QI | Why Do We Sleep? 

Stevie Cole like meeee... shit

Sir, it is the Only video for us.

Guilty as charged :)

It is 11 in the morning which for me is the end of my day shortly before bed time ... soooo yeah.

It's 3:44 AM here

Patrick Headland By Jove, he is!

He didn't lie to us.

No, he isn't. That was a patterned gown, dark flowers, this one has stripes.

It's just a dressing gown!

Noteworthy

He really _was_ listening, all those years.

Oh now I'm sad

Jessica Lee Yeah, but he once repeated a fact he heard on QI on another episode of QI and Stephen pointed it out...

Vacuum cleaners used to be large trucks that went from place to place.

I just arrived from that video!

You added a skip the video button by mistake.

That's a good metaphor. Nice!

When do humans evolve into SSD brains?

@@Killerjerick The "Outside" developers have yet to upgrade their servers.

Probably why dreams are a thing. Especially the mad, bizarre ones. Because that's when the brain is refilling the most random bits of memory that don't fit anywhere else. So you dreamed that you parachuted into a casino heist with a giant anthropomorphic rabbit, because you watched Ocean's 11 on a plane once, and saw a man in a giant bunny costume when you were 5... hypothetically.

Except it is possible to design filesystems that don’t need defragging (Linux has them). Microsoft Windows is just about the only OS in common use that needs defragging.

Which is in itself, interesting

@@nczioox1116 - Yep! Although QUITE Interesting will be sufficient... ;-) Science is about asking questions and looking for answers. The process can never end, because there's always one more question than answer. If anyone claims they've got all the answers, that's not science, that's religion. Run away before you become infected.

DEFINITELY!

By the Greeks I believe

Was it the Greeks? I thought it was the Romans...

Sleeping is the one thing greeks do better than romans

@lxulcu That's probably the Rainbow Reich flag in your avatar. It tends to have that effect on people.

Timothy McLean There is investigation into finding ways to need sleep less. The military is interested in this for obvious reasons. Though it may also have benefits for cognitive enhancement and stress reduction.

Timothy McLean We get sleepy because a chemical called adenosine activates the appropriately named adenosine receptors in your brain. We're working on why. Also, how caffeine works is that caffeine particles are almost the exact same shape as adenosine, but a tad smaller, so they clog up the receptors without activating them, keeping you awake - that is, less drowsy - for longer.

Alright, wise guy, _for what purpose_ do we get sleepy? (The purpose for which we sleep is to not be sleepy, it's not a direct cause-and-effect. Otherwise, all-nighters wouldn't be a thing.)

Timothy McLean The purpose is unclear. About the cleaning-brains thing they mention in the vid, well... your brain floats around in cerebrospinal fluid inside your skull. Over time, that fluid is replaced during the day. But at night, (that is to say, when you sleep) it replaces itself even faster, almost "flushing" your brain juice, in a sense. Personally, I wonder if that has anything to do with headaches disappearing overnight, but that's just my speculation.

Thomas Strauss Now this guy, this guy, I like. An educated commenter, who speaks from his mouth and not his anus. Good job. Are you a biology student or an intelligent stoner with too much time on their hands?

Heavenly!

I’d say so lol

yea but , what about nightmares?

Are you sure you just don't want to wake up for that reason, but go sleep for entirely different one?

Wow. You okay my friend?

I agree. Hugs 💚

I mean we already do that when we die

angelstouch92 So very rare I learn anything from the comments of a RU-vid video. That’s awesome!

It's byproducts from daily activities. When you sleep the cells or space between or something relaxes and your cerebrospinal fluid floods your brain to wash it all out. If you don't sleep enough these byproducts remain. The house party analogy might be a good one. A never ending house party would be disgusting in a few days time.

I knew of someone who released some music. One of the songs or an album was called No Sleep Gets You More Fucked Up Than Booze

@@lolnamelollastname9788 What a great anecdote

I would guess that long term sleep deprivation would give you the short term memory of a life-long alchoholic.

