[Toenex]

Begins to sound like a science fiction novel where a bunch of sleep researchers discover that far from being 'down time' sleep is actually a period where our neural hardware is being used by beings from another dimension to perform some nefarious calculation. Or if Douglas Adams were still alive a P2P version of Deep Thought.

[srathi]

Relevant short story by Issac Asimov: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostess_(short_story)

[ars]

My (semi-serious) theory: Sleep is us logging off of this MMO game we play.

Our "real" bodies (minds) need some downtime from the game.

So this explains why real AI will never happen: This reality is not where our consciousness lies.

[mrfusion]

Wouldn't they just pause the game though? In which case we'd never notice.

[ars]

Each person logs off at a different time, it's one game for everyone not a single player game.