Often when I’m dreaming I “feel” that I’m awake. When I’m awake, however, I always “feel” that I’m awake and have no conscious doubt (except in the philosophical sense) that I’m not dreaming. But logically when I “feel” awake I should believe there is a non-trivial chance that I’m dreaming. This has implications for how I should behave.
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.
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.
You could also say, you often wake up from sleep and feel the urge to tell a story that you had a dream in which you felt like you were awake. But what your brain was really doing, and what "you" were experiencing, while you were asleep is anybody's guess.
Whenever I write about the possibility that we are all just simulations in a full-earth/galactic/universe physics simulation, I have a strange tingling sense in the back of my neck, like the whole thing is going to shut down because too many people are talking about it, and ruining the creator's experiment.
Don't panic. If you weren't meant to guess you're simulated, you wouldn't be in a physics that invites simulation arguments.
Unsimulated JBs in the same situation would also write simulation wonderings, so stopping you from doing so would invalidate the accuracy of the simulation.
"I think a more interesting question to answer is what is the evolutionary explanation for repeated dreams that are almost universal. For example: falling, losing teeth, being naked, etc."
I used to have dreams where my teeth would fall out fairly often. Then I went to the dentist, who noticed that my teeth were getting worn down, probably through grinding them while sleeping. He gave me a plastic mouth-guard thing to wear at night, and now I don't have teeth-falling-out dreams any more. Perhaps dreams of falling also have a physiological explanation (some process inducing vertigo while sleeping), though I'd guess that naked dreams are more based on social fears.
Here's something a bit further along that line. When we create simulations, very often we "go inside" the simulation, for example, becoming characters in Second Life, soldiers in FPS games, etc. The very purpose of the simulation is to provide an environment to "play around" in and experience the simulation from a first person perspective, not a third person perspective.
So if this universe is a simulation, what does that say about who / what we might actually be?
Whenever I write about the possibility that we are all just simulations in a full-earth/galactic/universe physics simulation, I have a strange tingling sense in the back of my neck, like the whole thing is going to shut down because too many people are talking about it, and ruining the creator's experiment.
I feel compelled to continue to write about it, because I'd rather get used to the tingling, than perpetually be afraid of it.
For a long time I was annoyed by how the obvious argument
Am I dreaming? Well, since I'm unsure, I must be dreaming. Time to start flying!didn't occur to me while I was dreaming. But in recent years it seems that it's finally sunk in to even that level.
It's hard to say, of course, but I think that lately, in pretty much all the dreams I remember, I become aware at some point that I'm dreaming. But, strangely, it also seems like I remember fewer of my dreams than I used to.
Here's an interesting interpretation of the purpose of dreams. The brain is a statistical model of the world - an imperfect echo of the entire universe. To learn means to improve the correspondence between the brain's model of the world and the world itself.
In statistics there are various ways of improving the quality of a model. One way is to sample from the model and compare the samples to the real data. In this light we can view dreams as samples from the brain's generative model of (visual) reality. This idea can explain some of the recent research about how learning depends on sleep.
Also, if the samples closely resemble the real data, it means that the model is good. So if you have very realistic dreams, it means your brain has a good model of visual reality.
See "the Wake-Sleep Algorithm for Unsupervised Neural Networks" by Hinton et al for a technical explanation of how this might work.
StirlingWestrup, above, and this are the only stories I've heard of people thinking of dream tests and yet failing to identify the dream. SW is more extreme, since he seems to explicitly phrase it as a dream test, while Patri merely compares his experience to a dream.
For this reason I suspect we are “genetically programmed” to never doubt that we are awake when we “feel” awake even though it would be rational to hold such a doubt.
You are not “genetically programmed” to doubt that you are awake. Note the difference. Dreams are just another bug I didn't care to fix.By the way, what is "quality of life" and "rationality"?
When I dream I'm a different person. The dream person feels like me but its not completely me like the awake me. The dream person is narrowly focused on whatever events are happening from moment to moment(dream events). The dream person is like me on auto pilot. The dream person is not capable of understanding the question "am I dreaming right now?" and all of it's philosophical implications in the way that the awake me can.
There is no dilemma for me. If I can ask and think about the question in the way I can now then it means I'm awake. If a dream somehow invoked the rationality and introspection hardware required to seriously think about the question it would fully activate my brain and wake me up.
When I'm dreaming, I always know (either implicitly or explicitly) that I'm dreaming. That said, the pinching of the self and the looking at text doesn't work as distinguishing tests for me. Its true that pinching yourself in a dream doesn't hurt, but when I'm dreaming I *think* that it does. Similarly, although text is seldom stable in dreams, there is usally a semi-valid explanation presented by my dream such as discovering that the text is an e-book or I've inadvertantly picked up a different book than last time, etc.
One thing that does work for me is looking at a clock. Any clock in a dream will inevitably carry the message "OMG! Wake UP! You're Late for Work!" followed by me waking up in a panic at 3:00 am. I therefore try never to look at clocks in my dreams.
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.
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.
