Miracle Pill

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Miracle Pill

If a new pill that allowed humans to function with only one hour of sleep, I
would love the person who made it till the day I die. Imagine how much time
we waste sleeping? Assuming that the average human sleeps 6-8 hours a day,
and reducing his sleep to 1 hour a day, that would mean he would spend 365
hours (15 days) sleeping instead of 2190 – 2848 hours! That’s almost 91 – 118
days more! 3 to 4 months of extra time! Imagine the amount of work that
could be done in a scientist’s life in that time! Builder, writer, athlete, there
literally isn’t any profession that wouldn’t benefit from this extra time.
Working men could spend more time with their families, which would lead to a
happier life. I cannot think of one disadvantage that this would pill would have.
Of course, since this pill does not exist I cannot list any disadvantages it would
have.












“Dreams Have Psychological Meaning and Cultural Uses, but No
Known Adaptive Function” -G. William Domhoff
Dreams are so compelling, and they often seem so weird and strange -- surely
they must have a "purpose"; that is, an "adaptive role" in the maintenance of
our bodily or psychological health. Furthermore, all the famous theorists who
talk about dreams claim that dreams do have one or another purpose
(although the famous theorists disagree on just what those functions are), but
the best current evidence suggests otherwise. Dreams probably have no
purpose!
 The first and most famous dream theorist of the modern era, Sigmund Freud, said
that the function of dreams was to preserve sleep, but that theory from the year
1900 is contradicted by the fact that dreams happen very regularly at least five or six
times per night in an active stage of sleep called REM sleep. In other words, dreams
don't just happen as we are about to wake up due to hunger pangs, sexual urges, or
the need to go to the bathroom, as Freud thought way back when, before REM sleep
was discovered in 1953.
 The other famous dream theorist of the modern era, Carl Jung, an early follower of
Freud who broke away to develop a very different theory, claimed that the function
of dreams is to compensate for those parts of the psyche (total personality) that are
underdeveloped in waking life, but Calvin Hall's studies of two-week dream series
from students and longer dream journals from adults of all ages strongly suggest that
dream content is continuous with waking thought and behavior. That is, if we are
outgoing and active in our waking life, and not very introspective and reflective, then
we will be like that too in our dream life, which contradicts Jung's view.
 Still other dream theorists say that dreams have a problem-solving function. Dreams
supposedly deal with problems we can't solve in waking life and offer solutions. But
a variety of systematic studies find precious little support for this view. However, this
is one of those places where we have developed "uses" for our dreams as part of our
cultural lore. Looking at them in the light of waking day, and believing that they may
be full of insight, we may sometimes come up with new ideas or insights while
studying them. That is, we have invented a "use" for dreams, but that doesn't mean
that problem solving is a psychological function of dreams built into us over
evolutionary time.

But Dreams Have Meaning
This doesn't mean that dreams have no "meaning," that they make no sense. To the
contrary, dreams correlate with age, gender, culture, and personal preoccupations, as
evidence on this site and in many research studies suggests.
"Meaning" has to do with coherence and with systematic relations to other variables, and in
that regard dreams do have meaning. Furthermore, they are very "revealing" of what is on
our minds. We have shown that 75 to 100 dreams from a person give us a very good
psychological portrait of that individual. Give us 1000 dreams over a couple of decades and
we can give you a profile of the person's mind that is almost as individualized and accurate
as her or his fingerprints.
But however, human beings have developed uses for dreams:
 In a great many societies, dreams are used by shamans to diagnose illness (often
thought to be caused by evil or angry spirits) and to enter the spiritual world. In that
sense, shamans were the first psychoanalysts, and Freud and Jung are just modern-
day shamans (haha).
 In some societies, dreams are used to find game, predict the weather, or prophesize
about the future. In our society, at least since about 1900, they have been used in
psychotherapy, although not as much in recent years when the emphasis is on short-
term therapy and on thinking sensible thoughts. Dreams can be an "occasion" for a
reticent patient to talk more personally, especially when we note that people do not
take as much personal responsibility for their dreams as they do most of their other
thoughts, making dreams easier to talk about.
 In our society, dreams are also an excuse to say something intimate to someone,
maybe a tentative way to see if a deeper relationship is possible, as in "I had this nice
dream about you last night."
 Finally, the phrase "I had this dream last night..." is a platform to say whatever
nonsense, lie, or fantasy someone might have on his or her mind, because there's no
way to determine if the claim is true or not. Now, we have every reason to believe
that people are honest when they are reporting their dreams for academic studies,
as we explain in our section on representative samples and the quality of our data.
But, when the popular dream hustlers tell you of their amazing dreams and promise
that you can have similarly amazing dreams if you buy their book or attend their
workshops, then hold on to your hat -- and your wallet.

My opinion:

I believe the theory that dreams have a problem-solving function; however, I would like to
add that when I have dreams, which is a rare occasion, they are usually completely
unrelated to problems and just have superheroes and magic and all kind of dumb stuff so I
don’t really agree with this theory too much but it is the most plausible one I read while
making this assignment. Then again that’s just me and maybe Einstein came up with E=MC
2

while he was sleeping, but I certainly don’t have meaningful dreams.

References: http://sleepresearch.net

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