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?
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.
Hm?
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.
Note that the book contains a multitude of basic scientific errors, misrepresentation of research, data manipulation, etc: https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/
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.
(removed this comment)
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