[TeMPOraL]

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.

--

[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.

[max76]

-- lucid dreaming

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.

[Angostura]

> 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 :)

[TeMPOraL]

> 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!

[max76]

> 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.

[karmakaze]

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.

[TeMPOraL]

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.

[karmakaze]

I find it hard to believe that 39% see a red star or that 57% see a pink or red star. After minutes of trying, I can vaguely fool myself into thinking I can see (2) a faint black on black outline of a star as if you traced it out the way you'd draw it with crossing lines--I was mentally tracing out that pattern repeatedly.

Color is rare. I mostly don't even notice in most dreams except a very few where it's central, like the one time I saw a colorful dreamcatcher-like crystal mobile-thing after waking from a dream and enjoying still having it from my dream, only to wake up and realize that they were both dreams. Doh!

I keep believing I can learn to visualize based on the fact that seeing is hallucinating. We take samples of light and imagine that we're actually seeing the world when really we're guessing that's what it is and synthesizing what we see. A great example of this was when I came back from a tropical vacation and back in the city a leaf blew past my feet. I swear I clearly saw a small lizard (like I'd testify that I saw a glimpse of one) as I had been seeing for the past few weeks. I saw the leaf on the second glance. So if I can conjure a lizard, I can draw some cylinders and wires eventually.

[colechristensen]

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.

[TeMPOraL]

You'd have those QoL measures as fundamental goals then, not sleep.

[BurningFrog]

Sleep is a fundamental need for the human body, on par with food and (ok, maybe lower than) oxygen.

Maybe you're blessed with effortlessly getting enough of it, which in case congratulations. A lot of the people around you are not.

One thing I'm not saying is you should maximize sleep. Just get enough, and get good quality. Maybe that's our misunderstanding.