3 ms·
Do airplanes need sleep because they fly like birds who also require sleep?
by kelseyfrog 3y ago
Do airplanes need sleep because they fly like birds who also require sleep?
- goatlover 3y agoBirds flap their wings and maneuver differently. They don't fly the same way.
- sorokod 3y agoThey do need scheduled maintenance.
- TRDRVR 3y agoAh a very fun 'snippy' question that just proves my point further. Thank you. No airplanes do not sleep. That's part of why their flying is fundamentally different than birds'. You'll likely also notice that birds flap their wings while planes use jet engines and fixed wings. My entire point is that it is foolish to imagine airplanes as mechanical birds, since they are in fact completely different and require their own mental models to understand. This is analogous to LLMs. They do something completely different than what our brains do and require their own mental models in order to understand them completely.
- kelseyfrog 3y agoI'm reluctant to ask, but how do ornithopters fit into a sleep paradigm?
- TRDRVR 3y agoGreat follow up! Ornithopters are designed by humans who sleep - the complex computers needed to make them work replicate things humans told them to do, right? It is a very incomplete model of an ornithopter to not include the human.
- TRDRVR 3y agoHere, it's actually fun to respond to your comment in another way, so let's try this out: Yes, sleep is in fact a prerequisite to planes flying. We have very strict laws about it actually. Most planes are only able to fly because a human (who does sleep) is piloting it. The drones and other vehicles that can fly without pilots were still programmed by a person (who also needed sleep) FWIW.