Glimpses of the future in dreams

[Midnight_Carnival]

Theory 1: dreams are not very specific and badly remembered, our 'dreams' are in fact millions of random misfiring of synapses which (on waking) are cobbled together into a story, 99% of what we dream we do not remember, then when something happens which reminds us of something we dreamed about, we remold the dream and say "I dreamed that this would happen - exactly!"
Theory 2: 'time' is not in any way linear, but our perception thereof is - what was suggested above is true of or waking lives, later (perhaps when we sleep?) we put it together to form a coherent story. If nothing is quite as we percieve it, who is to say what is 'real' and what is 'a dream'?

I'm not 50/50, I believe both 100%, and further, I believe that humans have certain spiritual powers which few ever understand or use to their full capacity, in addition to which I believe that we are surrounded, inundated, by countless spirits who exert influence over out lives, the latter two views, I think are difficult to express logically and I have no interest in discussing them further not here and now anyway since I'm sceptical abuot the sort of interest such a discussion would attract. But I would not like the first two (theory 1+2) to be discounted on account of beliefs expressed.
Does anybody properly understand dreams? Do we understand waking and conciousness - those who claim to are generally those of us who have reall ****ed around with it more than the rest of us, and what they say is suspect on account of the large number of happycandies they consume in their -ahem- studies. How do we scientifically/objectively measure the media through which we access the universe around us? Even machines are made/programmed by humans and their feedback is certainly interpereted by humans.
Have you woken up yet this morning

[nuorc]

I probably don't understand dreams properly, but I do believe it's not only random misfiring.

A lot of dreams deal with stuff that happened earlier (that day), and one part of this "digestion" is exchange of the hemispheres/integrating contents of them.

[Blarumyrran]

'time' is not in any way linear, but our perception thereof is

Yes. Nature's Time is Cubic and perpetual. Linear Time is wrong and suicidal. There is proof that 3 dimensional math is erroneous, and that linear Time is actually of a Cubic nature.

[Midnight_Carnival]

thanks, I'll go and mediate on that

[Gambit]

He was friendly and a nice person.

Well now we know it was just a dream!

[nuorc]

He was friendly and a nice person.

Well now we know it was just a dream!

Maybe a glimpse at the future?

[SkyOne]

He was friendly and a nice person.

Well now we know it was just a dream!

Since Boru is not active, not many users have made me laugh on the forums, but at this one...

Spoiler:

I cannot stop laughing. Sorry...

[Mountain_King]

'time' is not in any way linear, but our perception thereof is

Of course it's not. From a non subjective viewpoint, It's more like a wibbly wobbly ball of timey-wimey... stuff.

[Dugi]

'time' is not in any way linear, but our perception thereof is - what was suggested above is true of or waking lives, later (perhaps when we sleep?) we put it together to form a coherent story. If nothing is quite as we percieve it, who is to say what is 'real' and what is 'a dream'?

Sorry for an overly materialistic opinion about this, but:
Time is generally known to be non-linear, due to Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, but on Earth, as we perceive it, we are almost unable to notice its non-linearity. So let's assume that it's linear. I don't believe in quasi-scientific theories of people like Erich von Däniken that electrons are points of mass, finite mass (9,1.10-31kg) at zero volume, therefore they are like small black holes, just too small to devour anything, and because of something related to black holes the time flows there backwards, and that our subconscious brain can read the information about future from it.
Time in dreams flows with a regular speed, it just happens that the situation changes too chaotically so that your perception tries to repair the problems with time jumps (you walk home, but you're suddenly at home, you are trying to explain it that you just walked there, but it is just a change of situation).

This is generally considered as truth by science:
Dreams are known to be chaotically recalled memories, modified by your perception to me more realistic, or better to say, possible to comprehend at all. Everything you dream about is real, it's just stitched together in a way too chaotic to make you notice it, every person in dreams is a person you have really met, but it might have a different role assigned to it, an unimportant shop assistant you would never recognise cognitively may have different clothes, might be this time a murdered that hunts you with a knife, in a place that is absolutely unrelated to the shop where you've seen him... The part of brain that is supposed to criticise the perception is shut down, so you will accept all the absurdities and not realise that it just can't be real; when you are close to waking, it turns on and makes you realise it was a dream. It is probably a process to practice your skills at dealing with various situations, if everything occurs correctly, all information is erased and you remember nothing - because if you did, your memory would be quickly filled with useless crap, because people dream like 3 hours per night (or day). Because of this deletion process, dreams in memory are insanely evanescent, when you wake up, you may remember anything, run through it several times without problems, and after a few minutes, even if you were thinking about it all the time, you forget most of it. That's why writing the dreams down is pretty much the only way to remember the dream.
Lucid dreams are something different, this time you recall the things you want, so it's less chaotic, and because it is still some sort of dream, the memories still go into the perception centre making you feel like it was real. They are also useless for the brain, you don't practice anything, you don't do other things you do while asleep... but the body is still in sleep paralysis (the thing that probably is behind the myth of succubi), so it is resting properly.

