Case study: Melatonin

gwern

I discuss melatonin's effects on sleep & its safety; I segue into the general benefits of sleep and the severely disrupted sleep of the modern Western world, the cost of melatonin use and the benefit (eg. enforcing regular bedtimes), followed by a basic cost-benefit analysis of melatonin concluding that the net profit is large enough to be worth giving it a try barring unusual conditions or very pessimistic safety estimates.

Full essay: http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin

I discuss melatonin's effects on sleep & its safety; I segue into the general benefits of sleep and the severely disrupted sleep of the modern Western world, the cost of melatonin use and the benefit (eg. enforcing regular bedtimes), followed by a basic cost-benefit analysis of melatonin concluding that the net profit is large enough to be worth giving it a try barring unusual conditions or very pessimistic safety estimates.

Full essay: http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin

Ideal in that you'd prefer to work that long.

You work more than your ideal amount. Equivalently, you value your free time at higher than what you get payed. Presumably, people like you mixed in with people who want to work longer averages out to free time being worth the same as what one gets payed.

I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me, disagreeing, or going off on a tangent. If your agreeing, then I guess what I'm about to say is pointless.

The amount of time people spend working is culturally determined to a large extent.

This illustrates my point. In Europe, people value free time more or they get payed less (possibly due to taxes) or some combination of above. Due to this, their average time at work changes.

It's possible that I significantly underestimated the decrease in marginal production as you work longer. Perhaps after eight hours, each additional hour people work is only worth minimum wage. On the other hand, it tends to be better to have fewer people on a project, so it seems like having fewer people spend more time working would be more efficient.

You work more than your ideal amount. Equivalently, you value your free time at higher than what you get payed. Presumably, people like you mixed in with people who want to work longer averages out to free time being worth the same as what one gets payed.

The marginal utility of an extra hour of free time outweighs my nominal hourly wage. My point is that most skilled jobs offer limited flexibility in the marginal substitution of additional free time for income. One reason for this is that most skilled jobs have an annual salary, not an hourly wage. I wo... (read more)

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Case study: Melatonin

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Case study: Melatonin

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