Seriously. The experiments with oxygen deprivation are very telling on this front. There's literally a button to press before you black out to give you oxygen, and people don't press it. Simple tasks, like identifying playing cards, people fail at, yet are convinced they've correctly identified the card. Our brains are amazing at lying to us.
I think the other part to remember is that the author of the article is 22. I didn't need sleep either when I was his age. I don't mean he's naive, just that a 22-year-old can abuse their body without too many negative consequences. As someone in my late 30s, I definitely feel it when I only get 4 hours of sleep.
That was my first thought as well (I"m in my late 30s too). When I was in college I could pull several all-nighters in a row without feeling too bad, or get 5-6 hours a sleep a night nearly indefinitely without too much trouble.
Nowadays... not so much.
Yup. Also in late 30s, and damn. I used to pull off all-nighters no problem in my 20s. Last night, I needed to do some work that didn't get done before, and by 2am, I was falling asleep in front of my keyboard. Ah, naivete of the young. :)
YES. Becoming a parent in my mid-30s taught me many things, including just how much more energy I had in my 20s
Maybe there is some wisdom in getting married/having kids at an younger age. I know, it is way more complicated than that..
I don't know what type of drugs you guys were eating in your 20's but if I pulled an all-nighter, I was absolutely ruined the next day and a bit the day after that. Even in my teens.
To be honest in my early 20s, I'd do no sleep the entire finals week just cramming for shit... then take a three day nap.
While consuming no drugs other than caffeine, I was regularly able to work for up to three days without sleep in my early twenties. At 48, I’m much more affected by my sleep schedule. Young people are simply more resilient, some more than others.
To pile on the anecdata: an all-nighter in my 20s was something feasible, even going through the next day (as in, day+night+day feeling fully awake, then resume usual behavior with normal night's sleep, and no further effects); at 25, this became harder, with a crash in the afternoon, at 30, an all-nighter meant sleeping through the next day, and currently just not getting at least 6 hrs of sleep will crash me the next afternoon. sigh
Another anecdote. When I was 19 I did a quick conversion job for a company. I'd take an early train down on a Monday morning, worked about 20 hours a day with just a quick nap each night on the reception sofa, and then a train home of Friday. I did that for two weeks, I was shattered but got through it OK.
I don't think it's quite the same as self-deception. The way I understood it is that it's more like alcohol: the first thing to go is your ability to judge for yourself whether your judgment is impaired.
It is fair to say that using your cognition to measure your own cognitive decline is unreliable ;-)