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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 wo

by 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.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    > You’d have to act some of the lucid dreaming folks about the limitations of consciously directing dreams I'm very good at that though, as I said it is just a process that is asking you questions, and just like you can steer a conversation with what you say you can steer where that process takes the dream by how you behave in it. It will continue asking you about the stuff until it is no longer curious about the situation, and when it is it will steer the dream (conversation) to some other subject, putting you in some completely different environment etc. I'm not sure why that interpretation is so hard to believe. And I think that process also does a lot of computation that doesn't need to ask the conscious parts about anything, in those cases you wouldn't dream, its just doing something else.
    - af3d 4y ago
      Occasionally I too have this ability to "wake up" within a dream and thus exert at least some form of influence over it, such as an ability to fly around the dreamscape. I even came up with a system to reliably verify whether or not I was indeed in a dream state. It's very simple actually. The first thing I do is look around for something with writing on it. Having done that I then turn my head and then back. If the wording has changed, I am dreaming. If I don't do something like that, I fall back into the "subconscious dreaming state" much faster than I would have than otherwise.
    - bumby 4y ago
      It’s not that the conjecture is hard to believe, it’s that it’s being muddled by sloppy language. If, as you say, you are aware of something, it is by definition now in your conscious mind. The idea that it originates somewhere else is not a new concept. Buddhists have been claiming “thoughts think themselves” for a long time.
      - Jensson 4y ago
        There is no precise language for this though, and if I clarified everything the comment would be too long so nobody would read it. By spreading out people asking for clarification like this we actually get to talk about it in a natural way. > If, as you say, you are aware of something, it is by definition now in your conscious mind Yeah, but that is a trivial statement, we all know that "thoughts popping into our head" means that they came from somewhere, I'm not talking about that effect. To me the difference is like between a function call and a process. The dream is some other part of the brain that wants to know something that you are good at answering, so it asks you that question by posing it in a language you understand, ie the "dream", and then you answer by reacting to the dream, it isn't waking you up it is just making a quick invocation. This is different than what you are talking about, unless I misunderstood you completely. When you are awake it is more that you are querying the other systems and they put thoughts in your mind as responses. Those responses will be calculated before you are aware of them, creating the "you made the choice before you think you did" effect, but you are still querying them. While when you dream those systems query you and you answer back with your reaction to the dream, meaning you have basically no control at all, and the shape and feel of the dream, when to dream, what to dream etc is decided entirely by that other part. Or in other words, "dreaming" would be the feeling of being the subsystem others are querying, while "awake" is the feeling of being the main system that is querying others. And just like you ask your subsystems a lot of questions for all sort of reasons, I don't see why our other systems would have just one reason to ask us anything, they probably ask all sort of things for all sort of reasons, as long as querying you for information is useful to them they will do it.
- taylorius 4y ago
  But dreaming involves the conscious mind - in that while dreaming, your conscious awareness has been switched into operating in another mode, playing back some internally generated scenario, rather than interacting with the external world.

by bumby 4y ago

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.
- Jensson 4y ago
  > You’d have to act some of the lucid dreaming folks about the limitations of consciously directing dreams I'm very good at that though, as I said it is just a process that is asking you questions, and just like you can steer a conversation with what you say you can steer where that process takes the dream by how you behave in it. It will continue asking you about the stuff until it is no longer curious about the situation, and when it is it will steer the dream (conversation) to some other subject, putting you in some completely different environment etc. I'm not sure why that interpretation is so hard to believe. And I think that process also does a lot of computation that doesn't need to ask the conscious parts about anything, in those cases you wouldn't dream, its just doing something else.
  - af3d 4y ago
    Occasionally I too have this ability to "wake up" within a dream and thus exert at least some form of influence over it, such as an ability to fly around the dreamscape. I even came up with a system to reliably verify whether or not I was indeed in a dream state. It's very simple actually. The first thing I do is look around for something with writing on it. Having done that I then turn my head and then back. If the wording has changed, I am dreaming. If I don't do something like that, I fall back into the "subconscious dreaming state" much faster than I would have than otherwise.
  - bumby 4y ago
    It’s not that the conjecture is hard to believe, it’s that it’s being muddled by sloppy language. If, as you say, you are aware of something, it is by definition now in your conscious mind. The idea that it originates somewhere else is not a new concept. Buddhists have been claiming “thoughts think themselves” for a long time.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      There is no precise language for this though, and if I clarified everything the comment would be too long so nobody would read it. By spreading out people asking for clarification like this we actually get to talk about it in a natural way. > If, as you say, you are aware of something, it is by definition now in your conscious mind Yeah, but that is a trivial statement, we all know that "thoughts popping into our head" means that they came from somewhere, I'm not talking about that effect. To me the difference is like between a function call and a process. The dream is some other part of the brain that wants to know something that you are good at answering, so it asks you that question by posing it in a language you understand, ie the "dream", and then you answer by reacting to the dream, it isn't waking you up it is just making a quick invocation. This is different than what you are talking about, unless I misunderstood you completely. When you are awake it is more that you are querying the other systems and they put thoughts in your mind as responses. Those responses will be calculated before you are aware of them, creating the "you made the choice before you think you did" effect, but you are still querying them. While when you dream those systems query you and you answer back with your reaction to the dream, meaning you have basically no control at all, and the shape and feel of the dream, when to dream, what to dream etc is decided entirely by that other part. Or in other words, "dreaming" would be the feeling of being the subsystem others are querying, while "awake" is the feeling of being the main system that is querying others. And just like you ask your subsystems a lot of questions for all sort of reasons, I don't see why our other systems would have just one reason to ask us anything, they probably ask all sort of things for all sort of reasons, as long as querying you for information is useful to them they will do it.
taylorius 4y ago
But dreaming involves the conscious mind - in that while dreaming, your conscious awareness has been switched into operating in another mode, playing back some internally generated scenario, rather than interacting with the external world.