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New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming

463 points by XzetaU8 6mo ago

https://archive.ph/6wKhx https://archive.ph/6wKhx

deleted 6mo ago
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metalman 6mo ago
There is no such thing as "should". The thing is possible, therefore humans will do it. The only question is, who is we?
- azan_ 6mo ago
  Well, you shouldn't smoke yet people do it. I think the article posits question whether we should in similar spirit.
econ 6mo ago
After two weeks I woke up and didn't notice it was German tv. Eventually after 5 minutes an unknown word came along. I still can't speak it. When 13 i use to code till 1-2 am. In school I slept with my eyes open till 11. The information was stored and organized but I was unaware of it. I remember tests where all of the questions talked about topics I never spend a conscious thought on. But I knew all the answers. Quite the surreal experience. Teachers sometimes wondered if I was still in the room or they just asked questions. My mind would grep the most recent chunk of speech, parse it and respond as if nothing unusual was going on. The mind raced but I talked slowly to portray the slight delay more natural. I learned you don't want other people's bullshit in your head. It needs to be questioned first.
tkfoss 6mo ago
tl:dr "Andrillon warned against trying to harness the sleeping mind in the service of the waking world." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-024-00276-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-024-00276-0
- econ 6mo ago
  Proper sleep definitely isn't optional.
redsocksfan45 6mo ago
[dead]
Xeoncross 6mo ago
AI does the work during the day and we learn while sleeping. Society doesn't collapse from ignorance. We have a new movie plot gentlemen.
jesse_dot_id 6mo ago
Lucid dreaming is a cool concept but I've never been able to pull it off. I still try, though!
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
  It sort of just happened to me a few years ago. It’s neat—flying is fun. (As is the opposite, when it just doesn’t work and I wake up sort of laughing at myself for having spent, presumably, hours jumping around in my dream.) But at least for me, the price was dreams, the moment I go lucid, ceasing to be self directed. I get that I’m in a movie, and I have to always create the next step. Nothing surprises or horrifies anymore. (If I’m lucid.) I have to kind of create my own magic, which isn’t particularly restful.
  - karmakurtisaani 6mo ago
    Yep, same. The dream gets incredibly boring after you get control of it.
    - chrz 6mo ago
      but but, you can do whatever you want?
      - bnreed 6mo ago
        I've had limited experience (n~20) but no... that's not how it worked for me, interested in others' experiences. "flying" was limited. I didn't have full control and sometimes felt dynamically pinned to the top of a 2D scrolling video game as if there were driver incompatabilities. drifting off to sleep in a session, it was very disturbing- i felt like i was being dragged by my ankle across the bed before lucid dreaming began, "here it comes..." Sometimes there would be ominious sounds/visuals that I could not influence that scared me so much I was glad I could wake up because it felt like a nightmare was approaching. Two big tells I'm lucid dreaming: I'm with a group of people who can't answer a very obvious question ("why is the sky blue?") or, I look at my hand - as if it were LLM it absolutely does not render well... like a tree trunk with a bunch of branches.
thenthenthen 6mo ago
Two months ago my partner recorded me speaking in my sleep. I was speaking fluent Mandarin. I always thought sleep time is used for learning (among healing etc), but now I am convinced.
- detribaby 6mo ago
  Well you’ll have to give us more. Do you speak Mandarin at all?
  - thenthenthen 6mo ago
    I am learning! But in my sleep I seemed way more fluent!
  - consumer451 6mo ago
    And, what was the partner's ability to benchmark? What is their level of familiarity with the language? I would love to believe.
    - jtbayly 6mo ago
      It was a recording. I dare you to ask for it.
      - consumer451 6mo ago
        I shall not be ensnared by your schoolyard dare. You cannot manipulate me so easily. OP, however...
    - thenthenthen 6mo ago
      Native speaker
      - consumer451 6mo ago
        Well, now I want to learn what you were saying!
CrzyLngPwd 6mo ago
Is this dream yoga? https://selfdefinition.org/tibetan/Tenzin-Wangyal-Rinpoche-The-Tibetan-Yogas-Of-Dream-And-Sleep.pdf https://selfdefinition.org/tibetan/Tenzin-Wangyal-Rinpoche-T...
- Argonaut998 6mo ago
  Interestingly this is not something native to Tibetan Buddhists. Neoplatonists had something similar, and even Orthodox Christian monks speak about literally "praying ceaselessly" which inludes prayer during sleep, it's definitely all lucid dreaming
squibonpig 6mo ago
It's gonna be really sad in 10-15 years when all the sc bros are hustling and grindsetting their dreams away.
- magiclaw 6mo ago
  Now that's dystopian!
  - fizzbar 6mo ago
    Top performers manufacture 33% more hours in the day thanks to this one weird trick!
- notahacker 6mo ago
  Can't wait for the LinkedIn posts about their day to start even earlier than the 4am workout and 5am meditation with strategic dreaming between 1am and 3am. Type LUCID in the comments for a how to guide...
  - Argonaut998 6mo ago
    Already done https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andyeung_i-just-met-a-founder-who-told-me-she-works-activity-7382532766543953920-YzCk https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andyeung_i-just-met-a-founder...
petra 6mo ago
Have anybody managed to use sleep to learn language? How ?
- spudlyo 6mo ago
  While I think it's a compelling idea that playing speech in your target language while you sleep can help, I don't think it's ever been demonstrated to work. Having said that, that sleep is incredibly important for learning anything! I practice my language learning during the day, a little bit every day, and I prioritize getting good sleep. This is mostly just trying to go to bed at the same time every night, avoiding alcohol, and giving myself an hour before bed with low lights to read and calm my mind. When you sleep, memories are consolidated, organized, and tagged for long-term storage. I will sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and bouncing around in my mind are echos of phrases and words from my target language. I figure it's working.
- neom 6mo ago
  I have dyslexia and in high school learning my lines for plays was really hard but I loved doing plays, so I recorded myself saying my lines on tape (yah, I'm old) and used double cassette to fill 2 tapes with them, then run them over night while I was sleeping. I've never used this in my adult life but it worked pretty well for my lines and I suppose maybe you could use it to learn a language? Edit: Claude tells me I was a head of my time, apparently it works but not net new, you have to also be working on it awake, it's called 'targeted memory reactivation (TMR)": https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12592824/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12592824/
  - nephihaha 6mo ago
    I attempted to do this with Japanese but did not make much headway.
- Cthulhu_ 6mo ago
  Dexter, from Dexter's Lab, learned French.
jboggan 6mo ago
My wife used to think that I had terrible sleep apnea because I'd repeatedly quit breathing for a minute or two at a time and then gasp for air, but it turned out I was just dreaming about freediving for lobsters.
- lazyasciiart 6mo ago
  Uh, do you freedive while awake?
  - jboggan 6mo ago
    Yes of course, I was in a mountain lake looking for walleye yesterday!
andai 6mo ago
> In perhaps the most striking example of learning during sleep, Konkoly, Paller, and several collaborators witnessed what amounted to conversations with people who were in the midst of dreams. Independent lab groups in the U.S., France, Germany, and the Netherlands asked lucid dreamers to answer yes-or-no questions and solve simple math problems. Electrodes measuring body and brain activity verified that the participants were not awake. Martin Dresler, a sleep researcher at the Donders Institute, who ran the Dutch experiments, said that they were able to verbally deliver new information to the sleeping mind—and to receive responses. Some people could remember the questions they had been asked when they woke up. “This is a form of very complex learning,” he told me. https://xkcd.com/269/ https://xkcd.com/269/
- Tossrock 6mo ago
  Also, https://dresdencodak.com/2006/10/07/summer-dream-job/ https://dresdencodak.com/2006/10/07/summer-dream-job/
  - andai 6mo ago
    Buddy of mine tried lucid dreaming for years. One night, he finally had it. Immediately, a police man shows up. "No, you're not allowed to be lucid." My friend hung his head and said "okay", and was never lucid again. Even stranger, I later heard reports from others along similar lines.
    - Geee 6mo ago
      I wonder if this is related to getting banned from the DMT realm.
      - aeve890 6mo ago
        >getting banned from the DMT realm Never heard of this before. Is it a real thing? I mean, in the context of psychedelics experiencies. I've tried DMT a few times expecting the legendary all-healing trip everyone talks about but never worked.
nomel 6mo ago
Edison, famously, solved problems in a light dream state [1]. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thomas-edisons-naps-inspire-a-way-to-spark-your-own-creativity/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thomas-edisons-na...
- deleted 6mo ago
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zombot 6mo ago
Now there is no excuse anymore to be working less than 24 hours a day.
rcarmo 6mo ago
So I guess having dreams about recurring meetings is... honing corporate skills?
- suprjami 6mo ago
  It also counts as overtime, right?
  - gblargg 6mo ago
    If this dream-learning thing caught on, everyone would have to work in their sleep to stay competitive.
- saltcured 6mo ago
  Is the main theme that you suddenly realize you aren't wearing pants? And if so, would you say it has improved your pants wearing performance on the job?
ml_basics 6mo ago
