Ok, well, delayed phase sleep disorder is in fact a disorder that can lead to serious health problems, even when people are allowed to self-select their sleep schedules. One proposal for the mechanism is that the circadian cycle is longer than 24 hours, which is in fact a medical problem. Society didn’t make the day 24 hours long. People without DPSD can generally fall asleep earlier than normal if they are sleep-deprived, but not people with DPSD.

DPSD is very different than normal “night owl” syndrome, and is not an issue of society refusing to acknowledge different schedules. Are you sure you even have DPSD?

> abusive and disrespectful and needlessly oppressive, no different from treating women or gay as inferior.

Please please please please stop trivializing misogyny and homophobia with these ridiculous and narcissistic comparisons. “No different” - reeeeeaaaalllllly? Things are more difficult socially and professionally for people with DPSD. But they don’t get killed for it! You don’t have people musing about how DPSD are duplicitous wenches who are running our culture.

Yeah, they are different. But not completely different. It is hard to be understanding to a social norm, when that social norms are responsible for a life full of mornings when I want to sleep, but instead I drag myself out of the bed and kick myself to keep awake.

I mean, it is happened already, there is no way to undid damage done. It is happening now, and forgotmypw17 shows us the expected reaction to a proposition to find another way to make some people to conform with social norms even when their physiology doesn't want it. I'm not saying that his attitude is constructive, rational, or the best possible, or even acceptable, but you'll get a lot of it, if you keep saying to people "we'll find a way to make you normal".

(It is mine reaction also: who do you think you are, to believe that you are more normal than me?! To write social norms ignoring my needs? To force me to conform to that stupid social norms? To make me think that I'm lazy because I cannot wake up in the morning, I have no will because I'm sleepy till 11:00, or in some other ways inferior? It is hard to not speak my mind in that style, because I hate those norms from the school. Now I'm 40, and my hate stewed for decades.).

> Society didn’t make the day 24 hours long.

It did. Maybe 200 years ago 24 hours long day was not a society's fault, but now it is. We have electricity now and electrical lights. One could be perfectly well and functioning even at night. Just some people think that if their sleep cycle aligned with Earth's rotations, it makes them special and superior.

If an overwhelmingly large proportion of a population exhibits tendency A and a smaller group tendency B, we describe the first group as normal. It’s not a value judgement so much as it is a useful description using a word from the dictionary.

It happens to correspond to the statistical definition, and certainly that is the mathematical meaning, but in every domain outside of pure mathematics, it always implies a value judgement.

Moreover in this particular case it is not just about statistical averages, it is about social norms which were built around statistical averages. So a normality in this case it is also the rights to have social norms to be built with a respect to my needs.

Categorising a group of people as not normal has negative effects.

People are downplaying the extent to which habits and preferences have an impact. Staying in bed late will shift forward your circadian rhythm. Blue-light emitting electronics will suppress melatonin at night and raise cortisol.

Before the industrial revolution few were staying up all night regularly unless they were on night shift. Bright light and multimedia available at night changed.

https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-used-to-sleep-in-two-shi...

This statement is not supported by your link:

> 25 adults...with late sleep schedules and subclinical features of delayed sleep phase disorder (DSPD).

The "subclinical features" part is important! I am not trying to step into the "habits versus nature" part for healthy night owls / morning larks, but actual clinical DPSD is a significant medical problem that is very clearly not related to habits or sleep hygiene. Which means comments like this:

> Before the industrial revolution few were staying up all night regularly unless they were on night shift. Bright light and multimedia available at night changed.

are truly irrelevant here, and inappropriately judgmental of people with a real illness.

There are still valuable things that can be learned from that kind of research, but the popular coverage really missed the mark by directly extrapolating from research in mice to human circadian rhythms.

If they miss too much high school they can be arrested for truancy, they can be verbally and physically assaulted by parents or peers, find themselves completely ostracized from society and unable to find professional work that suits their skill level, etc. They face significant discrimination, harassment, and exclusion. If that doesn't kill them, they might just do the job themselves.

sleeping same hours every day is not a given.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

While I agree with the general statement and dislike that a disorder might give the implication that it is abnormal and needs treatment, I rather have it acknowledged as a disorder than being told to just go to bed earlier. It's not ideal, but definitely better than ignoring it.

