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darkdantedevil  ·  3207 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: If you could never sleep again, would you stay awake for the rest of your life?

Well, that depends. If I was just gifted with the ability to not need to sleep to maintain my mind, that'd be pretty cool. However, there are other factors. A lot of your muscle repair/rebuilding happens during sleep (because, well, for one, you're immobile for 6-8 hours), so even if I was mentally able to go without rest, physically I'd probably still have to be in a reclining position for a similar amount of time if I wanted to function pretty normally.

If we as a species did away with sleep, I can only imagine some unpleasant consequences. If everyone CAN work all day/all night, then this increases the drive for everyone to do so. In much the same way things like adderall encourage students to go without rest, this would be even worse. "I can't rest, I have to study." In cultures where workers already put in insane hours, this might make that trend even worse.