7 ms·

This gives additional evidence to my personal hypothesis that the normal state of living beings is sleeping. The awake state only appeared as a survival strateg

This gives additional evidence to my personal hypothesis that the normal state of living beings is sleeping. The awake state only appeared as a survival strategy, to better adapt to the natural environment.

TylerLives 5y ago
What do you mean by "the normal state of living beings"?
- serverholic 5y ago
  Surely you understand that most people consider being awake to be our default state and sleeping is just something that we need to do sometimes
  - slver 5y ago
    The way you phrased is reminded me how blindly we walk through life, doing things that our body forces us to do, because despite all our bravado about how smart we are... we really have no clue what we do and why we do it most of the time.
- vmception 5y ago
  It means that being aware of surroundings with continual sensory input and influence is the aberration. This matches some other theories as well, where humans and a few other always awake organisms are the extreme, due to selective pressures. For example, humans "feel bored" because having nothing pressing to do for survival is usually the wrong option. Whereas that isn't true for many other organisms and they likely wouldn't have an opinion about staying still in the same place for prolonged periods of time.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
wfn 5y ago
This is basically what Matthew Walker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Walker_(scientist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Walker_(scientist)) sort of alludes to in his book, "Why we sleep". It's a good book. He specifically mentions hydras as well (iirc)... he's a neuroscientist who is a crazy maniac about sleep and he cites newest research and delivers a very clear message of urgency. Lots of fascinating stuff there, highly recommend if you're interested.
- slver 5y ago
  What is his clear message of urgency?
  - wfn 5y ago
    In my view (of his view) - that in many cultures we see today, we've come to vastly underestimate the importance of sleep. For example, we've removed afternoon naps from workday routine (with field evidence showing effects on health such as heart disease (against comparative groups who haven't stopped taking naps - but not lab-controlled I think) etc.) We sleep less.[2] We shouldn't be asking what's the purpose of this pesky thing called sleep (which evolution turns to always incorporate into animal life, however inconvenient it is[1]; to route around the inconveniences as it were, rather than the other way around). We should rather be asking, is there a single function which isn't improved by sleep (Walker thinks no). End of preach rant :) [1]: e.g.: some birds appear to sleep in patterns such as when there's a row of birds sleeping, the two birds at each end sleep with one hemisphere each - but opposite ones - so that the field of vision is maximised. At midpoint in time however they swap places. The rest of the birds sleep with both hemispheres. That sounds pretty cool. [2]: though apparently there's criticism directed at Walker re: this, and re: him not mentioning that mortality appears to increase beyond the 7 hour mark (but I'm just learning this, so basically, just a fair warning not to take all of this at face value, there's nuance).
    - slver 5y ago
      Ah, I align with him then. Regarding mortality and the 7 hour mark, this is such unfortunate bullshit, that keeps being propagated by people who should know better. Ill people sleep more (even if you catch a cold, once you get past the peak, you sleep more for a few days) because their body requires more recovery. In chronically ill people this continues for a long time and the body never is able to catch up to the problem it's trying to solve. But despite all the "correlation not causation" mantras repeated by everyone, we keep citing this as if we decide to sleep a bit more that'll make it more likely to die, which is nonsense.
agambrahma 5y ago
This is the most weird and interesting hypothesis I've heard in a LONG time !
slver 5y ago
Depends what you focus on as your definition of "living beings". If you look at our cells, they behave more naturally while we sleep. While we sleep, they're "awake". So yes, that's their natural state. But the "multicellular organism" mode they switch while we're awake is necessary for them to be more than a pile of cells. Which indeed is very important for our survival, as complex behaviors that only multicellular organisms have, are crucial to our ability to adapt.
lisper 5y ago
> the normal state of living beings is sleeping This is reminiscent of the claim that zebras are black with white stripes (or is it the other way around?)
twhb 5y ago
A fascinating idea. For your hypothesis to work, and I think this is what you mean by the article supporting it, sleep would have had to evolve very early. Because being awake activates a great deal of a modern organism’s complexity, and that complexity wouldn’t have evolved in an always-sleeping organism that doesn’t benefit from it. So either the predecessors were awake, or sleep came before all the complexity that is now activated only when awake. For the first wakers, then, being awake was little more than a period of increased activity. A boost mode. And indeed we’ve already seen the utility of boost modes across a variety of technology, from CPUs to cars to high output flashlights. But does that make the predecessors really asleep? To use a very HN analogy, were pre-boost CPUs always idling?
- gibspaulding 5y ago
  It doesn't seem like too far of a stretch to guess that the earliest life forms would have been pretty passive, absorbing nutrients directly from their "primordial soup" and somehow replicating whenever they've stored up enough. I imagine "life" would have gone on for quite some time before "waking up" and evolving the ability respond to their environment by doing things like relocating to a more nutrient rich area or away from danger.
- coliveira 5y ago
  > But does that make the predecessors really asleep? Well, not directly, but we can certainly talk about the appearance a distinct state, which would now be called awake state in comparison to previous organisms that had a single state. After this appearance it makes sense to talk about previous life forms as "sleeping".
outworlder 5y ago
> The awake state only appeared as a survival strategy, to better adapt to the natural environment. Well. Given that "awake" creatures react to stimuli, that might not be too far off the truth. If we could passively survive and not have to forage or hunt for food, what's the point of 'waking up'? Sleeping is advantageous (less energy use). Efficiency is usually selected for, unless there's some other kind of environmental pressure. Maybe that's why we haven't found other civilizations. They are all 'sleeping'. Maybe consciousness is also unnecessary (on that front, I love https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm)
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  While Peter Watts' writing feels like he enjoys being intentionally abstruse, his books are very thought provoking. I still get reminded about the concepts in Blindsight from time to time, years after I read it.
- moonchild 5y ago
  Only awake beings can reproduce.
  - dormento 5y ago
    That we know of, yes. In the earth animal kingdom, yes. But what if there was some king of being that "shed" their spawn in a totally passive manner, perhaps using all that surplus energy from not needing to be awake most of the time?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jimmytucson 5y ago
"Normal" is arbitrary, but since most animals need to be awake to reproduce it's hard to envision enough of them always sleeping for it to be the default.
- coliveira 5y ago
  By the time complex animals evolved, the awake state would already be the norm for survival. So, I guess everything we now assign to complex animals is already dependent on the appearance of an awake state.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dennis_jeeves 5y ago
coliveira, you have obviously given this some thought. Any further nuances?
- coliveira 5y ago
  I'm not a biologist, so I consider this just my pet theory. But the idea is that one key element of evolution was the appearance of an alert state, which we now call wakefulness. The normal for all organisms was what we now call sleep. Organisms that developed this awake state were obviously able to better adapt to the environment. Like in many other cases, we can take clues from embryonic development. We know for example that fetuses spend at least 95% of their time sleeping. So we know from pretty early stage that sleeping seems to be the norm. Sleeping is also the most efficient, energy-wise, state for an organism. Even nowadays certain animals are able to hibernate for months. Humans can do this too in extreme situations, it is called comma. So, when we go to sleep we're not just "recharging". We're going to our normal state, and while it is possible to stay that way for long periods, I never heard of anyone staying awake for more than a few days.

