You Have One of Three Wishes

[tegan]

You have the option of no longer requiring sleep, food, or air. There are no hidden drawbacks, and you can still choose to voluntarily perform the action you've given up in case you want to. Which do you pick? Get more done in a day? Never get fat? Hang out with some fish? It's up to you.

[feelthedarkness]

I'd be so much better off if I didn't need any sleep.

[mikemariano]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOXBCLtj_OQ

[Twig]

EASY. SLEEP. Not having to breathe would certainly be nice, but also potentially frightening because then someone could bury you alive and you'd have to keep living until you died of thirst! SO MUCH LONGER, THE SUFFERING!

[Gormongous]

This is a pretty easy call for me, because I'm boring and overly practical. I enjoy sleep too much to give it up (like Hemingway said, life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake) and breathing would have a lot of downsides. On the other hand, it'd be pretty nice to only want and/or need to eat when I felt like it. Saves money, too!

[clyde]

You have the option of no longer requiring sleep, food, or air. There are no hidden drawbacks, and you can still choose to voluntarily perform the action you've given up in case you want to. Which do you pick? Get more done in a day? Never get fat? Hang out with some fish? It's up to you.

That's what they said about automobiles and now it's super hard for people to walk to work.

[Twig]

Depends on where you live!

[Frenetic Pony]

Smelling things isn't bad, and other than a bit of underwaterness being more convenient I'm not sure it would be that useful. Pressure would still crush you to death to deep, so no walking in the oceans. And I assume choking will still kill you via cutting off circulation to the brain, so unless you are actively being murdered by asphyxiation or even accidental, then whatever. Not useful.

 

Eating would be my second choice. But I like eating, I like mochas and crackers and etc. So hey as a requirement it's not terrible.

 

Sleeping is by far the biggest time waster.

[Bjorn]

Sleep would be my kneejerk reaction, because that sounds awesome.  But honestly then I would probably just spend more time goofing off on the Internet, which isn't going to do much to enrich my life.  So I'll go with not having to eat instead. 

[TychoCelchuuu]

I'd be better off choosing not to have to sleep but all my life I've worried about starving to death (that and dying of exposure) because maybe I'm useless and nobody will hire me to do anything ever so I'd go with the food thing.

[BadHat]

Can I redeem the eating wish in DayZ instead of real life?

[elmuerte]

Easy, never sleep. I find sleeping the most annoying part of life. If I could go on without the need to mentally and physically recharge it would be awesome. My game backlog would be so much smaller.

[melmer]

Yeah, for me it's more about feeling groggy through lack of sleep or over sleep, I'd like to live my life in a perfect state of wakefulness, that'd be great.

[Sno]

Never needing to sleep is an easy answer.

Think of all the hours of your life you could reclaim, the sheer amount of time that you would otherwise be spending asleep.

[Ben X]

Sleep for all the above reasons. The only problem would be that my bills would go up!

[Nachimir]

Tempted with never needing to breathe because that would be cool sometimes, but rarely useful unless it was specific to my job or something. Also, a lot of places where you can't breathe can kill you quickly with either pressure, temperature or toxicity. All the time I'd get from not having to sleep makes it an obvious choice.

[SecretAsianMan]

So this poll was prompted by a random conversation Tegan and I were having last night.  I said that if I had a genie who would grant me 3 wishes without any downsides, one of them would be to never need sleep.  I mentioned that a coworker of mine said he'd rather not eat.  Teg proposed not needing to breathe.  After some discussion this poll was created.  I have since given the topic further thought and here are my I'm-thinking-about-this-way-too-much conclusions.

 

Biologically speaking, not breathing or eating poses problems to me.  You would presumably still have a respiratory/digestive system even though you wouldn't require them.  You'd have what are essentially extra organs that could become infected, diseased, cancerous, damaged, septic, etc.  I don't consider those "hidden drawbacks" but rather potential liabilities.  Not sleeping on the other hand doesn't seem to suffer from this flaw as far as I can tell.

 

From a physics point of view, not eating is interesting, but it raises the question where does your body get the energy it needs?  Am I like Superman and absorb solar radiation?  Or am I somehow generating free energy?  If that's the case, I keep picturing a Matrix scenario where a body that can generate energy without needing food really is a great battery.

 

Even ignoring those concerns, I'd still pick sleeping.  I enjoy eating food so I'd still do that even if I didn't require it.  Not needing to breathe would be interesting but I don't see enough advantage to pick it over sleeping.  I would rather have the lost time.  There are only a few instances in which I would actively choose to sleep, such as being on a long flight or drive.

[Zeusthecat]

Fuck sleep.

[BadHat]

So this poll was prompted by a random conversation Tegan and I were having last night.  I said that if I had a genie who would grant me 3 wishes without any downsides, one of them would be to never need sleep.  I mentioned that a coworker of mine said he'd rather not eat.  Teg proposed not needing to breathe.  After some discussion this poll was created.  I have since given the topic further thought and here are my I'm-thinking-about-this-way-too-much conclusions.

