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Dreams are the default for intelligence

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Re: Dreams are the default for intelligence

#51

Post by akvadrako »

lisper wrote: post #22
idleproc wrote: post #12

I read a book about lucid dreaming a while back, and it said something like: the easiest way to tell you are in a dream is to look at something mechanical or complicated. The idea seemed to be: if you could get your dreaming mind to look at your hand and then turn it over to the other side, you didn't have the mental 'bandwidth' to imagine the opposite side correctly, and you'd realize you were dreaming. Equally, if…

Most of the time when I'm dreaming it never even occurs to me that I might be in a dream until I wake up. I have even had some cases where it did occur to me, and I started lucid dreaming (which was very cool), but then I reverted to my default this-must-be-real dreaming state. That was very weird.

If you want to get better at recognizing dreams one way is practicing a few times a day to check "am I dreaming".

Re: Dreams are the default for intelligence

#52

Post by T-A »

molly0 wrote: post #3

I got completely lost in trying to understand the idea he is trying to convey.

I liked it (unusually enough for some random blog) so I'll volunteer my take on it.

Remember how Stable Diffusion works? It's essentially noise reduction cranked up to eleven. You train a neural network to clean up slightly noisy images. When it gets good at it you turn up the noise a notch and repeat. You keep doing that until the network will look at pure noise and "repair" it into an image of whatever.

Animal brains have to do something similar, because our senses suck. Take our eyes; the part of your field of view which is actually in focus is tiny [1], so you are constantly updating an internal 3D model of the world, one small patch at a time [2], interpolating between patches and editing out things like your nose to replace it with a hallucination of whatever it happens to be occluding (except right now, because I reminded you of it).

In this sense, what you "see" is not so much the real world as a hallucination guided by your sensory input.

What happens when you reduce the information content of that sensory input, either by making it "unstructured" [3] or by removing it altogether [4]? Same thing that happens to Stable Diffusion when you present it with pure noise: it hallucinates freely.

So it makes sense that lying down on a comfortable bed in a dark, quiet room and shutting your eyes - all steps toward sensory deprivation - should have a similar effect.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_span

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld_effect

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_deprivation

Re: Dreams are the default for intelligence

#53

Post by pengaru »

idleproc wrote: post #12

I read a book about lucid dreaming a while back, and it said something like: the easiest way to tell you are in a dream is to look at something mechanical or complicated. The idea seemed to be: if you could get your dreaming mind to look at your hand and then turn it over to the other side, you didn't have the mental 'bandwidth' to imagine the opposite side correctly, and you'd realize you were dreaming. Equally, if…

Recently I switched from taking a lions mane supplement in capsule form to mixing some powder into my morning tea, since I can get the powder for far less $$ and it's usda organic on top of it.

For some reason this has resulted in persistent lucid dreaming before waking up, daily, for over a month now. The capsules rarely caused this, but something about the tea seems to be affecting the bio-availability, or maybe the powder is just different.

Whatever the root cause, it's been quite fun. But a bit distracting as it makes completely waking up difficult, now that there's this incredible interactive mind-movie I'd rather continue playing vs. start my day...

It does seem like a state of mind worth exploring with some potentially huge utility if mastered. I can't produce such immersive and vivid visuals to navigate mental models in my regular conscious thinking. I'd much rather do the equivalent of lucid dreaming to navigate things like interplaying algorithms and data structures for example.

Re: Dreams are the default for intelligence

#54

Post by thetoon »

pessimizer wrote: post #27
irrational wrote: post #4

I hope this isn’t true. I’m in my 50s and I have never dreamed. By that I mean, I have never woken up from sleeping and remembered anything happening between the time I fell asleep and I awoke. It’s a complete blank. Maybe I do dream, but I have no proof or indication that I do. I never have. As a side note, it really bothers me when dreaming is used as a plot device in books. I can’t relate at all to the concept of…

Don't worry about it. There are no such things as dreams; they're the brain bullshitting itself when you wake up in an inconsistent state. If you have a very complicated or imaginative life, your brain has to do a lot of work at night doing a very lossy compress of everything interesting that happened that day. If your sleep is restless or interrupted, you're more likely to still be in this process when you awake. Yo…

Very interesting, but how do lucid dreaming could exist if there's nothing more than remembering? Are we, in fact, just remembering we've been lucid ? (and, thus, haven't really been?)

