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New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming

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Re: New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming

#161

Post by WaltPurvis »

Unai wrote: post #145
mr-wendel wrote: post #111

I was at my first real software job and we had an in-house system to provide automated installers for common open-source applications for our end-users. After I started getting familiar with it I had a dream one night that certain input fields (which were very common) could be rather easily exploited to inject shell commands with root access. I woke up convinced that it was a real bug, went to work the next day, and…

When I was young, I dreamt that I was playing guitar and made up a cool song. When I woke up I was so excited, that's something you would hear an old rockstar say about their best song, right? "Came to me in a dream". I jumped out of bed, grabbed the guitar, and started playing the song, every note still clear in my memory. It was a completely random series of notes.

Many years ago I had such a profound insight in one of my dreams that I woke up and wrote it down on an index card so I wouldn't forget.

Here's the pearl of wisdom I captured for posterity:

"Emotions — it's emotions that invented and fricasseed the invisible ravioli."

(I still have the card.)

Re: New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming

#162

Post by sqircles »

ml_basics wrote: post #33

During my time at university studying pure mathematics I had an interesting experience of doing a challenging sheet of combinatorics problems during a vacation. Every day I attempted one question and got stuck on it. Then the next morning I woke up knowing the solution. It was a recurring thing: this happened every day for about 2 weeks until I had solved all the problems. For me this a big eye opener about the impor…

My biggest road blocks seem to be knocked down with a nice walk / good nights rest, a la "rubber duck debugging." Essentially, stepping away and being able to put a fresh set of "eyes" on the problem with a different perspective, albeit it's just you resetting your own perspective.

Re: New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming

#163

Post by eks391 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #12
jesse_dot_id wrote: post #9

Lucid dreaming is a cool concept but I've never been able to pull it off. I still try, though!

It sort of just happened to me a few years ago. It’s neat—flying is fun. (As is the opposite, when it just doesn’t work and I wake up sort of laughing at myself for having spent, presumably, hours jumping around in my dream.) But at least for me, the price was dreams, the moment I go lucid, ceasing to be self directed. I get that I’m in a movie, and I have to always create the next step. Nothing surprises or horrifie…

> I get that I’m in a movie, and I have to always create the next step. Nothing surprises or horrifies anymore.

I haven't lucid dreamt since a child, but I recall everything about the dream continuing to be autonomous as before becoming lucid, but if I wanted to do something, I could add that element. I definitely could still be surprised, as the dream fulfilled wishes like a genie would, meeting it technically but perhaps not as I meant when I willed the change. The few times I reigned my subconscious so I had full power and there were no longer any surprises, I would wake up.

Re: New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming

#165

Post by dwoldrich »

timcobb wrote: post #129
dwoldrich wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my 40's I could go to bed with a complex software design or implementation problem I was wrestling with. Consciously word a cogent and succinct question that I needed answered, sleep on it, and then in the morning, I would be still and mentally ask, "well?" Not meditating or anything, just be quiet then and listen. And, in very deadpan style, after a few seconds (as if to choose one's words carefully), some answer…

What about before your 40s?

Nothing I recall from my 30's, but in my 20's I worked in videogames and that was a brutal industry at that time in terms of work-life balance. (Or, at least it sounds better nowadays.)

Bad sleep habits at that time ultimately led me to do a lot of daytime napping.

During those sessions I occasionally experienced sleep paralysis, one out of body waking dream, and disturbing stuff like hearing head-splitting trumpet sounds upon waking up.

One time, I awoke and heard an attenuated trumpet sound, and through the rush I heard two voices nearby. Just as I finished struggling to get control of my body, I distinctly remember hearing one of them say, "I can see it!"

I was living alone at the time, and that was so alarming and made me question my life choices. Looking back now I view that episode as a probable spiritual attack on a vulnerable young man.

Re: New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming

#166

Post by dwoldrich »

gblargg wrote: post #131
dwoldrich wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my 40's I could go to bed with a complex software design or implementation problem I was wrestling with. Consciously word a cogent and succinct question that I needed answered, sleep on it, and then in the morning, I would be still and mentally ask, "well?" Not meditating or anything, just be quiet then and listen. And, in very deadpan style, after a few seconds (as if to choose one's words carefully), some answer…

When I wake up from good rest it's like I've been somewhere else for years. I use that time to stay off the Internet and look at things fresh. That would explain plenty of coming up with novel solutions to things, without any solving being done while sleeping. The mental ruts of the day greatly limit problem-solving ability.

Sounds like you are a good sleeper!

Re: New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming

#167

Post by dwoldrich »

godelski wrote: post #154
Supermancho wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I subscribe to the Multiplicity of Personality theory (our personalities are a combination of multiple ones). eg My wife and I both have a chaos monkey that emits impulses to do the most destructive and disruptive things, which we sometimes talk about in jest. My dominant personality is one of control (for order) so I can focus on problem solving. Some sort of raw insight/intelligence comes from a personality that is…

> I often think that maybe I'm just crazy. Everyone is crazy, just most people are afraid to admit it to others. A lot of people are even afraid to admit it to themselves. Some people pretend so long they forget they're pretending. But wouldn't that itself be crazy?

I like to think of us as complicated, not crazy. Don't want to ever close myself off to advantages my quirks might bring.

Re: New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming

#168

Post by pillefitz »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #157
Unai wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was young, I dreamt that I was playing guitar and made up a cool song. When I woke up I was so excited, that's something you would hear an old rockstar say about their best song, right? "Came to me in a dream". I jumped out of bed, grabbed the guitar, and started playing the song, every note still clear in my memory. It was a completely random series of notes.

Richard James did an album of these using synthesizers to record from memory and lucid dreaming to compose.

Selected Ambient Works!

Re: New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming

#169

Post by dwoldrich »

rdevilla wrote: post #108
dwoldrich wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my 40's I could go to bed with a complex software design or implementation problem I was wrestling with. Consciously word a cogent and succinct question that I needed answered, sleep on it, and then in the morning, I would be still and mentally ask, "well?" Not meditating or anything, just be quiet then and listen. And, in very deadpan style, after a few seconds (as if to choose one's words carefully), some answer…

> There's a lot going on upstairs, higher mind stuff. I am older now, and I no longer experience this phenomena. Have I lost it to age, or have I integrated it somehow into my conscious mind? It's similar to what Jaynes described in his "bicameral mind." Man of antiquity "heard" disembodied wisdom dispensed to him, seemingly at random, from an incorporeal source: "gods." Today we simply regard such pseudo-auditory ph…

I view our existence as something like a fractal.

World history is a scrambled mess of lies and amnesia (from repeated collective concussions, heh) Who knows what is truth and what is the Victor writing the history books?

One's life is untraceable - how did we get here? Literally too much went into that story, majority unseen, and none of us can fully say.

And so at the personal level, are thoughts borne out of a chain (or DAG??) of memories that cannot ever be fully traced?

Was my homunculus voice who gave me detailed clues/answers just returning the highest probable solution gleaned from thousands of simulations in the problem space I presented? Of course I should not be privy to such musings, I wouldn't have the patience for it - so it seems to me to be "out of nowhere".

I do sometimes wonder though with all my weird experiences if I am merely the "doer in the body" whereas I have a higher self who is the real "thinker" running things in the background and who has access to the big picture.

Re: New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming

#170

Post by mbrumlow »

I have been saying this for years.

When I was young I somehow figured out how to control my dreams. By the time I was an adult and working in software all my dreams were always iterating over solutions to problems I had at work. And every day I would come into the office with the ability to move forward on projects with insights in leaned that night while sleeping.

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