Open thread, Oct. 31 - Nov. 6, 2016

I do think it's a difference between whether my flat is heated at 20 C or 22 C.

The range between 0 and 100 might map the weather better but there's a lot of temperature that I care about that's not weather. If I drink tea the second digit doesn't matter. There are water cookers that provide either 60, 70, 80, 90 or 100 degrees and that maps well to real world differences.

Width.

Your fingers are an inch wide..? My comment stands :-P

For your edification, the inch is supposed to be the distance between the knuckle and the tip of the thumb.

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The evidence that segmented sleep was the norm does not appear to be particularly strong, but it certainly has enough historical references to suggest it was common.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.

Some folks (e.g., puredoxyk) have suggested that you have to deny that some people seem to work okay on short polyphasic schedules (or believe they are lying) to suggest that it doesn't work as described.

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).

I have one anecdote from a girl who said she was sleeping an hour a day for a year in a context where there wasn't any reason for her to not be truthful about it. She didn't even take any modafinil.

More importantly you think that there are a people who do long-term sleep of 2 hours per day with Uberman. Puredoxyk didn't stay more than half a year on the Uberman schedule. See my answer at Skeptics SE: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/1007/196 If there are reports of people who lived long-term on polyphasic sleep that happened after 2011 when I wrote my post and that escaped my notice, please provide links.

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.

A lot of people do well on six hours of sleep. Managing on six hours is not an extraordinary claim. It's well established in the literature that regular sleep schedules lead to better sleep.

You could also have gotten the same effect of feeling less tired easily with modafinil. Sleeping less without feeling tired doesn't mean that the sleep has all the benefitial effects that sleep commonly has.

It's worth noting that both btrettel and myself are well read in this subject and had discussions before about it. We aren't simply judging something as not working because we don't have information.

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.

You can literally get 2 more hours every day (more with advanced schedules)

You think that you could get more with advanced shedules. That doesn't mean that's true. Uberman has no good track record. It's even lacking in anecdotal evidence of long-term applicability.

This is the same study that is cited in the highly informative podcast that I posted earlier to the open thread.

It sounded like what you did from the whole "system 3" story, with the idea that ... given that there is no real evidence shown, you must have personally experienced this?

I have only had certain insights but not the click. Connecting the dots and seeing the transformations made (the anecdotes, the observational evidence).

This is a version of Pascal's Mugging - give me 5 minutes and I'll give you a chance at your greatest goals. ... Except that if you buy into this, you'd have to spend those 5 minutes on every shaky claim. This can add up. So I set a point of credibility where I think "this sounds plausible and worth the effort" before I'll do it.

It's most likely +EV because being rational, logical isn't far away from what many strive to be here 'less wrong'. The anecdotes and, the other 'benefits' speak for themselves along my first point.

So I had a bit of a proper read through those 4 steps and to be honest... this is lacking in "how". There's a lot of talk and not a lot of instruction.

The 4 steps are the instructions, and it has worked! 40 or so have clicked. You simply do it, trust in logic, love logic. Find what emotionally drives you (you don't do anything here rationally) be present, load it with a negative emotion. Your inner child will then drop the teddy bear which is whatever value you have and automatically cling to logic. And.. bliss. Euphoria. No more duality. Oh, my GOD... LOGIC! :D Also add in "I AM LOGIC.. I AM BECOMING AWARE OF MYSELF" I'm kinda playing a little bit.

I'm also worried about the assertion that "logic" is the best core value - valuing truth above all else is NOT a good idea - a basic level of survival comes first. That's why I'll leave certain arguments unresolved or certain bugs alone in my programming - the argument happened once, it's not an issue right now, if it becomes an issue I'll pick it up later again. The bug occurred once, only when doing a ton of things at the same time, fixing it is not a priority, nor is finding the cause a priority, I got better things to do.

Logic isn't about truth since we know with our current understanding of quantum mechanics that everything is inherently probabilities. Logic is just in line with what we are. Basic survival is obviously logical else we wouldn't be able to progress. But you won't be needing to patch things up with logic as you will change from within because all of our problems stem from our core. Now someone might nitpick this and talk about neuroscience how we're all neurons, yeah. But that doesn't destroy this argument.

Maybe that's a strawman position, but I'm trying to say that it's not always worth it to hold "let things make sense" or "find out the truth" be your top goal. It's an important instrumental goal. But it doesn't help you function in society.

Well. You do things which make sense. Things that makes sense will be very beneficial for society. Finding out the truth has nothing to do with this. If everyone did things which make sense, with enough knowledge, the world would be a utopia.