During my time at university studying pure mathematics I had an interesting experience of doing a challenging sheet of combinatorics problems during a vacation. Every day I attempted one question and got stuck on it. Then the next morning I woke up knowing the solution. It was a recurring thing: this happened every day for about 2 weeks until I had solved all the problems. For me this a big eye opener about the importance of sleep and relaxed thinking to solve challenging problems.
- renegade-otter 6mo ago
  Yeah, when you are stuck, put away that red bull and step away from the keyboard, kids.
  - pants2 6mo ago
    This might be why agentic development/vibe coding leads to more burn out. It's been a long time since I've truly been 'stuck' on a problem and needed to sleep on it to figure out the answer. Now I just ask Claude to fix it until it's fixed...
    - malux85 6mo ago
      Then you're not challenging yourself with hard enough problems (those include the set of problems Claude cannot solve)
      - pants2 6mo ago
        Most software doesn't really have "hard enough problems" unless you're working in deep tech. The majority of SWEs are probably working on some sort of SaaS which isn't super challenging for a model like Opus 4.7. Most of the problems I face are on the product side, which I do need to take time to think through, but it's not as challenging as debugging in the good old days.
        Toutouxc 6mo ago
hughw 6mo ago
While you're sleeping I'm practicing my skills. Enjoy being poor, suckers!
- matthewfcarlson 6mo ago
  While you were sleeping, I was practicing the art of the blade
  - orthecreedence 6mo ago
    While you were studying the blade, I was drooling on my physical self while trying to get two girls to kiss in a lucid dream.
dgb23 6mo ago
Aside, but I struggled a long time with regular sleep. I have been a night owl since I was a kid. I experience late hours as magical, don’t know how to describe it. So I always slept too little, then not at all, then drifting and sleeping in. But I somehow managed to have a regular schedule and now I start to sleep at 00:00-01:00 very often, sometimes even earlier. No idea how I managed to do that. I guess I just did improve many small things, like getting rid of bad habits, being more content, appreciating sleep more, prioritizing things differently. I wish everyone good, healthy sleep.
- alargemoose 6mo ago
  My “trick” for this was getting a dog in my early 20s, while living in an apartment, doesn’t matter how much I wanted to sleep in, they needed to go out, so I had to get up. And without thinking I moved my sleep schedule to accommodate this. Worth it.
- anal_reactor 6mo ago
  I just pulled an all-nighter because drugs are fun and now I'm standing here to see the sunrise because why not if I'm already awake. Have a good day.
samtheDamned 6mo ago
Referenced Paper: https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niaf067 https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niaf067
ghm2180 6mo ago
The newyorker has fascinating and well written medical stories. For example, Dhruv Khullar always writes amazing columns https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/dhruv-khullar https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/dhruv-khullar
matthewfcarlson 6mo ago
I read a short novel about a technology that allowed you to have a VR like experience while dreaming. Of course, there was all the fun/perverted stuff you can think of but also it was immediately put to use as a corporate tool. Over a few years, more and more white collar jobs shifted to night shifts where you worked via dream VR. Then people were available during the day to do whatever, watch their kids, pursue hobbies, etc. In many ways- it was a very promising future.
- mlboss 6mo ago
  I don't think this will ever work. Sleep acts as a compression for our daily life. Brains takes in daily new information and compresses it based on what we already know. The stuff dreams are made off are just a variant of what happens in day life.
- eichin 6mo ago
  powernapcomic (maritza campos) is a surreal dystopian version of this (with the corporate part turned up to 99). Excellent sci-fi and very weird...
- neop1x 6mo ago
  There is also a game Dreamfall: The Longest Journey where they have devices which fastens to user's face and allow one to have lucid dreams. But they are two-way so the corporation can also control that. Then there also also "unlicensed dreammachines" without tracking and restrictions and "unlicensed dreams". I liked that game (and the original point-and-click adventure too)! https://tlj.fandom.com/wiki/Dreamer_Console https://tlj.fandom.com/wiki/Dreamer_Console
praveen4463 6mo ago
I feel walking outside and thinking is a better way to practice skills and solve problems. A tired mind just sleeps and usually doesn't remember current events.
- fodkodrasz 6mo ago
  Why not both? (Sleepwalking)
chaqchase 6mo ago
Sounds like mental rehearsal more than magic. Interesting, but I'm not sure what to do differently day to day.
vanviegen 6mo ago
I once solved a particularly nasty bug, causing a c++ server to segfault in production about once a week, in a dream! The eureka adrenaline woke me up, and I rushed to my laptop to find the insight was real. I had been trying to comprehend that segfault for several long days. It wasn't the most restful night though.
- pedalpete 6mo ago
  I used to do this regularly when I first started coding, I called them "Codemares". They were like nightmares with the shouting of commands I didn't quite understand would invade my dreams.
  - consumer451 6mo ago
    Is this the user-friendly name for what is happening? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect
  - aeternum 6mo ago
    It seems to me that this is the purpose of nightmares. I especially noticed this after having kids. They are not by default scared of snakes and such but if they see a nature documentary of a snake biting something or even a cartoon bad guy, it's enough to trigger bad dreams which reinforce the fear and it's far stronger the next day. IMO this is under-appreciated in current AI models. RL is not very effective in avoiding crocodiles for example, by the time like 5 of your tribe-mates are eaten it's far too late. You need some mechanism that ensures the danger is learned after just a single incident.
  - delis-thumbs-7e 6mo ago
    When I was learning C, I woke screaming. An ominous dark figure had been standing on the foot of my bed. I somehow knew it’s name was ”struct”.
    - cindyllm 6mo ago
      [dead]
throwforfeds 6mo ago
There's a long history of doing yogic practice in the dream state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_yoga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_yoga
- orthecreedence 6mo ago
  Yes, "new research" is a misnomer here. The correct version is "people in lab coats have finally noticed ..." Reminds me of the studies that say lobsters can feel pain. Like, no fucking shit. What multi-cellular (and even single-celled) organisms do not feel pain? Glad we're giving the western stamp of approval on these highly contested ideas.
  - azan_ 6mo ago
    I suggest you should drop the patronizing tone. People believe lots of things and a lot of them is completely bogus. That's why we need people in lab coats to evaluate them in systematic way.
    - orthecreedence 6mo ago
      [flagged]
      - whatever120 6mo ago
        I’m an academic and you have insulted my ego. I will now cry in a corner.
      - azan_ 6mo ago
        No problem, hit me up for an advice any other time you will be tempted to post stupid bullshit, glad I could help!
franze 6mo ago
yeah i hate it when i work while sleeping Me: "I'm gonna plan the workshop tomorrow, more than enough time." 7,5 h Later Brain: "Hey, here is everything, worked the whole night, no need to thank me!!!" Me: "I need coffee..."
brisket_bronson 6mo ago
Omelette du fromage
nothinkjustai 6mo ago
Hah and people still make the argument LLMs and brains work the same lol
nikolay 6mo ago
This is nothing new as there's even a term for it - "hypnopedia." People used this widely to learn new languages in the past, but I'm not sure I've seen evidence about its effectiveness.
deleted 6mo ago
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bethekidyouwant 6mo ago
Where is the control group of regular dreamers exposed to the same sounds when in REM? Lucid dreaming is just an unusually awake form of dreaming. Not surprising that they can hear things especially the ones that can move their eyes left and right when prompted… The study should have simply been find people that can move their eyes left and right when prompted that still have REM brain waves tell them some random thing and see if they can remember it when you wake them up. I don’t know why that’s not completely obvious maybe it is and these guys are just grifters
throwatdem12311 6mo ago
This is why I would smash my head against a wall trying to beat a boss in Dark Souls for an entire evening, then wake up the next day and beat them on my first or second attempt. Very common phenomena that is discussed frequently in the souls community.
- t-shaped 6mo ago
  That’s so on point. One time I was stuck on One Reborn from Bloodborne for a whole evening. While I was sleeping I figured out the optimal path to best the Chime Maidens. I woke up and beat the boss in 5 mins. Very real phenomenon. Happened so many times
- hatthew 6mo ago
  I experience similar, but I'm pretty sure it's just rest and a fresh mind, not overnight learning/thinking. When I'm bashing my head against a wall, I'm stuck in a local optimum, and sleeping lets me reset and try something new that often works better (and I execute it better since I'm not as tired).
  - jmiskovic 6mo ago
    It's both. Sleep is when trained skill get delegated into the muscle memory. Not sure if it relates to dreaming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory#Sleep_effects_on_muscle_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory#Sleep_effects_on...
- Root_Denied 6mo ago
  Sometimes called the "cold controller" effect as well, and not necessarily requiring sleep but rather just a break from the game.
Svoka 6mo ago
Reminds me of Echopraxia (Peter Watts book)
pedalpete 6mo ago
