Not about sleep learning but lucid dreaming in general: I have long been puzzled and disappointed that we are not pouring more research, interest, and funding into controlling the induction of lucid dreams. There are ways to learn to do it now, but they are slow and unreliable. Gadgets exist but they're fringe - there is no great lucid dreaming movement like there is with longevity, for example.
I would have thought in a society where we want a gadget or magic pill for anything and everything, our interest in this would be through the roof. You can live a whole other lifetime in a dream, either your own or of some other character or world you step into. You can replay the past see the future, countless times. Controlled lucid dreaming seems like the closest we will likely ever get to immortality. Why aren't we more bullish about facilitating it?
Same here, I don't understand it either. It's a powerful phenomenon and is essentially the end state of virtual reality, as you are now the god of your own universe.
I wonder if you would ask the same thing about any number of apps - like fitness trackers, mood trackers, supplement trackers, online diary apps, task trackers, etc? You don't even need a notes app - you could just carry a notebook around or email notes to yourself.
As for why people may want to track menstrual cycles specifically, it is because bodies can be greatly influenced by what phase of the menstrual cycle we are in. From regular physical and mood changes to disorders like PMDD. The different parts of the cycle can also impact ideal exercise and even food choices for some. There are women and couples who gain insights (and often useful predictions) into how their moods coincide with menstrual phases, and that is much easier to track in a dedicated app designed to do so (which can also flag cycle irregularities, bleeding variation, or other changes), just as with other purpose-built applications. All of that is before we even get to the whole fertility tracking thing. One such app is a certified birth control method in my country. Tracking periods in a notes app is not.
I have been thinking about this kind of thing recently. I've got a hobby project that generates some AI content for the user and trying to figure out the most fair way to deal with the output being just plain bad. I haven't run into this case myself yet in testing after many quality passes to make the generation robust, but have no doubt that at scale there would be junk output at some point. Users would likely be non-technical and pay per-generation, not on a subscription model. So I would like to find a way to:
- Define some threshold for bad output
- Detect when a piece of output meets that threshold (vs just maybe not being what the user expected, which in my case is just fine)
- Refund the user credits so they can generate again
Text output is relatively easy to evaluate to some base threshold of quality in the generation process, but the final output is not text... it becomes harder.
Each failed generation would be very disruptive to the user on its own (in the scope of the app's purpose), so I'm also considering offering them an extra discount on their next purchase (in addition to the credit refund).
Do I get users to report generations they consider bad and then review them somehow? Do I try to auto-detect bad output before the output is delivered to the user? Probably a mix of all of the above... while attempting to mitigate the potential for abuse (people making dummy generations and then reporting them 'just to try it out', or try to game the system to get multiple free generations). Maybe I'd have to have some sort of time window for reporting a junk generation, and a max "use" count that flags if the user actually took benefit from the output before reporting it...
I think it is already pretty widely recognized that caffeine can disrupt sleep taken even as early as 6 or 7 hours before bed. I usually don't drink coffee or caffeinated tea after 12 for this reason. Caffeine also has many other known benefits, possible beneficial effects on all-cause mortality, etc, and I'm not sure if we have any research showing the same benefits coming from paraxanthine. Seems like potentially a bit of a waste just to be able to get the stimulant effect a couple of hours closer to sleep time.
This is a distinct claim. Caffeine can disrupt sleep even 48 hours later, a little bit; It is traditionally modelled with an elimination half-life of 5 hours, meaning 1/2 effect at 5 hours, 1/4 effect at 10 hours, 1/8 effect at 15 hours, an exponential decay curve.
The claim being made is that due to cascading decay of a secondary metabolite that does a lot of the work producing the clinical effect, caffeine elimination is a much more linear, slow process that only reaches half effect at around 10 hours and 1/4 effect at 17 hours, 1/8 effect at 23 hours.
Just because the halflife leaves a measurable amount in your system, doesn't mean that that amount is enough for measurable outcomes.
In your example, a 200 mg caffeine intake in the morning, least to 100mg at noon, 50mg at 5PM, 25mg at 10PM. Yes that means you still have 25mg of caffeine. But it's unlikely to have an outcome you can measure since it's below a minimum threshold.
This depends on your genetics - there are different groups of caffeine metabolizers. I'm in the group that's super sensitive to caffeine and I can feel effects from less than 20mg.
I went decaf drinks only back in 2024. I was fine and thinking “what’s the big deal” until day three. I will never forget that day. So horrible.
Still decaf only. Has been a pretty positive change for me. Kicked the soda habit completely. Sleep is better. I find I’m even all day. I generally only get tired when I’m bored.
Decaf only is great for coffee lovers. Instant decaf is of course just a way to spoil perfectly good hot water. But decaf beans from a good roaster are good then grind and make what you desire - espresso, pour over, french press, moka etc.
The point is to communicate that it's not a steep step change. In the original caffeine-only model, it's a smooth exponential decay function. There is still measurable caffeine in your blood N hours later, at levels approximately 1/(2^(N/5)) as high as the peak concentration.
