QI | Why Do We Sleep?
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- čas přidán 19. 08. 2018
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This clip is from QI Series N, Episode 06, 'Night' with Sandi Toksvig, Alan Davies, David Mitchell, Noel Fielding and Holly Walsh! - Zábava
This is a perfect video for someone perusing CZcams at ungodly hours of the morning
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
David's wearing his special travel dressing gown!!
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
I can attest to this as a shift worker. Playing cards at 4am when you feel like you’ve been drinking was great fun.
Awww Alan got that fact at the start from a previous episode from Stephen
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!
It's currently 06:20 in the morning and I've been up all night watching CZcams clips.
As Sandy said, I have a choice: I can either go to bed, or I can watch CZcams, but not both.
You added a skip the video button by mistake.
"Why do we sleep?"
Oh this should be interesting.
"We don't know"
Oh
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.
De-fragmenting your hard drive.
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.
From immortal Bill Hicks: I need my sleep. I need about 8 hours a day... And 10 at night, and then I am good.
Sleep was invented to cure being knackered.
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.
Alan's toy rabbit is adorable, & really does round out his image of "funny child-man"
Greatest feeling ever when you don't have school or work so you can sleep in. Wake up really early to go pee then go back to sleep.
Heavenly!
Why do we sleep? Because we get sleepy.
Why do we get sleepy? ...We're working on that.
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?
A better question; Why aren't I sleeping?
The answer; This video, I'm watching it.
This is just the perfect thing to watch, you learn and get entertained
Oh man, I love the way this show can, at any point, immediately become a semi-genuine tangent on waking up for a midnight piss.
'Dying within a few days of not doing so' seems like a pretty good evolutionary reason for sleeping
I’d say so lol
Who else is watching this late at night when they really should be sleeping
Ooh I see David’s Special Travel Dressing Gown put in an appearance!
A study I read recently showed that during the day things build up in the brain that essentially intoxicates you and sleeping helps clear it away. It's why if you don't sleep you show signs like being drunk.
angelstouch92 So very rare I learn anything from the comments of a CZcams 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.
The weirdest dreams are 'wanting-to-wee' dreams, especially those where I'm searching for a toilet but can't find one anywhere!
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.
We sleep to escape the godforsaken hell that is reality bye
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
Something tells me that David Mitchell would prefer jammies and a robe to be his normal everyday dress.
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 ;)
I have the best dreams when I sleep for a while , wake up and in that second sleep period. Sometimes I set my alarm very early so I can go back to sleep again :p
You go to sleep because when you're sleepin there are no lonely times, just dreams.
Oh no, I need my alarm clock. I went an entire summer vacation without using one and wound up staying up later and sleeping later until I was keeping vampiric hours. Then I spent a week using my alarm clock to get myself back on schedule in time for school.
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
"Have a sleep, have a Kit-Kat"
Alan here remembers what he learnt years ago when Stephen asked them all “how old are you?”
Cheers for planting those negatives into my subconscious Mr Mitchell! Never been a problem for me before now! Guess what I’m gonna recall during my middle of the night wee now!
Ironically I'm up late watching this because I can't sleep.....
Because there's nothing on TV after 10:00 PM.
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
The description still says Stephen Fry lol
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!
I have had to stop the video temporarily because I've laughed so hard at David Mitchell's gum trimming rant that I've teared up and am in mild pain from the laughter. That man and his rants will be the death of me.
Note the audience reaction...
I'm not sure what Noel's hair looks like in 2018, but he did have a couple of very matronly middle-aged librarian years.
Sexy, sexy middle-aged librarian years
One of the writer Terry Pratchett's 'Discworld' characters asked, "If my body is completely renewed every seven years, how come my old tattoos don't vanish?"
Problem with not using an alarm clock is that I often end up sleeping 10 hours and then not being able to fall asleep till about 17 hours later which screws up my entire rhythm. I'm wired for a rotation of about 26-27 hour days rather than 24.
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
Reminds me of when Lee Mack informed everyone that he doesn't always get up to pee... 🤣
My natural sleeping rhythm is 19 hours awake and 8 hours asleep. So if I'm not employed, I will drift around the clock going diurnal, nocturnal, diurnal, until I no longer have a clue what day it is or whether it's morning or evening.
What a genius sandy, I now get to sleep in every day for a week for science!
Was honestly expecting this to be a 'Nobody Knows' answer.
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.
The alternative is going nuts!!
Let me tell you why I don't sleep: I keep binge-watching QI here, on YT.