Interesting comment they have towards the end about "targeted memory reactivation can disrupt sleep". It is important to note the study they are referring to is "targeted memory reactivation with sleep disruption", there are methods of doing targeted memory reactivation without sleep disruption. I work in neurotech/sleeptech as the founder of affectablesleep.com, and though we are mostly focused on slow-wave (deep) sleep, we have been looking into memory reactivation, lucid dreaming and other stimulations for additions.
- GranPC 6mo ago
  Sorry for the off-topic, but I was curious about Affectable so I opened the website. I saw it's very thin and light and comfortable, but I struggled to find out what "it" is and what it does for me. It's kinda buried. I was interested enough to click through the different links in the footer. And just as I reached the purchase page, I see that it requires "an iPhone running iOS". Unsure why it requires an iPhone; and no info on a timeline for iPhone-less customers. But that immediately rules me out as a customer. I feel like the landing page would be a lot better if it started out focusing on what it is & how it can help me. Apologies again for the unsolicited advice. Just wanted to share my impressions in case it's helpful.
davidw 6mo ago
I remember when I first started dreaming in Italian... it was pretty cool though.
richstokes 6mo ago
Kinda related but I used to practice guitar in my dreams. If I had been learning something I’d often dream about playing it over and over again, and even going beyond that and figuring out “solos” and melodies and stuff over the chord. Can’t be sure if it translated into any real life skill, but it felt like I was actually learning or at least strongly reinforcing what I’d been practicing.
mr-wendel 6mo ago
I was at my first real software job and we had an in-house system to provide automated installers for common open-source applications for our end-users. After I started getting familiar with it I had a dream one night that certain input fields (which were very common) could be rather easily exploited to inject shell commands with root access. I woke up convinced that it was a real bug, went to work the next day, and proved it. It was exactly as I dreamed. I never had access to our internal codebase, but had seen enough of the front-end and what we stored on disk to piece it together in my dream. While it made me popular with some folks, it was a strange lesson indeed to discover that not everyone was as thrilled to have an up-start from tech support make such a discovery. Fast forward almost 20 years later and I've never had anything even remotely close happen again.
- ahimthedream 6mo ago
  Did you try to harness this power again? I.e. seed your dreams to solve problems?
  - mr-wendel 6mo ago
    Only in my dreams! erm... The closest I've come since is involuntary obsessions with playing video games in my dreams. Not something I'd ever want to seed. Quite the opposite, in fact.
    - serf 6mo ago
      i've had an experience at the cross section of the two where I dreamt factorio optimizations after obsessive play. generally they don't work out.
  - ASalazarMX 6mo ago
    While I grudgingly recognize that your brain is indeed significantly sharper the younger you are (so epiphanies like that become less likely through the years), I think this experience came from subconsciously recognizing patterns, and gathering enough experience and interest so it could be pieced together by sleeping on it. In the 90s I was obsessed with Tetris, and actually found new strategies while dreaming. It is such a simple game that the dreams weren't unrealistic, contrary to other dream epiphanies that turned out to be gibberish to the awakened mind.
irishcoffee 6mo ago
This happens to me both sleeping and awake. When I’m stuck on a problem and decide to walk away from it for a while, I subconsciously spin off a thread in my mind and move on to something else. The number of times I’ve had a eureka moment 3-5 hours later (not realizing I was even percolating on it) has to be in the hundreds. Happens probably twice a week when I sleep on the problem as well. To parlay this back to the current LLM craze, if we just export all our problems to some fuzzy non deterministic solver without ever trying to understand the problem, our collective brains will atrophy severely. I use the LLM my work pays for, sparingly, because I refuse to let that atrophy occur.
mahdihabibi 6mo ago
This has always been clear as day to me, but I just couldn’t prove it. I used to take naps right after practicing guitar because I believed it would help me learn faster! LOL
manoDev 6mo ago
That’s why we say “let me sleep on it”.
silentkat 6mo ago
I regularly have abstract dreams I have trouble remembering. I wake up feeling like I understand problems better but I can't articulate why. However, I can indeed tackle problems from the day before more easily. It's pretty fascinating. What's even more fascinating is often times when I do remember the dream, a lot of it is nonsense. And yet I'm doing better at the things I dreamt about.
varispeed 6mo ago
My favourite part of coding is going to the park, sit on the bench and dream the problem. After a while, some times it needs several visits I write any code. Unfortunately most employers see this as slacking. It cannot be done in a noisy open plan office. At one place few other devs were into this. We would be spending most of the working day in the park. Managers were not happy, but work was delivered always.
markus_zhang 6mo ago
Ah, very soon we will need to work in dreams. Can’t leave any stone of productivity unturned, right?
- deleted 6mo ago
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- TallGuyShort 6mo ago
  I can honestly say one of my most productive moments ever was when a design came to me in a dream... And who among us hasn't figured out a bug in the shower after taking a break? Getting good sleep is essential to actually being productive in many endeavors for a few reasons.
- malux85 6mo ago
  Thats what I thought too, people in this thread are giving anecdotal evidence of "being productive in dreams" and then telltelling stories about one or a small handful of problems their mind voluntarily solved while sleeping, that's a very different thing from the eventual capitalistic dream-learning that is the inevitable ending of this research. They'll claim its a utopian dream of "only learn when you want to", and that its totally optional ... then a few renegade companies adopt it and get ahead, then more adopt it, then its mandatory and performance reviewed.
  - booleandilemma 6mo ago
    We really strive at making life into a living hell, don't we?
- yazaddaruvala 6mo ago
  I think the Rick and Morty episode mathematically proved the futility in trying such an exercise.
8note 6mo ago
"communicate" seems like the really interesting part of this, but gets a one-off mention only. like, how does this communication work? how does one sleeping person communicate skills to another sleeping person? have we found the mechanism? was it awake poeple communicating to sleeping people? the reverse?
- samothrace 6mo ago
  Stephen LaBerge's book explains, in detail, how they would communicate with lucid dreamers during their research. I don't remember how the researchers signaled the subjects, but if I remember correctly, the subjects would communicate with researchers primarily through eye movements. I can't say if the methods are related at all, but the book is worth a read.
- vixen99 6mo ago
  My thought too. The title appears to assume there's nothing special about the 'communicating' but there is about the 'practicing'. Should it not be 'New research suggests people can practice skills and even communicate while dreaming'. I would like to know more.
- tantalor 6mo ago
  You ever talk with a person who was sleep walking? It's hilarious
- nonameiguess 6mo ago
  It's just a few paragraphs in. The researchers asked yes or no questions and gave some math puzzles to people sleeping. A few remembered. A few were able to answer but didn't remember. It's probably important to remember your entire brain doesn't just stop working and signals still go in and out even though the attentional part we usually think of as ourselves are not aware of it (assuming it's not a lucid dream). On other hand, I used to have a long-distance girlfriend 25 years ago and we'd talk on the phone before falling asleep and attempt to induce ourselves into having the same dream and seeing each other in it, a la Wheel of Time, which sometimes worked, but of course that kind of communication between two sleepers isn't real, just a testament to the power of suggestion, especially while hypnogogic.
anon291 6mo ago
Srinivas Ramanujan famously said he did most of his work at night in dreams. As a total aside, I've had sleep issues my whole life and can sometimes inadvertently induce lucid dreaming, and then I can think for hours while sleeping; it's amazing. Unfortunately a bit inception-y, but whatever.
block_dagger 6mo ago
When I was beginning to use AI for everything, as most of us had, I would start dreaming that wall of text that had a personality sat between me and reality. For several nights I would dream this way with the wall becoming translucent and displaying text but the "real" actions (other people, scenes) was happening on the other side of the wall. I've dreamed in videogames as well. I'm not sure if I was getting any learning done, but I'm pretty sure my brain was exercising modes of thought that would push knowledge from "system 2" down into "system 1."
Rekindle8090 6mo ago
[dead]
deferredgrant 6mo ago
[flagged]
takyamoto 6mo ago
[dead]
ALittleLight 6mo ago
Now that there is proof of communication while dreaming, it is only a matter of time before someone manages to vibe code while sleeping.
willtemperley 6mo ago
20 years ago I was struggling to build an app that worked in ie6, FF and chrome. While still sleeping I asked my girlfriend what flavour JavaScript she liked. I don’t think it was a good dream.
mbrumlow 6mo ago
I have been saying this for years. When I was young I somehow figured out how to control my dreams. By the time I was an adult and working in software all my dreams were always iterating over solutions to problems I had at work. And every day I would come into the office with the ability to move forward on projects with insights in leaned that night while sleeping.
