4 ms·

I'm reminded that we still don't know conclusively what purpose sleep serves[1]. We know about things unimaginably distant in scale or time -- like quarks and t

I'm reminded that we still don't know conclusively what purpose sleep serves[1]. We know about things unimaginably distant in scale or time -- like quarks and the Big Bang -- but we don't know the answer to something seemingly pedestrian. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep#Functions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep#Functions

sdegutis 10y ago
It's meant to separate days. That way each day is a new day, and you have some sort of mental partition between each one.
- empath75 10y ago
  meant by who?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - sdegutis 10y ago
    Whoever you want.
- white-flame 10y ago
  What purpose does that serve? Why would it be more advantageous than a continuous time stream? We don't have similar separation between morning & evening, for example. (though I've always been a fan of the siesta)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- wturner 10y ago
  Its meant to serve physiological homeostasis in some way yet to be completely understood :)
- serf 10y ago
  as someone who has had a rotating schedule their entire life, I wonder what that would mean for my brain.
  - desertspike 10y ago
    What do you mean by your "entire life"? Since you were an infant? I have non-24[1], but it didn't manifest until I was in my 20s. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep-wake_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep-wake_disorde...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
shas3 10y ago
I think it is because of a few interrelated things: 1. Ill-posedness of the problems: what is sleep?, why do animals sleep?, etc. vs. the well-posed physics problems such as, what happened at the beginning of the universe? 2. Data sufficiency: there is too much variability across people and animals to have enough representative data marginalized on each variable for many biological systems in general, and sleep in particular 3. Complexity of the system: cosmological systems and even subatomic particles are less complex models than biological systems On incentives for researchers, there is also the maxim that there are many unsolved and interesting problems to work on, but scientific judgement is in knowing which are solvable. Of course, the occasional maverick goes after the hardest, most ill-posed, most unsolvable problem. But the existence of such mavericks is not guaranteed for every problem, sleep biology included.
lossolo 10y ago
Brain is very active when you sleep, a lot is happening. Imagine sleep is just a mutex on big set of data on which computation needs to be made, compression, data reorganization, index optimizing. Data that you received that day is segregated , decisions are made which data to keep and which to delete. After that lock is freed and you wake up. If you don't sleep your system will run slower and slower over time and will timeout more and more queries until it will start to return corrupted data. You need to sleep to keep the system healthy.
- rudolf0 10y ago
  Sure, but that's just pure speculation.
- mike_hock 10y ago
  Sleep = vacuum freeze analyze
  - mey 10y ago
    Garbage Collection
    - amelius 10y ago
      We need a concurrent GC.
      - pokemon-trainer 10y ago
        It's called Red Bull. It gives you wings. Nature is now selling native advertising.
- dmreedy 10y ago
  That is a theory. There are many other theories too. The OP's observation was that we don't really have a firm grasp on which theory or theories is/are correct, in the way we (believe) that we understand something like the nature of chemical interactions, or the limits of finite-state computation. Sleep, like many many other functions of the brain, not the least of which being its most recognizable function (to us), remains something speculated about without broad consensus. As per the fantastic quote in the linked wiki article, "As far as I know, the only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is because we get sleepy."
Retric 10y ago
Sleep does more than one thing. One advantage is lower energy needs, so saying we don't know what it does is very misleading. We don't know Everything sleep does in Every situation, but the same is true of everything else.
xkcd-sucks 10y ago
A better way of posing it might be to say that we don't know why the stuff accomplished during sleep can't be accomplished during wakefulness. We do know that the purpose of sleep is to maintain pretty much everything.
olivercreashe 10y ago
>> We know about things unimaginably distant in scale or time -- like quarks and the Big Bang Oh, we do? That's funny, Afaik quarks still confuse physicists because they behave erratically and appear to be composed of other particles. And the big bang is simply an assumption that makes the cosmological model work well for our human brains, but it is not how the universe started specifically. We don't know jack shit, that's the bottom line, and we like to pretend we do.
- peller 10y ago
  "We live in a culture of casual certitude. This has always been the case, no matter how often that certainty has failed. Though no generation believes there’s nothing left to learn, every generation unconsciously assumes that what has already been defined and accepted is (probably) pretty close to how reality will be viewed in perpetuity. And then, of course, time passes. Ideas shift. Opinions invert. What once seemed reasonable eventually becomes absurd, replaced by modern perspectives that feel even more irrefutable and secure—until, of course, they don’t." http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27068734-but-what-if-we-re-wrong-thinking-about-the-present-as-if-it-were-the-pa http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27068734-but-what-if-we-r...
  - babyrainbow 10y ago
    Yes. We were, are and will always be living in "modern times"...
- 77pt77 10y ago
  > That's funny, Afaik quarks still confuse physicists because they behave erratically and appear to be composed of other particles. I'd really like a source for the composite quark claim.
  - justinator 10y ago
    Well, String Theory.
    - 10y ago
duaneb 10y ago
You might call this bias of similar scales: things that happen within our attention must have similarly brief explanations.
Synaesthesia 10y ago
Scientists still don't understand the mechanisms behind lightning formation! Turbulent flow is also another great unsolved physics problem.

