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> Dreaming remains a mystery to neuroscience. While various hypotheses of why brains evolved nightly dreaming have been put forward, many of these are contradic

> Dreaming remains a mystery to neuroscience. While various hypotheses of why brains evolved nightly dreaming have been put forward, many of these are contradicted by the sparse, hallucinatory, and narrative nature of dreams Dreams are your subconsciousness asking you, the consciousness, about different scenarios or problems it can think of. That is the most obvious explanation to me. When you are awake then disturbing you could be dangerous, so that has to happen when you sleep. And since you the consciousness has to answer those questions you will experience them as fragments, ie "dreams". I don't see why dreams would have to be more complicated than that. It is very simple and explains everything.

endisneigh 4y ago
that doesn't explain everything. why would you subconsciousness ask anything to begin with? amazing how people state things like it's an absolute fact based on absolutely nothing.
- Jensson 4y ago
  > why would you subconsciousness ask anything to begin with? Because it is learning? If you had this supersmart function that could evaluate situations, why not ask it things when you are training another algorithm that tries to evaluate things cheaper? Edit: Or just to categorise things in general.
malteof 4y ago
[Citation needed]
- Jensson 4y ago
  Why would I need a citation to state a theory?
  - qup 4y ago
    Because the internet is in a fad where it's very fashionable to require evidence for any claims, and most opinions.
    - dazc 4y ago
      Citation?
  - IshKebab 4y ago
    The title is stated as fact, not a theory. You have to get all the way to the last sentence in the abstract before they say it's a hypothesis. Misleading title at best. I would say disingenuous.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      Its clickbait, clickbait works, you see lots of discussion here thanks to it (or due to if you don't like it).
  - bumby 4y ago
    Because they stated a hypothesis. In order to be a theory, it needs to be rooted in data.
    - AlecSchueler 4y ago
      It's everyday English though, theory is the common word for what would be called an hypothesis in scientific circles.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
chresko 4y ago
What you're proposing is a dialog between a conscious and subconscious self, while in a dream state, where one or the other (or both) forms of being are fully aware of what questions to ask, and what the answers to those questions are. This doesn't sound simple. It sounds extremely complex. And it doesn't explain everything, like, for example, why some people don't dream or can't remember their dreams. Or why other animals dream, unless all animals have a conscious and subconscious self and are attempting to resolve internal conflict.
- Jensson 4y ago
  > unless all animals have a conscious and subconscious You don't believe animals have a conscious? I thought all humans believes that a dog for example had a consciousness. > What you're proposing is a dialog between a conscious and subconscious self, while in a dream state, where one or the other (or both) forms of being are fully aware of what questions to ask You say this is complex, but there is definitely a subroutine that determines when you should sleep, when to wake you up etc. That routine calling you to do some bookkeeping while you are sleeping doesn't add any complexity at all. I don't see why that routine would be smart enough to do everything else, but not smart enough to ask some questions about things when you sleep...
  - bumby 4y ago
    >You don't believe animals have a conscious? I think it’s a matter of degree. We don’t know what level of consciousness they have relative to our own experience. Can you say with certainty, for example, that a mollusk or sea cucumber has conscious experience?
jklinger410 4y ago
While we're posting conjecture. I believe dreams are just hallucinations due to chemicals that the brain uses to wash and reset itself every night. The dream itself is the remnants of your conscious mind trying to make sense of the state of hallucination it is in. It is as if there is something damaging about the accumulation of memories, both micro (cellular, nervous) and macro (brain memory), that is incompatible with the way animals evolved. I believe we would see similar negative effects of why we need sleep if we tried to replicate it without the actual rest, or if human brains were able to survive on long passed 100 years.
- Jensson 4y ago
  But that can't be it, daydreaming also happens where the subconsciousness takes over even when you are awake. Daydreams doesn't do that washing. But we do know that our subconsciousness can learn to drive or to walk home etc, since we can do that without thinking about it. It has to learn those things somehow, and asking our consciousness about how all the things works, how to react or think about things when we sleep, that is the obvious ways for it to learn and test things from its control. I don't believe you can run the consciousness functions without us remembering it in some way, and that becomes the dreams. Edit: Maybe the hard part to understand is that people don't want to imagine themselves as a small part of a larger system. We aren't the main thing in control of ourselves, instead there is something that can shut us down, turn us up, invoke parts of us at will etc, that is in control. It just reuses some of the code that runs our consciousness to run other evaluations.
  - bumby 4y ago
    Isn’t that incompatible by the very nature that we are aware of our daydreams? I.e., it can’t be subconscious if we’re aware of it. Perhaps you mean daydreaming is when subconscious thoughts transition to conscious awareness? I think this is part of what the other commenter was alluding to with imprecise language.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      > Isn’t that incompatible by the very nature that we are aware of our daydreams? I.e., it can’t be subconscious if we’re aware of it. Perhaps you mean daydreaming is when subconscious thoughts transition to conscious awareness? I don't see how that is different from you being aware of your dreams. Daydreams aren't controlled by you, there is another process you aren't aware of that is feeding you the daydream. Also usually when you daydream you stop being aware of your surroundings, like when walking etc, so some process has to take over that as well. I'm talking about those processes.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
"Subconscious" is not a well defined technical term in psychology anymore, and hasn't been used since the days of Freud when nothing was well-defined anyway. And even Freud regretted his use of the term: "If someone talks of subconsciousness, I cannot tell whether he means the term topographically – to indicate something lying in the mind beneath consciousness – or qualitatively – to indicate another consciousness, a subterranean one, as it were. He is probably not clear about any of it. The only trustworthy antithesis is between conscious and unconscious." The "unconscious" is not understood as being a "hidden consciousness" with its own agency. It's simply understood as the collection of processes in the brain that you are not consciously aware of. All sorts of sensory processing and integration. Things like balance, the syncing of visual and auditory inputs. It's like the brain's standard library. There's very little support for the idea of some sort of dialogue between conscious and unconscious.
- Jensson 4y ago
  The name doesn't matter, but it is a fact that there are processes that we don't control that are very intelligent in our brain. They can find their way home, or drive your car etc, without you having to think about driving or where to go, you just zone out and before you realize it you are home. Any assumption that such a process doesn't exist is therefore disproven immediately, we know that none of those can be true. So, since we know that such a process exists, it asking us questions just like we ask it questions seems like a very useful property to have to handle all sorts of bookkeeping and learning. It is a very obvious mechanic in a brain containing two intelligent systems interacting so tightly as these two does.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    The name matters a lot if you want to clearly communicate your ideas. Your use of terminology leaves so many possible interpretations that it's hard to know exactly what you're trying to communicate. Which makes meaningful discussion nigh-on impossible.
    - Jensson 4y ago
coldtea 4y ago
>Dreams are your subconsciousness asking you, the consciousness, about different scenarios or problems it can think of. That is the most obvious explanation to me. One can't explain the workings of the brain as some Q&A between "conscious" and "unconscious" except as a high level abstraction/metaphor. Else this implies two tiny "thinking" entities inside your brain, where one asks another something.
- hungryforcodes 4y ago
  The most credible explanation to me -- and one that makes logical sense, is that dreaming is about processing the day's events -- possibly for learning, or committing to memory (same thing basically?). Since hearing about this theory, I've been able to pin point my dreams 90% of the time to themes that were discussed or experienced during the day I fell asleep. Including topics I had only worried about but never mentioned to anyone.
Sharlin 4y ago
I’m much more inclined to believe that dreams are pure System 1 stuff and essentially what we perceive is just how it feels inside when the part of the brain that thinks it’s in charge is 100% riding shotgun and the part that’s the actual driver is doing whatever dreams are for. Especially given that dreams are mostly the polar opposite of what System 2 is good at. This hypothesis is at least as good as yours, and requires fewer assumptions. For the record, I’m also very inclined to believe that even in the waking life the “conscious mind” has vastly less command authority than it likes to think, mostly receiving “executive memos” when the actual decision has already been made by the faster parts of the brain.

