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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

#41

Post by spudlyo »

petra wrote: post #23

Have anybody managed to use sleep to learn language? How ?

While I think it's a compelling idea that playing speech in your target language while you sleep can help, I don't think it's ever been demonstrated to work.

Having said that, that sleep is incredibly important for learning anything! I practice my language learning during the day, a little bit every day, and I prioritize getting good sleep. This is mostly just trying to go to bed at the same time every night, avoiding alcohol, and giving myself an hour before bed with low lights to read and calm my mind. When you sleep, memories are consolidated, organized, and tagged for long-term storage. I will sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and bouncing around in my mind are echos of phrases and words from my target language. I figure it's working.

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

#42

Post by pants2 »

renegade-otter wrote: post #38
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…

Yeah, when you are stuck, put away that red bull and step away from the keyboard, kids.

This might be why agentic development/vibe coding leads to more burn out. It's been a long time since I've truly been 'stuck' on a problem and needed to sleep on it to figure out the answer. Now I just ask Claude to fix it until it's fixed...

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

#43

Post by chrz »

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #15
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yep, same. The dream gets incredibly boring after you get control of it.

but but, you can do whatever you want?

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

#44

Post by Argonaut998 »

notahacker wrote: post #29
squibonpig wrote: post #16

It's gonna be really sad in 10-15 years when all the sc bros are hustling and grindsetting their dreams away.

Can't wait for the LinkedIn posts about their day to start even earlier than the 4am workout and 5am meditation with strategic dreaming between 1am and 3am. Type LUCID in the comments for a how to guide...

Already done https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andyeung_i-just-met-a-founder...

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

#46

Post by neom »

petra wrote: post #23

Have anybody managed to use sleep to learn language? How ?

I have dyslexia and in high school learning my lines for plays was really hard but I loved doing plays, so I recorded myself saying my lines on tape (yah, I'm old) and used double cassette to fill 2 tapes with them, then run them over night while I was sleeping. I've never used this in my adult life but it worked pretty well for my lines and I suppose maybe you could use it to learn a language?

Edit: Claude tells me I was a head of my time, apparently it works but not net new, you have to also be working on it awake, it's called 'targeted memory reactivation (TMR)": https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12592824/

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

#47

Post by dgb23 »

Aside, but I struggled a long time with regular sleep. I have been a night owl since I was a kid. I experience late hours as magical, don’t know how to describe it. So I always slept too little, then not at all, then drifting and sleeping in.

But I somehow managed to have a regular schedule and now I start to sleep at 00:00-01:00 very often, sometimes even earlier.

No idea how I managed to do that. I guess I just did improve many small things, like getting rid of bad habits, being more content, appreciating sleep more, prioritizing things differently.

I wish everyone good, healthy sleep.

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

#50

Post by lazyasciiart »

jboggan wrote: post #24

My 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?
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