It seems to me that if the issue is classified as medical disorder, it may have some advantages in relation with society, e.g. requirement for employers to accommodate it.

It is generally much stronger position than 'it is just my preference'.

Preference and disorder are not the only two options. Difference is another one.

I noticed the amount of sleep I need varies significantly. In the summer I usually do OK with 6-7 hours, in the winter I need 8-10. And it makes sense! In winter the days are short and food is scarce, so the best strategy is to save energy and wait for summer.

My mood follows a similar seasonal cycle.

On another note, I highly recommend the r/n24 (named after non-24 hour circadian rhythm) subreddit and their Discord for support and discussion on all kinds of sleep disorders. It was very validating for me to find people with the same struggles.

Also better understanding this can help with social acceptance.

Edit: E.g. yes, I stay up late but that's not because I don't care or want to be an ass or whatever; it's because I genuinely can not sleep for reasons outside of my control and going to bed at 10 or 11 is actually unhealthy for me.

Medicating that or living with it is a different question.

Of course on HN we're all smart enough to be immune to it /s

I could have been more precise that I deem this a mere possibility for myself, not a factum. I responded to the parent for the other reasons, but wanted to add some weight to my opinion because I can definitely relate to the symptoms, independent of the actual cause.

That is, if I go to bed at 23:00, wake up on my own, then I will be able to fall asleep only at midnight. The only "fix" for this drift is to under-sleep each day, but that all but guarantees shitty and groggy first two hours. I really hate this, it's such a nuisance.

The good news is that there is apparently a lot of us who are his way. Yaaay.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/1999/07/human-biologi...

So what I converged to is sleeping 2 hours less on weekdays and then sleep in on the weekends. This is marginally better, but still Fridays aren't very nice.

I'm not surprised that someone who sounds like they've been bullied over this would have their upset show through when they speak about something that directly related to this.

You should not make such strong statements, you betray poor knowledge of history.

Ancient Greece, and Rome here were were quite accepting of homosexuality. Hiduis have entire temples with states engaging in various sexual activity, including honosexual, group sex, etc.

Also what is "being anti-social"? Like what does it mean in this context - is anyone disagreeing with 'status quo' antisocial? Was Ghandi anti-social, are histers and goths antisocial?

People have the right to expect statistical normality in other people. Respecting everyone is fundamental, but people cannot be required to anticipate anyone's quirk.

No. Cultural normality may at times be very similar with, but is not the same dimension as statistical normality.

It's easy to see in soon-to-envelope-the-world trends.

A small sub-sect of people do something abnormal, the image generated is pushed throughout society and media as an actionable concept (sociocultural normal), and then the trend becomes achievable en masse. If the trend is a huge hit, everyone does it (statistically normal).

>People have the right to expect statistical normality in other people.

Let me play devils' advocate here for a moment.

Apply that argument to any sociocultural phenomenon or identity, and see if the argument seems humane and considerate.

That statement precludes a lot of people, and I don't think it's anywhere near a right.

Note the closeness of "Expecting someone to do/be something" and notice how many in this thread tell stories of trying to have a normal sleep-cycle, failing, getting shunned by society, being unable to function properly after forcing themselves to conform, feeling wrong, feeling defective, and that over decades, often going back to childhood. People compare it to left-handedness and how our society mishandled those in the past, and are fearful our society might expect them, even consider it normal, to get chemical treatment in the near future. People try to fulfill absurd expectations and suffer from it.

The way you phrased your demand makes you sound ego-maniacal, like you demand a right to mistreat people for not matching your expectation, like you blame your lack of empathy and decency on them being quirky, like you disrespect people for not being normal. Those are the worst interpretations of your words. There is some truth in the best interpretation, i can see that, see the freedom i mentioned above, but that "being disgusted", "anti-social" and "tyrannical" in your now flagged comment doesn't sound like you are "fundamentally respecting everyone" at all.

Except, that there often is a disconnect between statistical normality, and normality. For the longest time, people were expected to be men, despite how glaringly obvious that is false.

Still, people are often expected to be rich (median wealth in US is below 100k), well-educated (more than half have no degree).

Our society is still filled with things we expect to be normal, but it is often unclear which becomes first. Is society starting up at 7am because there are few night owls, or are there few night owls because society starts up at 7am in the morning?

We are not talking about dogmas!