kshri24 6mo ago
Reminds me of Ramanujan learning during sleep from Namagiri. There are umpteen stories in Hindu scriptures of baby learning in the womb of the mother and how the expecting mother must only be exposed to good thoughts and a good environment for giving birth to an intelligent and well rounded child: stories of Abhimanyu (learning how to break the Chakravyuha formation in his womb while mother was learning it but his learning was incomplete when mother fell asleep during the lecture) and Prahlada (mother learning about Lord Vishnu against the wishes of her demon husband Hiranyakashyapu). Wonder if any studies have been done on this as well.
lucidityspirits 6mo ago
I built a mobile app called Lucidity (luciditydreams.com) aimed at helping people have their first lucid dream: iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lucidity-lucid-dream-journal/id6505020545 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lucidity-lucid-dream-journal/i... Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.b3nz.lucidity&hl=en&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.b3nz.lucidi... Started building it 14 years ago after reading an article about lucid dreaming in my favorite science magazine, and no other apps out there existed to assist you with reality checks and the different induction methods. Recently added a 7-day lucid dreaming journey to guide you to your first lucid dream. I worked with lucid dreaming researchers for the program's content. Feedback welcome!
smurda 6mo ago
In “Why We Sleep” by Harvard sleep researcher Matthew Walker, he says that during REM sleep your brain revisits emotional experiences but in a chemically safe environment. Stress-related chemicals like noradrenaline are greatly reduced so you can replay difficult or painful memories but without the full emotional intensity you felt at the time. The brain can process and “defuse” those emotions. TLDR, sleeping on it works.
applesstt 6mo ago
[flagged]
shevy-java 6mo ago
I quite effectively use this technique at work.
ludicrousdispla 6mo ago
I've been intensively learning German for a year and once or twice a week in dreams I have brief dialogues with the locals. Very useful as additional speaking practice :)
drakonka 6mo ago
Not about sleep learning but lucid dreaming in general: I have long been puzzled and disappointed that we are not pouring more research, interest, and funding into controlling the induction of lucid dreams. There are ways to learn to do it now, but they are slow and unreliable. Gadgets exist but they're fringe - there is no great lucid dreaming movement like there is with longevity, for example. I would have thought in a society where we want a gadget or magic pill for anything and everything, our interest in this would be through the roof. You can live a whole other lifetime in a dream, either your own or of some other character or world you step into. You can replay the past see the future, countless times. Controlled lucid dreaming seems like the closest we will likely ever get to immortality. Why aren't we more bullish about facilitating it?
- satvikpendem 6mo ago
  Same here, I don't understand it either. It's a powerful phenomenon and is essentially the end state of virtual reality, as you are now the god of your own universe.
- sysworld 6mo ago
  I think the issue is, you can't take photos or bring friends with you into your lucid dream, so you have nothing to share with others. It's kinda a solo activity.
timwis 6mo ago
I've had some incredible product ideas while asleep, down to very intricate technical detail. The problem has been that when I wake up, reality kicks in, and I realise that, say, even if I built that incredible messenger app for dogs, they still wouldn't be able to communicate with us.
- Diti 6mo ago
  If you’re interested in prototyping something, the buttons Christina Hunger sells are able to send webhooks. I made a Telegram bot for receiving messages “typed” by my golden. (She’s less than one year old, so the sentences she makes are really basic.)
tsoukase 6mo ago
I rarely remember my dreams in the morning, only a handful times in my life. At one I was a Chinese citizen and experienced a dense feeling of being a little ant in the greatest Empire the universe and time had ever seen (China). A nothing in the whole. There are no words. Another one was an insane, out of the world sex experience. Dreams are wild.
cobbaut 6mo ago
Thinking of problems before falling asleep does sometimes help me in finding solutions in a dream. Though I may still be half awake when doing this.
- vasco 6mo ago
  That may be related or not to the article but Feynman for example wrote a lot about the miracles that the brain can do in the small moments between being awake and being asleep. He thought it unlocked some extra juice and tried to force himself to stay in that moment longer and then to wake up to take notes. You should look into it.
- EagnaIonat 6mo ago
  It's a well known technique. I first heard about it from Barbara Oakley, so there is probably some neuroscience research done about it.
ares623 6mo ago
Rich Hickey proven right again. (tongue-in-cheek reference to his Hammock Driven Development talk)
addedGone 6mo ago
Happens to me all the time, waking up with a solution (or a new problem :/) to complex software issues.
- trueno 6mo ago
  last couple years i really started branching away from data engineering to software engineering. i am constantly dreaming about software sometimes it just feels like im thinking while sleeping. sometimes its mumbo jumbo but a lot of times it's legitimate cohesive architecting or coding. honestly it's driving me crazy. i really miss just having nonsensical dreams it was refreshing.
cpbrown 6mo ago
Where I live the building emits a low rumbling like a spaceship in a sci-fi show. After binge-watching The Expanse then Wheel of Time I had this dream: In order to penetrate the forsaken's magic one must send a sequence of signals, and according to Naomi Nagata on the Rocinante, the sequence of 12 signals resulted in a temporary bypass of the magic, the /count/ was the key. I woke up and wondered what problem this applied to, then tried it with a recent PRNG problem I was having where George Marsaglia's XOR-shift sequences were mostly useless for GLib.get-monotonic-time() as the seed...
TipsForCanoes 6mo ago
This "research" has no controls, no blinding, no quantitative data. The historic work mentioned all come from a time when there was no reliable way to confirm that someone was actually asleep. The recent research is full of weasel words like suggests, seems like, appears to, with no actual hard facts to measure and review. So called Sleep Learning systems have been around for over 100 years but to date there is no rigorous suggesting that any of them work for acquisition of new information and/or skills. I'll never understand HN's fascination with obvious pseudo science.
indiebatch 6mo ago
But the problem is we forget as soon as we wake up
- nephihaha 6mo ago
  Not so much if you note it down immediately.
1970-01-01 6mo ago
I thought this was already known! Why else would we be out of touch with reality for several hours per day?? Any non-trivial task that requires focus will improve via sleep: Speaking a new language, playing the guitar, pickleball, flying a helicopter, coding, etc.
lofaszvanitt 6mo ago
The bigger problem is, most of people's brain do not work while sleeping, since there are less and less hard problems to think about.
october8140 6mo ago
Hypnospace
d_sem 6mo ago
It's not new information that people can learn/practice in their sleep. This is already known and well documented. The interesting question is: what conditions increase the chance practicing in ones sleep? What are the mechanisms?
Sam6late 6mo ago
I have started feeling good after waking up from a nightmare after learning that that nightmares may serve to prepare us to tolerate nasty things, helping the brain rehearse threats and build resilience or reduce fear over time. Apparently that is still questionable, I prefer it though , recent findings does not show that nightmares are generally a resilience mechanism. https://sleepeducation.org/survivor-reinterpreting-dreams-with-the-threat-simulation-theory/ https://sleepeducation.org/survivor-reinterpreting-dreams-wi... at least it helps me to dismiss all superstitions and dodgy stuff.
a-poor 6mo ago
Synthetic training data
conartist6 6mo ago
Cats practice skills while dreaming all the time. Watch their little paws go!
marc_g 6mo ago
When I was a kid I wanted to learn how to skateboard. I watched videos on technique a lot, read a bunch of articles, watched Rodney Mullen do some insane foot trickery, and then one night I had a dream of the mechanics of it. Standing on the board as I'd learned online, how to push (not mongo, naturally), and when waking up that day, I asked my friend if I could borrow a skateboard to try. I remember getting on the board, pushing as I'd dreamed, and voila! Off I went. Something about it did not feel new at all. I'd really visualised the process and it just worked. God I miss skating sometimes, but my self-preservation always far outweighed my desire to eat concrete.
heavyset_go 6mo ago
I hate evopsych speculation, but this might be involved in PTSD-related nightmares. Your brain is exploring the trauma-space while asleep to learn to deal with similar experiences.
Henchman21 6mo ago
Once upon a time, I had a Game Boy with Tetris. Now, I wasn’t particularly good or anything; I was an average player. I was at the end of high school so I’d have been in my late teens. After just a few days of obsessively playing Tetris it was all I could dream about! I heard the music, saw the pieces falling, rotating, getting faster. It was play play play all through the night! I did get better at the game pretty quickly but I have to admit: the dreams freaked me out a bit! They’re why I stopped playing entirely — I didn’t like the idea something could put itself in my head that way!
ouraf 6mo ago
So... If your latest nap was comprised of nightmares and solving a job issue, can you charge your boss for overtime and harmful working conditions?
commandersaki 6mo ago
I was once able to prove a MAC scheme was insecure by allowing ciphertext to be rearranged while in a dream; this was a cryptography exercise.
rurban 6mo ago
Sure, another Rupert Sheldrake

