The idea that sleep evolved to establish or avoid certain hunting patterns doesn’t seem totally complete to me. There are very harsh penalties to not sleeping: you become less intelligent, less amiable, you might randomly lose consciousness. I would think that if sleep was merely meant to provide a schedule to our lives, we would’ve evolved more incentives that don’t penalize us in other areas. I.e. a pack of early humans who enjoy sleep but can have individuals stay up all night to watch for predators with no penalty would out-compete other packs of early humans who can’t. My guess is that there’s some unknown function that sleep fulfills, and hence why the short sleeper gene(s) haven’t spread throughout the population already. This isn’t to say I don’t support the research, I’m pretty sure I suffer from sleep apnea myself, and work a job where falling asleep is both common and a hazard (yeah maybe I didn’t think that one all the way through, suffering from daytime sleepiness due to the apnea). But I’m worried about what sort of long term effects will crop up, as any such drug or treatment just seems a little too good to be true.
Oh I think sleep probably plays other roles today! But I don’t think those roles require exactly 7 hours of sleep.
And agreed, need to look at long term effects of sleep need reduction too. My vision is more that people have 3-4 nights of 1-2 hours less sleep and then take a break for 3 nights rather than taking a drug to stop sleeping entirely.
The idea that sleep evolved to establish or avoid certain hunting patterns doesn’t seem totally complete to me. There are very harsh penalties to not sleeping: you become less intelligent, less amiable, you might randomly lose consciousness. I would think that if sleep was merely meant to provide a schedule to our lives, we would’ve evolved more incentives that don’t penalize us in other areas. I.e. a pack of early humans who enjoy sleep but can have individuals stay up all night to watch for predators with no penalty would out-compete other packs of early humans who can’t. My guess is that there’s some unknown function that sleep fulfills, and hence why the short sleeper gene(s) haven’t spread throughout the population already.
This isn’t to say I don’t support the research, I’m pretty sure I suffer from sleep apnea myself, and work a job where falling asleep is both common and a hazard (yeah maybe I didn’t think that one all the way through, suffering from daytime sleepiness due to the apnea). But I’m worried about what sort of long term effects will crop up, as any such drug or treatment just seems a little too good to be true.
Oh I think sleep probably plays other roles today! But I don’t think those roles require exactly 7 hours of sleep.
And agreed, need to look at long term effects of sleep need reduction too. My vision is more that people have 3-4 nights of 1-2 hours less sleep and then take a break for 3 nights rather than taking a drug to stop sleeping entirely.