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MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

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Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#51

Post by kayoone »

freneticfox wrote: post #33
veli_joza wrote: post #2

I was introduced to this phenomenon through Kurzweil's book "How to create a mind". He claims that the brain is massively parallelized pattern recognition machine, with consciousness being a censor that filters results. While in hypnagogia, this censoring function is suppressed and you are able to make "unthinkable" connections between ideas you normally think are unrelated. Of course, you should just take notes of t…

For a long time now, I've been kinda self-experimenting on inducing these kinds of states in myself, without resorting to hardware or hard/scary drugs. It all started with my realization that sleep brought me answers in general; i.e. a realization that my general pattern was to work on hard problems all day until I hit various brick walls, then step away and do Real Life and then later at night I'd Sleep, and then of…

I recently read "A mind for numbers" which leans on this concept of working hard on a problem (focus mode) and then stepping away from it for some time (diffuse mode) very heavily. I also realized that this works really well for me and i guess for most people.

Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#52

Post by goodroot »

mjburgess wrote: post #50
goodroot wrote: post #47

Fascinating. I have a keen interest in Shamanism and more patience for "woo-woo" here than most. Navigating your dream state is a mighty Shamanic concept. It is one of two Shamanic practices that people here will entertain. The other is the idea of the memory castle. New technological approaches like this will help us peel back the veil of the tangible, 'ordinary' realities of which we are comfortable. The world will…

I think the converse is true, no? That the shamanic practices will be pealed back, to reveal the familiar reality of scientific investigation. I've had many lucid dreams, sleep paralysis, etc. "Navigating your dream state" seems really just like a lucid dream. You're pretty much able to create a life-like world at whim in a lucid dream. The ability of the mind to hallucinate sensation in great depth is tremendous, an…

That is an excellent point. I do agree that the converse is true. Together, now we are talking.

Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#53

Post by mygo »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #20

Sleep As Android can do this same thing. It uses your microphone/accelerometer to sense motion and estimate when you're entering REM sleep. It's not as advanced as the more complicated set up here, but anecdotally I can say it works fairly well. You can set it to play a trigger phrase when you enter REM sleep to help train lucid dreaming. I've never done it though because they default trigger phrase included is downr…

> I've never done it though because they default trigger phrase included is downright creepy sounding. It's some echo-y modulated voice that goes "You are dreaming-ing-ing-ing...."

I used an app like that to trigger a lucid state (might be the exact same one) and yeah I heard it say “you are dreaming” in that creepy voice and it gave me a freaking lucid nightmare. It succeeded in making me realize I was dreaming without waking me up, but my heart raced to about 200bpm and I thought that scary voice was going to come and kill me. Who the heck made that app?

Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#54

Post by carapace »

Raphmedia wrote: post #26
dosycorp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's interesting. Tech to create a feedback loop to keep you in a particular state. When I was a kid I really had this thing for switching a light switch between off and on. Know what I mean? There's a spot you can hold it between off and on where the light flickers, and buzzes, at low power, sort of randomly. I guess this is like that for wake-sleep. Cool state to be in and to get there without drugs, concen…

> When I was a kid I really had this thing for switching a light switch between off and on. Know what I mean? There's a spot you can hold it between off and on where the light flickers, and buzzes, at low power, sort of randomly. I relate to this on a spiritual level. When I was a child, I would go around the house and set all the switchs to that "in-between" state.

> A discrete decision based upon an input having a continuous range of values cannot be made within a bounded length of time.

~ Leslie Lamport

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan's_ass#Buridan's_princi...

;-)

Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#55

Post by komali2 »

>“Ideas were not coming from me, they were just passing through my head,” one subject reported.

Is consciousness even real, man?

Great books if you wanna chew on basically (for now) unanswerable questions:

Peter Watts' "Blindsight" and "Echopraxia."

Neal Stephenson's "Anathem."

Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#57

Post by ksk »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #45
ksk wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is one explanation. The alternative explanation is that someone found something cool and decided to write a blog post. How many front-page posts have there been on some algorithm or bloom filters or seemingly "advanced cool stuff" that people have already figured out decades ago?

Yes. But I think the point the comment (that I was commenting on) was getting at was that there are in fact refernece points that should have been mentioned for completeness. That void is either intentional. Not good. Or due to a lack of awareness (or the obvious). Again, not good.

Or, neither? There are alternate benign interpretations which admittedly are very non-dramatic and boring. I've found that people are most often neither malicious nor stupid.

Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#58

Post by braindongle »

Critic: "System for Dream Control", i.e., "People are suggestible as they fall asleep."

Fan: "But this is closed-loop. It keeps you in the hypnogogic state."

Critic: 1. Optimize a simple open-loop system using, say, number of repetitions, inter-repetition interval as f(repetition), and amplitude as f(repetition). Use your outcome of choice (e.g. the Alternative Uses Task) and a factorial design to explore the space. 2. Optimize closed-loop system for the same outcome, exploring its parameter space. 3. Randomize 100 people to (1) or (2) 4. t-test on the means 5. Get back to me 6. Even if p(2>1) Dr. Horowitz may be onto something. Let's not get ahead of ourselves with clickbait headlines while we wait and see.

Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#59

Post by Stratoscope »

suuuuuure wrote: post #56

Ah yes, vice.com, the premier outlet for reporting top-notch research

People say things like that about buzzfeed.com too.

But Vice and BuzzFeed both do a lot of quality journalism these days. This article is a good example.

Is judging an article by its domain the modern equivalent of judging a book by its cover?

Re: MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’

#60

Post by iamcasen »

goodroot wrote: post #47

Fascinating. I have a keen interest in Shamanism and more patience for "woo-woo" here than most. Navigating your dream state is a mighty Shamanic concept. It is one of two Shamanic practices that people here will entertain. The other is the idea of the memory castle. New technological approaches like this will help us peel back the veil of the tangible, 'ordinary' realities of which we are comfortable. The world will…

That's honestly what I was thinking while reading this. Shamans, and other types who are extremely skilled with meditation have control over their minds and bodies that is extraordinary. They can navigate dream states, explore their own bodily function, and perhaps even go to places we can't imagine.

Certain drugs like DMT, Mushrooms, or LSD are essentially performance enhancing drugs when it comes to those powers of meditation, and they allow ordinary folks a glimpse of what the human mind/body is capable of.

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