Just make sure you wake up before you find one, or you'll piss the bed.

I always end up weeing In things that aren't toilets like plant pots. But they are where the toilet should be so I accept that that's the arrangement for a toilet wherevwr I am in my dreams.

@@kisbie I used to think this was true, but I have had urination in a dream and not peed in the bed, more than once. Surprised me.

The weirdest dreams are when you dream that you’re doing a chore or errand and then wake up in the morning to realize that it hasn’t yet been done.

@MrWombatty I used to stay awake whenever I needed to pee and was at my ex's house. For the same reason David described, his house was terrifying. He had a mirror standing against the wall that'd move whenever a car drove by ór a person walked on the crooked floor. So my face would be reflected in it, but the mirror was 'bend' so it'd deform as I walked by. He had several aliens on paintings, dark-eyed masks on the wall, knifes and weaponry, empty-eyed pictures, and there were objects on the cabinet that he'd found in an abandoned building that had gone up in flames. A few were rings, from a person that had died and since the floor was crooked, the rings would move across the wobbly cabinet and 'ring' when you walked past it. These are only a few examples, but I gladly stayed up all night, waiting for the sunrise before I went to pee and thén went to sleep. It's one of the reasons I was absolutely terrified to live on my own. Untill I realised that in a normal appartment with no bullets stacked on the fridge and half-burned loveletters from deceased strangers, I was able to sleep very well on my own.

If I could get away with it, I would.

I think David Mitchell would be physically unable to wear anything that makes him stand out in a crowd, so while he might prefer jammies, he would never actually wear them in public.

@@rkah6187 ;)

That happens to me. My natural rhythm is for a planet with a 28-hour day or something. If I don't artificially force myself onto some kind of schedule, I'll go to bed at 3am, then 8am the next day, then noon the day after, and so on, cycling through the days at a totally different rate to everybody else - some days I'll be getting up in the morning, others I'll be going to bed in the morning.

Same. It's to do with the fact that we're nerds stuck to a shiny screen constantly pulsating bright light into our eyes, so the body has trouble understanding when it's time to sleep. You'll probably also notice that it's easy to shift the sleep schedule 2-3 hours every night until you start reaching sunrise, and then suddenly it's very difficult to keep yourself up any longer. Sunrise is a very surefire signal to the brain that "Righto, you should have slept HOURS ago! Go be tired immediately!"

what happens if you just don't care about the alarm?

Exercise to fatigue every day, you screen-junkies.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that in the absence of any outside clues like sunrise, most people's natural circadian rhythm is between 25 and 26 hours

Arctic IceFox other than Alan Davies it’s all wrong

Someone needs their brain cleaned

Four billion years into the future Alan will still be a QI panelist with a group of ascended energy beings.

Whoops! Fixed now. Sorry Sandi!

Sexy, sexy middle-aged librarian years

Yea, my natural sleep cycle does not match 24 hours and it is constantly changing. One day I will sleep for 4 hours and then I’m awake for 40 hours, sleep another 4 hours, awake for 16 hours, sleep for 11 hours. Sometimes I barely sleep and have tons of energy, sometimes I sleep for ages and have no energy. It’s very inconsistent. And it really depends what I’m doing during the day. Because if I do my test while i’m on holiday relaxing, I’m not going to need as much sleep as when I’m working. So I’ll still probably be tired when I adjust my schedule when I go back to work because I’m still not getting enough sleep.

@@rachelcookie321 hard relate

That's true if you don't have any streaming services.

For many years Doctor Who was not on in the US until after 10 PM

Combicon well..that was the answer.. so expectation met I guess?

I disagree I think sleep is just to conserve energy and to defrag/ organise the brain.

They just said that it doesn't conserve energy. And even tho it is proven that bad sleep lowers your immunity and affects your memory, reaction and other cognitive functions, nobody knows why or how.