TylerLives 5y ago

What do you mean by "the normal state of living beings"?

serverholic 5y ago
Surely you understand that most people consider being awake to be our default state and sleeping is just something that we need to do sometimes
- slver 5y ago
  The way you phrased is reminded me how blindly we walk through life, doing things that our body forces us to do, because despite all our bravado about how smart we are... we really have no clue what we do and why we do it most of the time.
vmception 5y ago
It means that being aware of surroundings with continual sensory input and influence is the aberration. This matches some other theories as well, where humans and a few other always awake organisms are the extreme, due to selective pressures. For example, humans "feel bored" because having nothing pressing to do for survival is usually the wrong option. Whereas that isn't true for many other organisms and they likely wouldn't have an opinion about staying still in the same place for prolonged periods of time.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

wfn 5y ago

This is basically what Matthew Walker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Walker_(scientist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Walker_(scientist)) sort of alludes to in his book, "Why we sleep". It's a good book. He specifically mentions hydras as well (iirc)... he's a neuroscientist who is a crazy maniac about sleep and he cites newest research and delivers a very clear message of urgency. Lots of fascinating stuff there, highly recommend if you're interested.

slver 5y ago
What is his clear message of urgency?
- wfn 5y ago
  In my view (of his view) - that in many cultures we see today, we've come to vastly underestimate the importance of sleep. For example, we've removed afternoon naps from workday routine (with field evidence showing effects on health such as heart disease (against comparative groups who haven't stopped taking naps - but not lab-controlled I think) etc.) We sleep less.[2] We shouldn't be asking what's the purpose of this pesky thing called sleep (which evolution turns to always incorporate into animal life, however inconvenient it is[1]; to route around the inconveniences as it were, rather than the other way around). We should rather be asking, is there a single function which isn't improved by sleep (Walker thinks no). End of preach rant :) [1]: e.g.: some birds appear to sleep in patterns such as when there's a row of birds sleeping, the two birds at each end sleep with one hemisphere each - but opposite ones - so that the field of vision is maximised. At midpoint in time however they swap places. The rest of the birds sleep with both hemispheres. That sounds pretty cool. [2]: though apparently there's criticism directed at Walker re: this, and re: him not mentioning that mortality appears to increase beyond the 7 hour mark (but I'm just learning this, so basically, just a fair warning not to take all of this at face value, there's nuance).
  - slver 5y ago
    Ah, I align with him then. Regarding mortality and the 7 hour mark, this is such unfortunate bullshit, that keeps being propagated by people who should know better. Ill people sleep more (even if you catch a cold, once you get past the peak, you sleep more for a few days) because their body requires more recovery. In chronically ill people this continues for a long time and the body never is able to catch up to the problem it's trying to solve. But despite all the "correlation not causation" mantras repeated by everyone, we keep citing this as if we decide to sleep a bit more that'll make it more likely to die, which is nonsense.

