If You Could Eliminate the Need to Sleep, Would You?

[illram]

Piggybacking on Aelf's sleep thread. If there was some easy, painless, affordable way to eliminate your biological need to sleep, would you take it? Assume it was reversible when necessary; i.e. if you prefer sleeping through a long flight, you could still do so. But the biological necessity of sleeping every night (or thereabouts) is eliminated, along with sleepiness, drowsiness, etc. There is no longer any such thing as being tired. Physical exhaustion would remain I suppose. Would you do it? Yes or no.

As much as I love sleeping, I think I would eliminate it if I could. You are almost doubling your conscious lifespan by doing so. I dunno, sounds worth it to me but maybe I have not thought it through.

 

[Lillefix]

Yes I would. I love sleeping but it's such a waste of time. But if it was irreversible then I would have to think.

 

[Kyriakos]

No. We cannot play with sleep, or food. Making us need less sleep would cause far more changes to the body and biological circles of a given person, than can be reasonably be accounted for. Just noting that currently a person will suffer from a number of bad effects if he stays awake for a bit more than a day. Hallucinations are a very common reported effect of not sleeping for 30 hours or more. Death is another effect

Even if we could make people only 'need' 4 hours of sleep, etc, we still would be playing dangerous games with the human body.

 

[Phrossack]

I might like it if the amount of necessary sleep were reduced, yeah. But I think that sleep is good for a lot of things. For example, if we're feeling sad or angry, a good nap will do wonders. It helps you to relax and give your mind a break. A society that never slept would be stressed out and angry. Not to mention that people would be consuming more, which would be environmentally pretty bad. More buying, more producing, more extracting, more polluting.

Also, I really like the night because it's so peaceful. In the summer, it's just the frogs, crickets, and owls singing. I love that. Except for bullfrogs, ugly-sounding things, but we don't get those in my immediate area. A sleepless society would mean that it would be even harder to find some peace.

 

[Joecoolyo]

So much more time to do things! I would love it.

 

[luiz]

Of course I would! Eliminating the need to sleep was one of my childhood dreams. As the OP said, we would effectively live twice as much.

 

[classical_hero]

We people fail to realise is that when we are sleeping our body repairs itself much beter, which is why people who have serious injuries are put into a coma to allow the body to be doing very little and hope the body does it's job and recover from the major trauma. Without that we would wear out so much faster than what is implied in the OP.

 

[squadbroken]

I don't know. I imagine that with the increase in waking hours would be matched with an increase in how many of those hours we are expected to devote to work, combined with a devaluing of those hours.

 

[nerdfighter13]

I would love all the extra time to do stuff. I might not have an excuse to just take a nap when I want to avoid things I need to do, though.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I know it is an hypothetical, but when we think this hypothetical all the way, we are not just represented with no sleep and more time, but with no sleep and more time and being a super human. Tiredness is just such a major component of human existence that eliminating it (unless for low sugar or as the OP says physical exercise) would be a whole new existence. My intuition is to say: Hell yes.
But one question bothers me. There is the saying "I'll have to sleep over that" and this saying stands for a very real and fundamental phenomena. Sleep is the state where a lot of restructuring is going on. On the physical level (for instance muscle growth) but also on the mental level. We literally see things differently after sleeping. Only in sleep do we get to process the information of the day. Lack of sleep literally means that less of your experience actually sticks with you. Now our super brains could just do it while being awake?
It just is a very hard hypothetical to work with. At least with the information provided in the OP.

 

[Bugfatty300]

Since last year I've been going 4-6 days in a row without any sleep at all. I just quit feeling sleepy at the end of the day and I've sort of gotten use to it. But as far as I can say, you're really not missing out on much between 00 and 06.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Since last year I've been going 4-6 days in a row without any sleep at all. I just quit feeling sleepy at the end of the day and I've sort of gotten use to it. But as far as I can say, you're really not missing out on much between 00 and 06.

Four to six DAYS? As in four to six times 24 hours?

Sorry, but I don't see how anyone could do that and not end up sick or dead.


The most I've gone without sleep at one stretch was 44-46 hours, and I was a basket case by the time I was able to sleep. The hell of it was that it still took time to get myself relaxed enough. Thank goodness for quiet music tapes and one of Arthur C. Clarke reading his own stories. He was a wonderful author, but his reading voice was godawful dry and monotone.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I wouldn't want to eliminate the need to sleep.

I like crawling into bed. I like drifting off to sleep. I like dreaming. I like waking up from sleep. Each of these is among my most distinct pleasures in a day. I'd be sacrificing four of my most distinctly pleasurable experiences in a day.

I really like the mental reset that comes with a good night's rest. Stuff that bothered me the day before falls into perspective. (Sleep that knits up the wrinkled sleeve of care). I have my best ideas first thing in the morning. Whatever I was meditating the previous day, I see with greater clarity and insight.

I agree with squadbroken, that if people had an extra eight hours in a day, employers would just snatch them up by paying half what they presently do for eight hours of work, so you'd have to work 16 just to get by.

 

[Rashiminos]

This thread is weird for me. It was not more than a week ago when I was trying to imagine the disruption that society would experience if for some mysterious reason (it's not caused by drugs or other technology) people no longer required sleep.

 

[Zelig]

No. We cannot play with sleep, or food.

Food is probably much easier and closer than sleep.

The End of Food

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food_substitute)

 

[Rashiminos]

Food is probably much easier and closer than sleep.

The End of Food

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food_substitute)

Mixing your dietary components in a blender and then consuming is essentially consuming food, if somewhat cheaper* and less time-consuming.

*At its current scale, and before significant "regulation" comes into play.

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

Once, I have not slept for about a week. Mind just needs to be reset and to reorganize itself. It is not only about biology but also the mental system. Dream is a crucial part of life and culture. And important thing about dream is that it is involuntary consciousness. There's too much voluntary, concentrated action and thought in human life. Consciousness would be instable and/or fast to lose polymorphism without dream and reset.

 

[warpus]

No, because:

- Eggs and bacon taste best right after you've woken up.
- Waking up beside a warm body is a great feeling I wouldn't want to eliminate.
- Naps rule

What I would do is make it so that sleep only lasts 2 hours. You go to bed at 5:30am, wake up at 8, you're good to go for another day. That way you keep all the perks of sleeping, including dreams, but you gain a whole bunch of time each day for activities.

 

[azzaman333]

Without a second thought.

 

[Zelig]

Mixing your dietary components in a blender and then is still consuming food, if somewhat cheaper* and less time-consuming.

*At its current scale, and before significant "regulation" comes into play.

Well the idea with Soylent is that you can just order it in bulk, you don't really need to get all the components yourself.