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Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

nature.com

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Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#61

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

dodongobongo wrote: post #51
Damogran6 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sleep 5-6 hours a night. I also seem to be bi-phasic...on the weekends if I wake up after 5 hours, hang around for an hour and successfully go back to sleep, the second cycle is the sleep of the dead. Like, I don't move. Wake up with limbs fallen asleep, a deep divot in the memory foam...and a lot more rested. (as an aside: have CPAP, apnea is not a factor.)

iirc, biphasic sleep is the “usual way” people sleep without the advent of electricity, yes? “the waking hour”, and all that. I wonder if there was an increase in dementia-related disorders once lightbulbs kept people up longer.

> iirc, biphasic sleep is the “usual way” people sleep without the advent of electricity, yes? “the waking hour”, and all that.

I honestly believe that this is not "natural", but rather an adaptation to the absurdly long European winter nights. Note that we didn't evolve there, so it seems unlikely that bi-phasic sleep is the most primal way.

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#62

Post by fooster »

ericmcer wrote: post #57
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife needs 8-9 hours, whereas I can get by just fine with 5-6. She is a very light sleeper who will wake up 3-4 times every night; I can sleep through almost any noise, and never get up in the middle of the night. My son takes after me -- he seems to need significantly less sleep than other kids his age, but he's an extraordinarily deep sleeper. Anecdotal, but I think that sleep depth might have something to do wi…

Anecdotal also but I sometimes sleep alone in my office (have a futon) where it is very quiet. I usually feel fully rested after 6 hours in there versus 8 hours in bed with wife, dog and the cat occasionally coming through. I wish culturally it was standard for houses to have something like `sleep` rooms that are optimized for that purpose.

They're called a bedroom.

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#63

Post by nottorp »

parpfish wrote: post #8
sylware wrote: post #2

Extreme Sleep deprived people did hallucinate. Nature may give us some hints to improve "AI" reliability.

It was a mistake to use the term “hallucinate” in AI. It’s a decent metaphor but it’s best to avoid terms prone to anthropomorphism.

> best to avoid terms prone to anthropomorphism

Like "understanding" and "thinking"?

Or "will change everything"?

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#64

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

bregma wrote: post #60
parpfish wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should’ve just gone with calling it Al. Seems friendly and you’ll mistake it for actual AI until you look closer

You can call it Betty.

Maybe only if you're their long last pal though.

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#65

Post by pazimzadeh »

api wrote: post #17

Whatever sleep does, it's something nature has had a tough time optimizing out despite the extreme vulnerability it creates and the sacrifice of a little under half an organism's waking time. That should tell us it's something incredibly important that's hard to do any other way. Edit: on the other hand... if Earth had two suns and rarely had periods of darkness, you wonder if maybe there would have been more evoluti…

Seems likely like the need for sleep then selects for many social/group behaviors. “Solo self-found” is not really an option unless you’re really good at hiding or have some other tricks

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#66

Post by ninetyninenine »

fooster wrote: post #62
ericmcer wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal also but I sometimes sleep alone in my office (have a futon) where it is very quiet. I usually feel fully rested after 6 hours in there versus 8 hours in bed with wife, dog and the cat occasionally coming through. I wish culturally it was standard for houses to have something like `sleep` rooms that are optimized for that purpose.

They're called a bedroom.

Obviously he means a room for one person to sleep. It’s called a bedroom too but he knows that and so do you.

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#67

Post by kridsdale1 »

cut3 wrote: post #59
sparsely wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which maintenance tasks, why does it require us to be unconscious, why can't we apply constant energy towards them? Lots of interesting questions to answer

Mental and physical body process refactoring is my guess

Cant run inference on the model while it’s in a new training run.

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#68

Post by ninetyninenine »

There’s this one guy in Vietnam who literally doesn’t sleep ever.

https://www.news18.com/amp/buzz/meet-80-year-old-vietnamese-...

Google it. There’s a lot about him. It’s like the one thing that makes zero sense in all this research about sleep.

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#69

Post by Noumenon72 »

NoTeslaThrow wrote: post #56
magneticnorth wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fairly well studied phenomenon known as short sleeper syndrome. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/gene-id... There are no known health problems caused by this syndrome, according to a Cleveland Clinic overview page: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/short-sleeper...

> There are no known health problems caused by this syndrome Presumably they mean there's no evidence of this syndrome causing health issues (presumably the "known" part is redundant). Trying to position a causal hypothesis as a matter-of-fact-finding is crazy. EDIT: that article is insanely poorly written and even worse cited. How are these websites giving super-sketchy medical advice even legal. There's no author t…

I don't understand what you are objecting to. What would the causal hypothesis be, "this syndrome causes no diseases"? It's just an ordinary claim that if the syndrome is harmful, it's not as immediately apparent as something like sniffing glue. It's saying "this is harmless" can't be ruled out.

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#70

Post by kridsdale1 »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #61
dodongobongo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iirc, biphasic sleep is the “usual way” people sleep without the advent of electricity, yes? “the waking hour”, and all that. I wonder if there was an increase in dementia-related disorders once lightbulbs kept people up longer.

> iirc, biphasic sleep is the “usual way” people sleep without the advent of electricity, yes? “the waking hour”, and all that. I honestly believe that this is not "natural", but rather an adaptation to the absurdly long European winter nights. Note that we didn't evolve there, so it seems unlikely that bi-phasic sleep is the most primal way.

Some of us have partially evolved for that environment. My ancestors eyes turned blue to see in the dim light and their hair and skin changed from Ethiopian Black to pale and blonde af.

Seems reasonable to expect some degree of genetic drift in sleep regulation as well, but I know of no data on this.

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