endisneigh 4y ago

that doesn't explain everything. why would you subconsciousness ask anything to begin with? amazing how people state things like it's an absolute fact based on absolutely nothing.

Jensson 4y ago
> why would you subconsciousness ask anything to begin with? Because it is learning? If you had this supersmart function that could evaluate situations, why not ask it things when you are training another algorithm that tries to evaluate things cheaper? Edit: Or just to categorise things in general.

malteof 4y ago

[Citation needed]

Jensson 4y ago
Why would I need a citation to state a theory?
- qup 4y ago
  Because the internet is in a fad where it's very fashionable to require evidence for any claims, and most opinions.
  - dazc 4y ago
    Citation?
- IshKebab 4y ago
  The title is stated as fact, not a theory. You have to get all the way to the last sentence in the abstract before they say it's a hypothesis. Misleading title at best. I would say disingenuous.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    Its clickbait, clickbait works, you see lots of discussion here thanks to it (or due to if you don't like it).
- bumby 4y ago
  Because they stated a hypothesis. In order to be a theory, it needs to be rooted in data.
  - AlecSchueler 4y ago
    It's everyday English though, theory is the common word for what would be called an hypothesis in scientific circles.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

chresko 4y ago

What you're proposing is a dialog between a conscious and subconscious self, while in a dream state, where one or the other (or both) forms of being are fully aware of what questions to ask, and what the answers to those questions are. This doesn't sound simple. It sounds extremely complex. And it doesn't explain everything, like, for example, why some people don't dream or can't remember their dreams. Or why other animals dream, unless all animals have a conscious and subconscious self and are attempting to resolve internal conflict.

