Sure, another Rupert Sheldrake
New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming
281–289 of 289 posts
Re: New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
I painfully recognize the value of community offered, as well as a sense of purpose. There's plenty of good things to be had from it. But just as opiates can remove pain and make one "feel good", they have serious risks as well. Marx's comment to this effect is spot on. We are experiencing a battle of religious fundamentalism and anti-intellectualism that impacts us all. This is why I understand and respect the perso…
No offense taken, I see you are wrestling with the idea of faith. The way I look at it, God doesn't just meet you where you are, he pursues. So, if you are meant to surrender, it's a good thing. That just means you were one that didn't get away. Question everything, but don't fight it unnecessarily. On the other stuff, I will only observe that war is not a human thing. It's too organized, requires inhuman (evil) top…
I'm actually not wrestling at all with faith -- my point is that I understand the attraction and how in individual contexts it can be benign, but as a whole is the foundation of incredibly dangerous outcomes.
I appreciate your recognition of ugliness that can come out when it is wielded as a weapon, but it's still in the context of "you're holding it wrong".
> war is not a human thing
Au contraire, mon frere. It's been part of humanity the whole time (and we recently learned about chimpanzees doing the same thing. And here you illustrate a facet of my concern: ascribing horrible behavior to some supernatural entities rather than the the reality of human psychology and power dynamics.
This is not just a philosophical exercise -- this is going forward at full tilt and literally represents an existential threat: https://thefulcrum.us/democracy/project-2025-christian-natio...
You must be aware of the fate of heretics and blasphemers in theocracies, right? That is what faith brings when allowed access to power.
Re: New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 s…
> 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!"
Sounds like the Geoff Day scene in Infinite Jest ... the sound resonance of a window fan and a violin opens a portal and something Lovecraftian comes through: "a small part of the wing of something far too large to be seen in totality."
Re: New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
No offense taken, I see you are wrestling with the idea of faith. The way I look at it, God doesn't just meet you where you are, he pursues. So, if you are meant to surrender, it's a good thing. That just means you were one that didn't get away. Question everything, but don't fight it unnecessarily. On the other stuff, I will only observe that war is not a human thing. It's too organized, requires inhuman (evil) top…
I'm actually not wrestling at all with faith -- my point is that I understand the attraction and how in individual contexts it can be benign, but as a whole is the foundation of incredibly dangerous outcomes. I appreciate your recognition of ugliness that can come out when it is wielded as a weapon, but it's still in the context of "you're holding it wrong". > war is not a human thing Au contraire, mon frere. It's be…
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Re: New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming
#285Earlier 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.
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.)
"banana big but banana skin is bigger" - supposedly Orwell
Re: New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming
#286During 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…
In French, there's a saying: "la nuit porte conseil". Roughly translates to "the night advises", and it means it might be better to sleep on it. I recall my father (also a mathematician, incidentally) often repeating this to me.
Bulgarian "утрото е по-мъдро от вечерта" (Morning is wiser then evening)
Re: New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming
#287My wife used to think that I had terrible sleep apnea because I'd repeatedly quit breathing for a minute or two at a time and then gasp for air, but it turned out I was just dreaming about freediving for lobsters.
Uh, do you freedive while awake?
Yes of course, I was in a mountain lake looking for walleye yesterday!
Re: New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming
#288I 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…
Did you try to harness this power again? I.e. seed your dreams to solve problems?
While I grudgingly recognize that your brain is indeed significantly sharper the younger you are (so epiphanies like that become less likely through the years), I think this experience came from subconsciously recognizing patterns, and gathering enough experience and interest so it could be pieced together by sleeping on it.
In the 90s I was obsessed with Tetris, and actually found new strategies while dreaming. It is such a simple game that the dreams weren't unrealistic, contrary to other dream epiphanies that turned out to be gibberish to the awakened mind.