After linking a friend of mine Alex post in the Average Joe thread (http://www.eclipsephase.com/so-ive-been-thinking-what-about-average-joe#...) we now have a nice discussion about being immersed in an infomorph or a synthmorph with no need for sleep.
While it is apparantly canon in EP that infos and synths do not need any kind of sleep (figures, for me) they simply need some kind of distraction or "meditation" similar to the "Immune to Sleep" Elves in D&D.
Right now, we argue about the simple question "Does this lack of sleep scar an Infomorph Indenture on the long run or is a simple "distraction" enough to not let the ego go mad with sleep deprivation?"
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On the matter of Sleep
Tue, 2011-11-29 09:55
#1
GreyBrother
On the matter of Sleep
Tue, 2011-11-29 10:51
#2
CodeBreaker
Re: On the matter of Sleep
Nope, at least not in canon. The canonical reason, as far as a post from Rob Boyle can be considered, for sleep is wear and tear on the biological bits of the brain. A year and a half ago there was a thread on the rpg.net where we had a little discussion on it. From that, we can guesstimate that sleep deprivation is canonically caused by the accumulation of such wear and tear, and because synthmorphs/infomorphs do not have the biological wet bits that can be wore and torn they would not suffer from sleep deprivation.
However! Posts from people who are in the know about such things (Arena? Maybe?) edumacated me that sleep might be an important part of things like memory consolidation. So if you want to have synthmorphs and infomorphs require a cooldown/sleep period, you could easily argue for it.
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Tue, 2011-11-29 12:27
#3
TadanoriOyama
Re: On the matter of Sleep
For the sake of the arguement, I would consider it largely a matter of the personality of the infomorph. Since it seems like most infomorph indentures don't go insane as a result of their labor sleep probably isn't an issue but if the ego in question particularly enjoyed sleeping or had some mental connection with the concept then the change to info-life might cause them some stress. Of course, infomorphs could probably buy an XP of sleep. It's not as exciting as most XPs but I'm sure there's got to be one out there available for purchase; they'd be able to use it during whatever breaks or downtime they might get.
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Tue, 2011-11-29 12:50
#4
Arenamontanus
Re: On the matter of Sleep
Yep. I'm arguing that all brains based on the mammalian brain plan need sleep - the wear and tear might be possible to remove, but there are clear (if currently confusing) links to memory consolidation. Basically the currently main theory in neuroscience says that you store much of what happens during the day in a buffer down in the medial temporal lobe, and then consolidate it into long term storage across the cortex during sleep. This process involves reinstating previous states (kind of) and various neuromodulation signals to turn on the right kind of brain plasticity to imprint it right. Different sleep phases might be doing different kinds of memory (skills vs. knowledge). The problem is that if this theory is true, then it is hard to do much consolidation while awake (your thinking and acting need the same networks as the reinstatement dynamics use).
Sleep may however be rather different. Cetaceans famously can sleep with a hemisphere at a time, and maybe this is possible to implement technologically in transhumans too (might work well as a meditative state, since at least when your dominant hemisphere is off you won't have much language). I can imagine fast forward memory consolidation, various techno-supported consolidation systems (parts of the cortex are modified when they see low use) and no doubt even stranger solutions. But it means that those synthmorphs and infomorphs are even less human than they seem, and that applied neuroscience needs to be even better than the core book hints.
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Tue, 2011-11-29 13:24
#5
Axel the Chimeric
Re: On the matter of Sleep
It's noted that non-biomorphs record memories as actual recordings. Perhaps there is a secondary process that runs constantly or periodically to convert these recordings into neural connections and apply them to the ego at regular intervals? There's nothing that says all brain processes need to run sequentially.
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Tue, 2011-11-29 14:49
#6
Arenamontanus
Re: On the matter of Sleep
How good are you at listening to what somebody is saying while your auditory cortex also gets activated by what was said at the lecture yesterday? Or seeing the world while your visual system gets an overlay from yesterday's party? The brain is parallel in the sense that many parts work fine separately (walking while listening to music works), but typically you cannot use the same subsystem well on two tasks (listening to two conversations simultaneously doesn't work).
