From: Robert Owen (rowen@technologist.com)
Date: Sat Oct 30 1999 - 22:02:07 MDT
hal@finney.org wrote:
> "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@www.aeiveos.com>,
> on Fri, 29 Oct 1999 09:37:14 -0700 (PDT), wrote:
>
> >I concur with [Anders'] comments on the primary purpose of sleep
> >being to "integrate" critical experiences into your knowledge
> >database. There may also be a biological purpose for
> >maintenance, repair & recycling to be done when resources
> >(esp. energy) are less needed for "thinking" (though I can't
> >point to much hard biological evidence for this).
>
> It's strange, though, that we don't consciously perceive any difference
> in our "knowledge base" or our memories after sleep.
Has anyone considered the hypothesis suggested by sleep research
and Hamlet that we sleep in order to dream? The peer-reviewed
research finding that it is possible to induce psychosis in subjects
if they are persistently awakened when REM states are detected
implies, but does not prove, that dreaming is the necessary and
sufficient condition for socialized cognition when awake.
Now, if we knew [1] how to induce a transient conscious analog
of dreaming that would perform the required function when awake,
or [2] how to modify cognition and/or conation so that e.g. there
was no residuum requiring reduction by dreaming, we might be in
a position to dispense with sleep per se.
=======================
Robert M. Owen
Director
The Orion Institute
57 W. Morgan Street
Brevard, NC 28712-3659 USA
=======================
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:05:39 MST