agambrahma 5y ago

This is the most weird and interesting hypothesis I've heard in a LONG time !

slver 5y ago

Depends what you focus on as your definition of "living beings". If you look at our cells, they behave more naturally while we sleep. While we sleep, they're "awake". So yes, that's their natural state. But the "multicellular organism" mode they switch while we're awake is necessary for them to be more than a pile of cells. Which indeed is very important for our survival, as complex behaviors that only multicellular organisms have, are crucial to our ability to adapt.

lisper 5y ago

> the normal state of living beings is sleeping This is reminiscent of the claim that zebras are black with white stripes (or is it the other way around?)

twhb 5y ago

A fascinating idea. For your hypothesis to work, and I think this is what you mean by the article supporting it, sleep would have had to evolve very early. Because being awake activates a great deal of a modern organism’s complexity, and that complexity wouldn’t have evolved in an always-sleeping organism that doesn’t benefit from it. So either the predecessors were awake, or sleep came before all the complexity that is now activated only when awake. For the first wakers, then, being awake was little more than a period of increased activity. A boost mode. And indeed we’ve already seen the utility of boost modes across a variety of technology, from CPUs to cars to high output flashlights. But does that make the predecessors really asleep? To use a very HN analogy, were pre-boost CPUs always idling?

gibspaulding 5y ago
It doesn't seem like too far of a stretch to guess that the earliest life forms would have been pretty passive, absorbing nutrients directly from their "primordial soup" and somehow replicating whenever they've stored up enough. I imagine "life" would have gone on for quite some time before "waking up" and evolving the ability respond to their environment by doing things like relocating to a more nutrient rich area or away from danger.
coliveira 5y ago
> But does that make the predecessors really asleep? Well, not directly, but we can certainly talk about the appearance a distinct state, which would now be called awake state in comparison to previous organisms that had a single state. After this appearance it makes sense to talk about previous life forms as "sleeping".

outworlder 5y ago

> The awake state only appeared as a survival strategy, to better adapt to the natural environment. Well. Given that "awake" creatures react to stimuli, that might not be too far off the truth. If we could passively survive and not have to forage or hunt for food, what's the point of 'waking up'? Sleeping is advantageous (less energy use). Efficiency is usually selected for, unless there's some other kind of environmental pressure. Maybe that's why we haven't found other civilizations. They are all 'sleeping'. Maybe consciousness is also unnecessary (on that front, I love https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm)

ASalazarMX 5y ago
While Peter Watts' writing feels like he enjoys being intentionally abstruse, his books are very thought provoking. I still get reminded about the concepts in Blindsight from time to time, years after I read it.
moonchild 5y ago
Only awake beings can reproduce.
- dormento 5y ago
  That we know of, yes. In the earth animal kingdom, yes. But what if there was some king of being that "shed" their spawn in a totally passive manner, perhaps using all that surplus energy from not needing to be awake most of the time?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jimmytucson 5y ago

"Normal" is arbitrary, but since most animals need to be awake to reproduce it's hard to envision enough of them always sleeping for it to be the default.

coliveira 5y ago
By the time complex animals evolved, the awake state would already be the norm for survival. So, I guess everything we now assign to complex animals is already dependent on the appearance of an awake state.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dennis_jeeves 5y ago

coliveira, you have obviously given this some thought. Any further nuances?

coliveira 5y ago
I'm not a biologist, so I consider this just my pet theory. But the idea is that one key element of evolution was the appearance of an alert state, which we now call wakefulness. The normal for all organisms was what we now call sleep. Organisms that developed this awake state were obviously able to better adapt to the environment. Like in many other cases, we can take clues from embryonic development. We know for example that fetuses spend at least 95% of their time sleeping. So we know from pretty early stage that sleeping seems to be the norm. Sleeping is also the most efficient, energy-wise, state for an organism. Even nowadays certain animals are able to hibernate for months. Humans can do this too in extreme situations, it is called comma. So, when we go to sleep we're not just "recharging". We're going to our normal state, and while it is possible to stay that way for long periods, I never heard of anyone staying awake for more than a few days.