Having a recording stored of all sensory data in a mnemonic augmentation actually makes sense, since if you were to make a cyberbrain it would be easy to add, not require much storage compared to an ego, and would allow all sorts of nifty enhancements - you can google your life! But in order to *think* about what you experienced you typically make associations between different memories. Seeing a yellow apple may get you thinking of your time on yellow Titan, that will trigger a memory of the smell of hydrocarbons, which will remind you of that time on an oil rig, and so on. These associative chains are due to overlaps between different memories in the brain and play an important role not just in recall but in understanding and deciding. Having an external file with a hi-fi version of what you sensed last Tuesday doesn't mean it gets activated when you think of something related (and if your exoself software does activate it, it might as well activate the other 5,499 cases when you saw a yellow apple, overloading you). So while it is nice to have experiences on file, they need to be integrated into your associative networks to be recallable. And that requires some period of synaptic tuning, during which time you cannot use those synapses for anything else.
The canon is not infallible when it comes to hard sf. For neuroscience and advanced enhancement a lot of stuff that is not 100% right can likely be handwaved with "it is too complicated for your character to care" - they see the mnemonic augmentation and think synthmorphs store their memories as recordings, while the truth is some very technical stuff about plural stream consolidation and synaptic timesharing that only Cognite understands. But I prefer to try to keep my game as hard (or squishy, in the neuroscience case) as I can.
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Tue, 2011-11-29 16:14
#7
nezumi.hebereke
Re: On the matter of Sleep
From a game balance perspective, I rule that biomorphs need at least 6 hours (if they're at least a splicer) of sleep per night. Non-biomorphs, funny enough, require 6 hours of downtime, to engage in memory clean-up and to help maintain mental health. Synthmorphs are really awesome enough compared to biomorphs without heaping ONE MORE thing on.
I also rule that running simulspace time acceleration accrues stress (but can be done without being an infomorph).
Tue, 2011-11-29 16:18
#8
Re-Laborat
Re: On the matter of Sleep
Nicely exemplified argument.
Tue, 2011-11-29 22:33
#9
Axel the Chimeric
Re: On the matter of Sleep
Just to clarify what I was suggesting before, Anders, I'm not suggesting that the recording memories as video is somehow a substitute; I'm suggesting that the cyberbrain runs additional copies of the brain (in segments, not entirely) to transfer experiences into long-term memory, which are then integrated into the active ego periodically.
Now that I think about it, though, what I'm suggesting is almost like micro-forking and merging.
For Infomorphs, this is probably relatively easy (no more particularly difficult than using the Multi-Tasking implant, at least). For egos in cyberbrains, I doubt it'd be impossible.
You don't have to use the idea, of course, it's just a thought. A part of me wonders if such a thing could be used as a software addition that would be sold to digitized egos as a mod, or something that was developed as a standard way of dealing with early simulated minds to deal with sleep problems.
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Wed, 2011-11-30 01:57
#10
Madwand
Re: On the matter of Sleep
I think this is exactly what is happening: a cyberbrain runs two copies of the ego: one awake, one asleep ("processing" memories). Both receive identical experiences, and the asleep copy is constantly merged into the awake one. Essentially, you use extra computational power to bypass the need to sleep. This seems easily doable given existing Eclipse Phase technologies.
Wed, 2011-11-30 09:03
#11
nezumi.hebereke
Re: On the matter of Sleep
It sounds like you're basically looking to run forks. But if you're going to run a fork so you can swap off sleep schedules, just use the rules for forking and be done with it.
Wed, 2011-11-30 10:52
#12
Madwand
Re: On the matter of Sleep
No, this isn't about using forking to solve the need for sleep, though you could certainly do so. This is how you could easily use forking technology to explain why snyths and informorphs don't need to sleep. We don't "need" to use forking. Synths and infomorphs already don't need sleep, by the rules. Forking is just one possible explanation as to why.
