Hacker News Reader

Comment by grapeskin | Hacker News Reader

I think one of the main purposes of sleep is that your mind shuts down and you have no clue what happens during that time.

Anything else and it wouldn’t be sleep.

View on HN

That's not how sleep works at all. Your sleep goes through many different phases and your brain is continually monitoring its surroundings for danger[0]. The reason why you feel like your mind is shut down is because, on a normal night of sleeping in your comfy home, nothing extraordinary happens. Try sleeping in the wild, it will be a whole different experience.

[0] https://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2022/01/06/JNEUROSCI...

The wild is a very different environment from a train ridden by a dude with years of acclimation to it.

A comfortable train seat or train bed is definitely a place where a tired person can and will ass out. I’ve slept through a plane takeoff and food service and thought 5 minutes passed, only to realize it’d been hours.

> thought 5 minutes passed, only to realize it’d been hours.

When my son was eleven, I took him on a flight from NYC to JNB. He passed out after the dinner service, somewhere near Bermuda. He then complained to me that he couldn't get to sleep... as we were just crossing the coast of Angola. He absolutely refused to believe me that he'd been asleep for about ten hours.

I managed to sleep and snore while watching some music videos on my phone in bed. I could swear that I didn't sleep, but my gf had other opinion. It's also common for me to do midday nap and still hear everything that goes around me.

For some reason, your comment reminded me of one time in elementary school. I got some from school around 3:30, felt tired and then went straight to bed. I woke up around 8:00 and started freaking out, thinking that I had woken up at 8AM instead of 8PM (the sun was still out and resembled the sunrise). I rushed to get my stuff ready to leave for school and went downstairs. Saw my dad just sitting there, so I yelled at him that I'm going to be late for school and why didn't he wake me up. He gave me a confused look and said, " I guess you slept well, it's 8PM."

Been there. Switched to 24-hour time (8:30 PM = 2030).

Now I'm only annoyed by the number of devices, applications, and people that don't support 24-hour time. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com