Love the writing-style. Quite "to-the-point", without any fluff, and with a nice flow and purpose.
Engineering Sleep
21–30 of 205 posts
Re: Engineering Sleep
#22I'm not really convinced that removing the need for sleep would result in me being more productive primarily because I'm not an always-on computer. The average day for me has huge differences in terms of my productivity at any given moment. I need downtime anyway, if I didn't sleep I believe that I'd end up vegging out in some way because I'm not doing 24 hours of flashcards. The discussions on here also always seem…
Yah, but if you needed 2 hours less of sleep, there'd still be myriad advantages.
Times when it's not possible to get enough sleep: you'd be less sleep-deprived.
And, if it's truly without negative side effects: maybe you get 20 minutes more useful time per day and increase your ratio of conscious relaxation to useful time. I'd call that a pretty big win.
Re: Engineering Sleep
#23I'm not really convinced that removing the need for sleep would result in me being more productive primarily because I'm not an always-on computer. The average day for me has huge differences in terms of my productivity at any given moment. I need downtime anyway, if I didn't sleep I believe that I'd end up vegging out in some way because I'm not doing 24 hours of flashcards. The discussions on here also always seem…
Yah, but if you needed 2 hours less of sleep, there'd still be myriad advantages. Times when it's not possible to get enough sleep: you'd be less sleep-deprived. And, if it's truly without negative side effects: maybe you get 20 minutes more useful time per day and increase your ratio of conscious relaxation to useful time. I'd call that a pretty big win.
It's interesting but I feel as if the discussion is a bit flawed because it feels very binary, i.e. sleep 8 hours = have 16 hours non sleep, sleep 6 hours = have 18 hours non sleep, and we assume that each hour is the same regardless, but it won't be.
It feels a bit like - well could I engineer myself to require 1500 calories a day instead of 2000. Maybe. But as a result there would definitely be some downside, maybe I'd be less physically strong, or have less endurance, or have a bit less processing power, or have to rest more, etc. If we straight up designed a more efficient body, then I'd rather keep eating 2k and be "more powerful", or maybe I'd go to 4k!
Maybe I can sleep for 2 fewer hours and retain the same or more productivity. Or maybe I could sleep for the full amount of hours but be more well rested and as a result be more productive in the awake time. That sort of thing.
Re: Engineering Sleep
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yah, but if you needed 2 hours less of sleep, there'd still be myriad advantages. Times when it's not possible to get enough sleep: you'd be less sleep-deprived. And, if it's truly without negative side effects: maybe you get 20 minutes more useful time per day and increase your ratio of conscious relaxation to useful time. I'd call that a pretty big win.
It's interesting but I feel as if the discussion is a bit flawed because it feels very binary, i.e. sleep 8 hours = have 16 hours non sleep, sleep 6 hours = have 18 hours non sleep, and we assume that each hour is the same regardless, but it won't be. It feels a bit like - well could I engineer myself to require 1500 calories a day instead of 2000. Maybe. But as a result there would definitely be some downside, maybe…
Yah -- note that I didn't posit that things would be the same at the margin (120 minutes more conscious time without other downsides yields only 16% of "useful" time and assumes the rest goes to minimally useful relaxation and recreation).
> There is no free lunch.
Selective pressure and evolution are pretty good at optimizing... but not perfect. What they optimized for, also, is not quality of life in the modern world. It's likely there are a whole lot of free lunches available, or at least big wins with relatively low opportunity costs.
It's certainly not great to discard potential improvements because of an assumption that what we have must be optimum.
Re: Engineering Sleep
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's interesting but I feel as if the discussion is a bit flawed because it feels very binary, i.e. sleep 8 hours = have 16 hours non sleep, sleep 6 hours = have 18 hours non sleep, and we assume that each hour is the same regardless, but it won't be. It feels a bit like - well could I engineer myself to require 1500 calories a day instead of 2000. Maybe. But as a result there would definitely be some downside, maybe…
Yah -- note that I didn't posit that things would be the same at the margin (120 minutes more conscious time without other downsides yields only 16% of "useful" time and assumes the rest goes to minimally useful relaxation and recreation). > There is no free lunch. Selective pressure and evolution are pretty good at optimizing... but not perfect. What they optimized for, also, is not quality of life in the modern wor…
Sorry, I edited my post a bit so what you've quoted isn't there any more but I agree fully with what you're saying.