Jensson 4y ago
> unless all animals have a conscious and subconscious You don't believe animals have a conscious? I thought all humans believes that a dog for example had a consciousness. > What you're proposing is a dialog between a conscious and subconscious self, while in a dream state, where one or the other (or both) forms of being are fully aware of what questions to ask You say this is complex, but there is definitely a subroutine that determines when you should sleep, when to wake you up etc. That routine calling you to do some bookkeeping while you are sleeping doesn't add any complexity at all. I don't see why that routine would be smart enough to do everything else, but not smart enough to ask some questions about things when you sleep...
- bumby 4y ago
  >You don't believe animals have a conscious? I think it’s a matter of degree. We don’t know what level of consciousness they have relative to our own experience. Can you say with certainty, for example, that a mollusk or sea cucumber has conscious experience?

jklinger410 4y ago

While we're posting conjecture. I believe dreams are just hallucinations due to chemicals that the brain uses to wash and reset itself every night. The dream itself is the remnants of your conscious mind trying to make sense of the state of hallucination it is in. It is as if there is something damaging about the accumulation of memories, both micro (cellular, nervous) and macro (brain memory), that is incompatible with the way animals evolved. I believe we would see similar negative effects of why we need sleep if we tried to replicate it without the actual rest, or if human brains were able to survive on long passed 100 years.

Jensson 4y ago
But that can't be it, daydreaming also happens where the subconsciousness takes over even when you are awake. Daydreams doesn't do that washing. But we do know that our subconsciousness can learn to drive or to walk home etc, since we can do that without thinking about it. It has to learn those things somehow, and asking our consciousness about how all the things works, how to react or think about things when we sleep, that is the obvious ways for it to learn and test things from its control. I don't believe you can run the consciousness functions without us remembering it in some way, and that becomes the dreams. Edit: Maybe the hard part to understand is that people don't want to imagine themselves as a small part of a larger system. We aren't the main thing in control of ourselves, instead there is something that can shut us down, turn us up, invoke parts of us at will etc, that is in control. It just reuses some of the code that runs our consciousness to run other evaluations.
- bumby 4y ago
  Isn’t that incompatible by the very nature that we are aware of our daydreams? I.e., it can’t be subconscious if we’re aware of it. Perhaps you mean daydreaming is when subconscious thoughts transition to conscious awareness? I think this is part of what the other commenter was alluding to with imprecise language.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    > Isn’t that incompatible by the very nature that we are aware of our daydreams? I.e., it can’t be subconscious if we’re aware of it. Perhaps you mean daydreaming is when subconscious thoughts transition to conscious awareness? I don't see how that is different from you being aware of your dreams. Daydreams aren't controlled by you, there is another process you aren't aware of that is feeding you the daydream. Also usually when you daydream you stop being aware of your surroundings, like when walking etc, so some process has to take over that as well. I'm talking about those processes.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago

"Subconscious" is not a well defined technical term in psychology anymore, and hasn't been used since the days of Freud when nothing was well-defined anyway. And even Freud regretted his use of the term: "If someone talks of subconsciousness, I cannot tell whether he means the term topographically – to indicate something lying in the mind beneath consciousness – or qualitatively – to indicate another consciousness, a subterranean one, as it were. He is probably not clear about any of it. The only trustworthy antithesis is between conscious and unconscious." The "unconscious" is not understood as being a "hidden consciousness" with its own agency. It's simply understood as the collection of processes in the brain that you are not consciously aware of. All sorts of sensory processing and integration. Things like balance, the syncing of visual and auditory inputs. It's like the brain's standard library. There's very little support for the idea of some sort of dialogue between conscious and unconscious.

Jensson 4y ago
The name doesn't matter, but it is a fact that there are processes that we don't control that are very intelligent in our brain. They can find their way home, or drive your car etc, without you having to think about driving or where to go, you just zone out and before you realize it you are home. Any assumption that such a process doesn't exist is therefore disproven immediately, we know that none of those can be true. So, since we know that such a process exists, it asking us questions just like we ask it questions seems like a very useful property to have to handle all sorts of bookkeeping and learning. It is a very obvious mechanic in a brain containing two intelligent systems interacting so tightly as these two does.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  The name matters a lot if you want to clearly communicate your ideas. Your use of terminology leaves so many possible interpretations that it's hard to know exactly what you're trying to communicate. Which makes meaningful discussion nigh-on impossible.
  - Jensson 4y ago

coldtea 4y ago

>Dreams are your subconsciousness asking you, the consciousness, about different scenarios or problems it can think of. That is the most obvious explanation to me. One can't explain the workings of the brain as some Q&A between "conscious" and "unconscious" except as a high level abstraction/metaphor. Else this implies two tiny "thinking" entities inside your brain, where one asks another something.

hungryforcodes 4y ago
The most credible explanation to me -- and one that makes logical sense, is that dreaming is about processing the day's events -- possibly for learning, or committing to memory (same thing basically?). Since hearing about this theory, I've been able to pin point my dreams 90% of the time to themes that were discussed or experienced during the day I fell asleep. Including topics I had only worried about but never mentioned to anyone.

Sharlin 4y ago

I’m much more inclined to believe that dreams are pure System 1 stuff and essentially what we perceive is just how it feels inside when the part of the brain that thinks it’s in charge is 100% riding shotgun and the part that’s the actual driver is doing whatever dreams are for. Especially given that dreams are mostly the polar opposite of what System 2 is good at. This hypothesis is at least as good as yours, and requires fewer assumptions. For the record, I’m also very inclined to believe that even in the waking life the “conscious mind” has vastly less command authority than it likes to think, mostly receiving “executive memos” when the actual decision has already been made by the faster parts of the brain.