Re: Dreams are the default for intelligence

#55

Post by kingstoned »

crooked-v wrote: post #7

This also reminds me of some theories I've seen that sleep (e.g. mostly sessile behavior) is the biological default for Earth life, and being "awake" and highly mobile is itself a specialized adaptation.

Interesting. Could you please share some links about it?

Re: Dreams are the default for intelligence

#56

Post by jiggawatts »

pengaru wrote: post #53
idleproc wrote: post #12

I read a book about lucid dreaming a while back, and it said something like: the easiest way to tell you are in a dream is to look at something mechanical or complicated. The idea seemed to be: if you could get your dreaming mind to look at your hand and then turn it over to the other side, you didn't have the mental 'bandwidth' to imagine the opposite side correctly, and you'd realize you were dreaming. Equally, if…

Recently I switched from taking a lions mane supplement in capsule form to mixing some powder into my morning tea, since I can get the powder for far less $$ and it's usda organic on top of it. For some reason this has resulted in persistent lucid dreaming before waking up, daily, for over a month now. The capsules rarely caused this, but something about the tea seems to be affecting the bio-availability, or maybe th…

"Some powder"?

So... you either don't know what you're taking, or don't want to say in a public forum?

Re: Dreams are the default for intelligence

#57

Post by elcritch »

jiggawatts wrote: post #56
pengaru wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently I switched from taking a lions mane supplement in capsule form to mixing some powder into my morning tea, since I can get the powder for far less $$ and it's usda organic on top of it. For some reason this has resulted in persistent lucid dreaming before waking up, daily, for over a month now. The capsules rarely caused this, but something about the tea seems to be affecting the bio-availability, or maybe th…

"Some powder"? So... you either don't know what you're taking, or don't want to say in a public forum?

No, they meant lion's mane in powder form. Cheaper to buy it in bulk.

Re: Dreams are the default for intelligence

#58

Post by molly0 »

T-A wrote: post #52
molly0 wrote: post #3

I got completely lost in trying to understand the idea he is trying to convey.

I liked it (unusually enough for some random blog) so I'll volunteer my take on it. Remember how Stable Diffusion works? It's essentially noise reduction cranked up to eleven. You train a neural network to clean up slightly noisy images. When it gets good at it you turn up the noise a notch and repeat. You keep doing that until the network will look at pure noise and "repair" it into an image of whatever. Animal brai…

Thank you! Interesting.

Re: Dreams are the default for intelligence

#59

Post by dorkwood »

idleproc wrote: post #12

I read a book about lucid dreaming a while back, and it said something like: the easiest way to tell you are in a dream is to look at something mechanical or complicated. The idea seemed to be: if you could get your dreaming mind to look at your hand and then turn it over to the other side, you didn't have the mental 'bandwidth' to imagine the opposite side correctly, and you'd realize you were dreaming. Equally, if…

The method that works most reliably that no one talks about is to pinch your nose closed and try to inhale through it. If you’re dreaming, you can still inhale through a pinched nose. Always a useful check to perform before hurling yourself off a cliff to see what it feels like.

Re: Dreams are the default for intelligence

#60

Post by not_the_fda »

bitwize wrote: post #41
harpiaharpyja wrote: post #2

I think it's an interesting potential answer to the ongoing question of "why do we have dreams, what evolutionary purpose do they serve?" Maybe the answer is that they do not need to serve any purpose because dreaming is actually the default mode - "normal" consciousness is the adaptation. From that perspective the evolutionary purpose (of normal rational consciousness) is obvious. Just musing here but I wonder if th…

I can tell you from firsthand experience that dogs dream. Some dogs "talk" in their sleep, move their legs as if walking or running -- the sequence from Cinderella (1950) when Bruno is dreaming of chasing Lucifer is only a slight to moderate exaggeration. A dreaming dog is definitely in a place far removed from waking life -- perhaps one where steaks grow on trees and blood-soaked frisbees fly through the air for no…

Dogs dreaming is one of my favorite things in life.
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