On Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 6:37 PM, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote: > That would imply that people in sensory deprivation tanks would dream. I > don't think they do though they experience sensory illusions. > > Of course the interesting question is why do we sleep. When you're asleep > you're not actually deprived of sensory perception. Most people will awake > instantly if you whisper their name. And dreaming only takes place during > part of sleep. I suspect it has something to do with condensing and > encoding the days experiences into long-term memory.
Have you heard of polyphasic sleep experiments? There are many variations, and the most extreme is something like sleeping for 20 minutes every 4 hours, for a total of 2 hours a day. Apparently people go through two weeks of hell and that get used to this schedule, being able to maintain it for months and feel fine. The thing is, the acclimation period seems to be mostly related to training the brain to go straight to REM sleep and use those 20 minutes only for that. The main side-effect seems to be more propensity for catching diseases like the common cold. This reinforces the idea that deep sleep has something to do with the immune system. I suspect that sleep must be a complex combination of many things, otherwise evolutionary pressure would get rid of it -- the vulnerability cost of being asleep seems enormous. One clue that there must be some leeway there is that we sleep much less than animals with simpler brains. Telmo. > Brent > > > On 8/28/2016 9:07 AM, Jason Resch wrote: > > Why do we dream? I think it is because the brain is a dreaming machine. > > Waking life is merely a dream kept roughly in sync with reality through > clues passed in from the senses. > > Jason > > On Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 4:29 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> I have found a nice paper >> >> Jan Westerhoff, What it Means to Live in a Virtual World Generated by Our >> Brain, Erkenntnis (2016) 81:507–528 >> >> The author considers the logical consequences from the theory that the >> brain generates a virtual world. Below is how Richard Dawkins describes the >> theory in his book Unweaving the Rainbow >> >> "We move through a virtual world of our own brains’ making. Our >> constructed models of rocks and of trees are a part of the environment in >> which we animals live, no less than the real rocks and trees that they >> represent." >> >> "There is an easy way to demonstrate that the brain works as a >> sophisticated virtual reality computer. First, look about you by moving your >> eyes. As you swivel your eyes, the images on your retinas move as if you >> were in an earthquake. But you don’t see an earthquake. To you, the scene >> seems as steady as a rock. I am leading up, of course, to saying that the >> virtual model in your brain is constructed to remain steady." >> >> Other proponents of the theory are Thomas Metzinger and Steven Lehar. >> >> Westerhoff offers three accounts for such a theory: strong, weak and >> irrealism. They differ from each other on the account of an external world. >> >> The strong account implies a structural correspondence between the virtual >> and external world. The week account just says that the external world >> exists but one can add almost nothing to this end. >> >> Irrealism on the other hand states the the external world is a part of the >> virtual world. I guess that Bruno's theory is close to irrealism. >> >> Evgeny >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
