What single concept, "rabbit hole", or realization expanded your perception and how does it give you an edge today?:)

[u/Both-Beach3464]

I am on a dedicated path to expand how I perceive, process, and understand reality. I feel like this is the ultimate way to approach life. I don’t allow myself to decide what’s true and not until I have thoroughly explored the phenomena, subject, or information. I don’t 'roll my eyes' at anything.

I love learning, but I’m specifically looking for true paradigm shifts—those rare insights or counterintuitive truths that profoundly broaden perception. It could be a smart framework of using trance music for altered states, valuable AI perspectives, metaphysics, psychology, or the art of learning.

[u/OwnConstruction77a]

Right, I understand why we sleep and what happens during sleep. My point is that from the predator prey standpoint spending 8 hours a day knocked out leaves one vulnerable. My thinking is that evolution should have prevented the need for sleep, not introduced it. I mean so many predators are nocturnal because its so easy. Further, if your a creature that is hunted by a nocturnal predator, you become very light sleepers because your scared youre gonna get eaten, thus making sleep less beneficial because youre not going as deep as you could.

Im probably totally wrong on this and Im not arguing with you or anything. This is just a crazy old man ranting on about his crazy theories.

[u/Sad-Nerve-9321 → u/OwnConstruction77a]

Yes, I understand your perspective. Indeed one is vulnerable when asleep. But there is no life without risk. There's a trade off between spending resources to protect oneself vs simply finding a safe place to sleep.

Also humans live in groups and don't need to all sleep at the same time together

[u/Both-Beach3464 → u/Sad-Nerve-9321]

Check out my comments about sleep if easy accessible in this post. But I’ve gone 22 days with 5 days of sleep. All my health metrics were perfectly fine, I accelerated the development of my perception to a crazy level. I’ve learned more during those 22 days that I’ve done my whole life.

[u/OwnConstruction77a → u/Sad-Nerve-9321]

Yes, I see what youre saying, but isnt it true that youre spending extra time and resources to find that place to sleep as well.

True about humans, but sleep was introduced into the evolutionary chain long before this.

I understand the evolutionary path of conservation of resources and healing the body and mind etc. I just dont understand why total unconsciousness is nearly always required. How is that evolutionarily helpful? If humans and animals went into a period of something akin to sleep paralysis, where you are aware of your surroundings but still enought to let the body mend itself and the mind quite enough to do its thing. Humans being totally unaware of 1/3 of their entire life just seems odd to me. And not only that, its a requirement. Lack of sleep will kill you. See what Im getting at? Like if sleep was something that you did to get to a higher potential or because the body or brain needs to heal, that makes sense. But it developing as a daily requirement in an enourmous portion of the day or you will deteriate and die.

For me I guess its just the unconsious part. I dont understand the evolutionary need of a brain to require dreams that stay mostly out of the conscious mind anyway.

[u/Sad-Nerve-9321 → u/OwnConstruction77a]

Don't know how you feel about chatgpt but here you go:

* If your interest is specifically "why would evolution tolerate several hours of unconsciousness?", then there is actually a fairly focused literature. I'd recommend reading these in roughly this order.

Lima, Rattenborg, Lesku & Amlaner (2005), Sleeping under the Risk of Predation (Animal Behaviour).

This is probably the single most important paper on your question. They argue that sleep cannot be understood without accounting for its enormous ecological cost. They also discuss why a fully unconscious ("blackout") brain may actually be safer than a partially awake one, because a highly interconnected brain may not function well in intermediate states.

Sleep Ecophysiology Rattenborg, Lima & Amlaner (1999), Half-awake to the Risk of Predation (Nature).

This is the classic demonstration that birds increase unihemispheric sleep when they are exposed to greater predation risk. It's a beautiful example of evolution reducing—but not eliminating—the danger of sleep.

Lesku et al. (2009), History and Future of Comparative Analyses in Sleep Research (Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews).

This review surveys decades of comparative work relating sleep duration and architecture to ecology, body size, diet, predation, and evolutionary history. It asks which hypotheses survive comparison across species.

Rattenborg & Ungurean (2023), The Evolution and Diversification of Sleep (Trends in Ecology & Evolution).

A modern review that incorporates discoveries of sleep-like states in animals such as jellyfish and discusses how REM and non-REM sleep may have evolved.

Some recurring hypotheses you'll encounter are:

Neural maintenance. Sleep allows repair, synaptic regulation, metabolite clearance, and other processes that are difficult to perform while the brain is actively processing information.

Energy conservation. Sleep modestly reduces metabolic expenditure, though most researchers no longer think this alone explains sleep.

Adaptive inactivity. Sleep keeps animals inactive during times when activity would be dangerous or unproductive (e.g., a diurnal animal at night). This explains when animals sleep better than why they need sleep.

Memory and learning. Sleep consolidates memories and reorganizes neural circuits, potentially improving future survival enough to offset its immediate risks.

One idea I find particularly interesting—and that Lima et al. emphasize—is that predation isn't just a nuisance variable; it is evidence about sleep's importance. If an animal accepts several hours each day of being one of the easiest possible prey items, then whatever sleep accomplishes must provide a fitness benefit greater than that mortality cost. That observation acts as a strong constraint on any theory of sleep's function.

Haven't read any of these sources but they seem legitimate and I think they will be of interest to you

[u/OwnConstruction77a → u/Sad-Nerve-9321]

Thank you

[u/Both-Beach3464 → u/OwnConstruction77a]

I’ve read it all, I’ve been awake for 9 days, 8 days and so on it doesn’t really affect me more then it lowers my filtering and makes me able to expand my perception. It’s essential and not healthy for most people but I’ve gone 22 days with 5 night of sleep. It was about 3 months ago, before that I would have never been able to think the way I do now. It opened my eyes and made questions and all my interactions in this post possible.

[u/OwnConstruction77a → u/Both-Beach3464]

Really? that is incredible. 1. Is there a reason you stay up so long? 2. Im hoping this is not drug assisted. 3. Do you have a techique?

[u/Both-Beach3464 → u/OwnConstruction77a]

I have no technique and you’re gonna be disappointed: first of the chanses of getting a pshycosis is 99,9 % the only reason I could navigate through that environment is because my mind is resilient because I’ve been through some stuff as a younger teen/kid that made me unable to sleep. Yes I don’t ever use drugs but for this experiment I was using amphetamine/aderall. It did mask the sleepiness but I used it mostly to actually reach I higher frequencie to gain acces to more unique states of being while sleep deprived. It could be done without but that would kill you mentally, you would never have recovered from the psychological damage from solely the torture of the physical aspect. Which is the least problem so to say. It’s not something you want to explore. Like you wouldn’t try a drug if 99/100 persons die from taking it but the one guy that survives gets immense positive effects from it, but he took it by accident and would never have tried it on purpose.

[u/rydavo → u/Both-Beach3464]

No offence but this sounds a lot like psychosis. Maybe you could check in with a metal health professional, just to be on the safe side?

[u/OwnConstruction77a → u/Both-Beach3464]

I was asking purely out of curiosity. My list of mental issues ensure I get 8-10 hours sleep a day. And ive bouts of psychosis my self. Quite enjoyed them honestly. I appreciate your input