We certainly do know. If you have absolutely zero sleep, you die.

Most ailments that severely impact sleep make it ‘likely’ that they died from lack of sleep, but not for sure. An easy way to tell is physically stop someone from sleeping, which has become more common than water boarding or other traditional forms of torture. 5-6 days of 100% wakefulness and they die.

I’ve noticed this take over the years, but it’s getting more prominent despite a very simple answer as to why it’s foolish. Actually it seems to rear it’s head anytime there’s a complex problem that doesn’t seem to be getting solved quick enough: person or team works hard to develop something that helps improve literally anything that’s an aside from what the listener cares about, let’s say a machine that passes butter. “Why’d you waste time on that garbage, you could have been fixing global warming!”. “Sir, I have zero education or experience in that science, I just know how to make small electronic devices that are fun, and thought perhaps they could pass the butter instead of me…”