4 ms·

I don't see the point of rest. We are biologically bound to need a resting period which is not the case for robots thereby making them superior species. A robot

I don't see the point of rest. We are biologically bound to need a resting period which is not the case for robots thereby making them superior species. A robot would rather crawl more webpages and learn more than shutting down, even we would like to finish those couple of side projects than sleeping off but are unable to.

gumby 7y ago
Perhaps this is because you don’t, as you say, see the point of rest. It may be that the time is used for other, very important things. Perhaps someday a robot could do those things without stopping, but for all we know it’s a form of Mark-sweep GC. Your position is similar to the view of so-called “Junk DNA” which was initially thought to be literal junk but some of which does in fact appear to modulate gene expression at runtime.
imgabe 7y ago
A robot doesn't have a preference. It wouldn't "rather" do anything because it's not sentient. Machines don't need rest because they aren't capable of regeneration. They run and damage accumulates until they break. Then they're done. You can run them less and have the damage accumulate slower so they last longer, but they don't heal themselves without somebody else to perform maintenance. Living things on the other hand, do repair themselves while they rest. In fact, they even grow stronger to better endure the stresses they experience. So, that's the point of rest.
captainbland 7y ago
I think if we all never slept, assuming that was just what had always happened, without something else happening to change the nature of society as it is, we'd just end up using those extra hours for work - not nice, fully voluntary side project work, either. I mean work of economic necessity as we do today. We might have flashier phones as a result but we'd only have the same amount of time in which to use them.

4 ms·

I don't see the point of rest. We are biologically bound to need a resting period which is not the case for robots thereby making them superior species. A robot

by fourier_mode 7y ago

gumby 7y ago
Perhaps this is because you don’t, as you say, see the point of rest. It may be that the time is used for other, very important things. Perhaps someday a robot could do those things without stopping, but for all we know it’s a form of Mark-sweep GC. Your position is similar to the view of so-called “Junk DNA” which was initially thought to be literal junk but some of which does in fact appear to modulate gene expression at runtime.
imgabe 7y ago
A robot doesn't have a preference. It wouldn't "rather" do anything because it's not sentient. Machines don't need rest because they aren't capable of regeneration. They run and damage accumulates until they break. Then they're done. You can run them less and have the damage accumulate slower so they last longer, but they don't heal themselves without somebody else to perform maintenance. Living things on the other hand, do repair themselves while they rest. In fact, they even grow stronger to better endure the stresses they experience. So, that's the point of rest.
captainbland 7y ago
I think if we all never slept, assuming that was just what had always happened, without something else happening to change the nature of society as it is, we'd just end up using those extra hours for work - not nice, fully voluntary side project work, either. I mean work of economic necessity as we do today. We might have flashier phones as a result but we'd only have the same amount of time in which to use them.