Wed, 2011-11-30 11:09
#13
Arenamontanus
Re: On the matter of Sleep
I have a hard time believing constant merging wouldn't induce stress. You are creating divergent brains and then constantly merging them.
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Wed, 2011-11-30 11:31
#14
Madwand
Re: On the matter of Sleep
This is a bit of a misunderstanding. We're talking about forking *technology* here, not actual forking and merging. That means the ability to take certain neural connections and merge them into a similar brain. The brains are not divergent: they are identical, just in different brain states (asleep and awake). Merging technology is used to keep them synchronized, just like modern backup/restore technology is able to do with modern computers. In particular, memories that are being formed (from the awake brain) and processed (in the asleep brain) could be constantly copied to the other. If done correctly -- and we have to assume they can be, given the evidence that synthmorphs and infomorphs don't sleep -- this should result in no additional stress.
Interestingly, you could use this same technology to avoid the need for sleep on a biomorph. All you need is a ghostrider module to run the additional ego, implanted nanotech to change brain states as required (which exists in the form of an ego bridge as an external device, but would be considerably smaller if specialized and implanted), and some means of dealing with fatigue poisons and such requiring physical rest, such as medichines.
The main reason why this isn't done on biomorphs, I would guess, is because it leaves the biomorph minds open to the same hacking that synthmorphs minds are susceptible to. All you have to do is hack that ghostrider module and you can download whatever information you want into the biomorph, up to and including and entirely new ego. On the plus side, forking, uploading, and egocasting would be just as easy for biomorphs as it is for synthmorphs. Really, if you are going to do this, it would be easier to just get a cyberbrain and turn yourself into a pod morph.
Wed, 2011-11-30 11:37
#15
Madwand
Re: On the matter of Sleep
duplicate post
Wed, 2011-11-30 12:25
#16
Axel the Chimeric
Re: On the matter of Sleep
I can't imagine this would even be close to feasible in a biomorph, but Madwand basically has it right. I'd argue that you don't actually even need the whole ego copied as a fork in the sleeping state, either; you create a temporary duplicate of a given brain region, map the effects of memory formation in an accelerated format, and then copy that into the ego at a regular interval.
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Wed, 2011-11-30 18:48
#17
Arenamontanus
Re: On the matter of Sleep
Have you ever tried editing a file that is constantly being modified by a background process? Or a program that is being changed as it is running?
Sure, one can imagine some kind of technical solution like this that works. But it would make synthmorph brains *alien* in internal structure - this is not just a neural network run on artificial processors, but a journalling file system doing on-the fly editing of its connectivity and weight matrix while using the same. Fundamental brainstem and midbrain systems that in biological brains are quite important for consciousness, memory and emotion are circumvented. Basically, anybody in a cyberbrain will be closer to an AGI than to a transhuman in a biobrain. And if we accept this kind of tech, then it should be very simple to include multitasking as a default option for synthmorphs, perhaps even allowing multiple streams of consciousness (a la Sterling's "Distraction") - it implies a fine-grained control over mental processes that has pretty massive repercussions.
That the canon makes an assumption doesn't mean it is perfectly thought through or that it doesn't have very problematic implications when trying to run it as hard sf (insert rant about backwards in time communications using QE here).
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Thu, 2011-12-01 02:09
#18
Madwand
Re: On the matter of Sleep
I just don't see it as that big a deal. The system I've described would be pretty easy to implement given Eclipse Phase technology: I can implement something very similar right now on modern computers, and in fact this has been implemented on several different backup software programs. It can be done in such a way that the synth feels normal, too, I'm sure. As much as not breathing, having no flesh, and not needing to sleep can feel normal, anyway.
Anyway, we know the rules allow something like this. This is just one workable explanation. There are other possible explanations for why synthmorphs and informorphs might not need to sleep, use your favorite.
