gwern comments on When Willpower Attacks - Less Wrong

17 Post author: jimrandomh 03 October 2009 03:36AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (77)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: randallsquared 05 October 2009 04:07:04AM 3 points [-]

And it's impossible to sleep too much more than normal; the better rested we are, the harder it is to fall asleep.

This isn't true, as far as I can see. I know several people who have fallen into the habit of sleeping much more than is normal for months or years, with no apparent physiological reason. Also, I notice that when I sleep in, I typically get up because I don't want to waste more of the day, and never seem to have trouble going back to sleep if I choose to do that. For someone sufficiently unmotivated to do anything, I think sleeping for most of each 24 hours would be possible.

Comment author: gwern 05 October 2009 05:22:54PM *  0 points [-]

In The Discovery of France, I read of one region of France where all the peasants during winter simply holed up in their houses, bundled up together, eating very little, and just sleeping or dozing the days away. Outsiders were struck how very like hibernating bears they were.