I'm not sure about that. To keep with the examples you stated earlier as being normative (namely being disgusted by homosexuality and being an early riser), for example, I am neither. Which according to your opinion is abnormal and should be shunned by society, because you consider not shunning homosexuals and nightowls anti-social. That sounds fairly dogmatic in these specific cases, and in general the attitude that minority behavior and tolerance of minority behavior should both be punished is itself a dogma.

To be fair, I don't see how dogma is avoidable. My assertion that minority lifestyles should not be shunned as long as they don't harm anyone is also dogmatic. It's just that we all have a habit of calling principles we disagree with dogma.

But if I had one shot to change your mind about this specific issue, my argument would be like this: there are so many opinions to be had and so many behaviors to engage in. Chances are, you are yourself also holding opinions or doing activities that are not shared by the majority. Do you consider those tendencies abnormal and anti-social? You may not like homosexuals or nightowls, but surely there are things where you diverge from the statistical everydayman? Would you then apply those policies of social repercussions to these activities by default because their existence threatens the integrity of the majority? And if so, why do you allow yourself those outlier behaviors, but don't apply the same tolerance to others?

> expecting the majority of people not to be insinctively disgusted by your sexual practices is anti-social

I strongly object to this characterization.

How is letting people live their life "tiranny (sic) of the minority"? You think instinctive disgust for other lifestyles is and should be the norm?

I realize that the term diversity has been poisoned in public discussion, but for lack of a better term: diverse cultures are stronger, both in biology and I would argue socially as well. On the other hand, the authoritarian monoculture you advocate is a joyless and brittle construct that has to be policed strongly and viciously all the time or it will fall apart immediately, and it also doesn't have any immune response to radicalizing forces.

In this specific case, a society with nightowls can do more than one without. There are plenty of jobs that have shifts where not being a nightowl destroys people. An ex girlfriend of mine had to do regular night shifts at the hospital. It became a real health issue for her, but me being a nightowl freelance programmer at the time voluntarily keeping the same schedule, I was doing just fine.

Being a nightowl is also a social equalizer to an extent, because it allows people who are not rich enough to live distraction-free lives to carve out a time of the day where interuptions are virtually non-existent.

Jesus Christ are you serious?

I've never heard of somebody getting beaten (possibly to death), getting mocked at work or fired or publicly shamed because they go to bed late and get up late, disorder or not.

I've never heard of somebody getting paid less, be dismissed or denied the right to vote because of their sleep cycle.

Do yourself a favor, shut the f up.

> getting mocked at work ...

> getting paid less ...

I have!

I was the lowest paid member of my team, yet a subject matter expert who the rest of the team frequently sought advice on a plethora of issues.

But because I turned up 10-15 minutes late most days (I woke up 30-40 minutes prior) I was considered to be "lacking" in performance reviews.

My bonus and my wage was tied to those performance reviews.

I'm not going to argue it was the sole reason (it wasn't), but it definitely was a factor.

Also there were a lot of jokes made about my time keeping in a large open plan office. Which was.... Uncomfortable.

Have I ever been beaten for turning up late? No.

Has someone somewhere in the world, in the last year, been beaten for not showing up to work on time? I'd probably bet £10 on that one.

Edit...

just to clarify, I don't agree with the original parent comment's comparisons to sexuality etc.

But I also appreciate that sleep issues are a problem in our society that we are yet to deal with.

I have second hand experience (one of my relatives) about being dismissed for being a woman. Anectodal example (this was in the late '70s / early '80s iirc): she was taking an exam at the university (engineering faculty) and she was told that she taking exam was nice and everything but women are really supposed to stay at home and knit socks.

You see, that's the point. Yeah you might have been considered "lacking" and by your own admisson being late wasn't the only reason. It's a bummer, okay.

But can you, in all honesty, compare that to seeing your studies, your work or your job application or your opinion being dismissed because of your biological sex? Really?

> just to clarify, I don't agree with the original parent comment's comparisons to sexuality etc.

I already said that, no, I don't think it is a fair comparison.

> It's a bummer, okay.

It's a bit more than that.

But its less than centuries of discrimination and oppression.

Like I said, I think this is a problem society is yet to deal with.

I never said it was an urgent top of the to-do list priority.

Yeah, no parallels at all..

You really actually cannot imagine (let alone you have not actually heard of) this? Maybe you just deep in a self selecting cohort.