Note the audience reaction...

It's all diet and exercise, if you're going to bed with too much energy or stimulation, your body will try to use it, for me it was alcohol that has both sugar and caffeine, since i stopped drinking, not only do i get a good night sleep without tossing and turning, i don't need to get up and go to the toilet during the night. Was a great decision for me.

@@maxnaz47 I run long distance, did a 104 mile week in February. Couldn't sleep a wink even during that week.

Yeah, I relate to that, it's damned annoying.

So basically, if we don't sleep enough, our father is going to tell us to kill our uncle?

You've just made me realise that i have to know that quote for an exam 😂

The whole soliloquy is about Hamet contemplating suicide. Ay, there's the rub i.e. that's the problem: the fact no-one knows what happens after death and whether it is worse than his current torments, i.e. his continuing to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, etc.

@mike A The prince of a hamlet in Denmark.

Clearly not.

I wish.

He's probably one of the writers who dreamed up this ARG

Then you get night terrors and it's all a pointless exercise

Rosie Clarke you think that's bad? I go to bed regularly at 6am and wake up anywhere from 1pm-5pm, dependant on lectures at uni or assignments/deadlines. My whole flat is essentially nocturnal, it just happens and will get worse as you get older. Me and four others stayed up until 8am before Christmas for some reason, fucked me over for a week I wasn't awake during the day.

@@sbg2005 Well you seem to possess a great personality and are surely a treat to be around.

Scrolled down to find this comment to make sure I wasn’t the only one.

You actually burn calories while sleeping, because you still consume energy. The 110 calories here come from a study unknown to me, but what are they implying is most likely that those calories are saved with respect to the same average amount of time being awake (which is of course highly dependent of body ptype, lifestyle, etc.). So Alan was wrong in a way and you are right, but also the opposite (since you could compare it to a spell when awake; and because in both scenarios 110 cal of food are always an add-on to your daily intake, no matter what happens in your sleep)

Why? Out of interest.

@@dunkindoughnut167 he's brilliant.

@@lungtied_tonguelied he's not funnier than me. I once made a man laugh so much he said I was a "funny guy" Of course the man was high and none of this actually ever happened, but that's besides the point.

Hypno Toad a dream or were you high too?

@@lungtied_tonguelied My dishwasher is fully functional.

The idea that sleep is basically a way to conserve energy and keep people out of harm's way until morning is a popular one, but it's problematic when you consider the evidence. Said evidence ranges from the obvious (why not keep just alert enough to respond to predators before they attack? Seems like a good use of energy) to obscure (it is currently believed that hunter-gatherers woke up in the middle of the night to do various stuff rather than sleep for eight hours straight like modern humans do). The hypothesis I've heard that makes the most sense to me is that it has something to do with brain function-filing memories for long-term storage or "recharging" electrochemical potential or something. But there's not enough evidence to support any one hypothesis.

That wouldn't make sense for nocturnal creatures, they still sleep during the day

Nocturnal creatures - and nocturnal people - are awake during those dark hours but still need the same amount of sleep. If it was to do with being some sort of 'pause button', the amount of sleep should change with distance from the equator.

Well it would if you were to put into perspective that for nocturnal creatures, the night time is the same to them as the day is to us in the sense that they would do their hunting at night and other activities while we would do that during the day

"currently believed that hunter-gatherers woke up in the middle of the night to do various stuff rather than sleep for eight hours straight like modern humans do" Not just hunter-gatherers. There are references in literature well into the 19th Century of "first sleep" and "second sleep", with a period of wakefulness between them.

2 glasses of wine isn't much though really. Depending on the glass size I guess

Similar to alcohol, your ability to function is tempered by tolerance. If you're accustomed to staying up long periods you'll be able to function at a higher level (though not as completely as a well rested person) similar to how a regular drinker would be able to function at a higher level to an infrequent drinker. But either way, you're not entirely sober.