US Army Ranger School, i was awake for 74 hours straight [and yes, i attended a LONG time ago]. Some of my fellow candidates were hallucinating and/or so disoriented. I recall that i knew our exercise mission bit could not remember my own name.
I kinda didn’t want this to end
“We have to show them the back of their gums” 😂😂😂
Such good fun.
I'm been suffering from insomnia and I haven't slept a wink all night. This video was in my randomly in my recommended. I think CZcams's targeted suggestions are going too far.
Well I can sleep for over 30 hours straight! I tell you now it's really weird waking up a whole day later than you expected...
I’ve got spine disease. Due to the pain I stayed awake for 9 days without a wink. I could see and feel little bugs all over my skin and everything sounded like I had cups over my ears.
It was absolutely awful and I almost did something silly due to feeling insane.
they are so funny, I usually don't get to hear the answer to the question....
Sleeping is a more radical version of sitting on the lounge watching television.
It's weird how everyone is different. I'm the type who will toss and turn for hours on end and then wake up every 20 minutes, yet I have a brother who's out like a light the moment his head hits the pillow then sleeps soundly until morning.
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.
We sleep to try and hide from the horrors that haunt our day to day lives
Then you get night terrors and it's all a pointless exercise
Yea! I live in Rochester NY.
The no alarm clock is a dangerous game. Many hoomans have a 25-26 hour cycadian cycle rather than a 24 hour one. Nightmare to fix a rhythm after a week of that
Watching this at 1am because I can’t sleep -.-
"Head to toe in plastic" DAVID MITCHELL KNEW ABOUT COVID 19!!!
He's probably one of the writers who dreamed up this ARG
I never use an alarm clock, go to sleep at different times, but always wake up either at the same time, or just before someone is about to open my bedroom door.
I'm a simple girl, I see Noel, I click
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.
0:30
Your heart, I believe, can't replace itself. The cells can't split to repair or do anything. Just slowly dies...
(Yes I know that sounds ridiculous, but look it up)
2:34 My brain can't be cleaned because I'm dirty minded.
"Why don't you just dump me?"
"Um, can you please just get your dessert order in? The chef is getting ready to close the kitchen."
Alan learned that from a TV show called _QI._
I've watched this a few times, and it's only just occurred to me that Alan saying you can have a two finger KitKat actually doesn't make sense... sleeping *conserves* 110 calories, so eating the KitKat wouldn't cancel anything out, it'd just add another 100-ish calories to your daily caloric balance.
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)
Sleep helps your brain sort out recent memories. I always assumed that. Without sleep you go insane. sleep helps you organise you minds.
so apparently i was drunk when i took my final exams
"I would rather have just left that in the bed, we could have just dealt with in the morning."
...perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub, for in this sleep what dreams may come...
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.
A week without an alarm hum. I'll never wake
Can’t even answer the question “does our consciousness continuity break during sleep, in which case, do we effectively die and our bodies generate a new ego as we wake?”
Clearly not.
I wish.
it has been a long while since I related to a video this much
I kind of like the idea of the cleaning period. I mean it was kind of my guess to. We need to get rid of used and damaged cells in the brain when we aren't using it for something else. So we kind of spend a bunch of energy to deal with memories while trying replace old brain cells with new ones.
We sleep because we have to engage in a neurological maintenance cycle in order to learn from what we've been memorizing all day.
Yes, no idea why she says "We know absolutely nothing about why we do it"
SynthwaveHyena she says that because sleep isn't _neccesary_ for that process to occur
It seems more like the function of memory storage and garbage disposal in he brain evolved to happen during sleep because that's the most efficient time to do it, but it doesn't answer the question of why we need to sleep in the first place
@@Deathnotefan97 but that's how evolution works, right? Something doesn't need to be necessary for it to evolve, it just has to be an advantage without being such an undue disadvantage such that organisms die as a result and fail to pass it on.
@@Delinae Yeah, except being unconscious and defenseless for hours at a time doesn't seem to be all that advantageous
Obviously it is, because most life evolved to do it, but we don't know what those advantages are
@@Deathnotefan97 other traits and behaviours have evolved to offset the disadvantage of sleep, such as finding shelter, living in groups, having territories, being the apex predator, etc. Also, the way we sleep is not natural. Animals in the wild don't clonk out for 8 hours a day and in the past humans didn't either.
Maybe the questions should have been "we don't know why sleep has evolved this way" rather than "we don't know why we sleep"?
