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Comment by jonmc12 | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised this article is at the top of HN. 1) It is not the announcement of a research study, rather it is just referencing previous hbr blogs and sleepfoundation.org's general guidelines for sleep. 2) It offers no unique advice. 3) The title is basic linkbait (ie, its not really about food vs sleep).

Why the upvotes? is it because everyone is tired?

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The research is voluminous and has been around for a long time. Articles like this make the results easy for us normals to digest.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sleep+deprivation&hl...

In experiments, rats have actually been killed by lack of sleep. Mind you, it took about a month as I recall, but it's still a bit scary.

I think this is what surprises me - this is hacker news, not normals news. How interesting is a safe interpretation of the research that conforms to what I was taught in 2nd grade? Its like someone posted an article extolling the virtues of the food pyramid or something. Even my doctor has a more liberal interpretation of the research than this particular author (and he is probably more qualified to make this interpretation).

In the past I've experimented with quantities of sleep, polyphasic sleep, measuring sleep quality, light / sound in the room, sleep supplements, etc, etc. Why? because sleep takes up 25-30% of my life. Its a no brainer activity for me to try to hack and optimize. Further, given sleep is such a big part of all of our lives, I'm surprised more people on this site do not have a similar mindset about experimenting and tweaking their sleep patterns.

Show me some articles with new research, personal experiments, or useful tips that can allow me to hack my sleep - these kind of interpretations are much more useful to digest.

I'm no longer surprised by the number of dumbass articles from HBR, New York Times, and the like. In fact, it's boring me and I think I'll take a nap :-)

And the moment you say something like this; they down-rate you. Great going, HN.

It did nothing to advance the discussion in any meaningful way. If you don't like this article, don't read it. If you really think it's awful and doesn't belong on HN, then flag it.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953834

It may not be new or unique, but I didn't know sleep was that important.

And no, I'm not tired.

I'm one of those who normally sleep only 6.5 hours per day. As stupid as it sounds, I need someone telling me that I should sleep more. After reading an article like this I'll start sleeping 8 hours a day, and if the article is right, I'll feel better and more productive.

So the article is useful for me, hence the upvote. I do agree about 3) though.

It looks like a PR piece for a company called The Energy Project. The HBR blogger forgot to remove their link at the end: "For more tips on sleep and other forms of renewal visit our web site." (links to http://theenergyproject.com/tips).

I completely agree with you. This place is slowly growing into another Reddit with more junk crowd joining in regularly.

Not to be too snarky, but your profile shows you've been a member for less than a year -- complaining about the "new kids" is rather ironic.

That's actually called out specifically in the guidelines, even.

If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)

I don't think being defensive of quality is a bad thing though. It's often unnecessary, but I'd say that's better than being under-cautious.

Less than a year on HN. So does that qualify for less brainy? Or you mean, I should have joined HN directly out of mother's womb?

Most realities are harsh to accept; but that doesn't change anything. Don't you see that some non-sense posts are making at the top here? And that is happening more too often?

I don't deny that today HN has the best of Internet and Techie crowd; but it is also a fact that there is also some junk. So let's accept it.

And yea guys, thanks for the down rating; much appreciated.

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