Re:Sleep helps to repair damaged DNA in neurons, scientists ...
by asdkhadsj on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @01:32PM
(#19312865)
Yea, evolution is just a good enough result based on current stimuli. Even if the output is great and near perfect, the "perfect" is still based on the requirements of the environment.
Re:Sleep helps to repair damaged DNA in neurons, scientists ...
by vokep on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @05:03PM
(#19314673)
This isn't about humans though, but life in general. Mostly everything sleeps, theres been a lot of time for something to evolve that would both be intelligent and not need sleep, and yet there isn't.
5000 years isn't remotely close enough for sleeplessness to evolve, more like a few million. Its not so much why do humans sleep, but why do apes? Why does anything?
Re:Sleep helps to repair damaged DNA in neurons, scientists ...
by Terr_ on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @05:48PM
(#19314983)
That seems just a little bit of an absolutist straw-man, though. Exaggerating further for effect: Nobody's saying sleep is a universal constant imposed by fundamental timeless physical law.
Whatever is going on must be important, and not easy to avoid without serious trade-offs.
Saying "if it was better, it would've happened already" assumes humans are perfectly evolved right now, and negates any possibility of future evolution. That argument would be just as valid a 5000 years ago as it is now but presumably humans have evolved since then. Genes mutate randomly, selection pressures change, things in our environment might affect the way genes mutate - its much more complex.