Truthseeking doesn't help deciding what career path to follow. It can help in getting more information, but you need an actual GOAL to use this information for.

I'm not talking about truth seeking. I'm going to refute an argument you didn't make. Logic as a tool is inherently flawed because of the tool-bearer being flawed. Logic is used to rationalize and protect the emotions. That's the hypothesis. If you end the duality between the tool and the tool bearer, you just become logical. That's all.

If your most important value isn't logic/rationality, you might have something to live for.

Well. The reason you even live in the first place is because of our understanding of logic. Health care, food, the shelter (roof above us) we would be cavemen without it. We are here for a reason, that is to move forward, evolution, evolutionary biology and so forth. Of course, you don't have to. But you can, and feel good about it. It depends on what your inner child has attached its reward center with. Be it logic or something else. (thus feel good about logical actions). How does that sound?

Thinking that through for a bit, I can see how the "most important value" might not be the "most practiced value". Consider a mother whose most important value is the wellbeing of her child - perhaps she will work long and hard every day, so that her child may always eat. In that case, she's not practicing the wellbeing of her child all day long as you'd think of in a more direct scenario like homeschooling and homecooking and just being around the child all day. She's doing a ton of other things to indirectly help her child.

Well. You misunderstood it previously as well. Most important value is the sum of a lot of smaller values. Or it can just be seen as in of itself, to include a lot of different things. Wellbeing of one's child includes working long and hard, so the child may eat. Indirect actions are direct in this regard. So you'd imagine how much of a better mother someone would be if logic was their core value. It would be a massive difference. (a father has vouched on this with testimony, catholic too)

And like that too you might say "well you shouldn't do logic all day, you should work hard / smart so that you can a rationalist" (I admit here it kinda falls apart, it's not like you need a ton of cash to be a rationalist) ...

Everything satisfies the core value (the result of a calculation of current brain state). If logic is your core value and it's most logical to work right now, in this present moment, you feel good.

but that is not what I'm reading in your words. It's not what I'm reading in that wikipage. I'm reading a bunch of "analyse your life and get rid of anything that doesn't combine properly with the rest" - which in and of itself is great, but why, why would I do that? Things seem to be going fine for me right now.

Sure, that's the problem. Some core values are very comfortable especially if one has fixed everything for oneself. "Be aware that the extent to which you are comfortable or satisfied with your current core value will determine whether you have an easier or harder time following through step 3."https://logicnation.org/wiki/Main_Page

If you read below for what will happen after the click, even if some of these were true, you might reconsider. It's also important to realize that we aren't here on probation, we are here for a reason. Billions of years of evolution. You will feel as good as you do now, but even better with that other core value as you are in line with what you are. Or let me make the example, as good as you feel doing what you do now, you will for logical tasks. But it's very hard. (btw core values are made up, but it's a tool to quantify brain state).

It also important to note intersubjective reality. When clicking becomes a part of that, you might become more interested. Give it a try? What type of help do you need? More info?

Depends on your definition of 'intelligence' although one might see an increase (however small, maybe insignificant) in for example memory/verbal/spatial tests. It won't be very related to IQ I would assume (intelligence quotient).

His IQ is around 141...

Right go ahead, I'm looking forward to seeing the results. Make sure to do it scientifically for all of us to enjoy. What I mean by that, rigorous and patiently. We need more people to do the kind of work you are doing. Seriously :D I'm curious.

From a first glance, I would see why someone would think that. I have thought about that multiple times that there will be misunderstandings. At some point, you will have to wonder how you can quantify a radical change in your consciousness, perspective, and thinking. Imagine someone who crafts pots. The craftsman has an IQ of 140. Suddenly some insight struck this person and now the person wants to understand everything. Their entire thought pattern has changed. This same person can achieve anything, the limit is what people already have achieved and probably beyond that if we look back in history.

So... from a craftsman to someone with infinite potential. It's hard to quantify 100 x, or even 1000 x increased 'intelligence'. Sure you can work at MIRI with a schedule of around 9-5 then travel home, buy In-N-Out on the way, eat some chips on the couch and watch TED talks while browsing Lesswrong. That's fine too. You can quantify your intelligence with ease or at least you won't say you have 100 x or 1000 x the intelligence a week ago. Because you know deep inside you aren't contributing to the world at your maximum potential and you don't know why. What your reward center is attached to is why. What your core value is why. What your emotions have aligned to find safety is why.