463 points by XzetaU8 6mo ago

https://archive.ph/6wKhx https://archive.ph/6wKhx

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

metalman 6mo ago

There is no such thing as "should". The thing is possible, therefore humans will do it. The only question is, who is we?

azan_ 6mo ago
Well, you shouldn't smoke yet people do it. I think the article posits question whether we should in similar spirit.

econ 6mo ago

After two weeks I woke up and didn't notice it was German tv. Eventually after 5 minutes an unknown word came along. I still can't speak it. When 13 i use to code till 1-2 am. In school I slept with my eyes open till 11. The information was stored and organized but I was unaware of it. I remember tests where all of the questions talked about topics I never spend a conscious thought on. But I knew all the answers. Quite the surreal experience. Teachers sometimes wondered if I was still in the room or they just asked questions. My mind would grep the most recent chunk of speech, parse it and respond as if nothing unusual was going on. The mind raced but I talked slowly to portray the slight delay more natural. I learned you don't want other people's bullshit in your head. It needs to be questioned first.

tkfoss 6mo ago

tl:dr "Andrillon warned against trying to harness the sleeping mind in the service of the waking world." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-024-00276-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-024-00276-0

econ 6mo ago
Proper sleep definitely isn't optional.

redsocksfan45 6mo ago

[dead]

Xeoncross 6mo ago

AI does the work during the day and we learn while sleeping. Society doesn't collapse from ignorance. We have a new movie plot gentlemen.

jesse_dot_id 6mo ago

Lucid dreaming is a cool concept but I've never been able to pull it off. I still try, though!

JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
It sort of just happened to me a few years ago. It’s neat—flying is fun. (As is the opposite, when it just doesn’t work and I wake up sort of laughing at myself for having spent, presumably, hours jumping around in my dream.) But at least for me, the price was dreams, the moment I go lucid, ceasing to be self directed. I get that I’m in a movie, and I have to always create the next step. Nothing surprises or horrifies anymore. (If I’m lucid.) I have to kind of create my own magic, which isn’t particularly restful.
- karmakurtisaani 6mo ago
  Yep, same. The dream gets incredibly boring after you get control of it.
  - chrz 6mo ago
    but but, you can do whatever you want?
    - bnreed 6mo ago
      I've had limited experience (n~20) but no... that's not how it worked for me, interested in others' experiences. "flying" was limited. I didn't have full control and sometimes felt dynamically pinned to the top of a 2D scrolling video game as if there were driver incompatabilities. drifting off to sleep in a session, it was very disturbing- i felt like i was being dragged by my ankle across the bed before lucid dreaming began, "here it comes..." Sometimes there would be ominious sounds/visuals that I could not influence that scared me so much I was glad I could wake up because it felt like a nightmare was approaching. Two big tells I'm lucid dreaming: I'm with a group of people who can't answer a very obvious question ("why is the sky blue?") or, I look at my hand - as if it were LLM it absolutely does not render well... like a tree trunk with a bunch of branches.

thenthenthen 6mo ago

Two months ago my partner recorded me speaking in my sleep. I was speaking fluent Mandarin. I always thought sleep time is used for learning (among healing etc), but now I am convinced.

detribaby 6mo ago
Well you’ll have to give us more. Do you speak Mandarin at all?
- thenthenthen 6mo ago
  I am learning! But in my sleep I seemed way more fluent!
- consumer451 6mo ago
  And, what was the partner's ability to benchmark? What is their level of familiarity with the language? I would love to believe.
  - jtbayly 6mo ago
    It was a recording. I dare you to ask for it.
    - consumer451 6mo ago
      I shall not be ensnared by your schoolyard dare. You cannot manipulate me so easily. OP, however...
  - thenthenthen 6mo ago
    Native speaker
    - consumer451 6mo ago
      Well, now I want to learn what you were saying!

CrzyLngPwd 6mo ago

Is this dream yoga? https://selfdefinition.org/tibetan/Tenzin-Wangyal-Rinpoche-The-Tibetan-Yogas-Of-Dream-And-Sleep.pdf https://selfdefinition.org/tibetan/Tenzin-Wangyal-Rinpoche-T...

Argonaut998 6mo ago
Interestingly this is not something native to Tibetan Buddhists. Neoplatonists had something similar, and even Orthodox Christian monks speak about literally "praying ceaselessly" which inludes prayer during sleep, it's definitely all lucid dreaming

squibonpig 6mo ago

It's gonna be really sad in 10-15 years when all the sc bros are hustling and grindsetting their dreams away.

magiclaw 6mo ago
Now that's dystopian!
- fizzbar 6mo ago
  Top performers manufacture 33% more hours in the day thanks to this one weird trick!
notahacker 6mo ago
Can't wait for the LinkedIn posts about their day to start even earlier than the 4am workout and 5am meditation with strategic dreaming between 1am and 3am. Type LUCID in the comments for a how to guide...
- Argonaut998 6mo ago
  Already done https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andyeung_i-just-met-a-founder-who-told-me-she-works-activity-7382532766543953920-YzCk https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andyeung_i-just-met-a-founder...

petra 6mo ago

Have anybody managed to use sleep to learn language? How ?

spudlyo 6mo ago
While I think it's a compelling idea that playing speech in your target language while you sleep can help, I don't think it's ever been demonstrated to work. Having said that, that sleep is incredibly important for learning anything! I practice my language learning during the day, a little bit every day, and I prioritize getting good sleep. This is mostly just trying to go to bed at the same time every night, avoiding alcohol, and giving myself an hour before bed with low lights to read and calm my mind. When you sleep, memories are consolidated, organized, and tagged for long-term storage. I will sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and bouncing around in my mind are echos of phrases and words from my target language. I figure it's working.
neom 6mo ago
I have dyslexia and in high school learning my lines for plays was really hard but I loved doing plays, so I recorded myself saying my lines on tape (yah, I'm old) and used double cassette to fill 2 tapes with them, then run them over night while I was sleeping. I've never used this in my adult life but it worked pretty well for my lines and I suppose maybe you could use it to learn a language? Edit: Claude tells me I was a head of my time, apparently it works but not net new, you have to also be working on it awake, it's called 'targeted memory reactivation (TMR)": https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12592824/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12592824/
- nephihaha 6mo ago
  I attempted to do this with Japanese but did not make much headway.
Cthulhu_ 6mo ago
Dexter, from Dexter's Lab, learned French.

jboggan 6mo ago

My wife used to think that I had terrible sleep apnea because I'd repeatedly quit breathing for a minute or two at a time and then gasp for air, but it turned out I was just dreaming about freediving for lobsters.

lazyasciiart 6mo ago
Uh, do you freedive while awake?
- jboggan 6mo ago
  Yes of course, I was in a mountain lake looking for walleye yesterday!

andai 6mo ago

> In perhaps the most striking example of learning during sleep, Konkoly, Paller, and several collaborators witnessed what amounted to conversations with people who were in the midst of dreams. Independent lab groups in the U.S., France, Germany, and the Netherlands asked lucid dreamers to answer yes-or-no questions and solve simple math problems. Electrodes measuring body and brain activity verified that the participants were not awake. Martin Dresler, a sleep researcher at the Donders Institute, who ran the Dutch experiments, said that they were able to verbally deliver new information to the sleeping mind—and to receive responses. Some people could remember the questions they had been asked when they woke up. “This is a form of very complex learning,” he told me. https://xkcd.com/269/ https://xkcd.com/269/

Tossrock 6mo ago
Also, https://dresdencodak.com/2006/10/07/summer-dream-job/ https://dresdencodak.com/2006/10/07/summer-dream-job/
- andai 6mo ago
  Buddy of mine tried lucid dreaming for years. One night, he finally had it. Immediately, a police man shows up. "No, you're not allowed to be lucid." My friend hung his head and said "okay", and was never lucid again. Even stranger, I later heard reports from others along similar lines.
  - Geee 6mo ago
    I wonder if this is related to getting banned from the DMT realm.
    - aeve890 6mo ago
      >getting banned from the DMT realm Never heard of this before. Is it a real thing? I mean, in the context of psychedelics experiencies. I've tried DMT a few times expecting the legendary all-healing trip everyone talks about but never worked.

nomel 6mo ago

Edison, famously, solved problems in a light dream state [1]. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thomas-edisons-naps-inspire-a-way-to-spark-your-own-creativity/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thomas-edisons-na...