I guess what would be cool is being able to play with the sliders. People already do this in other ways, for example people at the extreme end of bodybuilding or strongman are almost certainlhy explicitly shortening their lifespans for a shorter term benefit, calorie restriction looks like it lets you go the other way, etc.
Maybe you could even fiddle and have 16 hours of sleep and overclock your brain for the other 8 being super-intelligent, lol.
Re: Engineering Sleep
#26I wonder it I have this… Both my parents go to bed around 1am and wake up at 7am, and so did all of my grandparents. My kids on weekends go to bed around 1-2am as well but do sleep in, and my average is about 4-5 hours a night… As for me, I’ve had sleep issues all my life and found the only way to fall asleep within 20 minutes is to stay up until exhaustion. But lately I’ve been gaining back my time and pushing even…
Sleep starting late + driving to exhaustion + occasional night skipping then catchup sounds almost like DSPD:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder
That one sleeps 4-5h per night also sounds like one light/deep/REM sleep cycle, of which there would typically be two in an idealised 8h-ish "night".
There are hypotheses out there that a single 8h block of sleep is a myth - possibly socially induced by industrialisation and 3x8 shifts - and that waking up in the middle of these 8h is a normal thing.
"waking up" here may mean anything from near-consciousness sleep to actually waking up and possibly do shit for an hour then going back to bed; or even for some, splitting sleep in two 4-hour blocks spread around the 24h day.
In parent's post it may be that one 4h block is done, then social pressure (work/child schedules) pushes one to continue with this one-block schedule.
It may even look appealing as triggering sleep through exhaustion superficially appears to help with sleep in the short term. Long term it gets exhausting but this perceptually becomes the new normal, especially when the symptoms of this kind of sleep deprivation aren't that obviously tied to sleep habits, the naively expected ones being masked by external pressure (schedule), habit bias (normalisation of deviance through repetition), exogenic (alcohol, caffeine, nicotine) or endogenic (adrenalin, cortisol, dopamine).
The main problem is then that by the time symptoms are impacting the situation is deeply anchored; worse, because the root cause is non-obvious it is often misdiagnosed.
Don't ask me how I know.
Also, not a physician, just saying: take care.
Re: Engineering Sleep
#27As above, so below. These lines of thinking sees sleep as a hygiene factor for maintaining bio stasis. We also process experiences and “simulate” effects of potential actions in the waking state. These “software-level” sleep activities seems less quantifiable in terms of sleep-time efficiency. If I get an evolutionary advantage from better consolidated experiences through longer dream sessions, how would that compare with more “face-time” with lions and famines in my waking state?
There is a nasty “all things being equal” fallacy hidden in this line of thinking.
Re: Engineering Sleep
#28My question is, if sleeping less (with FNSS) offers so much advantage, why haven't we all evolved to sleep less with FNSS? If a mutation offers a distinct advantage, natural selection will force us to adopt it sooner or later.
Re: Engineering Sleep
#29I've always wanted to reduce my sleep requirement. These days I naturally sleep for 8 hours. It's not completely wasted; my brain often figures out difficult problems while I sleep. But if I could do something relaxing like playing a game or socialising instead that would be great.
I did try polyphasic sleep when I was younger but it didn't work out. Having my sleeping patterns so far off the standard made me really unhappy.
Re: Engineering Sleep
#30Hey, discussion of orexin receptor stuff! As someone with clinically-diagnosed insomnia, I've been lucky enough to/unfortunate enough to have to try the orexin receptor antagonist sleep aids for a while. As recent, on-patent drugs, they are very, very expensive ($360/month was the number marked on the receipt slip, not that that means much in the US; I certainly wasn't paying that)... and they work. They really, really do work. I was prescribed them because I tried every single other class of sleep aid on the market and they were mostly ineffective, had massive side effects, or were benzos (temazepam: best sleep of my life, but better not use it for longer than a month!).
This stuff? Orexin receptor antagonists? They work. Holy crap, do they ever work. Sleep quality better than the Z-drugs, great tolerability, no massive disruption going off them... when these things go off-patent they're going to be massive. Sleep quality was not perfect (maybe 80% of "normal"? I don't know) but that is absolutely minor compared to the alternative.
(And for the record, I'm off them now due to other stuff clearing up such that I don't need this level of sleep assistance anymore. Not because I can't afford them.)
I guess that's a long-winded way to say that if you're going to do questionably-advised sleep biohacking, orexin receptors are probably the place to start.