[ExI] Sleep (was Re: Dreams...)

Kelly Anderson kellycoinguy at gmail.com
Tue Aug 21 21:48:00 UTC 2012


On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 3:06 PM, Giovanni Santostasi
<gsantostasi at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a physics background but I have spent the last 2 years working in
> data analysis of sleep in 2 world famous laboratories in the field. I'm not
> working on dreams so I cannot give much of scholarly input. Instead I study
> the sleepless part of sleep called slow wave sleep.

> Just wanted to share this with the group, sleep is a cool subject.

One of my earliest transhumanist thoughts was that it would be cool to
no longer need sleep. My reasoning was that sleep "wasted" a full
third of our lives, and wouldn't it be nice if we could somehow
recover that lost time. As a teenager, I announced my bold plan to my
mother. I would shorten each night's sleep by 15 minutes until I
didn't need as much sleep. I thought that somehow by depriving myself
of sleep, I would be able to reach a point where I just didn't need it
as much. The experiment of course failed miserably within two weeks.
:-)

Nevertheless, I have often reflected upon what a fuller life we could
have if the sleep cycle could be shortened or even eliminated. I would
think this would be a common transhumanist desire, but we haven't
discussed it in the time I've been on the list. If there is work being
done on radical life extension, it seems equally valid to research the
shortening of the sleep cycle, as both give you more time, which is
the ultimate transhumanist desire... I would suppose.

-Kelly



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