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Have you stopped to think for a second where science would be if every possible hypothesis was thrown out as soon as its inventor realized he couldn't conclusiv

Have you stopped to think for a second where science would be if every possible hypothesis was thrown out as soon as its inventor realized he couldn't conclusively prove it in a day? Also exactly the fact that it hasn't been fully proved out yet is why the nuance is missing. But now all the sudden you want them to be able to give you an explanation of the nuanced mechanism that prevents visual from taking over everything else? (Plus why on earth would it? What are you even talking about? I'm seeing all day long, but I'm also smelling hearing touching and tasting) Make up your mind!

tgv 6y ago
1. If it's just a hypothesis, write it up in a journal, don't put it in Time magazine. 2. The hypothesis is as unprovable as they come: not only do we not have any idea on how this process of taking over other brain areas would work, if you knew how it worked, you couldn't build brains that lack this mechanism but are identical for the rest, and set up an experiment in which half of the brains (modified and original) would dream and the rest wouldn't. Because that seems to be about the only experiment that could truly falsify this idea. 3. It doesn't explain why only the visual cortex is susceptible to this, when we know that other brain areas also can adapt. The argument "it's dark" doesn't cut the mustard, because the effect should go away as soon as we open our eyes, which is around 2/3rds of the day. BTW, babies can't see, so it's odd that so many of them manage to develop a normally functioning visual cortex. 4. Sleep inhibits the senses, so how can the areas they input to take over, and why don't their areas get taken over? 5. They don't even attempt to prove that REM sleep and REM sleep alone activates the visual cortex and only that. > Make up your mind! That was under the assumption that the hypothesis was true. It seems to lead to rather unintuitive predictions. And I do like a theory to not be in apparent contradiction with simple observations. So no, I have no reason to take it seriously, and people that (think they) don't dream shouldn't worry.
- dwighttk 6y ago
  Don’t worry, I’m not worried. I hear a lot about people struggling with sleep and so I recognize that it is probably a widespread problem, but I sleep like a rock most nights and have little to no stress about it.

tgv 6y ago

1. If it's just a hypothesis, write it up in a journal, don't put it in Time magazine. 2. The hypothesis is as unprovable as they come: not only do we not have any idea on how this process of taking over other brain areas would work, if you knew how it worked, you couldn't build brains that lack this mechanism but are identical for the rest, and set up an experiment in which half of the brains (modified and original) would dream and the rest wouldn't. Because that seems to be about the only experiment that could truly falsify this idea. 3. It doesn't explain why only the visual cortex is susceptible to this, when we know that other brain areas also can adapt. The argument "it's dark" doesn't cut the mustard, because the effect should go away as soon as we open our eyes, which is around 2/3rds of the day. BTW, babies can't see, so it's odd that so many of them manage to develop a normally functioning visual cortex. 4. Sleep inhibits the senses, so how can the areas they input to take over, and why don't their areas get taken over? 5. They don't even attempt to prove that REM sleep and REM sleep alone activates the visual cortex and only that. > Make up your mind! That was under the assumption that the hypothesis was true. It seems to lead to rather unintuitive predictions. And I do like a theory to not be in apparent contradiction with simple observations. So no, I have no reason to take it seriously, and people that (think they) don't dream shouldn't worry.

dwighttk 6y ago
Don’t worry, I’m not worried. I hear a lot about people struggling with sleep and so I recognize that it is probably a widespread problem, but I sleep like a rock most nights and have little to no stress about it.