Thu, 2011-12-01 06:27
#19
Arenamontanus
Re: On the matter of Sleep
As a neuroscientist who thinks about uploading quite a lot I find the sleep issue bizarre. A proper uploading process will produce an ego that will run just like the original brain (otherwise it was not an identity preserving uploading). That includes the same emotions, background functions and "bodily needs", including the need for memory consolidation. They do not magically disappear just because the ego is now running on silicon: they are functions of the neural network.
These body interfacing issues have to be patched, of course - typically by running a virtual body simulation, including low-level patches that tell the breathing centers that there is indeed plenty of air and the hypothalamus that there is no need to be hungry. I get the feeling the game designers assumed these low-level things are actually not even part of the ego and just belong to the morph, which is problematic (part of your personality comes from how easily your locus coeruleus is triggered - replace it with a generic locus and it will change how excitable/nervous you are). Also, if this system is assumed to belong to the morph then it would make sense to make it much more controllable - not just a pain filter but a counterpart to endocrine control should be default in all morphs. It would not cost anything extra, since the wiring would already be there.
But I/O system patches are not so problematic as changing core functions. My beef with getting rid of sleep is that the required patch is very involved. You need to store memories in the hippocampus and basal ganglia for a time (since there is likely an important selection effect - what gets stored in the cortex is not just everything that happened, but what in hindsight mattered). Then these are read out into something equivalent to a sleeping fork and used to run quick memory consolidation. Then the synaptic states of the main ego are updated by the changed synaptic states of the fork. Note that just plonking in updated synaptic weights directly is likely a bad idea, since it is likely to disrupt ongoing activity - it has to be put in gradually, perhaps using a pseudorandom update. Then the fork is deleted and the hippocampus/basal ganglia networks are reset - but oops, they are constantly in use! If you blank the hippocampus you lose your intermediary memory, if you blank the basal ganglia your current motor program likely stutters; not a problem during sleep, but very much a problem if happening during work. Worse, the fork should just include memory information older than some set time (say 6 hours) in order to apply the saliency data properly, and separating that from newer information in the hippocampus is likely impossible - they are written in the same neural network. No problem if you have periodic sleep states. A solution might be to ignore the "real" hippocampus in the brain and just store info as it arrives there in the hippocampus of the sleep fork, tagged with timestamps. That allows the fork to "dream" and consolidate, removing memories from the buffer when needed - but now there is a real risk the fork hippocampus and the real hippocampus will start diverging, since the internal neural network states will be very different. Since we do use it in decisionmaking, this could very well lead to situations where the awake ego makes a decision that makes no sense to the sleep fork, and the sleep fork consolidates memories that make no sense to the awake brain. Awkward.
See what I mean? And if we allow that this is what every cyberbrain is doing, then we should also accept that these technologies are used for other things. It would for example be trivial to have XP or simspace education and training for forks that are merged in using the same system to produce continuing education - people would just improve some skills they have paid for in the background. You could run lots of "sleep forks" cramming data and reading news, having their knowledge magically appear in your memory. Who needs skillwires?
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Thu, 2011-12-01 08:29
#20
Axel the Chimeric
Re: On the matter of Sleep
Frankly, a lot of things that you'd expect to be standard are excluded for game balance purposes. Even a basic synthmorph should be able to accelerate its mind to extreme levels equivalent to, say, the Mental Speed nanoware.
Also, just as an argument given using long-term forks, the thought is to have forks that are less than four hours divergent. Still, I can see a lot of problems are involved with this system that could be solved with a smaller sort of handwave.
Namely, instead of altering the mental state, the ego goes offline briefly at a certain time each day, akin to refreshing RAM. When the ego is offline, sleep.exe is run, performing a rapid integration of memories by forcing a highly sped up and optimized version of REM sleep. The computer the ego's running on performs a restart and, when it's running start-up processes, the ego gets refreshed too. The whole process probably only takes a minute or two at the most, during which many infomorphs have their muses run background programs and synths likely run automated processes, like switching out batteries for charging.
