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I've seen some interesting arguments that 'sleep' is actually the default state of living organisms, and being 'awake' is the temporary altered state evolved on

I've seen some interesting arguments that 'sleep' is actually the default state of living organisms, and being 'awake' is the temporary altered state evolved on top of that.

ed 5y ago
> The earliest life forms were unresponsive until they evolved ways to react to their environment, he suggests, and sleep is a return to the default state. “I think we didn’t evolve sleep, we evolved wakefulness.” FTA
scubakid 5y ago
I've always marvelled at the huge discrepancy in sleep needs between people; many need 7-8 hrs per night, but some report 4-6 feeling optimal. Anyone care to guess if future technology/medicine might ever be able to improve rest/recovery efficiency to the point that people only need to spend 5-10% of their lifespan unconscious instead of ~30%? Or at least even the playing field so we can all rock 6 hrs and feel amazing?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nickpeterson 5y ago
  Those 7-8 hour people have their log4j configuration set on verbose.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  I’m betting that improving measurement tools and understanding the subtler points of what sleep does and how to influence it will bring the ability for people generally to get higher quality sleep and ultimately need less.
- Jensson 5y ago
  As far as I understand it you spend 4 hours sleeping, then your subconscious wakes up and spends 4 hours training itself based on new data acquired during the day, and then your consciousness wakes up and shuts down the training in order to execute for the next day. So I'm not sure that reducing sleep to just 4 hours would help, it is enough to survive and stay alert throughout the day but probably not optimal. Edit: I also think that this is why you get tired when you sleep too much, your subconsciousness will run exhausting mental training when your consciousness is asleep so sleeping when your subconsciousness is alert makes you more tired.
- watwut 5y ago
  Afaik, when they actually measure people performance, nobody works optimally on 4-6 hours of sleep a night. People may claim whatever or ignore the feeling, but sleep deprivation affects them still.
- Meai 5y ago
  to be honest, I think this is all solely due to caffeine. I sleep 5-6h if I'm on caffeine, I sleep 8-9h if I'm off caffeine. When I first started drinking caffeinated drinks at age ~23 (yes really), I had a short period where I could still sleep full nights but eventually I was always down to 6h. In my opinion most people don't attribute any of these sleep changes to caffeine because they've been on caffeine for a long time, never fully stop and when you are younger it doesn't have this effect yet or immediately.
  - Emma_Goldman 5y ago
    I don't think this is likely. It's well known that caffeine disrupts sleep and that you therefore need to spend more rather than less time in bed to get the same rest.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    I sleep 8-9h and drink however much caffeine is in about 8g of green tea leaves in the mornings.
  - medstrom 5y ago
    I've had the same experience with sleeping more after my coffee runs out, but it's only temporary, lasting maximum one week.
mach1ne 5y ago
This sort of makes sense, as unnecessary movement drains energy. It seems counterintuitive, then, that sleep has survived for so long, but the forces pushing for it must be strong. It does seem rather coincidental that we sleep for 7-9 hours, which is the majority of the dark time, during which wakefulness would only expend energy with little gain (thinking of apes instead of modern humans)
jkbyc 5y ago
Related post: https://www.quantamagazine.org/sleep-evolved-before-brains-hydras-are-living-proof-20210518/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/sleep-evolved-before-brains-h... And an interesting comment of someone on FB: Hydra Hydra have a diffuse neural system But no brain to speak of A simple creature echoing older, more primitive forms They doze off, so we've found Using familiar chemistry To slumber every four hours When I sleep I descend like a bathysphere Down through layers of earlier incarnations Dipping below the surface Leaving the airy light of consciousness behind To enter the involuntary dream world of Freud and Jung Deeper still then dreams themselves disperse Slipping away like darting fish Leaving me reptilian, autonomic, just breath and pulse But there's further to go - into the abyssal dark To reach my fundamental hardware Where I am the hydra https://www.facebook.com/QuantaNews/posts/1789738887890362 https://www.facebook.com/QuantaNews/posts/1789738887890362
medstrom 5y ago
While this makes sense, an alternative hypothesis also makes sense: that consciousness just came when the hardware was there, and a standby state for it then evolved afterwards. It's easy to buy if you just postulate that the standby state wasn't actually necessary for a healthy mind at first. We started putting essential functions into that time window after it was there, and now we must sleep, but the original purpose was just a low-power mode to wait for morning or something. Supporting evidence: horses sleep 2 hours, cats sleep 16, and even humans vary widely in how much sleep they need. That's hard to explain if all of it is fundamentally necessary, but easy to explain if the precise length is irrelevant for biological purposes and that the length was determined by outside factors e.g. how much this species stands to gain from remaining in a low-power state.

