michael_nielsen

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. :-)

That's a substantial part of it! So many weird physiological changes (& multiple sleep states); the claimed benefits could plausibly be achieved in less costly ways, that didn't involve debilitating us for a third of the day.

Sleep or things like it are pretty conserved in nearly all vertebrates and even most chordates. So maybe "Why do central nervous systems sleep?" is a better question/paper title.

Yes, that would be better!