It's your call whether this jibes with your sci-fi. In reality, the actual process of dealing with an uploaded mind would likely just time-accelerate sleep until they develop a suitable alteration.
There is, of course, the argument that infomorph and synthmorph egos really ARE more like AGIs than transhuman egos are naturally, which might add to the idea of how they have so much trouble integrating; the entire brain doesn't need to be emulated, just the "important" parts, with the rest being simplified for optimization purposes and are later translated into synapses when/if it's downloaded into a biobrain.
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Mon, 2011-12-05 07:52
#21
Xagroth
Re: On the matter of Sleep
Arena trying to get us POSThuman... figures XD
Ok, by parts:
Fork limit of 4 hours is, indeed, an arbitrary number. Personally, I think it's more a "safety" trigger to avoid the forks from trying to run away than any kind of "integration safety".
After all, what is simplest and better? To make a "slave" copy of yourself to help you and then delete it, or try to integrate that copy that lived only four hours with yourself, risking madness? Most likely, after four hours a Fork starts to develop some sort of "ego" (I'm talking about beta, gamma and such, alphas have it by default) and will try to run away unless it has been carefully assembled (and that would be beyond the skills of an automated "fork factory").
Cyberbrains & mental speed: Essentially, people is not ready for that. So the synthmorphs are not built with the hardware capability to support that by default. In the case of infomorphs, well, welcome to "Fire Vs Fire": It is irrelevant the speed at which an infomorph can do stuff, if he is facing another infomorph. It will be relevant to the players that are not hacking, of course, but this will be a direct escalation that will keep things "balanced" while increasing the complexity level of the game. Essentially, if rules like this were implemented inn RAW, then we would see that everybody would have a ghostrider module with an infomorph for infosec tasks exclusively, and that before starting a firefight there would be a hacking campaign. So a player using an infomorph might get about 4 hours of gaming play, while the rest of the players look at the ceiling.
Kinda like playing a healer in D&D at epic levels: You use you actions to heal somebody all the time. So fun you will be bringing your console to have something to do.
Sleep & the game: Balance says that, whatever is avaiable for everybody, is balanced regardless of its power. So what if infomorphs and synthmorphs don't sleep? Any character can sleeve inside a synthmorph or an infomorph, but people prefer biomorphs. Why? Leaving aside the natural preferences of sleeving in something as close as the body you grow up with, and the background differences, there is an engineered memetic war to impose the biomorphs as superior. Why? Because it makes them easier to control, it makes people to desire a really scarce good, and it can be used as a class differenciation tool.
Now on how to avoid the need of sleep using a cyberbrain. Well, "Your mind is software. Program it". If you can digitalize a consciousness, you can reduce it to code lines, processes, etc. That means you can alter the values in several ways.
So for example, someone can run an "always sleeping" program that emulates the sleep's effects. Or he can run a quick "sleep" process that will let him have the equivalent to a full night's sleep in just a few seconds (or a cat's nap everyy now and then when he has the time).
Frankly, I would be wondering about Hibernoids Vs other biomorphs instead Synth Vs Bio...
As for Arenamontanous' position about the purpose of digitalization oof the ego... I disagree. It's like the transporter from Star Trek: you are not "moved", you are "copied, then deleted, then pasted". Of course, in a transhuman society people won't think about it. In a Posthuman one, however...
Mon, 2011-12-12 07:34
#22
Decivre
Re: On the matter of Sleep
For those who think that people need sleep, I'd highly recommend looking up an article on a man named Thai Ngoc or Al Herpin. Thai is a 69-year old Vietnamese man who, since the 70s, has had an unusual case of insomnia where his body literally does not need to sleep. Observing scientists have not seen any symptoms normally associated with sleep deprivation, nor has it affected him adversely in the physical sense: he hauls his rice home on his shoulder. Al Herpin was a man who died at 94 years old in 1947, and had reportedly not slept a wink since the mid-1890s. He was put under professional observation in the 40s, where they found that he had no sitting furniture in his home other than a rocking chair... and spent every night reading the paper until dawn, when he got up to go to work.
