Interesting subject. Intelligence and sleep work in different ways to help us survive. Sleep enables us to recover energy from work and allows us to heal in a more efficient way. It also gives our metabolism a break. If we stayed awake all the time we'd need more food. We'd need to metabolize the food which puts more strain on our bodies that we couldn't recover from rest and so forth.
Intelligence allows us to form relationships/alliances with other humans or even animals to watch over us when we are asleep or sick or otherwise engaged so our attention isn't on personal protection. Now, much like the Romans, we are becoming softer as a Civilization. We are less capable and even less willing to take care of ourselves because so much is provided for us gratis. Some of us believe this is the way things are supposed to be. Soon the law of the jungle will have a rude awakening for these people and natural selection will right this imbalance. It's going to get ugly. dj On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 12:35 PM, retiredjim34<[email protected]> wrote: > > As I understand one basic premise of the theory of evolution, > survival of the fittest prefers individuals that live longer, breed > faster and leave more progeny. Yet two traits we possess – sleep and > intelligence – seem to contradict this preference. > Sleep works against survival for, while sleeping, an individual can > hardly defend against attack and consumption. So evolution would seem > to have selected those individuals needing less and less sleep, until > sleep would no longer be needed. Yet today, maybe one billion years > after speciation began, we still need our 8 hours of sleep. > Intelligence also seems to disprove the all-encompassing scope of > evolution. Those individuals better able to recall experience and > predict the future would have an advantage in food-gathering, mate > selection and progeny protection. Yet we hardly seem smarter today > than humans living thousands of years ago. > Are these traits exceptions to evolution? Are there other exceptions? > I expect so. But no one discusses them. Why not? > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Minds-Eye?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
