Open thread, July 21-27, 2014

polymathwannabe

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one.

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

I still stand by what I wrote in the answer to the Skeptic Stack Exchange question that you linked to. I don't think there good reason to assume that polyphasic sleep is very useful.

At the same time it's an interesting topic for research. If I understand right puredoxyk wants to do some group research at the moment. I would also be interested in the current conclusions of those Leverage Research folks who started polyphasic sleep a while ago.

I while ago I did meet a girl via PlentyOfFish who claimed to have been for a year on 1 hour of sleep per day without doing any kind of polyphasic schedule or other personal development tricks and that's without her knowing about my interests in the subject. It didn't kill her but it probably wasn't healthy either.

Some folks (e.g., puredoxyk) have suggested that you have to deny that some people seem to work okay on short polyphasic schedules

Phrases like "work okay" have a fairly broad meaning. There are plenty of people who think they are highly functioning but who could function a lot better. If I remember right puredoxyk was depressed when she wrote the post. She was depressed before she even started polyphasic sleep, but that doesn't set the bar for "being okay" very high.

I had not realized the Stack Exchange post was yours. Good work.

New research into short polyphasic sleep is not so interesting to me. I think it is plausible that a polyphasic schedule could modestly reduce sleep requirements (perhaps around 1 hour at most) by reducing the duration of lighter stages of sleep (but not eliminating; it's not clear these stages are unimportant). But that's not what people interested in polyphasic sleep are testing. Instead, they try very short schedules that don't make sense. I skimmed through puredoxyk's original post on poly... (read more)