Often when I’m dreaming I “feel” that I’m awake.
You could also say, you often wake up from sleep and feel the urge to tell a story that you had a dream in which you felt like you were awake. But what your brain was really doing, and what "you" were experiencing, while you were asleep is anybody's guess.
Dr. Mark Ast the neuroscientist once argued to me that dreams are possibly the experiential by-product of the brain writing long-term memories.
Whenever I write about the possibility that we are all just simulations in a full-earth/galactic/universe physics simulation, I have a strange tingling sense in the back of my neck, like the whole thing is going to shut down because too many people are talking about it, and ruining the creator's experiment.
Don't panic. If you weren't meant to guess you're simulated, you wouldn't be in a physics that invites simulation arguments.
Unsimulated JBs in the same situation would also write simulation wonderings, so stopping you from doing so would invalidate the accuracy of the simulation.
"I think a more interesting question to answer is what is the evolutionary explanation for repeated dreams that are almost universal. For example: falling, losing teeth, being naked, etc."
I used to have dreams where my teeth would fall out fairly often. Then I went to the dentist, who noticed that my teeth were getting worn down, probably through grinding them while sleeping. He gave me a plastic mouth-guard thing to wear at night, and now I don't have teeth-falling-out dreams any more. Perhaps dreams of falling also have a physiological explanation (some process inducing vertigo while sleeping), though I'd guess that naked dreams are more based on social fears.
JB,
I think you are on to something.
Here's something a bit further along that line. When we create simulations, very often we "go inside" the simulation, for example, becoming characters in Second Life, soldiers in FPS games, etc. The very purpose of the simulation is to provide an environment to "play around" in and experience the simulation from a first person perspective, not a third person perspective.
So if this universe is a simulation, what does that say about who / what we might actually be?
Whenever I write about the possibility that we are all just simulations in a full-earth/galactic/universe physics simulation, I have a strange tingling sense in the back of my neck, like the whole thing is going to shut down because too many people are talking about it, and ruining the creator's experiment.
I feel compelled to continue to write about it, because I'd rather get used to the tingling, than perpetually be afraid of it.
For a long time I was annoyed by how the obvious argument
Am I dreaming? Well, since I'm unsure, I must be dreaming. Time to start flying!didn't occur to me while I was dreaming. But in recent years it seems that it's finally sunk in to even that level.
It's hard to say, of course, but I think that lately, in pretty much all the dreams I remember, I become aware at some point that I'm dreaming. But, strangely, it also seems like I remember fewer of my dreams than I used to.
Here's an interesting interpretation of the purpose of dreams. The brain is a statistical model of the world - an imperfect echo of the entire universe. To learn means to improve the correspondence between the brain's model of the world and the world itself.
In statistics there are various ways of improving the quality of a model. One way is to sample from the model and compare the samples to the real data. In this light we can view dreams as samples from the brain's generative model of (visual) reality. This idea can explain some of the recent research about how learning depends on sleep.
Also, if the samples closely resemble the real data, it means that the model is good. So if you have very realistic dreams, it means your brain has a good model of visual reality.
See "the Wake-Sleep Algorithm for Unsupervised Neural Networks" by Hinton et al for a technical explanation of how this might work.
StirlingWestrup, above, and this are the only stories I've heard of people thinking of dream tests and yet failing to identify the dream. SW is more extreme, since he seems to explicitly phrase it as a dream test, while Patri merely compares his experience to a dream.
Evolution - Quality of life is utility, rationality is maximizing your expected utility.
For this reason I suspect we are “genetically programmed” to never doubt that we are awake when we “feel” awake even though it would be rational to hold such a doubt.
You are not “genetically programmed” to doubt that you are awake. Note the difference. Dreams are just another bug I didn't care to fix.By the way, what is "quality of life" and "rationality"?
When I dream I'm a different person. The dream person feels like me but its not completely me like the awake me. The dream person is narrowly focused on whatever events are happening from moment to moment(dream events). The dream person is like me on auto pilot. The dream person is not capable of understanding the question "am I dreaming right now?" and all of it's philosophical implications in the way that the awake me can.
There is no dilemma for me. If I can ask and think about the question in the way I can now then it means I'm awake. If a dream somehow invoked the rationality and introspection hardware required to seriously think about the question it would fully activate my brain and wake me up.
Intersting post, but it fails to take into account something I experience all the time: Being awake but feeling like I'm dreaming.
When I'm dreaming, I always know (either implicitly or explicitly) that I'm dreaming. That said, the pinching of the self and the looking at text doesn't work as distinguishing tests for me. Its true that pinching yourself in a dream doesn't hurt, but when I'm dreaming I *think* that it does. Similarly, although text is seldom stable in dreams, there is usally a semi-valid explanation presented by my dream such as discovering that the text is an e-book or I've inadvertantly picked up a different book than last time, etc.
One thing that does work for me is looking at a clock. Any clock in a dream will inevitably carry the message "OMG! Wake UP! You're Late for Work!" followed by me waking up in a panic at 3:00 am. I therefore try never to look at clocks in my dreams.