How so? Can't think of a thing that's more a means to an end than sleep - you have to sleep to be able to live your life! Barring those who can call up lucid dreams at will[0], there's zero point in optimizing for sleep as a terminal goal. I mean, if more sleep was a good fundamental goal, then suicide would be an optimal strategy - we get all the sleep in the world when we're dead.
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[0] - somehow they exist and they don't use it as a personal holodeck to escape reality, which tells me lucid dreaming must be overrated.
I've had over 100 lucid dreams, although none recently. My crowning achievement was summoning Socrates that would teach me things using the socratic method (only asking questions). The thing that blows my mind today is I was able to take away real value from these conversations even though I supplied both the questions and the answers.
Why didn't I use it as a personal holodeck to escape reality? Reality is a bigger, more interesting, and more exciting place than inside my own head.
> The thing that blows my mind today is I was able to take away real value from these conversations even though I supplied both the questions and the answers.
Well it worked for Socrates in that way too - he just happeed to be awake :)
> The thing that blows my mind today is I was able to take away real value from these conversations even though I supplied both the questions and the answers.
Not surprising - whenever we think, we supply both inputs and outputs ourselves :).
If I had that level of vividness of dreams and I could make them lucid, I'd definitely want to sleep more than I do now, to push experiments such as yours to sleep time. I mean, from what I read about lucid dreams, in best cases you have enough control over it that you could essentially use it as a sandbox prototyping environment!
> If I had that level of vividness of dreams and I could make them lucid
Lucid dreaming is actually a skill anyone can learn.
Edit: Now that I think about it, the population is probably less than anyone. Anyone that can get a goods night rest can learn how to lucid dream, and anyone that routinely enters REM sleep has a decent shot at it.
I've been able to lucid dream on a few occasions. What I really want is the ability to vividly imagine constructions while awake. Like design an A/C motor in my head without paper. Not to that degree but those fuzzy concepts that you loosely feel the connections of, I'd like to be able to 'draw it out' in my mind and use those visuals to work out other aspects.
Yup, me too. Apparently the capability to form vivid mental images is not a human universal. See this informal poll: https://twitter.com/backus/status/1091203973246111744?lang=e.... Unfortunately, I fall into the 27% that choose (1), i.e. they see nothing.
I really, really, really wish vividness of mental images would be trainable. I so want it.
It is a good fundamental goal not because it itself is the end but because there is ample evidence that a very large number of quality of life measures have a dependency on sleep.
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[0] - somehow they exist and they don't use it as a personal holodeck to escape reality, which tells me lucid dreaming must be overrated.