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The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

Book by Carl Sagan · 2 quotes · Sleep, Animal Communication, Animal Intelligence

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The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence Quotes

“Much more plausible is the computer-based explanation that dreams are a spillover from the unconscious processing of the day's experience, from the brain's decision on how much of the daily events temporarily stored in a kind of buffer to emplace in long-term memory... The American psychiatrist Ernest Hartmann of Tufts University has provided anecdotal but reasonably persuasive evidence that people who are engaged in intellectual activities during the day, especially unfamiliar intellectual activities, require more sleep at night, while, by and large, those engaged in mainly repetitive and intellectually unchallenging tasks are able to do with much less sleep.”

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Book:The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
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“However, in part for reasons of organizational convenience, modern societies are structured as if all humans had the same sleep requirements; and in many parts of the world there is a satisfying sense of moral rectitude in rising early. The amount of sleep required for buffer dumping would then depend on how much we have both thought and experienced since the last sleep period.”

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Book:The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
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