[p-e-w]

I'm highly skeptical concerning the claimed 'effects' of lack of sleep. I don't doubt those are correlated with lack of sleep, but for many of them, obvious confounding factors exist.

As a trivial example, overworked people typically get less sleep than average folks. And excessive work is also correlated with several of the 'effects' from the list, such as "fatigued and demotivated" and "lower libido". This means that even though lack of sleep is (indirectly) linked to those problems, getting more sleep won't necessarily fix them, because the real cause is something else.

I find it strange that a post explicitly addressed to HN readers fails to even mention this extremely obvious issue.

[topkai22]

Some of the effects may not be casual, but there is substantial evidence for many of the cognitive effects in sleep deprivation studies, which just introduce a lack of sleep. There is probably good evidence for the other effects as well, although I’m not immediately familiar with it.

While other issues may be also playing a role or even be the primary cause, the physiological effects of sleep deprivation are likely to make almost any underlying cause worse.

[goda90]

I've felt the impacts of sleep deprivation on mood, thinking, speech, etc because of gaming late into the night, so stress/overwork wasn't a factor in that case.

[randomcarbloke]

for sure, I set the Set Daily Puzzle world record during a time of my life when I had been subsisting on an average of 1-2 hours sleep a night, if that.

It's also the fluffiest thing I've seen on HN in a while.

[Barrin92]

it reminds me of Why We Sleep which turned out to be completely full of scientific errors (https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/)

Obviously that book sold like hot cakes. When it comes to sleep and diet people will repeat anything as long as it sounds intuitive.

[wing-_-nuts]

Lol, this is a bunch of hot takes from some random dude with a BA in math. You'll forgive me if I'm just as skeptical of him as I am of Walker.

[randomcarbloke]

Brilliant read, thank you for this!