From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Tue Sep 24 2002 - 00:18:11 MDT
On Mon, 23 Sep 2002, Hal Finney wrote:
> This is amazing reporting. It sounds like there is a real chance that in
> 10-15 years we, our whole society, may be able to effectively eliminate
> our need for sleep. That would be a tremendous boost for the acceptance
> of extropian philosophy. Once people take this step beyond their human
> limitations, all the following steps will be that much easier.
I'm betting against it. Sleep, or at least diurnal cycling is integrated
within the architecture of all multicellular beings. You need a complete
redesign to engineer sleep out of your system.
Skipping sleep for a few days every month or two on chemical assist is one
thing, make it a habit, and you first start see cognitive impairments,
immunosuppression, and cumulating, partly irreversible damage. Dying due
to lack of sleep on modafinil or adrafinil might be somewhat easier,
though.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:17:15 MST