Late Thursday Music Link
As I say, Michael Gove might be Minister for the Olympics
Also - I had been genuinely worried that the fourth series of "The Thick Of It" was going to be really weak and laboured, what with Cameron being in and all. Instead, the thought of Malcolm Tucker going at it in the context of a weak coalition is positively toothsome.
In unrelated philosophical news, scientists have apparently found that people who don't sleep much don't live as long. Surely to hell, though, this analysis only works if you count sleeping as living.
It's a pity they don't say what causes of death the increase is down to. If it's accidental deaths, I probably have an advantage from not driving.
ReplyDelete"Surely to hell, though, this analysis only works if you count sleeping as living."
ReplyDeleteThe same effect is true for exercise, too. Spend 5% of your waking hours exercising while you're young, and you'll probably get to spend a few extra years as an octogenarian. (That deal never made any sense to me, but that's the recommendation....)
Somewhat interesting point for a utilitarian analysis, though. Is there a value added for living longer in time, even if the total waking time is the same?
ReplyDeleteWhile it's somewhat irrational, one of the things that annoys me about my impending mortality is that I won't get to see more of the future, to learn how things turn out.
Even if you don't gain any additional hours of wakefulness, each one will be better-quality because you won't feel so tired due to lack of sleep.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think that shifting your life into the future is a benefit - if quality of life continues to rise gradually, an hour of life in 2020 will be worth more than an hour of life now, right? I don't think life has a discount rate. 25-year-olds smoke even though they know it will take ten years off their lives. But go up to a 70-year-old and say "Stop smoking or I will kill you here and now" and he will. (I assume.)
if quality of life continues to rise gradually, an hour of life in 2020 will be worth more than an hour of life now, right?
ReplyDeleteCross sectionally, but you can't live your life that way - even the invention of the internet doesn't really compensate for, as the song goes "it takes you all night to do what you used to do all night".
To be a geek about it: this was a big issue in Orson Scott Card's Worthing Saga. There was a future society where higher status individuals got to "extend their lives" by spending a higher percentage of their time in some sort of suspended animation, so, e.g., if you were really successful, you might spend your years "one up, one down," and the Empress, if I remember correctly, was only awake for a single day every few years.
ReplyDeleteAs far as sleeping being living is concerned, do you know Ursula Le Guin's The Word For World Is Forest?
ReplyDelete