[HN Gopher] Circadian justice (2022)
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       Circadian justice (2022)
        
       Author : anigbrowl
       Score  : 53 points
       Date   : 2025-08-04 18:27 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (eprints.lse.ac.uk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (eprints.lse.ac.uk)
        
       | piinbinary wrote:
       | It's always seemed strange to me how the world agrees that it is
       | fine to deprive someone of sleep if they happen to have a late
       | sleep schedule (by e.g. starting school or work early).
        
         | earnestinger wrote:
         | To solve the issue we must answer several questions: What's the
         | alternative? How much it would cost for whole class and members
         | of classmate families?
        
         | bsza wrote:
         | I don't think anyone is conspiring against people who go to bed
         | late - as an early waker I've often had noisy neighbors playing
         | loud music late at night to contend with. Sometimes it was a
         | larger event like a wedding reception, so calling the police
         | wasn't exactly an option either (not that I'd ever done that).
         | 
         | I would say the world simply agrees that things - whether
         | schools, shifts or parties - should generally start _sometime_
         | , and thus, by necessity, be less accommodating to some people
         | than to others.
        
       | just-working wrote:
       | End DST!
        
       | Telemakhos wrote:
       | The author talks about certain groups, like offshored call center
       | employees whose sleep schedule is shifted so that they can
       | respond to needs of people in a different time zone... but
       | wouldn't mobile phone usage have a more widespread (really
       | pervasive) impact on sleep than irregular labor conditions for a
       | few? There are studies showing significant associations of mobile
       | phone use and poor sleep quality.[0] I don't get the feeling that
       | a strong link between mobile phone use and poor sleep quality
       | would appeal to the Journal of Political Philosophy, though.
       | 
       | [0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9707689/ in India,
       | https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10....
       | in UK
        
         | anigbrowl wrote:
         | I didn't see those studies cited but it does specifically
         | mention the use of communication devices in the bedroom.
        
         | taneq wrote:
         | That second one is about 'smartphone addiction' not smartphone
         | use. They don't even give the number of interviewees with smart
         | phones, presumably because it's 100%.
        
       | oytis wrote:
       | The abstract reads like one of these fake articles people would
       | trick journals on humanities to publish for fun
        
         | lurk2 wrote:
         | The argument he's making is coherent.
         | 
         | 1) There are social, economic, and institutional norms
         | surrounding sleep.
         | 
         | 2) These norms are defined (or at least abided) by a majority
         | group.
         | 
         | 3) A minority of individuals can't abide by these norms either
         | due to physiological differences or necessity.
         | 
         | 4) Some people benefit from the work that this minority does,
         | and the minority is not adequately compensated in comparison to
         | the benefits they generate.
        
         | Levitz wrote:
         | Only because it uses words like "injustice" or "minorities".
         | 
         | It was my first impression as well, but if I get over my gag
         | reflex and actually read the lines carefully, it seems the
         | "injustice" basically means that people with different
         | schedules are treated unfairly by society and the "minorities"
         | are precisely those with different schedules.
        
           | oytis wrote:
           | To me it's the sum of that and using a term from hard
           | science. But the whole article doesn't indeed look like the
           | author is trying to do fake science.
        
       | delichon wrote:
       | As a high school teacher with a multi ethnic classroom, I don't
       | believe that scheduling is significantly a multi-cultural issue,
       | but rather it's a specific school and community issue. For
       | instance the time at which school starts is less downstream of
       | puritan or protestant heritage, and more a matter of when the sun
       | rises, and how far the busses have to travel. It emerges from
       | lots of discussion with parents and staff.
       | 
       | One thing that came out of those discussion is a four-day school
       | week. That is popular with rural parents across cultures.
       | 
       | The fact that some of our students come from a White or Hispanic
       | or Native American heritage doesn't enter into the conversation,
       | other than through their individual expressed preferences. Some
       | cultures tend to speak more quietly and it's up to us to listen
       | carefully. But we care about what those parents care about, not
       | what our assumptions about their culture would lead us to guess
       | they care about.
        
         | fc417fc802 wrote:
         | > more a matter of when the sun rises, and how far the busses
         | have to travel
         | 
         | In the suburbs I'm familiar with it was 100% a bus scheduling
         | constraint. The high schools had to start at the crack of dawn
         | because by the time the same fleet of busses made it through
         | the middle schools and on to the elementaries it was getting
         | pretty late.
         | 
         | You could alternatively argue that it was a budget constraint
         | (not enough money to 3x the bus fleet). Either way, it sure
         | would have been nice to have robust city planning and public
         | transit (and thus not need a large private bus fleet in the
         | first place).
        
       | lurk2 wrote:
       | > The model of an eight-hour, unbroken sleep is a modern and
       | western one, coinciding with the advent of electric lighting and
       | the new routines of the workday, and achieved through class
       | struggle in the emerging industrial workplace.
       | 
       | The scholarship on this isn't good.
       | 
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zutvcs/comme...
        
         | EA-3167 wrote:
         | That tracks, it was a scandal-dogged publication that finally
         | closed the year after this article was published, following the
         | resignation of the editorial board.
        
       | cwmoore wrote:
       | This makes me so happy to see, for so many people, now and in the
       | future.
        
       | kennywinker wrote:
       | > Given the difficulty and undesirability of restoring the
       | practices that underpin those norms, the challenge is develop
       | societies that no longer presuppose them.
       | 
       | Is this a joke? Instead of idk improving labour laws... more
       | worker power / unionization... let's just stop "oppressing"
       | people with assumptions about their sleep schedule.
       | 
       | They've hit on something real, but their solution is bonkers.
        
       | steanne wrote:
       | i'm not sure if this is still active looking at the 'in the
       | press' section, but...
       | 
       | https://www.b-society.org/
        
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