michael_nielsen

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.

I see, then I'll have to look for these other explanations and make the case to you in a way you find convincing :-p I might email you at some point then

I think MN means something like "why couldn't humans have evolved to not sleep?" And even if it's not what he meant, that's what I'd love to understand. :-)