From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 24 2002 - 14:44:15 MDT
Hal 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.
>
### As much as I wish this were true I can't help being quite skeptical
here. Since we know that in the ancestral environment falling asleep is
dangerous, with all the hyenas prowling around, there must have been some
selection pressure for reduction of sleep. That we still sleep is for me a
strong indication that getting rid of the need for sleep is
neurophysiologically difficult, probably burdened with unfavorable
trade-offs (e.g. diminished high-level information processing). While
eventually new technologies will most likely allow constant wakefulness
without getting stupider, this will require very advanced revamping of our
neurophysiology, perhaps even discarding it altogether in favor of a
tireless inorganic substrate. Fiddling with neural network setpoints using
something as crude as drugs is not likely to achieve a feat that our Mother
Evolution couldn't accomplish in 20 million years.
Rafal
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