In software, optimizing this type of garbage collection for low pauses usually results in reduced application throughput. Evolution in general clearly does not favor "low pause" sleep patterns.

However, there are anecdotes of rare people that subsist on "low pause" sleeping. Allegedly, Thomas Edison had a 24 word day and frequently cat-napped. Contrast that with Einstein who allegedly slept 10 hrs a night.

For modern garbage collection systems (e.g. the JVM), there is no single setting that is best (or even acceptable) for all applications. The same is probably true for sleep patterns.

How about switching from a dynamic late-binding brain to a much faster static typed compiled one?

(Or would that just render us faster, but much less flexible and adaptable?)