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]

zombot 6mo ago

Now there is no excuse anymore to be working less than 24 hours a day.

rcarmo 6mo ago

So I guess having dreams about recurring meetings is... honing corporate skills?

suprjami 6mo ago
It also counts as overtime, right?
- gblargg 6mo ago
  If this dream-learning thing caught on, everyone would have to work in their sleep to stay competitive.
saltcured 6mo ago
Is the main theme that you suddenly realize you aren't wearing pants? And if so, would you say it has improved your pants wearing performance on the job?

ml_basics 6mo ago

During my time at university studying pure mathematics I had an interesting experience of doing a challenging sheet of combinatorics problems during a vacation. Every day I attempted one question and got stuck on it. Then the next morning I woke up knowing the solution. It was a recurring thing: this happened every day for about 2 weeks until I had solved all the problems. For me this a big eye opener about the importance of sleep and relaxed thinking to solve challenging problems.

renegade-otter 6mo ago
Yeah, when you are stuck, put away that red bull and step away from the keyboard, kids.
- pants2 6mo ago
  This might be why agentic development/vibe coding leads to more burn out. It's been a long time since I've truly been 'stuck' on a problem and needed to sleep on it to figure out the answer. Now I just ask Claude to fix it until it's fixed...
  - malux85 6mo ago
    Then you're not challenging yourself with hard enough problems (those include the set of problems Claude cannot solve)
    - pants2 6mo ago
      Most software doesn't really have "hard enough problems" unless you're working in deep tech. The majority of SWEs are probably working on some sort of SaaS which isn't super challenging for a model like Opus 4.7. Most of the problems I face are on the product side, which I do need to take time to think through, but it's not as challenging as debugging in the good old days.
      - Toutouxc 6mo ago

hughw 6mo ago

While you're sleeping I'm practicing my skills. Enjoy being poor, suckers!

matthewfcarlson 6mo ago
While you were sleeping, I was practicing the art of the blade
- orthecreedence 6mo ago
  While you were studying the blade, I was drooling on my physical self while trying to get two girls to kiss in a lucid dream.

dgb23 6mo ago

Aside, but I struggled a long time with regular sleep. I have been a night owl since I was a kid. I experience late hours as magical, don’t know how to describe it. So I always slept too little, then not at all, then drifting and sleeping in. But I somehow managed to have a regular schedule and now I start to sleep at 00:00-01:00 very often, sometimes even earlier. No idea how I managed to do that. I guess I just did improve many small things, like getting rid of bad habits, being more content, appreciating sleep more, prioritizing things differently. I wish everyone good, healthy sleep.

alargemoose 6mo ago
My “trick” for this was getting a dog in my early 20s, while living in an apartment, doesn’t matter how much I wanted to sleep in, they needed to go out, so I had to get up. And without thinking I moved my sleep schedule to accommodate this. Worth it.
anal_reactor 6mo ago
I just pulled an all-nighter because drugs are fun and now I'm standing here to see the sunrise because why not if I'm already awake. Have a good day.

samtheDamned 6mo ago

Referenced Paper: https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niaf067 https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niaf067

ghm2180 6mo ago

The newyorker has fascinating and well written medical stories. For example, Dhruv Khullar always writes amazing columns https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/dhruv-khullar https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/dhruv-khullar

matthewfcarlson 6mo ago

I read a short novel about a technology that allowed you to have a VR like experience while dreaming. Of course, there was all the fun/perverted stuff you can think of but also it was immediately put to use as a corporate tool. Over a few years, more and more white collar jobs shifted to night shifts where you worked via dream VR. Then people were available during the day to do whatever, watch their kids, pursue hobbies, etc. In many ways- it was a very promising future.

mlboss 6mo ago
I don't think this will ever work. Sleep acts as a compression for our daily life. Brains takes in daily new information and compresses it based on what we already know. The stuff dreams are made off are just a variant of what happens in day life.
eichin 6mo ago
powernapcomic (maritza campos) is a surreal dystopian version of this (with the corporate part turned up to 99). Excellent sci-fi and very weird...
neop1x 6mo ago
There is also a game Dreamfall: The Longest Journey where they have devices which fastens to user's face and allow one to have lucid dreams. But they are two-way so the corporation can also control that. Then there also also "unlicensed dreammachines" without tracking and restrictions and "unlicensed dreams". I liked that game (and the original point-and-click adventure too)! https://tlj.fandom.com/wiki/Dreamer_Console https://tlj.fandom.com/wiki/Dreamer_Console

praveen4463 6mo ago

I feel walking outside and thinking is a better way to practice skills and solve problems. A tired mind just sleeps and usually doesn't remember current events.

fodkodrasz 6mo ago
Why not both? (Sleepwalking)

chaqchase 6mo ago

Sounds like mental rehearsal more than magic. Interesting, but I'm not sure what to do differently day to day.

vanviegen 6mo ago

I once solved a particularly nasty bug, causing a c++ server to segfault in production about once a week, in a dream! The eureka adrenaline woke me up, and I rushed to my laptop to find the insight was real. I had been trying to comprehend that segfault for several long days. It wasn't the most restful night though.

pedalpete 6mo ago
I used to do this regularly when I first started coding, I called them "Codemares". They were like nightmares with the shouting of commands I didn't quite understand would invade my dreams.
- consumer451 6mo ago
  Is this the user-friendly name for what is happening? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect
- aeternum 6mo ago
  It seems to me that this is the purpose of nightmares. I especially noticed this after having kids. They are not by default scared of snakes and such but if they see a nature documentary of a snake biting something or even a cartoon bad guy, it's enough to trigger bad dreams which reinforce the fear and it's far stronger the next day. IMO this is under-appreciated in current AI models. RL is not very effective in avoiding crocodiles for example, by the time like 5 of your tribe-mates are eaten it's far too late. You need some mechanism that ensures the danger is learned after just a single incident.
- delis-thumbs-7e 6mo ago
  When I was learning C, I woke screaming. An ominous dark figure had been standing on the foot of my bed. I somehow knew it’s name was ”struct”.
  - cindyllm 6mo ago
    [dead]

throwforfeds 6mo ago

There's a long history of doing yogic practice in the dream state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_yoga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_yoga

orthecreedence 6mo ago
Yes, "new research" is a misnomer here. The correct version is "people in lab coats have finally noticed ..." Reminds me of the studies that say lobsters can feel pain. Like, no fucking shit. What multi-cellular (and even single-celled) organisms do not feel pain? Glad we're giving the western stamp of approval on these highly contested ideas.
- azan_ 6mo ago
  I suggest you should drop the patronizing tone. People believe lots of things and a lot of them is completely bogus. That's why we need people in lab coats to evaluate them in systematic way.
  - orthecreedence 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    - whatever120 6mo ago
      I’m an academic and you have insulted my ego. I will now cry in a corner.
    - azan_ 6mo ago
      No problem, hit me up for an advice any other time you will be tempted to post stupid bullshit, glad I could help!

franze 6mo ago

yeah i hate it when i work while sleeping Me: "I'm gonna plan the workshop tomorrow, more than enough time." 7,5 h Later Brain: "Hey, here is everything, worked the whole night, no need to thank me!!!" Me: "I need coffee..."

brisket_bronson 6mo ago

Omelette du fromage

nothinkjustai 6mo ago

Hah and people still make the argument LLMs and brains work the same lol

nikolay 6mo ago

This is nothing new as there's even a term for it - "hypnopedia." People used this widely to learn new languages in the past, but I'm not sure I've seen evidence about its effectiveness.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

bethekidyouwant 6mo ago

Where is the control group of regular dreamers exposed to the same sounds when in REM? Lucid dreaming is just an unusually awake form of dreaming. Not surprising that they can hear things especially the ones that can move their eyes left and right when prompted… The study should have simply been find people that can move their eyes left and right when prompted that still have REM brain waves tell them some random thing and see if they can remember it when you wake them up. I don’t know why that’s not completely obvious maybe it is and these guys are just grifters

throwatdem12311 6mo ago

This is why I would smash my head against a wall trying to beat a boss in Dark Souls for an entire evening, then wake up the next day and beat them on my first or second attempt. Very common phenomena that is discussed frequently in the souls community.

t-shaped 6mo ago
That’s so on point. One time I was stuck on One Reborn from Bloodborne for a whole evening. While I was sleeping I figured out the optimal path to best the Chime Maidens. I woke up and beat the boss in 5 mins. Very real phenomenon. Happened so many times
hatthew 6mo ago
I experience similar, but I'm pretty sure it's just rest and a fresh mind, not overnight learning/thinking. When I'm bashing my head against a wall, I'm stuck in a local optimum, and sleeping lets me reset and try something new that often works better (and I execute it better since I'm not as tired).
- jmiskovic 6mo ago
  It's both. Sleep is when trained skill get delegated into the muscle memory. Not sure if it relates to dreaming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory#Sleep_effects_on_muscle_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory#Sleep_effects_on...
Root_Denied 6mo ago
Sometimes called the "cold controller" effect as well, and not necessarily requiring sleep but rather just a break from the game.

