While perhaps excusable, I don't think the ignorance of some short polyphasic sleep proponents is a point in their favor.

There are two distinct questions:

1) How does it come that a bunch of rationalist people advocate polyphasic sleep? 2) Does polyphasic sleep work?

Both are interesting questions.

Stampi seems to recognize that falling asleep fast is difficult if you are well rested and don't have the help of your circadian drive, as well as the very real effect of sleep inertia.

I think falling asleep fast is a learned skill. It's just about switching from one mental state into another. I do think that doable to build anchors in hypnosis that instantly allow people to switch off consciousness and go into a state similar to stage 1 or stage 2 sleep.

There are people who can fall asleep in an act of will and wakeup at a predestined time with +-5 minutes whether it's 3 or 7 hours after getting to sleep.

Don't underrate the effect that determined decisions can make. Yes, your average Westerner might need to be tired to fall asleep but that's simply because he's not much in control over what his brain is doing.

If you know any short polyphasic sleep proponents who make better justified claims on average, I'd be interested in seeing them, as this is the best I've seen.

I would be surprised is the leverage research people who attempted polyphasic sleep think all naps during polyphasic sleep are completely REM and that's a good thing.

I also don't think that puredoxyk believes it these days.

Perhaps people who are naturally predisposed to sleep longer would reduce their longevity if they slept less.

I don't like the word "naturally" in this context. Part of sleep is regenerating the body. If someone has a depression that puts stress on the body. It then makes sense that the body needs more time in regeneration mode.

There a claim where I don't know whether it's true, that switching from a normal diet to a vegetarian diet reduces sleep needs by roughly 30 minutes. It's certainly possible that a body that doesn't has to digest animal protein requires less protein.

I also want to iterate, that it might be a bad idea to think of sleep needs as a one dimensional thing. The amount of time you sleep without an alarm clock is not the same thing as the amount of sleep that you need to not feel tired. I don't think either of those is the amount of time you need to not have reduced performance on reaction time test. Memory consolidation is a fourth thing.

It's certainly possible that there are interventions that solve most dimensions that are immediately but that don't solve dimensions of sleep needs that aren't well visible.

I do have experience with mostly exchanging a night of sleep for meditation (I can't say whether stage 1/2 sleep occured, but no REM or deep sleep).

On the one hand it regenerated energy but I still felt tired.

I know that I wake up after fewer hours if I spent a night dancing Salsa and being really in flow then when I'm not in flow while dancing.