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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

personal heuristic of mine, never read something that even remotely reeks of self-help.

when it starts with "popular science person xyz charts a map of the most important scientific breakthrough of the decade" etc just put it back and pick something from the fiction section and you'll have a better time.

Life isn't lived in the aggregate, you don't need "sleep science" to figure out how much you need to sleep. Are you tired? Sleep more, no? you're fine. This emerging health industrial complex has just one purpose: create neurotic people who try to optimise their life and then sell them answers.

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This heuristic sadly doesn't always work, it's like saying you don't need "food science" and should just go for that sugary drink if you want it, or not exercising because you're not feeling like it

I dunno. When I ate junk food and gained weight, I started getting out of breath easily from not that much exertion. Signals of poor diet and exercise are fairly self-evident - you don't need to read a bunch of anxiety inducing books about the right diet and best exercises to do - just a little basic self assessment. It's a heuristic; it shouldn't be taken to extremes.

That's not what I was saying. I didn't say you don't need to exercise or eat healthy, I said you don't need a nutrionist or a wellness coach. Do you know how I know I need to exercise or cut down on sugar? When my belt starts to get tight, when my posture gets bad, when I lose muscle and when I wheeze running up the stairs. Then I know I need to switch the beer for water and take the bike instead of the train to work, problem solved.

Never in my life have I ever wasted a minute installing exercise apps on my phone, reading exercise books, instead I've just gone to public pool and done my laps and for some reason I'm in better shape than some of my peers who seem to spend hundreds of dollars per month on books, peloton courses and exercise audiobooks.

Sure, this sound reasonable. But you needed scientists to figure out at some point that it's optimal for most people to eat some things, and not other. E.g. you can stay lean eating only fruit, but you'll lack some micronutrients.

Also there are some long term longevity effects (or at least people doing studies and claiming such effects).

And even with 'noticing' you feel tired, it doesn't always work, at least not for everyone. Obviously most people would feel suboptimal if they start sleeping 4h/day, for example. But anecdotally, I dont notice any subjective difference as long as I slept something like 6.5h+. Sometimes I feel a little sleepy but then it goes away quickly.. sometimes I feel like crap till afternoon even though I slept a lot. And making long term observations is hard because it's hard to compare how tired you're feeling now with how tired you were a week ago.

the book was appealing because it was something to point to that might convince your boss or friends to let you sleep, rather than acting like wanting to sleep more than 6 hours a night is a sign of weak moral character.

many people hold this attitude, it’s appealing to have something “objective” when trying to justify going to sleep.

unfortunately it does have these many scientific inaccuracies. depressing.

Self help books sell because they give they buyer a sense of having accomplished “something”. It’s similar to the person who wants to start running to get healthier. They go out, buy a nice pair of running shoes, grab some expensive name brand clothing and perhaps buy themselves a fitness tracker too and then call it a day feeling great. They have convinced themselves they have begun their journey to a life where they run marathons weekly but have in actual fact achieved nothing.

Calling his book a self help title is a stretch - the author is one of the top researchers in his field. He simply wrote a book making the research out there a lot more accessible to the layman. He isn't selling you anything past that.

As for the field of "sleep science", you're drastically oversimplifying it. Your sleeping habits have tons of second order affects that aren't remotely intuitive. For example, you know alcohol wrecks your sleep quality? Over time that lack of quality sleep is associated to weight gain. Doesn't it make sense to have a solid understanding of something you spend a third of your life doing?

Finally the author of the blog post has no background in this past reading articles on PubMed. I've read some genuine criticisms of the book, most of which Walker addressed, but these are incredibly weak. If you're attempting to synthesize entire fields of research, you should probably have a background in them.

> He isn't selling you anything past that.

He is selling speaking gigs, advises startups. He is cashing out and part of that is sensationalist book for general audience.

> but these are incredibly weak.

It's riddled with factual errors.

I don't read a lot of self-help books, but the ones I have have been extremely helpful. Some people don't respond to them and 95% of what's on the market are bullshit platitudes, but it feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater to write them off entirely.

I'd argue that the "emerging health industrial complex" you mention has been with humans since the dawn of civilization. One wonders how we were able to envision tools that help us move away from our opportunistic instincts.

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