I’m quite skeptical about “easier” due to usual Algernon argument.
Roughly, conceptually, animal activity can be divided into 3 phases:
Active, when animal is looking for food or mate or something.
Sleep (which seems to be a requirement for Earth animals design).
Passive phase in-between when animal doesn’t do anything particular, but it shouldn’t sleep because of predators (the main problem with sleep as an evolutionary adaptation).
Large herbivores have very short sleep phase and active/passive phase are not very meaningfully different, because food doesn’t hide from them and is not very energy-dense, and they should always look out for predators. Large predators have very long sleep phase, short active phase and don’t have passive phase—because their search for food is very energy-intense and they don’t need to look out for predators.
Humans seem to be comfortably between these two extremes, but I think that unproductive phase in your day is just what it is—unproductive phase, meant only for you to be alert about predators (and fellow tribesmen). You can probably extend your productive phase somewhat by doing known things, like healthy diet, normal sleep, exercise, but it is likely that you have strong biological limit on what you can productively do per day which you can’t cross without degradation in quality of life.
I don’t think caffeine and amphetamines help here. They just forcefully redistribute activity—if you have ADHD, you are going to work instead of doing whatever you feel like and if you are night owl, you can function better at morning.
You can play on difference between “activity which requires you to be biologically active” and “meaningful activity”, like, I don’t think watching TV with family is very energetically demanding. Although, it seems to be a time organization problem?
I think that actual solution to “lack of biological willpower” is something like “large bionanotech system which resets organism in the way like sleep resets it” and honestly, I think if you can develop such systems you are not far from actual aging treatment.
I’m quite skeptical about “easier” due to usual Algernon argument.
Roughly, conceptually, animal activity can be divided into 3 phases:
Active, when animal is looking for food or mate or something.
Sleep (which seems to be a requirement for Earth animals design).
Passive phase in-between when animal doesn’t do anything particular, but it shouldn’t sleep because of predators (the main problem with sleep as an evolutionary adaptation).
Large herbivores have very short sleep phase and active/passive phase are not very meaningfully different, because food doesn’t hide from them and is not very energy-dense, and they should always look out for predators. Large predators have very long sleep phase, short active phase and don’t have passive phase—because their search for food is very energy-intense and they don’t need to look out for predators.
Humans seem to be comfortably between these two extremes, but I think that unproductive phase in your day is just what it is—unproductive phase, meant only for you to be alert about predators (and fellow tribesmen). You can probably extend your productive phase somewhat by doing known things, like healthy diet, normal sleep, exercise, but it is likely that you have strong biological limit on what you can productively do per day which you can’t cross without degradation in quality of life.
I don’t think caffeine and amphetamines help here. They just forcefully redistribute activity—if you have ADHD, you are going to work instead of doing whatever you feel like and if you are night owl, you can function better at morning.
You can play on difference between “activity which requires you to be biologically active” and “meaningful activity”, like, I don’t think watching TV with family is very energetically demanding. Although, it seems to be a time organization problem?
I think that actual solution to “lack of biological willpower” is something like “large bionanotech system which resets organism in the way like sleep resets it” and honestly, I think if you can develop such systems you are not far from actual aging treatment.