Research Program / Claims / sleep-10
If the entire world were simultaneously awake, energy overload would almost inevitably occur; therefore, only a portion of the species is awake at any given time, while the other part sleeps to replenish energy.
若全世界同时清醒将几乎必然发生能量超载，因此物种任一时刻只有部分清醒，另一部分睡眠补充能量。
Concept sleep · Domain Dream Consciousness and Self-Representation · mechanism · interface 3/3 · testability 3/3 · status untested · ★ fundable
This program treats the Seth Material as a source of hypotheses, not as doctrine to be validated. Lead dossiers are AI-compiled from the corpus with a book-and-session citation after every statement; literature reviews are AI web-search summaries whose references were all DOI-verified against Crossref; the agenda draft is an AI synthesis. None of it is Seth's original text, and none of it represents scientific consensus. English fields are machine-translated; the Chinese text is authoritative.
Seth sources (book §session)
Adjudicating experiment
It is first necessary to specify the physical units of energy, storage locations, and overload thresholds. If a group-level synchronization effect independent of individual wake duration is predicted, approximately 240 mice could be used, with individually caged groups as units of randomization, comparing synchronized versus phase-shifted wake schedules, matching each animal's wake dose, light, activity, and feeding, recording EEG, oxygen consumption, and stress for 2–4 consecutive weeks; project duration about 12 months. The experiment only tests local group mechanisms and cannot adjudicate versions triggered only when the whole world is simultaneously awake.
Suggested paper title
Testing Population-Level Wake Synchrony Effects on Metabolic Load Under Matched Individual Sleep Exposure
What it would overturn
If a reproducible group-level overload effect exists, it would challenge the model that 'individual sleep needs can be explained by one's own sleep homeostasis, circadian rhythm, and known environmental effects, without requiring a global shared energy reservoir'.
Candidate labs / funders
Niels C. Rattenborg — 比较睡眠与野外鸟类睡眠研究者; National University of Singapore — Centre for Sleep and Cognition，睡眠时间分布研究
Specificity of Seth's formulation
It proposes the extreme condition of globally synchronized wakefulness but does not define energy or thresholds; staggered sleep across time zones is not a prediction unique to this mechanism.
Note
No direct evidence for a global overload mechanism was found; the literal claim that 'at any moment some part must be asleep' cannot be proven by existing sampling, and the original source section number is missing; the citation should first be completed.
Evidence (1, DOI-verified via Crossref)
Cite: Future Mind Institute, Seth Material Research Agenda, claim sleep-10, https://www.seth.org.cn/en/research/claims/sleep-10