Biological Time Hacking

Sunday, July 24, 2022: 11:00 am (DAC 206): Time is the most valuable asset we have. As biological organisms, our experience and usage of time is often formed by limitations imposed by the biological form. The organism requires energy and matter in se...

Sunday, July 24, 2022: 11:00 am (DAC 206): Time is the most valuable asset we have. As biological organisms, our experience and usage of time is often formed by limitations imposed by the biological form. The organism requires energy and matter in several forms. We can only buffer so much of each before replenishment is required. We must eat, drink, breathe, all more or less on the body's schedule - not one determined by our intent. Delay too long and it becomes an emergency. The body imposes other requirements on waste elimination, cleanup, and processing. This is true of physical matter, but even more so for the body's most energetic organ - the brain. Sleep can force temporal interruptions for a third of our lives! Delaying sleep can be even more costly later. It is difficult to consume matter while asleep, forcing serial time interruption, further shortening the available useful waking time for us. Sleep mechanisms are now better understood than in recent years. Is it possible to intentionally optimize these biological requirements so that they work well with modern human intentions? This talk explores the mechanisms and components that may be applied to temporal optimizations.

Kenji Larsen