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What kind of lifehack would it be if we could fully understand lucid dreaming to the point we could teach everyone to do it on command. What would the benefits

What kind of lifehack would it be if we could fully understand lucid dreaming to the point we could teach everyone to do it on command. What would the benefits be for entertainment, education, and psychological health? If you were getting your entertainment during sleep, what kind of productivity boost would that have? Spend more time sleeping and more of your waking hours working.

unimpressive 15y ago
Eh, trypt in the comments claims it can be done in a week. How legit he is I don't know.
JonnieCache 15y ago
We'd never wake up I imagine. What'd be the point? I have heard true lucid dreaming described as being like the holodeck. Suddenly Nozick's Experience Machine becomes an alarming possibility which must be considered seriously. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine
- ComputerGuru 15y ago
  This is more true than you realize. Many days I will awake from a lucid dream and go back to sleep for several more hours to discover/continue. "Waking up" from that is like being pulled out of an RPG game right in the middle of an exciting action sequence. Also, sometimes when I'm feeling bored or a little depressed, I'll go to sleep for the excitement/entertainment factor (it's a letdown if I don't end up in a lucid dream, but you can't always have everything in life :)
  - unimpressive 15y ago
    I do this and I don't even lucid dream. However, to say that we'd never wake up might be a bit of an exaggeration. Until all labor is automated in some way shape or form, eventually someones going to need to get up to keep the water running. You also have to remember that people sort of have this tendency to die when they don't eat or drink. Though I guess thats one way we could all never wake up. Have a lucid dream thats so compelling that you can't justify it to yourself to get up for food and water. EDIT: On the other hand, you could feed people intravenously. But a matrix of solipsism probably doesn't sit right with a significant portion of humanity.
  - meow 15y ago
    Happens for me too :) .. Some days I seed what I want to dream about before sleeping (usually by watching a related genre movie).. I can go back to the same dream if interrupted for a few minutes (5-10).. not hours though... Once in the dream and after realizing that it is a dream - I can control most of the things (environment, flying, running on four legs etc) - though I keep moving in/out of that realization...sort of like inception... :)
    - salemh 15y ago
      Be wary of trying to further "lucidate" the lucid dream into another lucid state. I've woken up going a few tiers into such very dissasociative from reality for several (4+ hours) over weekends :) EG: building in my dream a "jump pad" standing upon such, to "jump" to an even deeper reality, etc. It sounds wonky, but, throwing it out there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_disorder Subset: Depersonalization disorder: periods of detachment from self or surrounding which may be experienced as "unreal" (lacking in control of or "outside of" self) while retaining awareness that this is only a feeling and not a reality.
rsaarelm 15y ago
A big part in training to have lucid dreams is just plain suggestion, so maybe just having a constant culture-wide preoccupation with lucid dreams would make people pay more attention to their dreams and have more lucid dreams. Too bad hearing about other peoples' lucid dreams is about as boring as hearing about other peoples' dreams in general, so there it's a bit tricky how you'd set up the culture around it. One idea might be what traditional shamanistic cultures do, and pretend that dreams actually take place in a "real" astral plane, instead of just being whatever your head comes up with. As per the suggestion thing, this might make people end up imagining their lucid dream adventures into the culturally shared astral plane imagery instead of stuff that's more transparently just a rehash of their daily stuff, and strengthen the lucid dream inducing cultural narrative. For a completely different approach, I wonder if it were possible to build some kind of transcranial magnetic stimulation device that increased dream recall and lucid dreams drastically.

unimpressive 15y ago

Eh, trypt in the comments claims it can be done in a week. How legit he is I don't know.

JonnieCache 15y ago

We'd never wake up I imagine. What'd be the point? I have heard true lucid dreaming described as being like the holodeck. Suddenly Nozick's Experience Machine becomes an alarming possibility which must be considered seriously. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine

ComputerGuru 15y ago
This is more true than you realize. Many days I will awake from a lucid dream and go back to sleep for several more hours to discover/continue. "Waking up" from that is like being pulled out of an RPG game right in the middle of an exciting action sequence. Also, sometimes when I'm feeling bored or a little depressed, I'll go to sleep for the excitement/entertainment factor (it's a letdown if I don't end up in a lucid dream, but you can't always have everything in life :)
- unimpressive 15y ago
  I do this and I don't even lucid dream. However, to say that we'd never wake up might be a bit of an exaggeration. Until all labor is automated in some way shape or form, eventually someones going to need to get up to keep the water running. You also have to remember that people sort of have this tendency to die when they don't eat or drink. Though I guess thats one way we could all never wake up. Have a lucid dream thats so compelling that you can't justify it to yourself to get up for food and water. EDIT: On the other hand, you could feed people intravenously. But a matrix of solipsism probably doesn't sit right with a significant portion of humanity.
- meow 15y ago
  Happens for me too :) .. Some days I seed what I want to dream about before sleeping (usually by watching a related genre movie).. I can go back to the same dream if interrupted for a few minutes (5-10).. not hours though... Once in the dream and after realizing that it is a dream - I can control most of the things (environment, flying, running on four legs etc) - though I keep moving in/out of that realization...sort of like inception... :)
  - salemh 15y ago
    Be wary of trying to further "lucidate" the lucid dream into another lucid state. I've woken up going a few tiers into such very dissasociative from reality for several (4+ hours) over weekends :) EG: building in my dream a "jump pad" standing upon such, to "jump" to an even deeper reality, etc. It sounds wonky, but, throwing it out there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_disorder Subset: Depersonalization disorder: periods of detachment from self or surrounding which may be experienced as "unreal" (lacking in control of or "outside of" self) while retaining awareness that this is only a feeling and not a reality.

rsaarelm 15y ago

A big part in training to have lucid dreams is just plain suggestion, so maybe just having a constant culture-wide preoccupation with lucid dreams would make people pay more attention to their dreams and have more lucid dreams. Too bad hearing about other peoples' lucid dreams is about as boring as hearing about other peoples' dreams in general, so there it's a bit tricky how you'd set up the culture around it. One idea might be what traditional shamanistic cultures do, and pretend that dreams actually take place in a "real" astral plane, instead of just being whatever your head comes up with. As per the suggestion thing, this might make people end up imagining their lucid dream adventures into the culturally shared astral plane imagery instead of stuff that's more transparently just a rehash of their daily stuff, and strengthen the lucid dream inducing cultural narrative. For a completely different approach, I wonder if it were possible to build some kind of transcranial magnetic stimulation device that increased dream recall and lucid dreams drastically.