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I agree with your statement - that doesn't mean that there isn't a way around sleep. If we imagine the fitness vs. evolutionary traits as multi-dimensional land
by Protostome 8y ago
I agree with your statement - that doesn't mean that there isn't a way around sleep. If we imagine the fitness vs. evolutionary traits as multi-dimensional landscape, it could be that we're stuck on a very deep local minimum.
It doesn't mean that there's not a deeper local minimum few blocks away :-)
It just means that sampling evolutionary traits that lead us out of that local minima, is very expensive from a fitness perspective.
- gnode 8y ago> it could be that we're stuck on a very deep local minimum I think that's likely. Also, in cases where being able to be awake continually (e.g. high predation or flying over water) animals have evolved unihemispheric sleep, which is likely a shorter evolutionary path and largely satisfies the selective pressure, making it less likely for sleep to be entirely evolved away.