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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 it

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.
    - bumby 4y ago
      That’s the point. I believe neuroscientists don’t consider all dreaming to be “subconscious”. By definition, if they were, you wouldn’t be aware of them and wouldn’t remember them. Lots of people dream (and it can be verified with brain scans) without remembering them.
      - Jensson 4y ago
        > I believe neuroscientists don’t consider all dreaming to be “subconscious”. Can you consciously start to dream whenever you want? Otherwise I'd say that they are invoked by a subconscious process. Also forgetting something doesn't mean that the memory was never there. Even people who remember their dream directly after the night usually quickly forgets about them afterwards, you don't remember most of your dreams from a week ago, so that is easily explained by just saying that they cleaned up the memory of their dream before they woke up.
        bumby 4y ago
        I think you’re conflating concepts like free will and consciousness. I can be conscious of a sound without willing the experience into existence. You’d have to act some of the lucid dreaming folks about the limitations of consciously directing dreams.
        4y ago

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.
  - bumby 4y ago
    That’s the point. I believe neuroscientists don’t consider all dreaming to be “subconscious”. By definition, if they were, you wouldn’t be aware of them and wouldn’t remember them. Lots of people dream (and it can be verified with brain scans) without remembering them.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      > I believe neuroscientists don’t consider all dreaming to be “subconscious”. Can you consciously start to dream whenever you want? Otherwise I'd say that they are invoked by a subconscious process. Also forgetting something doesn't mean that the memory was never there. Even people who remember their dream directly after the night usually quickly forgets about them afterwards, you don't remember most of your dreams from a week ago, so that is easily explained by just saying that they cleaned up the memory of their dream before they woke up.
      - bumby 4y ago
        I think you’re conflating concepts like free will and consciousness. I can be conscious of a sound without willing the experience into existence. You’d have to act some of the lucid dreaming folks about the limitations of consciously directing dreams.
        4y ago