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New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming

newyorker.com

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

#251

Post by ceplabs »

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.

Supposedly that's how Keith Richards came up with Satisfaction.

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

#252

Post by dwoldrich »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #247
dwoldrich wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I do remember one episode in my late 30's. My wife had twins. They were born extremely premature and there was a good chance they'd both die as we were at the extreme end of the survivability chart at that time - like by a single day of gestation and with one less day we were in the "recommend do not resuscitate" zone. Most compressed time of anguish I've ever experienced, stunned me for years. Both boys' b…

I had a similar experience (seeing blobs) where in my sleep I saw my baby boy conceived. A few days later my wife took a pregnancy test and it came back negative, I was majorly let down as I had this vision and strong feeling there was a baby. A week later my wife misses her period and she is pregnant. It turns out my vision is more accurate than the 99% accurate pregnancy test. I never had a similar vision since.

Very cool, sweet baby chose you two and you saw it happen, maybe.

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

#253

Post by mavamaarten »

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…

Yup! All good ideas and solutions to hard problems, after becoming stuck, have come to me after a good night's sleep or after removing myself from the "thinking place" and taking a break. Yes I mean the toilet. Many fantastic ideas come to me on the toilet.

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

#254

Post by marc_g »

When I was a kid I wanted to learn how to skateboard. I watched videos on technique a lot, read a bunch of articles, watched Rodney Mullen do some insane foot trickery, and then one night I had a dream of the mechanics of it. Standing on the board as I'd learned online, how to push (not mongo, naturally), and when waking up that day, I asked my friend if I could borrow a skateboard to try.

I remember getting on the board, pushing as I'd dreamed, and voila! Off I went. Something about it did not feel new at all. I'd really visualised the process and it just worked. God I miss skating sometimes, but my self-preservation always far outweighed my desire to eat concrete.

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

#255

Post by qup »

usernotused wrote: post #76
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…

Interestingly, I observed the same when I was practicing the drums. I would fail multiple times to reproduce a drumming part, sleep on it, and succeed on the first try the day after.

This would happen to me when I played pool. I would master a skill overnight, somehow, and come back to the table the next day leveled up--far better than I had left off the day before.

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

#257

Post by flippyhead »

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…

I wonder if you have, but that normally what dreams provide is often just delivered subconsciously. You might be regarding a lot of great ideas as having occured when you were awake even though maybe some would never have come had you not slept/dreamt on them.

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

#258

Post by pstuart »

dwoldrich wrote: post #236
svnt wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who do you attribute the spiritual attack to?

The voices sounded human, like hushed. I can't say in my case. In Christianity, Satan and demons are recognized as a reality. God allows them access to humanity. That doesn't make God evil, and in fact God uses evil forces to drive people to Him. And we are given the choice to go with whatever party we choose, so the whole experiment hinges on choice. I know that the prince of Earth, Satan, isn't sporting; of course…

It's nice that it gives you comfort but it still boggles my mind how all of this gets rationalized.

I also get that it's a personal relationship, but it troubles me because that mindset allows for an incredible amount of damaging behavior for society as a whole. What's worse is that this relationship becomes part of one's self-identity, so that any critique of that worldview is received as a personal attack rather than a philosophical debate.

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

#259

Post by JackFr »

Supermancho wrote: post #140
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…

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…

> 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.

Often called “the imp of the perverse” from the Poe story of the same name.

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

#260

Post by malux85 »

pants2 wrote: post #60
malux85 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you're not challenging yourself with hard enough problems (those include the set of problems Claude cannot solve)

Most software doesn't really have "hard enough problems" unless you're working in deep tech. The majority of SWEs are probably working on some sort of SaaS which isn't super challenging for a model like Opus 4.7. Most of the problems I face are on the product side, which I do need to take time to think through, but it's not as challenging as debugging in the good old days.

Then get a better, more challenging job. Its your responsibility to make sure you stay sharp and keep growing, by pushing at the edge of capability and stretching yourself.

At the gym, the bodybuilder increases the mass of the weights until a workout generates the correct amount of stress, because thats how they get to the next step.

Or dont, stay where you are and atrophy, whatever :))

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