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I feel like lucid dreaming is in a way the baseline and that when we're awake, reality constantly knocks us back into groundedness. In a lucid dream there is no

I feel like lucid dreaming is in a way the baseline and that when we're awake, reality constantly knocks us back into groundedness. In a lucid dream there is no error correcting signal to keep our fabulations in check. Things tend to drift away like the silhouettes of an infinity mirror. Reality is like the flash of solid pixels when switching away from the hysteresis stream in a shared window Zoom call.

anonylizard 3y ago
Wow, absence of error correction explains why dreams are the way they are... No wonder my dreams always start out normal and mundane, but end up with extremely exotic events in the end (even though I don't realize it during the dream).
BobbyJo 3y ago
As someone who lucid dreams frequently, and has done a good deal of experimentation in that state, the fundamental difference between your sleeping state and your awake state is that some of your brain is just 'off'. The parts of your brain that are on do their best to match your experiences (or just replay experience), but for things that concern the off parts (counting, reading, reasoning...) those elements are just missing. When you look at a clock it doesn't look like nonsense, it doesn't look like anything, as the part of your brain that interprets that information, and would therefore be necessary to simulate it, just isn't present. You 'see' all of the visual qualities of a clock kind of jumbled together the same way a lot of generative AI produces them. The feeling I get from messing around in those states a lot is that there is no 'baseline', just some things that are on, and some that are off. When you dream, it's the visual cortex that is on, so things concerning light and shape and texture exist and you experience a slimmed down consciousness composed of those pieces. When memory turns on, you experience references to other things, and chain thoughts together (I think this is what separates normal and lucid dreams). So far, those are the only two things I can turn on without waking up. Anything that uses reason and bam I'm awake. If I count, read, or recognize inconsistency, it's over. Consistency is possible, but only forward facing. Like you can string together thoughts and events with purpose, and a lot of them will be consistent, but the moment you look backward and try to ask "did y follow x" the lights come on.
- yencabulator 3y ago
  > but for things that concern the off parts (counting, reading, reasoning...) those elements are just missing > Anything that uses reason and bam I'm awake. Tangent, I can reliably wake up from nightmares / bad dreams by going "oh that doesn't make any sense, that can't be". There's a moment of the bad dream "trying to adjust" but then it feels like something just gave up.

anonylizard 3y ago

Wow, absence of error correction explains why dreams are the way they are... No wonder my dreams always start out normal and mundane, but end up with extremely exotic events in the end (even though I don't realize it during the dream).

BobbyJo 3y ago

As someone who lucid dreams frequently, and has done a good deal of experimentation in that state, the fundamental difference between your sleeping state and your awake state is that some of your brain is just 'off'. The parts of your brain that are on do their best to match your experiences (or just replay experience), but for things that concern the off parts (counting, reading, reasoning...) those elements are just missing. When you look at a clock it doesn't look like nonsense, it doesn't look like anything, as the part of your brain that interprets that information, and would therefore be necessary to simulate it, just isn't present. You 'see' all of the visual qualities of a clock kind of jumbled together the same way a lot of generative AI produces them. The feeling I get from messing around in those states a lot is that there is no 'baseline', just some things that are on, and some that are off. When you dream, it's the visual cortex that is on, so things concerning light and shape and texture exist and you experience a slimmed down consciousness composed of those pieces. When memory turns on, you experience references to other things, and chain thoughts together (I think this is what separates normal and lucid dreams). So far, those are the only two things I can turn on without waking up. Anything that uses reason and bam I'm awake. If I count, read, or recognize inconsistency, it's over. Consistency is possible, but only forward facing. Like you can string together thoughts and events with purpose, and a lot of them will be consistent, but the moment you look backward and try to ask "did y follow x" the lights come on.

yencabulator 3y ago
> but for things that concern the off parts (counting, reading, reasoning...) those elements are just missing > Anything that uses reason and bam I'm awake. Tangent, I can reliably wake up from nightmares / bad dreams by going "oh that doesn't make any sense, that can't be". There's a moment of the bad dream "trying to adjust" but then it feels like something just gave up.