sdegutis 10y ago

It's meant to separate days. That way each day is a new day, and you have some sort of mental partition between each one.

empath75 10y ago
meant by who?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sdegutis 10y ago
  Whoever you want.
white-flame 10y ago
What purpose does that serve? Why would it be more advantageous than a continuous time stream? We don't have similar separation between morning & evening, for example. (though I've always been a fan of the siesta)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
wturner 10y ago
Its meant to serve physiological homeostasis in some way yet to be completely understood :)
serf 10y ago
as someone who has had a rotating schedule their entire life, I wonder what that would mean for my brain.
- desertspike 10y ago
  What do you mean by your "entire life"? Since you were an infant? I have non-24[1], but it didn't manifest until I was in my 20s. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep-wake_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep-wake_disorde...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

shas3 10y ago

I think it is because of a few interrelated things: 1. Ill-posedness of the problems: what is sleep?, why do animals sleep?, etc. vs. the well-posed physics problems such as, what happened at the beginning of the universe? 2. Data sufficiency: there is too much variability across people and animals to have enough representative data marginalized on each variable for many biological systems in general, and sleep in particular 3. Complexity of the system: cosmological systems and even subatomic particles are less complex models than biological systems On incentives for researchers, there is also the maxim that there are many unsolved and interesting problems to work on, but scientific judgement is in knowing which are solvable. Of course, the occasional maverick goes after the hardest, most ill-posed, most unsolvable problem. But the existence of such mavericks is not guaranteed for every problem, sleep biology included.

lossolo 10y ago

Brain is very active when you sleep, a lot is happening. Imagine sleep is just a mutex on big set of data on which computation needs to be made, compression, data reorganization, index optimizing. Data that you received that day is segregated , decisions are made which data to keep and which to delete. After that lock is freed and you wake up. If you don't sleep your system will run slower and slower over time and will timeout more and more queries until it will start to return corrupted data. You need to sleep to keep the system healthy.

rudolf0 10y ago
Sure, but that's just pure speculation.
mike_hock 10y ago
Sleep = vacuum freeze analyze
- mey 10y ago
  Garbage Collection
  - amelius 10y ago
    We need a concurrent GC.
    - pokemon-trainer 10y ago
      It's called Red Bull. It gives you wings. Nature is now selling native advertising.
dmreedy 10y ago
That is a theory. There are many other theories too. The OP's observation was that we don't really have a firm grasp on which theory or theories is/are correct, in the way we (believe) that we understand something like the nature of chemical interactions, or the limits of finite-state computation. Sleep, like many many other functions of the brain, not the least of which being its most recognizable function (to us), remains something speculated about without broad consensus. As per the fantastic quote in the linked wiki article, "As far as I know, the only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is because we get sleepy."

Retric 10y ago

Sleep does more than one thing. One advantage is lower energy needs, so saying we don't know what it does is very misleading. We don't know Everything sleep does in Every situation, but the same is true of everything else.

xkcd-sucks 10y ago

A better way of posing it might be to say that we don't know why the stuff accomplished during sleep can't be accomplished during wakefulness. We do know that the purpose of sleep is to maintain pretty much everything.

olivercreashe 10y ago

>> We know about things unimaginably distant in scale or time -- like quarks and the Big Bang Oh, we do? That's funny, Afaik quarks still confuse physicists because they behave erratically and appear to be composed of other particles. And the big bang is simply an assumption that makes the cosmological model work well for our human brains, but it is not how the universe started specifically. We don't know jack shit, that's the bottom line, and we like to pretend we do.

peller 10y ago
"We live in a culture of casual certitude. This has always been the case, no matter how often that certainty has failed. Though no generation believes there’s nothing left to learn, every generation unconsciously assumes that what has already been defined and accepted is (probably) pretty close to how reality will be viewed in perpetuity. And then, of course, time passes. Ideas shift. Opinions invert. What once seemed reasonable eventually becomes absurd, replaced by modern perspectives that feel even more irrefutable and secure—until, of course, they don’t." http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27068734-but-what-if-we-re-wrong-thinking-about-the-present-as-if-it-were-the-pa http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27068734-but-what-if-we-r...
- babyrainbow 10y ago
  Yes. We were, are and will always be living in "modern times"...
77pt77 10y ago
> That's funny, Afaik quarks still confuse physicists because they behave erratically and appear to be composed of other particles. I'd really like a source for the composite quark claim.
- justinator 10y ago
  Well, String Theory.
  - 10y ago

duaneb 10y ago

You might call this bias of similar scales: things that happen within our attention must have similarly brief explanations.

Synaesthesia 10y ago

Scientists still don't understand the mechanisms behind lightning formation! Turbulent flow is also another great unsolved physics problem.