I am much more sold on “variety is good for humans, and mild-moderate deprivation and excess is variety” than “humans should permanently run on much less sleep than they think they need” or “sleepiness is a lie”.
One tricky thing here is humans aren’t actually guaranteed to have a pareto optimim, or to have a path that gets all good things. It seems really plausible childhood illnesses damages development and IQ, and lack of childhood illness causes allergies and immune vulnerability later (I think think the hygiene/old friends hypothesis is largely correct, even if it doesn’t support eating dirt in particular), and there isn’t an ideal level that gets you your max IQ and no allergies. Variety is something of a hack to get some of both and also create a discovery process for what you need more at a particular moment.
I am much more sold on “variety is good for humans, and mild-moderate deprivation and excess is variety” than “humans should permanently run on much less sleep than they think they need” or “sleepiness is a lie”.
One tricky thing here is humans aren’t actually guaranteed to have a pareto optimim, or to have a path that gets all good things. It seems really plausible childhood illnesses damages development and IQ, and lack of childhood illness causes allergies and immune vulnerability later (I think think the hygiene/old friends hypothesis is largely correct, even if it doesn’t support eating dirt in particular), and there isn’t an ideal level that gets you your max IQ and no allergies. Variety is something of a hack to get some of both and also create a discovery process for what you need more at a particular moment.