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Where Human Sleep Went Wrong

nautil.us

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Re: Where Human Sleep Went Wrong

#51

Post by vintermann »

hackernud3s wrote: post #32
i_love_limes wrote: post #27

I think people in HN (and in general) have to remember the central axes of evolution before digesting this kind of article. I've already seen comments like it's "odd that no species has ended up evolving a continuous maintenance system" and "sleep has a higher opportunity cost in humans" in this comments section. This is a common, but poor framing of evolution. Remember: the only real rule with evolution is "did this…

Did their genes survive more, you mean. Hyper-vigilance could be maladaptive for the individual and still survive if it benefits others that carry the gene for it.

A bit of a digression, but I recently learned about the concept of pangenomes, of trying to map not just the genes in one individual, but the entire set of genes from a clade. It seems it matters a lot in practice for e.g. the immune system that we don't all have the same surface proteins on our cells, even if done some surface proteins are clearly better than others.

Re: Where Human Sleep Went Wrong

#52

Post by nkrisc »

dotancohen wrote: post #14
krige wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People already live in different altitudes, ie with vastly different amounts of rock between themselves and the bits of the earth that produce her magnetic field. It's not really the same thing. Construction and especially the high content of charged metal (whether it's power conduits or plain old frame) may make a considerable difference.

Do many people sleep in such tall buildings? Obviously they exist, but I can't think of any over-20 story residential building I've ever been in. Office space, sure, but not residential.

The amount of people who would regularly sleep in such a building is a minuscule fraction of the world population.

Re: Where Human Sleep Went Wrong

#54

Post by jbuhbjlnjbn »

HappyPanacea wrote: post #37
yard2010 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could only wish for low unnatural rumbles of cars. In 3rd world countries it's non stop horns and noisy motorbikes

Car horns gotta be up there as some of the worst inventions of the 20th century, noise pollution galore.

It works when you have strict rules on the use of horns and people get peer pressured into adapting to the behavior of their surroundings.

Re: Where Human Sleep Went Wrong

#55

Post by [deleted] »

exceptione wrote: post #13
moffkalast wrote: post #5

> Sleep is critical to human functioning, and yet, we sleep fewer total hours than any other ape, and are still arguably the most evolutionarily successful of the primates > humans are weird outliers—we’re the shortest sleeping primates, yet we pack in the most REM sleep relative to this short duration Isn't that sort of the point? Sleep is a detrimental necessity and the more efficient an organism is in needing less…

> It's still very odd that no species has ended up evolving a continuous maintenance system that can run while conscious Great point. Afaik, our bodies do preserve energy when we sleep/rest. A few questions that needs to answered first: - will gains of 24/7 hunting/foraging offset the extra energy costs? Lions sleep 16-20 hours a day, according to the internet. - do continuous maintenance systems imply duplicate syst…

[deleted]

Re: Where Human Sleep Went Wrong

#56

Post by teekert »

albert_e wrote: post #49
teekert wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a biologist so forgive me the poor wording, but there are "infinitely high" peaks/walls in the evolutionary landscape, as in: "the human urinary system has some evolutionary constraints and anatomical features that are not optimally designed from an engineering perspective, but they are generally functional and reflect our evolutionary history rather than deliberate design." So in that sense, a global maxima (min…

Interesting I did not know human urinary tract was suboptimal. Are there examples of "discontinuous" evolution where a chance mutation stumbled upon a much better way to do something that allowed a species to jump the gap? I imagine it would be very rare because chance mutations in a single individual that confer extraordinary survival / mating advantage to offset entire population would be rare like being a superman…

Well, what is suboptimal... One would engineer it differently, it makes a weird, seemingly unnecessary, loop around some other tracts. However, being a biologist I can also imagine that if we'd reroute the thing in someone using surgery, that person suddenly gets more infections because bacteria find their way up the tract more easily (no idea, but could be!). The point is... It's a mess based on some earlier mess, but it works, and changing one part in this mess can lead to unpredictable results.

As for "discontinuous evolution"... Again, what is discontinuous? I'm sure there are events to be found of which the probability of them occurring is so small and the effects so large that they'd fall into someone's definition of "discontinuous". But I think there is by definition no such thing as discontinuous evolution. If it occurred, it had a non-0 probability of occurring, then again, maybe the universe is infinite and everything has a non-zero probability of occurring. This is getting philosophical haha. Maybe listen to some Mindscape podcasts (Sean Caroll).

Actually rabbits eat their excrement again. That's also probably not how an engineer would make it (or an intelligent designer would design it, since we seems to be going in that direction ;) ).

Re: Where Human Sleep Went Wrong

#57

Post by [deleted] »

duskdozer wrote: post #46

>18 degrees Celsius is considered optimal for sleep depth I'm instantly skeptical of anyone making universal statements like this, because they're certainly not true for everyone, and having looked into these and similar (f/x "ideal room/office temperature"), are based on many entangled assumptions. Most of the time I expect it's just people making after-the-fact justification for doing (or imposing) what they most p…

[deleted]

Re: Where Human Sleep Went Wrong

#58

Post by sd9 »

zorrocangrejero wrote: post #23
moffkalast wrote: post #5

> Sleep is critical to human functioning, and yet, we sleep fewer total hours than any other ape, and are still arguably the most evolutionarily successful of the primates > humans are weird outliers—we’re the shortest sleeping primates, yet we pack in the most REM sleep relative to this short duration Isn't that sort of the point? Sleep is a detrimental necessity and the more efficient an organism is in needing less…

There's a similar mechanism called USWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-wave_sleep (Half of the brain remains awake while the other sleeps, not an expert so please correct if wrong)

Unihemispheric sleep has been used by cults for mind control because it puts you in a vulnerable mental state (for example https://zizians.info/#unihemispheric-sleep). So anybody reading this and interested in trying it, ensure you’ve done sufficient research first.

Re: Where Human Sleep Went Wrong

#59

Post by voidUpdate »

oulipo wrote: post #19
hlynurd wrote: post #12

>the Hadza uniformly reported high satisfaction with their sleep. And why wouldn't they? This is (presumably) the only kind of sleep they know.

Well probably us modern human only know the "8h sleep at night" kind of sleep, yet a lot of people would tell you whether they're satisfied or not with their sleep

I mean I can vary from 9 to 3 hours of sleep a night, and I can tell you I'd rather get 9 than 3. Just because I'm meant to get 8 hours a night doesn't mean I do

Re: Where Human Sleep Went Wrong

#60

Post by sd9 »

usernametaken29 wrote: post #22

> untangle what he calls the sleep paradox: Sleep is critical to human functioning, and yet, we sleep fewer total hours than any other ape Instead of going to Tanzania you could’ve asked a sleep scientist. Sleep length has no known correlation to brain size and is known for drastic within family variation. What’s more sleep has a high within species variation too, some sleepers can survive 4 hours, others need 8. Col…

How do you think sleep scientists got their data in the first place? Some of them went to Tanzania.
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