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Comment by almostlit | Hacker News Reader

If there was in fact a safe pathway to only needing 2 hours of sleep I would 100% use it and consider it a zero to one innovation. Although I think it would also come with a lot of pushback. One of my favourite questions to ask people is "if there was a way that allowed you to not sleep and be completely fine, would you take it?". Surprisingly (or maybe not) most people will answer no and say they like sleep to much.

I think most people aren't trying to squeeze the maximum amount of time efficiency from their day. They don't like sleep because they need it, they like sleep because its synonymous to relaxing. So less sleep means less relaxing.

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Count me in with you - I'd definitely say "yes" to less sleep. But, if it were a general invention, I don't think it would work as well as you say. Beyond the usual economics issue[0], for me the value of not sleeping is entirely conditioned on everyone else sleeping.

It's not that I don't like to sleep. It's that I also like me-time, autonomy, lack of other people's demands or expectations, and the only time to get that is when most people are sleeping, so the house is quiet and I can be sure no one will randomly want something from me[2]. Relaxation, unwinding, deep thinking, self-actualization are all competing with sleep for that limited amount of time. Everyone else not sleeping would cut into that for me.

[0] - Any generally available trick or change that allows someone to get ahead economically, quickly becomes a requirement. See e.g. working longer, coffee, cars, double-income households, increasingly also stimulant meds. It's a textbook Red Queen's Race[1]. "Less sleep" would be so profound a win that it would turn from "hack" into global standard pretty much in an instant.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_race

[2] - Because of strong societal expectations of behavior, such as not calling or bothering people past 20:00-22:00.

very good point - if everyone could sleep 2 hours we’d be working 999 hours

I like sleep for several reasons, I like to cuddle with my spouse, I like a set amount of time where I don't have to think or worry about anything, and I love dreaming.

Of these, only dreaming strictly needs sleep, however, I think the healing that occurs in deep sleep should be added as a need.

And according to my smartwatch, I spend around 2 hours dreaming and 1 hour in deep sleep each night, although this varies quite a bit night to night. I don't think trying to reduce these is a good idea.

That means light sleep is the candidate for reduction. However, I have researched this before and the most consistent answer I get is that we don't really know what the 5 hours spent in light sleep is for. It seems unlikely that it's just for conserving energy, the body rarely does things for only one reason.

So my bet is that we might find a way to reduce light sleep by around 2 hours a night, which is what this article is suggesting. But it's unlikely that we'll go much further without causing problems. And even if someone does discover a way, there's no way I'd try it without at least a few decades of evidence that it doesn't cause Alzheimer's or some other old age disease.

You may take it and be happy, but what is more likely to happen is workplaces enforcing 18/h workday (because hey, people don't need to sleep much anymore) so most are forced to take it and work more for not much salary raise. I bet such evolution would lead to a even hardcore exploitation of humans and I don't want to live in such a world.

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