michael_nielsen

Or, what kind of explanation are you looking for? The book talks about the evolution of sleep, and it's functional role, what else is missing?

One that's convincing. Unlike the half dozen or more I've previously read about the evolution of sleep and its functional role.

Can you link me to the previous ones and why they are not convincing?

I'm in a slightly odd spot here. I feel a little as though I've commented that astrology isn't all that convincing, and someone now wants a list of what I've read about astrology (a fair number of tidbits, over my life, but it was all bad, so I don't remember any titles);

and they pointers to explanations of why it's not convincing (well, it's so obviously not that I'd never bother looking up such explanations). I don't mean to make an equivalence: the "explanations" of sleep I've read were mostly somewhat better than those of astrology.

But they weren't serious. Of course, I may be quite wrong about the current book. But all I can say is: the reviews mostly didn't make me want to spend the time reading it. I mentally bucketed it under:

"may be useful for learning about _how_ & _why_ to sleep better, won't help much in explaining why sleep happens."

This is a somewhat uncomfortable thread to be writing. It's began with a throwaway joke from my point of view. I don't regard my own point of view above as especially serious or well-founded. It's just how I arrived at my priors, and may be wrong.