I have recently read Why We Sleep (a nice book review) by Matthew Walker PhD (AKA Sleep Diplomat).

The book explains about the benefits of sleeping enough and the negative consequences of not sleeping enough, based on scientific research.

Please keep in mind that this book is exceptionally poor scholarship and should not be relied upon as a scientific source according to Guzey's detailed refutation. Here is the summary, but you should read the whole article:

In the process of reading the book and encountering some extraordinary claims about sleep, I decided to compare the facts it presented with the scientific literature. I found that the book consistently overstates the problem of lack of sleep, sometimes egregiously so. It misrepresents basic sleep research and contradicts its own sources.

In one instance, Walker claims that sleeping less than six or seven hours a night doubles one’s risk of cancer – this is not supported by the scientific evidence (Section 1.1). In another instance, Walker seems to have invented a “fact” that the WHO has declared a sleep loss epidemic (Section 4). In yet another instance, he falsely claims that the National Sleep Foundation recommends 8 hours of sleep per night, and then uses this “fact” to falsely claim that two-thirds of people in developed nations sleep less than the “the recommended eight hours of nightly sleep” (Section 5).

Walker’s book has likely wasted thousands of hours of life and worsened the health of people who read it and took its recommendations at face value (Section 7).

The myths created by the book have spread in the popular culture and are being propagated by Walker and by other scientists in academic research. For example, in 2019, Walker published an academic paper that cited Why We Sleep 4 times just on its first page, meaning that he believes that the book abides by the academic, not the pop-science standards of accuracy (Section 14).

Any book of Why We Sleep’s length is bound to contain some factual errors. Therefore, to avoid potential concerns about cherry-picking the few inaccuracies scattered throughout, in this essay, I’m going to highlight the five most egregious scientific and factual errors Walker makes in Chapter 1 of the book. This chapter contains 10 pages and constitutes less than 4% of the book by the total word count.

Sleep loss is an important problem, but it's unclear whether any charity should focus on it directly.

The problem of driving while sleep-deprived will likely be solved by robocars more than by any altruistic efforts.

The rest of the problem seems better tackled by focusing more on the stresses that cause sleep problems, and by relatively decentralized efforts to shift our cultures to be more sleep-friendly.

Sleep is something to keep in mind when asking whether EAs should donate to mental health charities or to meditation charities such as Monastic Academy. I'm very uncertain whether these charities should be considered effective enough to be EA causes.

I don't think this is a particularly good area for EAs to tackle, but I do suspect that new parents should be more informed/reminded of the dangers of driving while sleep-deprived. I remember borrowing a car to drive to a meetup for new parents and and some point realizing, "This is ridiculous. I'm so exhausted I don't always feel confident in my ability to walk downstairs. I shouldn't be operating heavy machinery." Not like isolation is great for new parents either, but I needed to find ways to get out without driving.

The problem seems to be large-scale and relatively neglected, but not especially solvable. When people don't sleep, it seems unlikely that their sleep is disordered than that they are choosing to do something else with their time (maybe an obligation like childcare, maybe some form of entertainment).

Example: While getting people to stop drinking puts "having soda/water/nothing" up against "having alcohol", getting people to sleep more puts "unconsciousness" up against "the most important and/or entertaining thing you believe you can do instead".

That said, there are clearly some modest interventions that could help some groups:

• Apps like f.lux to reduce blue light exposure before sleep
• Having schools (especially high schools) start classes later, to sync up with teen sleep schedules
• Improving the quality of remote-work software to reduce commute times and help people start their days later

But none of these seem broad enough to make a significant dent in the problem, and I'm not aware of any charities that are doing obviously effective work in this area (though "starting school later" probably has some active advocates I'm not aware of).

I'm biased in favor of this. I started sleeping enough when I got very ill (proper sleep on a routine schedule is the most important thing I can do besides medication to manage my disease) and it has made such a difference to my experience of life. I'm beginning to suspect overstimulation in general is a hugely underappreciated cause of pysical and psychological dysfunction.

My only hesitation is that the solutions that are forthcoming aren't exactly in EA's wheelhouse, but that could be because I'm not thinking creatively enough. Sleep deprivation is important and neglected, but might not be very tractable and effective solutions may or may not be scalable. There's not some cheap supplement that everyone needs that we could just hand out. You have to be dedicated to making an against-the-grain personal behavior change to sleep more, and that's complicated and hard. (As I say, only severe illness was able to move the needle for me.) My first thoughts are all policy solutions: later school start times, more mandatory sleep breaks for hospital workers, shift workers, etc., some way of regulating smartphones to cut into sleep less? One of those might rise to EA criteria.

I, like Holly, am also interested in exploring this, though have not thought rigorously about this. 

• A lot of people who are in power might be running low on sleep. This can jeopardize our future and is relevant to improving institutional decision making
• (As Holly said) It could be good to promote sleep widely in EA circles given that we want to be optimal and it seems quite tractible to change a culture in a smaller community vs. the whole world. (Although it is my impression that EA orgs already encourage healthy work / sleep habits.) 
  
  Now we have the question: Should the EA community encourage sleep within the community more so than it does now?