Tenoke comments on Seed Study: Polyphasic Sleep in Ten Steps - Less Wrong

31 Post author: BrienneYudkowsky 11 July 2013 07:17AM

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Comment author: Tenoke 11 July 2013 07:03:23PM *  0 points [-]

There are no double-blind studies. All evidence so far is largely anecdotal, because it's extremely challenging to get a statistically significant number of people to do this to themselves at the same time.

I didn't ask for double-blind studies. I was saying that I understand the rationale behind it ( so no need to repeat it it again) but am not convinced unless there is some evidence.

There is a myriad of statistical evidence about how sleep deprivation works, but by and large most people just report "if you don't get X hours of sleep per night, then things suck".

How is this related? We are talking about this method versus more 'traditional' methods of adapting to everyman.

Based on many anecdotes (which are spread around in personal correspondence, forums, listservs, etc) the instructions above make sense. It is the best data available ...

Granted, I have not been heavily involved in the related communities for the last ~5 years but I have seen significantly more people adapting everyman through the standard method of just jumping in (or jumping in and making some slight alterations at least). Fwiw, if you can provide the information that you are talking about here it would've sufficed to some extent as evidence (or at least data).

But we have to start with a hypothesis, and based on the anecdotes, this is that hypothesis.

You are assuming that based on the anectodes this is the optimal(ish) hypothesis but you have not provided them. If you wish I can link you (after some googling) to a lot of people who claim to have achieved everyman through more traditional methods for example.

My uberman adaptation using the 6nap one (with sometimes 1 extra) failed, but years I later successfully adapted to everyman using the 12nap method. So this collective experience means that I have evidence that this adaptation plan is a solid one, it's just not easy to impart to you.

The biggest difference between the two attempts is that in one you were going for uberman and in the second you were going for everyman. This, I suspect makes a bigger difference than the use of 6 versus 12 naps.

ETA: My point here is that if we insist on having evidence before we do experiments, we will not do a lot of science today.

Who exactly is insisting on that??

Comment author: ModusPonies 11 July 2013 07:25:02PM 5 points [-]

I'm not sure what this argument is about. I don't think you two actually disagree on any questions of fact.

Comment author: malcolmocean 12 July 2013 08:17:07PM 0 points [-]

Yeah, and I'm basically done with it. The double-blind studies remark was sarcasm, which I was hoping would be apparent given the impracticality of deceiving people about whether they were doing 6 or 12 naps :P

Comment author: malcolmocean 12 July 2013 08:22:53PM *  1 point [-]

I really don't have the energy to respond to all of this, but I'll point out that the main reason that you probably haven't heard of many people doing the exaptation/naptation method in general is that it's a recent (~2y) innovation.

ETA: To elaborate, Bayesically, the question we want to be asking is not "of the successful adapters, how many used which method?" but "of the people who attempt each method, what proportion are successful?" Not that we can hope to get an accurate answer to either by googling. What we do have is the advice of Matt Fallshaw (who has coached a number of people through successful adaptations (myself and JGWeissman included) and he recommends this method. We could ask him how many of his coachees have been successful.

And then for more on going uberman=>everyman, see this page on Polyphasic Society:

There are 2 main methods of adaptation to the Everyman 3 schedule.

One of these methods, and often considered the most effective method, is attempting to do Uberman for as long as you can, then falling back on E3 when you can do Uberman no longer.

Comment author: malcolmocean 12 July 2013 08:38:36PM 0 points [-]

The biggest difference between the two attempts is that in one you were going for uberman and in the second you were going for everyman. This, I suspect makes a bigger difference than the use of 6 versus 12 naps.

This, and the fact that my body probably sort of remembered how to do the REM naps from last time. I accidentally suggested that the success itself was solid evidence. I don't believe it is. What I meant to do was simply cite my own experience with this stuff (in addition to my research) which strongly suggests more naps (well-spaced) would not have any negative physiological effects, and would have a net positive psychological effect (because you really want to sleep, so it's nice to let yourself sleep more often). Therefore a good idea.

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