Is it at all possible that circadian rhythms, like senescence, are a genetic flaw that crept into our bodies at some point in the evolutionary cycle, and simply permeated across all animal species? I mean hell, we haven't found a single person who has been immune to aging, but here are two cases of people immune to sleep... that actually makes it more plausible that we can live without rest than it does for us to live without old age!
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Mon, 2011-12-12 09:50
#23
Axel the Chimeric
Re: On the matter of Sleep
Ngoc has mentioned that, without sleep, he has felt stretched very thin, whatever that means. Neither of them are the only ones to go permanently without sleep, though; there's plenty of others. Some, however, do take time to meditate, which sort of disqualifies them.
To my knowledge, though, Ngoc or Herpin never had problems with long-term memory. If anything, Herpin seems to have good health and high levels of awareness.
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Mon, 2011-12-12 13:19
#24
Decivre
Re: On the matter of Sleep
Exactly my point. I don't know whether sleep is actually a necessity for organisms at all. My guess is that like aging, it was a flaw that crept in, but wasn't so big a threat to survival to be considered "unsuccessful". So I don't think there's anything necessarily preventing infomorphs from running 24/7, and the potential exists for future implants that could keep a biomorph going ad infinitum.
—
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Mon, 2011-12-12 16:09
#25
Axel the Chimeric
Re: On the matter of Sleep
Not a big threat to survival? Sleep is a HUGE threat to survival; you become utterly inactive for hours at a time. An organism that can survive without sleep has an absolutely immense survival advantage.
Now, does it mean that sleep is necessary? Not really. Evolution is all about back doors and work-arounds; tinkering because things cannot be created whole cloth. The mechanisms for sleep might be unnecessary at this point, and the odd circumstances that came to bring about the unique mechanisms of the brains of these gentlemen may have spontaneously forced the brain to develop a way to fix the problem of sleep.
However, biologically speaking, it might be that this fix is just too difficult to implement via gradual mutation. Or it could be something else entirely, it's hard to say. Ngoc getting an MRI to examine his neural architecture might provide some sort of answer but who knows if it'll be worthwhile or even the same as Herpin's?
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Mon, 2011-12-12 16:33
#26
Decivre
Re: On the matter of Sleep
I didn't say that it [i]wasn't[/i] a threat to survival. I said that it wasn't big enough that it would ensure a species is unfit for survival. Remember, survival of the fittest doesn't care that you have flaws, only that those flaws aren't lethal before you have a chance to procreate.
Just like old age. An eternally young organism would have the greatest survival chances around. Give that eternally young organism regrowing limbs, and you have an amazingly powerful predator. That doesn't mean that organism with no regrowing limbs and senescence (us) aren't capable of surviving, though.
If memory recalls, one case of this permanent insomnia was induced from head trauma. Wouldn't it be bizarre if sleep was caused by the presence of a vestigial element of the brain that we never realized could simply be removed or broken, with nothing but benefits as the result?
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Mon, 2011-12-12 18:22
#27
Axel the Chimeric
Re: On the matter of Sleep
That's not my point. My point is that, if there were some easy work-around for sleep that could be evolved, it would have. As it stands, no mammal, bird, or reptile has managed to develop the ability to survive without sleep. That indicates that there is no easy avenue that can be reached by which sleep can be excised.
Well, as it stands, we know sleep has a use. What these men underwent wasn't a removal of a capacity, it was some sort of bizarre reorganization. The question is why and how.