 

Biologically speaking, not breathing or eating poses problems to me.  You would presumably still have a respiratory/digestive system even though you wouldn't require them.  You'd have what are essentially extra organs that could become infected, diseased, cancerous, damaged, septic, etc.  I don't consider those "hidden drawbacks" but rather potential liabilities.  Not sleeping on the other hand doesn't seem to suffer from this flaw as far as I can tell.

 

From a physics point of view, not eating is interesting, but it raises the question where does your body get the energy it needs?  Am I like Superman and absorb solar radiation?  Or am I somehow generating free energy?  If that's the case, I keep picturing a Matrix scenario where a body that can generate energy without needing food really is a great battery.

 

Even ignoring those concerns, I'd still pick sleeping.  I enjoy eating food so I'd still do that even if I didn't require it.  Not needing to breathe would be interesting but I don't see enough advantage to pick it over sleeping.  I would rather have the lost time.  There are only a few instances in which I would actively choose to sleep, such as being on a long flight or drive.

 

Well hey, if we're overthinking things, what constitutes a hidden drawback when it comes to mental health? This is the first thing that occurs to me when I think of not having to sleep - how long would it take to go mental? Also, if I still have the option of sleeping, does that mean I'm able to do it at will? I have enough trouble dozing off sometimes already, how the fuck would I fall asleep if I were never tired? When would I wake up? How would my body know to?

 

I mean I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm pretty dependent on sleep to keep me in (what vaguely resembles) a sound state of mind, so I'd have to have some pretty solid wish guarantees before I signed on the dotted line.

[Malice Song]

Well hey, if we're overthinking things, what constitutes a hidden drawback when it comes to mental health? This is the first thing that occurs to me when I think of not having to sleep - how long would it take to go mental? Also, if I still have the option of sleeping, does that mean I'm able to do it at will? I have enough trouble dozing off sometimes already, how the fuck would I fall asleep if I were never tired? When would I wake up? How would my body know to?

 

This is half of what pushes me away from the sleeping option. I don't think it's really an obvious answer. Plus I would not be surprised if you'd miss the structure in your life that sleep provides after a while on a very deep level. If you could choose to sleep for 2 hours or so every day, though, that potential issue might be solvable.

No more eating on the other hand sounds absolutely dreamy to me. Since no hidden drawbacks I would assume that your body just stayed in check nutritionally by default (even if you decided to eat something every now and then), so having that part of physical health covered without even trying, the minor time gain from not having to cook and everything that entails plus the substantial savings of not having to buy food (or a kitchen, for that matter) anymore seems like a very appealing mix of benefits.

[elmuerte]

The question stated no hidden drawbacks. So there's no mental drawback from lack of sleep.

[SecretAsianMan]

The question stated no hidden drawbacks. So there's no mental drawback from lack of sleep.

 

Exactly.  You would still suffer from physical and mental fatigue, you just wouldn't need sleep to fix it.  Not eating means you won't feel hunger or weak from lack of food, but it doesn't mean those organs will always be in perfect health.  I don't consider that a hidden drawback because it's always a possibility that isn't necessarily related to eating.  Not needing sleep seems cleaner to me, if that makes any sense.

[Roderick]

Never to eat again. It's easily the thing in my life that vexes me most. I hate the thought that food can disease me, I dislike the feeling of hunger, I hate having to eat while in social situations and more often than not it's a source of worry and stress. Fuck eating.

While breathing is also something neat to miss (you could walk underwater!), it's of no concern to me. It doesn't fret me.

Sleeping, on the other hand, I actively enjoy, however strange that may seem. I love going to sleep when I'm tired, love surrendering to that realm of dreams, and awakening in a fresh new world, full of new adventures and new thoughts and possibilities. I think I'd hate not having sleep as a natural divider between days. Imagine not being able to go to bed after a gruelling day, sleeping off whatever ill feelings you might harbor, instead carrying it over forever because you're always conscious. That's even before the inspiration that often hits me after a night's sleep. I couldn't do without, and I wouldn't want to.

[Merus]

I'd probably go breathing, because the metaphysics of not requiring food bug me far more than the occasional pangs of hunger, particularly in an abundant society like the one I'm blessed to have been born into. I'm far less creeped out by my blood cells finding oxygen whenever they head to my lungs.

 

As for sleeping, I'm even more creeped out by magic tinkering with my memory, moving things from short to long term memory. I don't like the idea that I don't turn off, that I'm not required to declare the day done, that my whole life would become a continuous blur of events rather than quantised by my biorhythms. I think, of the three, it'd be the one that makes me most dependent on wish magic, and it's the most likely to go horribly wrong to my mind.

 

Of course, if there was any wriggle room on wish content I'd either wish for an end to conflict in either Palestine or the Congo, or a perpetual motion machine, because I'd be a fool to waste a miracle on problems that don't need a miracle.

[osmosisch]

If eating's not a source of pleasure you're doing it wrong if you ask me.