Ok so modulo @GeneSmith’s comments about this gene potentially being red herring, if there were a genetic basis to this, we’d expect to see prevalance of this trait increase due to genetic drift and removal of the selection pressure right?
I don’t have a good sense of how quickly we’d expect to be able to detect those population level differences with the rate at which calories have become more available and the rate of growth of the variant.
Figure 7 in @guzey’s post shows that it’s directionally been increasing but a lot has changed about our environments and lifestyles so it doesn’t rule out that maybe people are in-fact less pre-disposed to sleep but something else is increasing it.
Since the matter at hand is a genetic basis that could flip a switch to needing “a lot less sleep” we should still expect to see the variance in sleep duration increase in the population even if the mean is increasing. I have no idea what the data says about that though.
I don’t see why genetic drift would increase this particular mutation. On average I expect genetic drift to destroy the body’s ability to produce substances and not increase their production of them.
If the selection pressure is due to certain risk-taking behavior, it’s not clear that we see a removal of selection pressure. In humans, we certainly don’t have an environment which is similar to those cavefish as far as the selection pressures go.
Ok so modulo @GeneSmith’s comments about this gene potentially being red herring, if there were a genetic basis to this, we’d expect to see prevalance of this trait increase due to genetic drift and removal of the selection pressure right?
I don’t have a good sense of how quickly we’d expect to be able to detect those population level differences with the rate at which calories have become more available and the rate of growth of the variant.
Figure 7 in @guzey’s post shows that it’s directionally been increasing but a lot has changed about our environments and lifestyles so it doesn’t rule out that maybe people are in-fact less pre-disposed to sleep but something else is increasing it.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HvcZmKS43SLCbJvRb/theses-on-sleep
Since the matter at hand is a genetic basis that could flip a switch to needing “a lot less sleep” we should still expect to see the variance in sleep duration increase in the population even if the mean is increasing. I have no idea what the data says about that though.
I don’t see why genetic drift would increase this particular mutation. On average I expect genetic drift to destroy the body’s ability to produce substances and not increase their production of them.
If the selection pressure is due to certain risk-taking behavior, it’s not clear that we see a removal of selection pressure. In humans, we certainly don’t have an environment which is similar to those cavefish as far as the selection pressures go.