Svoka 6mo ago

Reminds me of Echopraxia (Peter Watts book)

pedalpete 6mo ago

Interesting comment they have towards the end about "targeted memory reactivation can disrupt sleep". It is important to note the study they are referring to is "targeted memory reactivation with sleep disruption", there are methods of doing targeted memory reactivation without sleep disruption. I work in neurotech/sleeptech as the founder of affectablesleep.com, and though we are mostly focused on slow-wave (deep) sleep, we have been looking into memory reactivation, lucid dreaming and other stimulations for additions.

GranPC 6mo ago
Sorry for the off-topic, but I was curious about Affectable so I opened the website. I saw it's very thin and light and comfortable, but I struggled to find out what "it" is and what it does for me. It's kinda buried. I was interested enough to click through the different links in the footer. And just as I reached the purchase page, I see that it requires "an iPhone running iOS". Unsure why it requires an iPhone; and no info on a timeline for iPhone-less customers. But that immediately rules me out as a customer. I feel like the landing page would be a lot better if it started out focusing on what it is & how it can help me. Apologies again for the unsolicited advice. Just wanted to share my impressions in case it's helpful.

davidw 6mo ago

I remember when I first started dreaming in Italian... it was pretty cool though.

richstokes 6mo ago

Kinda related but I used to practice guitar in my dreams. If I had been learning something I’d often dream about playing it over and over again, and even going beyond that and figuring out “solos” and melodies and stuff over the chord. Can’t be sure if it translated into any real life skill, but it felt like I was actually learning or at least strongly reinforcing what I’d been practicing.

mr-wendel 6mo ago

I was at my first real software job and we had an in-house system to provide automated installers for common open-source applications for our end-users. After I started getting familiar with it I had a dream one night that certain input fields (which were very common) could be rather easily exploited to inject shell commands with root access. I woke up convinced that it was a real bug, went to work the next day, and proved it. It was exactly as I dreamed. I never had access to our internal codebase, but had seen enough of the front-end and what we stored on disk to piece it together in my dream. While it made me popular with some folks, it was a strange lesson indeed to discover that not everyone was as thrilled to have an up-start from tech support make such a discovery. Fast forward almost 20 years later and I've never had anything even remotely close happen again.

ahimthedream 6mo ago
Did you try to harness this power again? I.e. seed your dreams to solve problems?
- mr-wendel 6mo ago
  Only in my dreams! erm... The closest I've come since is involuntary obsessions with playing video games in my dreams. Not something I'd ever want to seed. Quite the opposite, in fact.
  - serf 6mo ago
    i've had an experience at the cross section of the two where I dreamt factorio optimizations after obsessive play. generally they don't work out.
- ASalazarMX 6mo ago
  While I grudgingly recognize that your brain is indeed significantly sharper the younger you are (so epiphanies like that become less likely through the years), I think this experience came from subconsciously recognizing patterns, and gathering enough experience and interest so it could be pieced together by sleeping on it. In the 90s I was obsessed with Tetris, and actually found new strategies while dreaming. It is such a simple game that the dreams weren't unrealistic, contrary to other dream epiphanies that turned out to be gibberish to the awakened mind.

irishcoffee 6mo ago

This happens to me both sleeping and awake. When I’m stuck on a problem and decide to walk away from it for a while, I subconsciously spin off a thread in my mind and move on to something else. The number of times I’ve had a eureka moment 3-5 hours later (not realizing I was even percolating on it) has to be in the hundreds. Happens probably twice a week when I sleep on the problem as well. To parlay this back to the current LLM craze, if we just export all our problems to some fuzzy non deterministic solver without ever trying to understand the problem, our collective brains will atrophy severely. I use the LLM my work pays for, sparingly, because I refuse to let that atrophy occur.

mahdihabibi 6mo ago

This has always been clear as day to me, but I just couldn’t prove it. I used to take naps right after practicing guitar because I believed it would help me learn faster! LOL

manoDev 6mo ago

That’s why we say “let me sleep on it”.

silentkat 6mo ago

I regularly have abstract dreams I have trouble remembering. I wake up feeling like I understand problems better but I can't articulate why. However, I can indeed tackle problems from the day before more easily. It's pretty fascinating. What's even more fascinating is often times when I do remember the dream, a lot of it is nonsense. And yet I'm doing better at the things I dreamt about.

varispeed 6mo ago

My favourite part of coding is going to the park, sit on the bench and dream the problem. After a while, some times it needs several visits I write any code. Unfortunately most employers see this as slacking. It cannot be done in a noisy open plan office. At one place few other devs were into this. We would be spending most of the working day in the park. Managers were not happy, but work was delivered always.

markus_zhang 6mo ago

Ah, very soon we will need to work in dreams. Can’t leave any stone of productivity unturned, right?

deleted 6mo ago
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TallGuyShort 6mo ago
I can honestly say one of my most productive moments ever was when a design came to me in a dream... And who among us hasn't figured out a bug in the shower after taking a break? Getting good sleep is essential to actually being productive in many endeavors for a few reasons.
malux85 6mo ago
Thats what I thought too, people in this thread are giving anecdotal evidence of "being productive in dreams" and then telltelling stories about one or a small handful of problems their mind voluntarily solved while sleeping, that's a very different thing from the eventual capitalistic dream-learning that is the inevitable ending of this research. They'll claim its a utopian dream of "only learn when you want to", and that its totally optional ... then a few renegade companies adopt it and get ahead, then more adopt it, then its mandatory and performance reviewed.
- booleandilemma 6mo ago
  We really strive at making life into a living hell, don't we?
yazaddaruvala 6mo ago
I think the Rick and Morty episode mathematically proved the futility in trying such an exercise.

8note 6mo ago

"communicate" seems like the really interesting part of this, but gets a one-off mention only. like, how does this communication work? how does one sleeping person communicate skills to another sleeping person? have we found the mechanism? was it awake poeple communicating to sleeping people? the reverse?

samothrace 6mo ago
Stephen LaBerge's book explains, in detail, how they would communicate with lucid dreamers during their research. I don't remember how the researchers signaled the subjects, but if I remember correctly, the subjects would communicate with researchers primarily through eye movements. I can't say if the methods are related at all, but the book is worth a read.
vixen99 6mo ago
My thought too. The title appears to assume there's nothing special about the 'communicating' but there is about the 'practicing'. Should it not be 'New research suggests people can practice skills and even communicate while dreaming'. I would like to know more.
tantalor 6mo ago
You ever talk with a person who was sleep walking? It's hilarious
nonameiguess 6mo ago
It's just a few paragraphs in. The researchers asked yes or no questions and gave some math puzzles to people sleeping. A few remembered. A few were able to answer but didn't remember. It's probably important to remember your entire brain doesn't just stop working and signals still go in and out even though the attentional part we usually think of as ourselves are not aware of it (assuming it's not a lucid dream). On other hand, I used to have a long-distance girlfriend 25 years ago and we'd talk on the phone before falling asleep and attempt to induce ourselves into having the same dream and seeing each other in it, a la Wheel of Time, which sometimes worked, but of course that kind of communication between two sleepers isn't real, just a testament to the power of suggestion, especially while hypnogogic.

anon291 6mo ago

Srinivas Ramanujan famously said he did most of his work at night in dreams. As a total aside, I've had sleep issues my whole life and can sometimes inadvertently induce lucid dreaming, and then I can think for hours while sleeping; it's amazing. Unfortunately a bit inception-y, but whatever.

block_dagger 6mo ago

When I was beginning to use AI for everything, as most of us had, I would start dreaming that wall of text that had a personality sat between me and reality. For several nights I would dream this way with the wall becoming translucent and displaying text but the "real" actions (other people, scenes) was happening on the other side of the wall. I've dreamed in videogames as well. I'm not sure if I was getting any learning done, but I'm pretty sure my brain was exercising modes of thought that would push knowledge from "system 2" down into "system 1."