In the new model, it's still smooth decay, but it's a compound exponential decay which is spread out over a longer time period, and close to linear for a while after that, before going on a longer exponential decline.
I think I got a really cool wallet and notebook from Hand & Sew through Massdrop many years ago. The wallet is long gone but the notebook is still around with a wonderful patina. It used to be a really cool site for unique items. I stopped using it when they had a falling out with Input Club and it seems like they've just gone downhill since then.
Reminds me of a talk I went to in 2018 about rebel agents, in which the speakers talked about some ongoing work in this area and gave some good examples of physical systems that we might _want_ agent rebellion (e.g., a delivery drone is instructed to take a certain route, but the operator instructing it may not be fully aware of the situation or the specific obstacles in the drone's way (or maybe even all of the drone's underlying goals). The drone may then choose to 'rebel' and deviate against the operator's instructed flight path).
They also talked about the importance of explanation (on the agent's part) using theory of mind regarding why it rebelled. I took some notes at the time and put them here: https://liza.io/ijcai-session-notes-rebel-agents/
That's really interesting — thanks for sharing the notes.
The "rebel agent" framing feels very close to what I'm trying to get at, especially the idea that refusal can be part of correct behavior rather than failure.
One difference I'm trying to think through is where that decision lives.
In a lot of these examples, the agent itself decides to deviate based on its understanding of the situation.
What I'm wondering is whether we can (or should) define that earlier — at the level of the action itself.
So instead of the agent deciding to "rebel" at runtime, the system would already encode when execution is permitted, and refusal becomes the default if conditions aren't met.
The explanation part you mentioned also seems important — not just saying "no", but making it legible why execution wasn't allowed.
Curious how much of that work treats rebellion as something emergent from the agent, vs something structurally defined in the system.
I'm still reading, but as I go through the sight vs sound section I am reminded of how weird my cats seem to be (especially the male). He seems to have none of these risk assessment/survival instincts at all unless we are at the vet's office. At home, whether inside or on the balcony, he simply behaves like there is no danger from anything, ever. If he hears a new sound he will likely go toward it rather than away, and if a new person comes he's the first to the door to sniff them out. I don't think I've ever seen him hide in my life.
Then again, every cat owner thinks their cat is the special one.
Having lived with a cat that had been in the streets for months before being adopted, and a different cat that had always lived indoors, I think that's the main difference in behavior regarding safety.
The one that had had experiences outdoors was more obsessed with food (to the point of eating everything fast until vomiting sometimes), scared of noises and sudden movements (going to hide in safe places), even from the people that had been living with her and caring for her for years. She was sweet and loving, but the streets never left her.
The one that had always been indoor was friendly to everybody, never super scared of noises, super curious, could regulate food properly (eating piecemeal throughout the day), etc.
There's always differences between cats' personalities, and this is a small sample, but it seemed significant and made sense given their experiences and possible past trauma.
It makes me so happy every time I think about that - how my cats have never had to know anything other than utter love and safety.
In actuality he's been through some really rough times at vet hospitals as a kitten (and that's why he reacts differently with vets), so it is an extra relief that he came out of that so well-adjusted at home.
People like me: who prefer not to kill animals to live but enjoy the taste of some type of meat in moderation. I am absolutely happy to pay for a premium meat alternative for the occasional visit to a burger joint. There are lots of them where I live alongside the Beyond patties and they're quite popular. I'm not quite sure what desperation has to do with it - you just eat things you enjoy that fit your dietary preferences.
Most 19 year olds probably wouldn't opt into injecting themselves twice a day for weeks and dealing with the side effects of the injections, then the subsequent extraction procedures (likely for multiple rounds) even if it was paid for. Which is reasonable, considering most women who want children will have them without IVF and don't need to go through any of that.
To be clear: I agree that it's not great policy to pressure women into doing this (which, arguably, making egg-freezing free would tend to do), bodily autonomy concerns chief among them. It's also not great policy to withhold this as an option from poor women while allowing rich ones access to it (the status quo). The third option would be to ban it, but that has obvious problems too most notably that womens' reproductive health is already surveilled and politicized enough without adding another new crime to police for around it. Allowing it in certain circumstances (a "medical waiver" or similar) just reproduces that same issues as banning it, and would probably be just a waystation on the way to a full ban.
I've yet to see a good proposal for how to regulate or handle this as a society, so my best guess is that we keep the status quo (it's expensive so only rich people can do it) for the foreseeable future UNLESS it becomes some kind of culture war issue for MAGA, which seems honestly pretty likely. Presumably they would want to ban it, but allow exceptions for certain cases that amount to "but is the patient a married white woman with acceptable politics?" in a more legally palatable form.
I would have thought in a society where we want a gadget or magic pill for anything and everything, our interest in this would be through the roof. You can live a whole other lifetime in a dream, either your own or of some other character or world you step into. You can replay the past see the future, countless times. Controlled lucid dreaming seems like the closest we will likely ever get to immortality. Why aren't we more bullish about facilitating it?
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