Dreams

Excelsior

I realise this isnt ideal books board conversation but I felt this was the best place to put it.
De Vore has been talking a lot about popular science books which is great. The king of popular science books is Edward O Wilson, two time nobel prize winner (almost certain of that, but not quite.)
anyway, in his last book, Consilience, which frames all my ideas on science and its role in society and society's responsibility to hold a positive enlightened attitude towards science as oppossed to using it for political or financial gain, he talks about theconcept that freams are nought but a subconcious expression of our brains frustration at being deprived of stimulus while asleep. geddit? dreams are just busy work for our brains.
how do the quake nerds round here feel about that theory. or do you read something into the whole dream meaning thing?
once again, this is only tangentially related to books, i apologise, but it needs a serious non flaming response. ie- come here and not to quake boards.

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It is so lonely here in my indecipherable tower of speech impedimency

TwoShedsJackson

Even when fully awake we only used an estimated 6 per cent of our total brain capacity, thus when asleep dreams are the product of our active minds, as mentioned.

You basically dream about whatever is drifting through your subconscious while you are falling asleep - some of my dreams are deeply bizarre, others are utterly mundane. I rarely remember them, nor do I ever see myself in a dream, nor read much into them.

One interesting point about dreams though, because your brain has little or nothing else to do while you sleep, dreams are very tightly compressed in time - no matter how long you think a given dream has been going on, it does not last more than thirty seconds in reality.

oh, and perhaps if you're looking for people's opinions, calling them nerds isn't the best way to go about it??

[This message has been edited by Castor Troy (edited 04-05-2000).]

Shiminay

Ya, but admit it Cas, we are nerds

It's a really interesting subject that I (to my loss) know nothing about. I think I'll check out that book you mentioned Excel. Available in the usual haunts?

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All the best,

Dav
@B^)
My page of stuff

Shinji

Dreams are odd, to say the least. The concept that dreams are an expression of things that your subconscious knows but the rest of you hasn't twigged yet is an interesting one, and I tend to give it a lot of respect, because in my experience thinking over the contents of dreams has often revealed things I hadn't realised before.

During dreaming, bits of our brains that don't get everyday use are aired. This may possibly explain some interesting things that happen in dreams - I know a few people (and in fact, I'm one of them) who have had very vivid and frightening dreams about someone dying, only to discover later that someone they know did actually die around the time that they were dreaming about it. This is a little too eerie to be pure co-incidence (it sure as hell scared the living bejesus out of me for a couple of weeks)...

I think there's more to be learned from dreams about the human psyche than a lot of people may believe...

Pretence

A little point that is probably of no use.

Everybody dreams, although some never remember them.

You only remember a dream if you wake up before it is finished

BossArky

Here I'm getting a bit scared here.

Last Wednesday morning I awoke to remember that I had just dreamed that my girlfriend had been held hostage by an axe murder(who was the guy playing the guitar the night before here in an Irish pub in Munich).He was going to kill here or hurt here...so I legged it up the road to my neighbours for help..and they were weird in the dream...but anyway...
So, me wakes up a tad shocked and sweaty...so later on I come into work and I have this email from one of my friends girlfriends.She was telling me that she was after having her second dream in a short while that my girlfriend also died...like wtf?...that is spooky.
Just got off the phone from my girlie and she was trying to stop her knees from knocking, that was some spooky coincidence.

Very Weird.

SheroN

Bah thats nothing...I had a dream I was home alone...and I got a phone call to say...my god father...had been killed by a bum in london...stabbed 12 times in the neck he was....that was pretty ****ed up..

i dreamt a while back to...that one saturday morning i was in bed to be woken by the fone...i answered it and it was the vatican telling me the pope was dying.....and he wanted me at his death bed...so off i went to rome...and the pope died in his bed before my eyes.

DeVore

When my computer crashes it sometimes spews out a pile of stuff it had in memory at the time.

I dont sift through it for the source code to MS Windows, the face of Jesus, some premonition of my own death or a deeper meaning of life.
I just reboot.

