One could also have access to difficult to obtain equipment in academia, but a large corporation could also provide such equipment. In principle I don’t think these things are unique to academia.
I went to the Library of Congress today. It’s highly likely I’ll go again next summer, so you can still let me know if there’s anything you want scanned.
The article is more of historical interest to me. I don’t think Buckminster Fuller’s claims are more trustworthy than those of other people, and from what I’ve read they aren’t any different from what others claim. So the basic criticisms seem to hold against his claims. And the evidence for polyphasic sleep is quite bad, so bad in fact that I am surprised and disappointed that so many rationalists take it seriously. I suppose it comes from wishful thinking, but I’m not sure. (My intention is not to be mean to people who take these ideas seriously, but rather to check if there’s anything I’m missing. It seems to me that I know considerably more about sleep science than polyphasic sleep proponents, though I’m still not an expert.)
My opinion of polyphasic sleep as a way to reduce sleep requirements is negative, so I recommend not tracking this down.
This would be a top recommendation of mine as well. There are quite a few prediction tracking websites now: PredictionBook, Metaculus, and Good Judgement Open come to mind immediately, and that’s not considering the various prediction markets too.
I’ve started writing a command line prediction tracker which will integrate with these sites and some others (eventually, at least). PredictionBook and Metaculus both seem to have APIs which would make the integration rather easy. So integration with LessWrong should not be particularly difficult. (The API for Metaculus is not documented best I can tell, but by snooping around the code you can figure things out...)