Update: I just realized that the resolution criteria here have some ambiguity: I was asking the question with a mind to reducing sleep, but of course the values for Cohen's d here indicate I'm interested in making sleep longer. I will stay with the literal interpretation, where this market asks whether meditation increases sleep need, unless ~everyone tells me that they interpreted it as being about reducing sleep.
This is a market in a series on markets for possible quantified self experiments I might run.
Context here, in short: I will put up >10 of these markets, run the "best" one (my own judgment, but probably just the one with the highest expected Cohen's d), and a random one (resolving them to the outcome), and will resolve all the others as N/A. In all experiments, I will be using the statistical method detailed here, code for it here.
This trial will not be blinded. As such, even though I try to not form an opinion on its outcome, all kinds of subconscious biases might creep in. Sorry for this confounder while forecasting.
50 samples, 25 intervention (2 consecutive days of ≥2h/day of meditation), 25 non-intervention (no meditation), selected via echo -e "meditation\nno meditation" | shuf | tail -1. Expected duration of trial: 5 months, as I might not always find a 2-day interval in which I'm sure I can meditative 2h/day.
In general, I measure sleep need by the data from my Fitbit(slightly more info here).
1,000
1.00I'd probably bet "no statistically significant result" if it was available (and well defined). I think it might be worth running a quick simulation with ChatGPT before embarking on this, to see if 50 samples could even be expected to produce a significant result (or large enough Bayesian update), given some assumptions about the range of possible effect sizes as well as the existing noisiness of your sleeping hours.
@yetforever Good suggestion! I'm kind of time-poor at the moment, but might pick that up around Christmas. Thanks for the suggestion.
I recall hearing that monks who reduced chanting time needed *more* sleep. Just checked with my anecdotal source - it was a study reported in the 1970’s
Curious! The evidence I've found points in the direction of people who meditate a lot needing far less sleep: http://niplav.site/increasing#Meditation, especially Kaul et al. 2013.
I just realized that the resolution criteria here have some ambiguity: I was asking the question with a mind to reducing sleep, but of course the values for Cohen's d here indicate I'm interested in making sleep longer. I will stay with the literal interpretation, where this market asks whether meditation increases sleep need.
@NiplavYushtun Also, I bet on this market, which was a mistake and I shouldn't've done. I've sold my share. But I will bet on the markets for blinded experiments.