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Mon, 2011-12-12 20:13
#28
Decivre
Re: On the matter of Sleep
Perhaps, or it simply means that the lack of necessity for sleep is potentially recessive in nature. The few that have had it are very unlikely to pass it onto offspring if few other beings have the trait. And that's assuming it's merely a trait.
Sort of. We know what our bodies do when we sleep, but we don't really know the purpose of sleep itself. There's nothing that inherently prevents many of the benefits of sleep from occurring when you are awake. That's always been a mystery to us. As the founder of the Stanford Sleep Research Center said, "As far as I know, the only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is because we get sleepy."
—
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Mon, 2011-12-12 23:03
#29
Axel the Chimeric
Re: On the matter of Sleep
Recessive traits would still win out given how ridiculously advantageous not sleeping would be. An extra eight hours of hunting and/or avoiding being hunted? That's a monumental advantage, and those with it would out-compete those without by a mile.
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Tue, 2011-12-13 04:46
#30
Decivre
Re: On the matter of Sleep
You might be overstating the advantage. Humans are social animals, and one of the key elements of social animals is that interdependence makes them harder to kill as a whole, even if one by itself is easily taken out. Many of the flaws that would harm a solitary creature aren't as dramatic an issue when you move and work in groups. Even with predators, there's not a dramatic advantage to being awake all the time as their vision often only works best at certain times of day (dogs and cats are crepuscular, for instance, and their vision becomes poor mid day and late night).
Plus, evolution isn't just about giving organisms every and any advantage. Otherwise, every animal on earth would be like some super-voltron with every advantage in existence and no weaknesses (sweet! an endoskeleton and exoskeleton! immortality! jumping legs! gills and lungs! infravision, ultravision and sonar!). Some advantages disappear when they are no longer necessary, even if they would still be damn useful. I would love to still have a prehensile tail, or have directional hearing with manipulative ears, but those things disappeared because they weren't a necessity anymore. They were a big advantage... our hearing has become far inferior to our predecessors, and we would probably be far better at balance with a tail, but it's gone. Just like our appendix as an element of our digestive tract. It probably had a pretty effective use reinforcing our body's ability to digest, or restoring it after an illness (those are the two prevailing theories). But it's been lost, and the organ is now vestigial.
Evolution is kind of a bitch, no?
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age.
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Tue, 2011-12-13 09:24
#31
Axel the Chimeric
Re: On the matter of Sleep
I'm aware of these details. Evolution does tend to fill every detail available, though, given time, which is why organisms have marvelous adaptations to pretty much every natural occurrence in their habitat (which are often astonishingly round-about and overly complex).
Sleep is such a disadvantage in every animal, be it mammal, bird, or reptile, that it is strange they would [i]all[/i] retain it so long if there was a route by which removal of sleep could be evolved via intermediate steps. It's clear that unusual adaptations regarding it can develop, of course, such as the dolphin's ability to sleep half a brain at a time, but that's not the same as no need to sleep at all.
Either sleep provides some tremendous advantage (which we aren't quite sure of yet) or it has no easy path to be "evolved out". Otherwise, at some point over the past 375 million years, some species would have developed such a mutation and utterly curb-stomped its rivals.
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Tue, 2011-12-13 10:50
#32
Decivre
Re: On the matter of Sleep
I'd imagine that, like aging, the ability to not sleep was simply such a minor advantage that those who had to sleep didn't have any real reduction in the ability to survive. This is the mindset behind why creatures that breed fast often have short lifespans; a short lifespan might seem like a massive disadvantage, but when you can produce hundreds to thousands of offspring in the little time you are alive, it's a moot point. This also explains other animal behaviors that would seem to be detrimental to survival... cannibalism being the first to come to mind. The flaw simply doesn't risk the survival of the species enough to die off or be bred out.
—
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age.
[url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
Tue, 2011-12-13 10:57
#33
nezumi.hebereke
Re: On the matter of Sleep
Sleep (and aging) do have biological uses.