Rekindle8090 6mo ago

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deferredgrant 6mo ago

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takyamoto 6mo ago

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ALittleLight 6mo ago

Now that there is proof of communication while dreaming, it is only a matter of time before someone manages to vibe code while sleeping.

willtemperley 6mo ago

20 years ago I was struggling to build an app that worked in ie6, FF and chrome. While still sleeping I asked my girlfriend what flavour JavaScript she liked. I don’t think it was a good dream.

mbrumlow 6mo ago

I have been saying this for years. When I was young I somehow figured out how to control my dreams. By the time I was an adult and working in software all my dreams were always iterating over solutions to problems I had at work. And every day I would come into the office with the ability to move forward on projects with insights in leaned that night while sleeping.

kshri24 6mo ago

Reminds me of Ramanujan learning during sleep from Namagiri. There are umpteen stories in Hindu scriptures of baby learning in the womb of the mother and how the expecting mother must only be exposed to good thoughts and a good environment for giving birth to an intelligent and well rounded child: stories of Abhimanyu (learning how to break the Chakravyuha formation in his womb while mother was learning it but his learning was incomplete when mother fell asleep during the lecture) and Prahlada (mother learning about Lord Vishnu against the wishes of her demon husband Hiranyakashyapu). Wonder if any studies have been done on this as well.

lucidityspirits 6mo ago

I built a mobile app called Lucidity (luciditydreams.com) aimed at helping people have their first lucid dream: iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lucidity-lucid-dream-journal/id6505020545 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lucidity-lucid-dream-journal/i... Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.b3nz.lucidity&hl=en&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.b3nz.lucidi... Started building it 14 years ago after reading an article about lucid dreaming in my favorite science magazine, and no other apps out there existed to assist you with reality checks and the different induction methods. Recently added a 7-day lucid dreaming journey to guide you to your first lucid dream. I worked with lucid dreaming researchers for the program's content. Feedback welcome!

smurda 6mo ago

In “Why We Sleep” by Harvard sleep researcher Matthew Walker, he says that during REM sleep your brain revisits emotional experiences but in a chemically safe environment. Stress-related chemicals like noradrenaline are greatly reduced so you can replay difficult or painful memories but without the full emotional intensity you felt at the time. The brain can process and “defuse” those emotions. TLDR, sleeping on it works.

applesstt 6mo ago

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shevy-java 6mo ago

I quite effectively use this technique at work.

ludicrousdispla 6mo ago

I've been intensively learning German for a year and once or twice a week in dreams I have brief dialogues with the locals. Very useful as additional speaking practice :)

drakonka 6mo ago

Not about sleep learning but lucid dreaming in general: I have long been puzzled and disappointed that we are not pouring more research, interest, and funding into controlling the induction of lucid dreams. There are ways to learn to do it now, but they are slow and unreliable. Gadgets exist but they're fringe - there is no great lucid dreaming movement like there is with longevity, for example. I would have thought in a society where we want a gadget or magic pill for anything and everything, our interest in this would be through the roof. You can live a whole other lifetime in a dream, either your own or of some other character or world you step into. You can replay the past see the future, countless times. Controlled lucid dreaming seems like the closest we will likely ever get to immortality. Why aren't we more bullish about facilitating it?

satvikpendem 6mo ago
Same here, I don't understand it either. It's a powerful phenomenon and is essentially the end state of virtual reality, as you are now the god of your own universe.
sysworld 6mo ago
I think the issue is, you can't take photos or bring friends with you into your lucid dream, so you have nothing to share with others. It's kinda a solo activity.

timwis 6mo ago

I've had some incredible product ideas while asleep, down to very intricate technical detail. The problem has been that when I wake up, reality kicks in, and I realise that, say, even if I built that incredible messenger app for dogs, they still wouldn't be able to communicate with us.

Diti 6mo ago
If you’re interested in prototyping something, the buttons Christina Hunger sells are able to send webhooks. I made a Telegram bot for receiving messages “typed” by my golden. (She’s less than one year old, so the sentences she makes are really basic.)

tsoukase 6mo ago

I rarely remember my dreams in the morning, only a handful times in my life. At one I was a Chinese citizen and experienced a dense feeling of being a little ant in the greatest Empire the universe and time had ever seen (China). A nothing in the whole. There are no words. Another one was an insane, out of the world sex experience. Dreams are wild.

cobbaut 6mo ago

Thinking of problems before falling asleep does sometimes help me in finding solutions in a dream. Though I may still be half awake when doing this.

vasco 6mo ago
That may be related or not to the article but Feynman for example wrote a lot about the miracles that the brain can do in the small moments between being awake and being asleep. He thought it unlocked some extra juice and tried to force himself to stay in that moment longer and then to wake up to take notes. You should look into it.
EagnaIonat 6mo ago
It's a well known technique. I first heard about it from Barbara Oakley, so there is probably some neuroscience research done about it.

ares623 6mo ago

Rich Hickey proven right again. (tongue-in-cheek reference to his Hammock Driven Development talk)

addedGone 6mo ago

Happens to me all the time, waking up with a solution (or a new problem :/) to complex software issues.

trueno 6mo ago
last couple years i really started branching away from data engineering to software engineering. i am constantly dreaming about software sometimes it just feels like im thinking while sleeping. sometimes its mumbo jumbo but a lot of times it's legitimate cohesive architecting or coding. honestly it's driving me crazy. i really miss just having nonsensical dreams it was refreshing.

cpbrown 6mo ago

Where I live the building emits a low rumbling like a spaceship in a sci-fi show. After binge-watching The Expanse then Wheel of Time I had this dream: In order to penetrate the forsaken's magic one must send a sequence of signals, and according to Naomi Nagata on the Rocinante, the sequence of 12 signals resulted in a temporary bypass of the magic, the /count/ was the key. I woke up and wondered what problem this applied to, then tried it with a recent PRNG problem I was having where George Marsaglia's XOR-shift sequences were mostly useless for GLib.get-monotonic-time() as the seed...

TipsForCanoes 6mo ago

This "research" has no controls, no blinding, no quantitative data. The historic work mentioned all come from a time when there was no reliable way to confirm that someone was actually asleep. The recent research is full of weasel words like suggests, seems like, appears to, with no actual hard facts to measure and review. So called Sleep Learning systems have been around for over 100 years but to date there is no rigorous suggesting that any of them work for acquisition of new information and/or skills. I'll never understand HN's fascination with obvious pseudo science.

indiebatch 6mo ago

But the problem is we forget as soon as we wake up

nephihaha 6mo ago
Not so much if you note it down immediately.

1970-01-01 6mo ago

I thought this was already known! Why else would we be out of touch with reality for several hours per day?? Any non-trivial task that requires focus will improve via sleep: Speaking a new language, playing the guitar, pickleball, flying a helicopter, coding, etc.

lofaszvanitt 6mo ago

The bigger problem is, most of people's brain do not work while sleeping, since there are less and less hard problems to think about.

october8140 6mo ago

Hypnospace

d_sem 6mo ago

It's not new information that people can learn/practice in their sleep. This is already known and well documented. The interesting question is: what conditions increase the chance practicing in ones sleep? What are the mechanisms?

Sam6late 6mo ago

I have started feeling good after waking up from a nightmare after learning that that nightmares may serve to prepare us to tolerate nasty things, helping the brain rehearse threats and build resilience or reduce fear over time. Apparently that is still questionable, I prefer it though , recent findings does not show that nightmares are generally a resilience mechanism. https://sleepeducation.org/survivor-reinterpreting-dreams-with-the-threat-simulation-theory/ https://sleepeducation.org/survivor-reinterpreting-dreams-wi... at least it helps me to dismiss all superstitions and dodgy stuff.

a-poor 6mo ago

Synthetic training data

conartist6 6mo ago

Cats practice skills while dreaming all the time. Watch their little paws go!

marc_g 6mo ago

When I was a kid I wanted to learn how to skateboard. I watched videos on technique a lot, read a bunch of articles, watched Rodney Mullen do some insane foot trickery, and then one night I had a dream of the mechanics of it. Standing on the board as I'd learned online, how to push (not mongo, naturally), and when waking up that day, I asked my friend if I could borrow a skateboard to try. I remember getting on the board, pushing as I'd dreamed, and voila! Off I went. Something about it did not feel new at all. I'd really visualised the process and it just worked. God I miss skating sometimes, but my self-preservation always far outweighed my desire to eat concrete.

heavyset_go 6mo ago

I hate evopsych speculation, but this might be involved in PTSD-related nightmares. Your brain is exploring the trauma-space while asleep to learn to deal with similar experiences.

Henchman21 6mo ago

Once upon a time, I had a Game Boy with Tetris. Now, I wasn’t particularly good or anything; I was an average player. I was at the end of high school so I’d have been in my late teens. After just a few days of obsessively playing Tetris it was all I could dream about! I heard the music, saw the pieces falling, rotating, getting faster. It was play play play all through the night! I did get better at the game pretty quickly but I have to admit: the dreams freaked me out a bit! They’re why I stopped playing entirely — I didn’t like the idea something could put itself in my head that way!

ouraf 6mo ago

So... If your latest nap was comprised of nightmares and solving a job issue, can you charge your boss for overtime and harmful working conditions?

commandersaki 6mo ago

I was once able to prove a MAC scheme was insecure by allowing ciphertext to be rearranged while in a dream; this was a cryptography exercise.

rurban 6mo ago

Sure, another Rupert Sheldrake