Based on my own experience:
I frequently wanted to learn some information. No matter if I was just offline and needed to look something up, or it was too late to read, but I wanted to finish reading at night. And several times I dreamed about learning that information, but in all cases that information was just some gibberish - some words chaotically put together without any meaning, but as the criticising part of brain was shut down, I didn't realise it. I read a few lines in a book, and I was asking myself (better to say, my memory) what the hell did I read, there was no information on these line - because of this error, I woke up. Or today, I read about receiving a PM from Konrad2 (I actually really received it, but although there was no way to know about it, this wasn't a glimpse of future - I was expecting to receive it), I read it, and when I was trying to compose a reply, I realised I had absolutely no idea what I read - words with no meaning together, and inability to notice something was wrong isn't a nice combination. On the other hand, I dream about endless lines of WML code with highlighted syntax, and sometimes I notice that something it that chaos is actually a good idea - but this isn't an information learned by supernatural means, it's rather something I made up, and I should be able to make it up at any time.

[HomerJ]

...

Thanks for this, always nice to see people being rational.

About the lucid dreaming, if you ever are questioning if you are in a dream or not, for me two things usually help:
Looking at my hands, the fingers can't be seen separated clearly in a dream.
Looking at a LED display, the numbers change chaotically in a dream.

The thing is you usually don't do these things in dreams and there are also a million other things that probably don't make sense in a dream but you are not questioning them usually. The trick is to do these things like looking at your hands or displays closely in everyday situations, so it will be a common procedure to you, and maybe carried over into your dreams.


Greetz
HomerJ

[Dugi]

Looking at a LED display, the numbers change chaotically in a dream.

I noticed it, but it never made me realise anything, I didn't consider it strange. In dreams, lots of details are missing or chaotic, but because of the inactivity of critical brain centre, you never speculate about it. If you remember somebody lying in a dream, you noticed the lie instantly, not after some logical thinking - you simply cannot think normally in dreams, you are using a different part of the brain to think while dreaming (but actually kids mostly think with different parts of their brain than adults, that's why kids think strangely sometimes).
But what is the purpose of learning to notice you are dreaming? You would awaken much more frequently as a result, and it is against the purpose of dreams.

What I forgot to mention above, was the feeling that you had seen something before, you cannot remember when, so you assume it was in a dream with future revealed, the déjà vu. It is not related to any supernatural revelation, it is not a glitch in Matrix, it is a memory error that makes you recall something exactly when you put it into your memory, and because you perceive things about a half-second after that they happen (the time perception corrects this in a strange way), it may actually happen that you recall it even before you really (notice that you) see it. Thanks to this, you can remember things before you see them.
There are also other memory errors, like jamais vu (memory wrongly assumes an error occurred and blocks something - this can happen if you say a word 100 times, and then somebody asks you what it means, you may become absolutely sure that there is no such word) or presque vu (happens quite frequently, you can remember a load of details about something, but you simply cannot remember what it was; for example you try to recall a rare word, you recall its approximate length, whether it sounded like originating from Latin, where you first saw that word - but not the word itself).

[HomerJ]

Looking at a LED display, the numbers change chaotically in a dream.

I noticed it, but it never made me realise anything, I didn't consider it strange.

Yes, I only could use this once and only after having read about this "reality check". The hands worked more often, but once again, only after I have read about it, so probably from now on, you can use it Dugi.

But what is the purpose of learning to notice you are dreaming? You would awaken much more frequently as a result, and it is against the purpose of dreams.

You are right, during most dreams that area in the brain for consciences is inactive, but not in all of them, so, when you (can) become aware of your dream, your brain is at it's full potential. You can learn things, make experiences that you could never have otherwise (like flying for example).
Lucid dreaming can help people that suffer from nightmares, because they can alter the environment at their will and escape threatening situations.

For those of you who'd like to try, spinning around on the spot can take you to a whole new scene inside a dream (at least it worked for me a few times).

There are also popular legends about people and their dreams, like Einstein getting the idea for E=MC^2 and Paul McCartney getting the inspiration for "Yesterday". How much of that is fact, I can not say.

From my experience, the dream vanished more quickly after me having realized it is a dream and I would actually wake up. In how far this is "against" the biological intent of the dream, I don't know.
Don't get me wrong though, I can count the instances of lucid dreaming I experienced in my whole life with only my two hands. So it's really not dimishinig my sleep much all together, but you see, it leaves a strong impression

Greetz
HomerJ

[Hulavuta]

@HomerJ: Interestingly enough, I did have an unintentional reality check in a dream once, and this did lead me to realizing it was a dream. However, the situation was very realistic as I was only in class. However, in reality I was on Winter Break at the time. So in my dream, I realized there was no way that I could be in class, because I was on break.