
New evidence suggests we can learn while we sleep, but do we really want to? - prostoalex
http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/does-sleep-learning-really-work/
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DiabloD3
Do we really want to? _I_ want to, this is the type of science fiction I
adored as a kid, and, well, we _do_ live in the future, after all.

We're getting self driving cars, we carry computers we can use natural
language with in our pockets (along with the sum total of all human knowledge,
and a communicator that can talk to anyone else on Earth almost
instantaneously), we have televisions half the size of a wall regularly in
homes, normal computers are getting smaller and more power efficient, and the
portable ones have insane battery life compared to just a decade ago, and I
can get IEMs for under $300 that sound as good as thousands of dollars of
conventional speakers.

So, why does learning while you sleep even sound surprising, yet the rest of
this stuff that is clearly _from the future_ doesn't and is now the norm?

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littletimmy
In theory, yeah it might be cool.

In practice, parents will push their kinds into learning while asleep.
Millions of Chinese and Indian students will cram while sleeping. Sheryl
Sandberg will write a book about how women need to sleep learn with more
vigor. Corporations will require workers to do overnight sleep-learning in
preparation for tomorrow's meetings. People who don't utilize their sleep time
effectively will be outcompeted by those who want to succeed at all costs.
Human "rest" will be relegated to the books of history.

Is that really the sort of world you want to live in?

~~~
Radim
Some nice material for a sci-fi novel you've got there :)

To answer your question: I want to live in a world where humans continue to
evolve, yes. I don't want to live in a world where armchair philosophers and
do-gooders decide what's best and "proper" for everybody. Their predictions
always fall flat in the face of reality's complexity.

Not that there's much risk of them succeeding... nature has built-in ways of
bypassing (outcompeting) such regulatory efforts, sooner or later. Still, in
my region (eastern Europe, communism) it took a few _decades_... and their
aftermaths are still palpable.

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wodenokoto
The way the article lays out the history of sleep learning make it sound like
there was a huge scientific misstep.

First, psychologists shows through experimentation that it works, then a neuro
scientist show that our current understanding of the brain says that this
should be impossible.

Instead of revising our brain-model, we _throw out the experimental evidence_.
But why?

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NPMaxwell
Great question! At the time of this glitch, Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions had not yet been published (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions)).
But even current researchers have not fully adapted to Kuhn's lessons. For
example, last I saw, you couldn't pick up an intro text on the sociology of
science and read a clear explanation of what academic, funding, and social
structures allow scientists to be open minded and what structures prevent
that. We don't really know. We haven't yet fully answered your question.

~~~
wodenokoto
I'm not really blaming the neuro scientist for standing his ground, I'm more
blaming the psychologists for not standing theirs.

Or maybe they did, but the consensus was to believe a "real" scientist.

