Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

These are all interesting experiences, but we have to take into account that not al people experience dreams and waking reality as most. I, myself, find it very hard to distinguish between dreams and wake reality; philosophically speaking, there is no difference. My memories of dreams present themselves the same as 'actual' memories. And so, for myself, i can never 100% guarantee that I am awake right now.

I ALWAYS dream in first person. I have NEVER experienced lucid dreams, or that realisation that I am dreaming, when dreaming. The 'pinch test' doesn't work for two reasons: 1, I am not in control of my dreams, so I cannot decide to test myself. 2, If I experience pain in a dream, it is experienced the exactly the same as being awake. Pain being a mental event (philosophically termed 'mental event', despite whether mental events exist, to which I believe they do), if experienced in dreams, how then can one distinguish it from the experience of pain in waking reality?

I realise that I am quite unique in the topic of dream experience. I know this from philosophical classes, and discussions with friends. And I may be alone with how I experience dreams, but this IS how I experience them; and so long as there is one variable, there cannot be a unified theory/concept/thought.

Other than 'in waking reality' I go to bed and rise from bed, I have NO way to distinguish dreams from reality. It's a very weird, scary, exciting, and philosophically interesting experience.

Expand full comment
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I assign higher utility to eating spinach when I'm dreaming, completely independently of any doubt of my awake status.

I do not consider instant gratification to be beneficial inside of dreams. In fact, if anything I would prefer my dreaming self to be more self controlled than my waking self. I would thereby benefit from reinforcing and processing the outcomes of rational behaviors without some of the associated stress.

I reject the implicit assumption that we should want to submit to instant gratification in our dreams. I accept your conclusion. I acknowledge that there is likely a good reason for evolution to have made it difficult for us to be aware that we are dreaming. I wouldn't trust people with that sort of information either. At least, not until they were able to rationally explain the purpose of dreams and demonstrate that they can use that knowledge to effectively achieve reproductive goals.

Expand full comment
25 more comments...

No posts