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Alicorn comments on Willpower Hax #487: Execute by Default - Less Wrong
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This sounds like the kind of aversion that could cause serious problems in your life. Does it? Do you want to hate sleep/consider it "temporary death"? (Temporary death isn't, or we wouldn't be so up on cryonics 'round these parts...)
It doesn't cause serious problems in my life. I just have the standard aversion to going to bed. But I know that it robs me of 1/3 of my potential life, just as dying at age 53 robs someone of 1/3 their potential life span of 80 years. I have tried to transition to polyphasic sleep a few times, with no success.
In regards to "Do you want to hate sleep?", I assume you're asking a "desire to desire" analogue of "belief in belief". My hatred of sleep simply comes from the recognition of the fact that it robs any conscious experience from me, and therefore robs me of all value receivable during that time. I could just ignore it and get used to it, but I think a conscious recognition of the true value of things is the optimal way to feel (is there some decision theory theorem about this?). It's certainly not the kind of futile, life-degrading hatred that some people have have against, say, the state, their parents, or society.
If it's that important to you, you could consider investing some hours in training yourself to lucid dream.
After some research, this looks feasible! Thanks! My only concern is that there really won't be much value in the lucid dreams. For instance, I'm pretty sure I can't work on AGI or anything mathy during a dream.
You can probably do purely cognitive work in a lucid dream, although its portability will be limited by your memory. It's probably more efficient to have your daily diet of fun while you sleep, and then need less entertainment while you're awake so you get more work done.
Y'know, I'm really interested in hearing about lesswrong posters' experiences with and methods of inducing lucid dreaming (and if these diverge from the norm). Have you mentioned this topic before? Do you have any peculiar insights?
I`ve invested some time to learn it, (consciously looking into mirrors, feeling walls, holding ones nose+breath, pinching the arm) but the results were somewhat depressing: I notice that I am dreaming, but get paraplegic when I want to move, and wake up, or panic due to being unable to tell dream/reality apart (only when dreaming), so I gave up.
I've played with them a tad. They seem more likely if I fiddle with my brain chemistry in some way (the precise change doesn't seem to be important.) Just moderately high doses of melatonin can do it (for me, that is). Practicing specifically remembering dreams when waking up also makes a difference, prompting more awareness of the dream experience in general.
The biggest downside I have experienced is that these days my dreams are too damn realistic. Many of the dreams are just as credible as everyday experiences. Which means I have to spend effort at times remembering whether a conversation or experience was real or dreamed of.
I've occasionally had lucid dreams, but always by accident just as a matter of normal sleeping. I tend to like my regular dreams well enough that it's never seemed worth the bother to mess with them. However, I've heard it's possible to train oneself to lucid dream, and it seemed like a good solution to Alex_Altair's predicament.