Comments on: Do Larks Repress Owls?

By: lenoxus

lenoxus — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:00:18 +0000

All right, since weiss added to this, I don't feel too guilty putting in my two cents, which are as follows: In my subcultural corner of the world, while larkness is certainly seen as somewhat admirable, it's not considered remotely wrong to be an owl, and the "standard refrain" is much more anti-lark than anti-owl. Larks are above and beyond the "normal", baseline owls, in all the good and bad ways that entails. ("Goddamn morning people! So perfect all the time!") I'm thinking of the many Calvin and Hobbes cartoons where Calvin's father awakes at five AM and says "are you going to waste the whole day?" (A parody at the lark's expense). Perhaps it is entirely because of Bill Watterson that I retain a sense that my culture sees larks the way it sees politicians — targets to make fun of yet furtively envy.

By: weiss

weiss — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 05:54:15 +0000

When I was a senior in high school I had enough credit to take a free credit, most people took their last period off, but I was smart and took my 1st period off. It was the best thing that ever happened to me! I ate a good breakfast then rode my bike to to school without any traffic and got to my second period class ready to start the day with everyone else still tired, grumbling, and hungry. It was awesome!

By: Lovey

Lovey — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:45:49 +0000

As a person who is both a morning and night person everyday, I have nothing to say about this that hasn’t already been said.
But I did laugh. You poor guys. xD

By: gwern

gwern — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:12:58 +0000

Your questions seem to assume that going to sleep is just a matter of deciding to, and having ‘willpower’. But sleep is part of a complex cycle; why would an owl go to bed at 10 PM if it just means he tosses and turns for 3 hours and feels like dirt upon waking?

The right question is to ask, why do owls not use melatonin supplements to physiological modify their sleep cycle to be more lark-like? (They already are modifying their sleep cycle by using caffeine, after all.)

I think it’s a combination of ignorance and misguided fear of pharmaceuticals. Certainly the numbers check out:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1lt/case_study_melatonin/

By: gwern

gwern — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:08:17 +0000

I’d also note that it’s not as if this were a contentious theory and there aren’t decades of studies on teenager sleep cycles & melatonin secretion & scores; I ran across yet another one today on _Science News_.

By: gwern

gwern — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:05:52 +0000

Ask any current college student: many dread 8 AM classes. If you’re a lark, try looking in on some 8 AM classes at 8:30 or 9 or so, and see how many of the students struggle to pay attention or stay awake. You don’t see very many faces flat on the desk in afternoon classes…

By: James F

James F — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:19:07 +0000

Jumping in here pretty late, but it seems a bit obvious to me – work schedules were established during the industrial revolution. And the data about larks and owls presented makes it seem kinda clear to me that larks would be preferable industrial employees – more likely to follow rules, less likely to question the process or superiors, intelligence not particularly essential.

Now that more workers are knowledge workers and fewer are physical laborers, it makes much less sense. But status quo bias keeps work schedules the way they are.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:10:06 +0000

Barkley, you must be a lark if you can’t figure out the “apparent contradication” (sic) on your own. Students usually have to take a lot of pre-noon classes to make it through four years of college. Naturally, owls will do worse at these classes given that they either end up sleeping through them or being groggy. Imagine how well a randomly selected group of students would do in a class scheduled for 4am versus 10am. An 8am or 9am class is the same thing for the owl as a 4am class for a ‘normal’ person.

By: Barkley Rosser

Barkley Rosser — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:00:51 +0000

Did anybody notice the apparent contradication here that on the one hand college freshman owls have lower GPAs while supposedly in the later work world it is the owls who are “cleverer and richer”?

By: Yvain

Yvain — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 23:20:47 +0000

As you mentioned, most larks, and even many owls, assume owls are just lazy. The owls don’t complain because complaining would be very publically sending the signal that they’re lazy.