Sleep significantly reduces energy (and thusly food) consumption, and also permits us to specialize. Day hunting and night hunting are drastically different. If your critter had to be evolved for BOTH of them in order to gather enough food to survive, it isn't likely to live long. Sleeping is a vulnerability, but not as much as you'd think. In the wild, animals sleep lightly, and are very good at hiding themselves. No matter how much time I spend outside, I've yet to find a sleeping wild animal.
I can't comment on the psychological or neurological benefits to sleep though. Way outside of my background. I'm inclined to trust Arementarous on this one, though.
Tue, 2011-12-13 11:18
#34
Decivre
Re: On the matter of Sleep
Exactly. An organism's lifestyle orbits around its sleep, so sleeping is not as disadvantageous as one might think. Nocturnal creatures sleep when their senses and camouflage help them the least, as does everything else. Not sleeping might be an advantage, but apparently not a great one.
As for the psychological and neurological benefits, it's a tough call. There's still no hard evidence to conclude that sleep has any benefits per se. Any evidence we do have could be equally used to conclude that organisms with a circadian rhythm suffer mental deterioration when they try to fight that rhythm. This does not mean that sleep has definite positive neurological benefits, however. We simply don't know enough about sleep yet.
Since it's somewhat relevant, I think I should post [url=http://www.cracked.com/article_19442_8-simple-questions-you-wont-believe... little article about this exact topic, among other things it talks about[/url].
—
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age.
[url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
Wed, 2011-12-14 07:48
#35
Xagroth
Re: On the matter of Sleep
Oh, I think I forgot to mention something: Sharks' brains sleep sequencially. Since AF10 has so many biomodifications, then it could be possible to stay awake indefinitely wihtout much tampering or aftereffects simply by adopting that method. Of course, there would be a limitation of the tasks that the biomorph can performe while in this state.
Anyway, as I implied in my previous post,, I think removal of the need for sleep would be one of the points where TRANShuman goes into POSThuman.
Wed, 2011-12-14 11:03
#36
Yerameyahu
Re: On the matter of Sleep
These kinds of things lead me to ask how that's relevant, though. A shark brain isn't a human brain, and a shark 'ego' isn't a (trans)human ego. At least the famous dolphin example is relatively close. It feels like people are saying, 'well, worms can reproduce by cutting in half; surely they'd have invented the human version, simple!' I'm okay with a moderate amount of hand-waving, but…
Wed, 2011-12-14 14:27
#37
Decivre
Re: On the matter of Sleep
Except that does count for a lot of things. Transgenic modifications are traits borrowed from other animal species and applied to the human genome. This is how a human can be granted prehensile feet like a chimp, claws like a cat, a bloodhound's sense of smell, a viper's poison gland, a fish's gills or any number of other modifications that are right there in the core book. So yes, it is relevant. A shark isn't nearly as different from us as a worm; said worm has no central nervous system...
... but I'm sure that you could be given the power to reproduce by being cut in half if you're willing to have your CNS removed.
—
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age.
[url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
Thu, 2011-12-15 08:35
#38
Xagroth
Re: On the matter of Sleep
And here we have the anti-uplift league member! XDDD
Now seriously, if things like the alien planimal pod have been engineered, I doubt it would be impossible to develop a modification to the brain of a splicer, or a Remade, so sleep won't be a need anymore.
Fri, 2011-12-16 11:44
#39
Yerameyahu
Re: On the matter of Sleep
Heh. What I'm saying is actually what uplifting is fundamentally about. If a shark ego/brain was at all like a human one, they wouldn't need to uplift; uplifting is 'human-ifying' the animal mind, usually to a huge degree.
And I think Decivre nailed it: you can have full-body mitosis… if you give up having a CNS. That's the kind of tradeoff I'm talking about; you literally can't just slap on a gene from any random thing and gain its Marvel mutant powers. I'm not talking about ideology or politics, it's just not necessarily something you can scientifically hand-wave. 'That seems easy to me, I'm sure they fixed it by then' is just so lazy. :D