I've seen some interesting arguments that 'sleep' is actually the default state of living organisms, and being 'awake' is the temporary altered state evolved on top of that.

ed 5y ago

> The earliest life forms were unresponsive until they evolved ways to react to their environment, he suggests, and sleep is a return to the default state. “I think we didn’t evolve sleep, we evolved wakefulness.” FTA

scubakid 5y ago

I've always marvelled at the huge discrepancy in sleep needs between people; many need 7-8 hrs per night, but some report 4-6 feeling optimal. Anyone care to guess if future technology/medicine might ever be able to improve rest/recovery efficiency to the point that people only need to spend 5-10% of their lifespan unconscious instead of ~30%? Or at least even the playing field so we can all rock 6 hrs and feel amazing?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nickpeterson 5y ago
Those 7-8 hour people have their log4j configuration set on verbose.
colechristensen 5y ago
I’m betting that improving measurement tools and understanding the subtler points of what sleep does and how to influence it will bring the ability for people generally to get higher quality sleep and ultimately need less.
Jensson 5y ago
As far as I understand it you spend 4 hours sleeping, then your subconscious wakes up and spends 4 hours training itself based on new data acquired during the day, and then your consciousness wakes up and shuts down the training in order to execute for the next day. So I'm not sure that reducing sleep to just 4 hours would help, it is enough to survive and stay alert throughout the day but probably not optimal. Edit: I also think that this is why you get tired when you sleep too much, your subconsciousness will run exhausting mental training when your consciousness is asleep so sleeping when your subconsciousness is alert makes you more tired.
watwut 5y ago
Afaik, when they actually measure people performance, nobody works optimally on 4-6 hours of sleep a night. People may claim whatever or ignore the feeling, but sleep deprivation affects them still.
Meai 5y ago
to be honest, I think this is all solely due to caffeine. I sleep 5-6h if I'm on caffeine, I sleep 8-9h if I'm off caffeine. When I first started drinking caffeinated drinks at age ~23 (yes really), I had a short period where I could still sleep full nights but eventually I was always down to 6h. In my opinion most people don't attribute any of these sleep changes to caffeine because they've been on caffeine for a long time, never fully stop and when you are younger it doesn't have this effect yet or immediately.
- Emma_Goldman 5y ago
  I don't think this is likely. It's well known that caffeine disrupts sleep and that you therefore need to spend more rather than less time in bed to get the same rest.
- adrianN 5y ago
  I sleep 8-9h and drink however much caffeine is in about 8g of green tea leaves in the mornings.
- medstrom 5y ago
  I've had the same experience with sleeping more after my coffee runs out, but it's only temporary, lasting maximum one week.

mach1ne 5y ago

This sort of makes sense, as unnecessary movement drains energy. It seems counterintuitive, then, that sleep has survived for so long, but the forces pushing for it must be strong. It does seem rather coincidental that we sleep for 7-9 hours, which is the majority of the dark time, during which wakefulness would only expend energy with little gain (thinking of apes instead of modern humans)

jkbyc 5y ago

Related post: https://www.quantamagazine.org/sleep-evolved-before-brains-hydras-are-living-proof-20210518/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/sleep-evolved-before-brains-h... And an interesting comment of someone on FB: Hydra Hydra have a diffuse neural system But no brain to speak of A simple creature echoing older, more primitive forms They doze off, so we've found Using familiar chemistry To slumber every four hours When I sleep I descend like a bathysphere Down through layers of earlier incarnations Dipping below the surface Leaving the airy light of consciousness behind To enter the involuntary dream world of Freud and Jung Deeper still then dreams themselves disperse Slipping away like darting fish Leaving me reptilian, autonomic, just breath and pulse But there's further to go - into the abyssal dark To reach my fundamental hardware Where I am the hydra https://www.facebook.com/QuantaNews/posts/1789738887890362 https://www.facebook.com/QuantaNews/posts/1789738887890362

medstrom 5y ago

While this makes sense, an alternative hypothesis also makes sense: that consciousness just came when the hardware was there, and a standby state for it then evolved afterwards. It's easy to buy if you just postulate that the standby state wasn't actually necessary for a healthy mind at first. We started putting essential functions into that time window after it was there, and now we must sleep, but the original purpose was just a low-power mode to wait for morning or something. Supporting evidence: horses sleep 2 hours, cats sleep 16, and even humans vary widely in how much sleep they need. That's hard to explain if all of it is fundamentally necessary, but easy to explain if the precise length is irrelevant for biological purposes and that the length was determined by outside factors e.g. how much this species stands to gain from remaining in a low-power state.