I very very rarely use an alarm clock and haven’t done so for decades, I do set an alarm if I have to catch a flight fir example but I always wake up just before the alarm anyway. But I also don’t wear a watch and fairly on point with the time of the day. I am always up in time to get to work, catch a train, etc, etc. And I can categorically say that it makes no sodding difference if you are trying to assesss the amount of sleep you do actually need, mine varies from day to day. Or maybe I’m just odd…which is probably true. 😉☮️
"The 5 am wee" once saved me from being in bed when sizable part of the bedroom ceiling collapsed onto the bed during heavy rain. It all happened in a matter of minutes. I still maintain my late parents woke me up while my uncles (also deceased) said " no leave him and lets watch the fun".
That was quite interesting
The five o click wee is a real struggle
The no alarm clock test would be nice if most of us didn't have circadian rhythms already affecting our hours. Many people these days are working more or just staying up later so the first few days will be us getting an extra, unneeded, amount.
Other mysterious things I do in bed: think, remember, decide, yawn, dream, age, ...
The single most wonderful thing abut being retired is that I threw OUT my alarm clock when I came home retirement day. If I ABSOLUTELY must be at an appointment, my cell phone clock's program is sufficient. Otherwise, I sleep when I need to and am awake when I don't need to sleep. No pattern to it has emerged yet--and I've been retired for some time now.
I’ve always imagined that it might have been a way for our ancestors to get through the night, as it was so dark they couldn’t get much done so sleep would essentially they could sleep and then wake up when it’s morning. I’m not saying that this is the reason for sleep as it’s obviously not the main reason, but I’ve always been fascinated as to how sleep seems to be a time machine to the morning time. You can’t feel yourself sleeping, you just sort of wake up and it feels instant to when you went to sleep but really 8 or 9 hours may have passed. I’ve just always found that quite cool
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.
Sleep was invented by big mattress to sell more beds
Sleeping is really good. If our body sees it as such a rewarding thing, there must be a critical reason for it.
I've lost a lot of sleep thinking about that question..
Sleep is our reset button.
Only someone who’s never been sleep deprived is unsure why sleep is necessary for our brains. It causes all sorts of negative psychological reactions way beyond grumpiness, including anxiety & eventually, even paranoia.
There’s like a mountain of research into why we sleep. We know a huge amount about it.
"If you stay awake for 17 hours, it's the same as having two glasses of wine" -- Whaaat. That's surprising to me. I've had to do 16-hour shifts at work before, and obviously I was awake for a bit before getting to work.
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.
I only sleep about 3 hrs a day since I was 10. Been tested on and scanned by endless doctors all my life. Once I became an adult I put stop to that shit! 😂🤣😂 They couldn’t figure me out in all this time then there’s no need for me to keep hangin” around.
I think the reason we sleep is just reflecting... I think the reason we sleep is just reflecting...
I can remeber what I did yesterday.... I can't remember what I did last month but I can remeber what I did when I was a kid... so between yesterday and when I was a kid where did the memory go for the month?!!
Anybody else find Alan's hat adorable?
File management. It provides a period where the conscious mind is turned off so as to lower the amount of information being processed. There is plenty of unconscious material still getting through, but it gives your nerves more time to catch up with what you have processed in the day. There's still too much information to absolutely process everything properly, but it gives the mind still more time for cleanup and defragmentation of your hard drive. This would explain the purpose of sleeep, but there's still the question, why do we dream?
I listened to a lecture that suggested that sleep is when your brain dumps all the unnecessary information it absorbed in the day, then stores the useful information. For example, how many cars did you walk past, from your parking spot to the front door of your gym? Your brain observed that data but did not store the number. At the end of the day that kind of stuff is prevented from becoming a memory. Opposite for the name of that really attractive person you spoke with and the contents of the conversation.
You sleep so you can recover and grow
Sleep helps us properly form our memories
Cleaning is not far off the mark, read a few papers citing Roger Y Tsien and Mark H. Ellisman. Particularly the ones with Varda Lev-Ram and Daniela Boassa dealing with extracellular matrix, holes, moving proteins, and memory. The research reinforces Penrose and Hameroff quantum mechanics theories of the microtubule.
In summary get good amounts of good sleep, your memory and consciousness hinges on that housekeeping.
we sleep as an exclusive sneak preview of the welcoming void of death
I sleep when there’s nothing in the fridge
The no alarm clock test sounds pretty sketchy. I wake up several times a night. Then I roll over and go back to sleep.
Out brain collects massive amounts of data throughout the day and has a cycle for analyzing and making sense of it. Like the large hadron collider, run a few experiments, collect terabytes of data then spend a ton of time sorting it all out.
"gum dresser" ;-)