Similarly dreams are the garbage of the brain getting worked over to clean out the latent energy of the neural cells.

There is much research into dream theory (I've studied it for my final year project believe it or not).
However, there are things I have personally seen the brain do which defy all logic and all science as we understand it AT THE MOMENT. It gives you a moment of pause.

When cycling 120km 5 days a week for 2 months my brain would go into what can only be described as endorphine zen land. Your brain takes off completely on the craziest tangents of imagination. After the first few times you kinda get used to it and start to enjoy it. Its very weird tho, but highly creative.

The point is that I think cycling and sensory deprivation tanks etc do the same thing as Shinji is getting at. Lack of stimulus might leave the brain so understimulated that it effectively says, ho hum, better amuse myself while I clean all this gunk out.

Just a thought (lol I kill myself).

DeV.

Shinji

Exactly Dev... The brain starts going off and using bits of itself that perhaps we've forgotten about, or don't know how to access.

I've had a vivid and very frightening dream about death and a funeral, while halfway around the world from the place where someone I knew quite well was dying, at that very moment in time - I didn't even know the person was ill.

I don't believe in coincidences that big.

Ja,
Rob

Pretence

I agree,
fraky things just happen. Sometimes its helps to format a reason or some logic behind these events. But at the end of the day they are just a fluke

Excelsior

cool response. i think it has been hit on the head for me. the brain, like a shark must always keep doing what it does. when we sleep, dreams are its busywork. occaisionally the random images that are evoked by the subconcious can be interpreted, but the actual dream had no meaning besides the one you apply to it.
by the way castor- its been about 8 years since anyone took offence at the term nerd. it is merely a statement about the kinds of people who visit the boards.
kharn you can get the book everywhere, very famous. but i dont think it is in softback yet.

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It is so lonely here in my indecipherable tower of speech impedimency

Shiminay

Thanks for that - I'll be making a trip to town tonight I think.

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All the best,

Dav
@B^)
My page of stuff

Gamblor

Anyonee try Lucid Dreaming ???
I used to and it was great !!!!!
however i do think that dreams do mean something, sorry what happens in dreams means a lot the dreams them self is the brian ticking over.
Lucid dream is where you realise you are dreaming but you can stay with the dream and have fun, like give you self super human strenght, or fly ( always found that hard to do) and when you first start Lucid dreaming all you do is have A good SH*g with anyone you want !!!! well back to sleep with me for now !!! :P

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***** Feel my Evil Neon Claws *****

WhiteWashMan

you are all freaks

what ever happened to dreams of world domination, the perfect rocket jump or 6 super models on their knees before you?

i can never remember my dreams after about 2 minutes anyway....

SheroN

Wan eamo......u lunatic.

Paladin

1. - World domination. Meet Bill Gates.
2. - The perfect rocket jump. Now thats just freaky
3. - 6 supermodels on their knees. Only 6?

Blitzkrieger

which way are they facing?

Isn't the current popular theroy that your brain is sorting the days expiences and storing them in memory. Sorry to use computer analaligies but I'm a computer science student for christs sake

I had the ultimate dream though. I dreamt of a lotto ticket. Nothing else in the dream but a lotto ticket, so since I was kinda half awake I concentrated on the numbers to remeber them. I fell into a deeper sleep but lo! in the morning I remembered all six numbers. I wrote them down and bought a ticket with those same six numbers later that same day.

Need you ask that they were winning lotto numbers? Why then you ask do u hear me *****ing about the price of ISDN around the boards?

Because they were the winning numbers for the Saturday after! Maybe I should have concentrated on the date too.

Bard

aauuugh... I ****ing hate that... I oughtta stop using the same numbers every week for the Lotto and just do quick-picks. Chance, and my own dumb luck, dictates that the week I DO forget to do it, my regular numbers will come up.

Personally, I've a lot of thoughts on dreams- I do believe they mean something, but not every time. Basically, I wish I knew more, so I could argue my opinion on it better, but I don't. Putting it simply though, I'd never underestimate them, and I sure as hell hope that some of mine come true... and soon