4 ms·

Dreams: Night School

19 points by dood 19y ago

mojuba 19y ago
While it seems pretty logical that everything in our behavior, including dreams, comes down to evolutionary processes and survival, still positive dreams remain unexplained from this point of view.
- mwerty 19y ago
  Don't positive thoughts help survival? Perhaps we have evolved to an optimum mix of the two (nightmare & positive dreams).
  - mojuba 19y ago
    Or maybe a positive dream is a successful resolution of a nightmare scenario. When we wake up we remember only emotionally intense episodes and forget others. If you did solve a problem in your dream, the solution "dominates" over the original problem in terms of its emotional charge.
mynameishere 19y ago
I suspect dreaming is just a process that goes on constantly but gets completely stifled by either consciousness or deep sleep. The notion that we rehearse our instincts at night makes me wonder why we don't dream about the full gamut of our instincts more often--things like: 1) Placing food in mouth, 2) Finding a designated area to defecate, 3) Forming social hierarchies, 4) Killing animals, 5) Enforcing mores, etc. I've never dreamed about any of those things.
- randallsquared 19y ago
  The suggestion here is not that dreams are rehearsing instincts, but that they're rehearsing of behaviors which are important for survival, and the selection of which behaviors to rehearse depends mainly on what the waking mind is concerned with, since that's a good indicator of "important survival behavior". Hence dreaming about code for those that program all day, or having World of Warcraft dreams after playing too much WoW. Er... not that I've ever done that last. Nope. Not me.
Alex3917 19y ago
That's funny because there is that BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares about how politicians gain power by attaching their message to whatever the populace is currently having nightmares about, and by creating new nightmares as well.
chaostheory 19y ago
Given all the new articles/submarine ads for drugs that let you stay awake straight for a week - probably not a good idea to use them now...
maurycy 19y ago
What about erotic dreams? What about abstract dreams? I frequently dream about the code, or, even, in the code. Quoting: "Dreaming is a sensitive system that tries to pay much attention to the threatening cues in our environment," Revonsuo concludes. "Their function is to protect and prepare us." So, the erotic dreams are here to protect and prepare us... ? But, more seriously, if you believe that erotic and mathematical dreams are yet another kind of survival scenario, it doesn't take a genius to realize that in more broader sense, all your activities, not only dreams, can be generalized to survival training. What's the difference between thinking about math during the sleep, or no?

19 points by dood 19y ago

While it seems pretty logical that everything in our behavior, including dreams, comes down to evolutionary processes and survival, still positive dreams remain unexplained from this point of view.

mwerty 19y ago
Don't positive thoughts help survival? Perhaps we have evolved to an optimum mix of the two (nightmare & positive dreams).
- mojuba 19y ago
  Or maybe a positive dream is a successful resolution of a nightmare scenario. When we wake up we remember only emotionally intense episodes and forget others. If you did solve a problem in your dream, the solution "dominates" over the original problem in terms of its emotional charge.

mynameishere 19y ago

I suspect dreaming is just a process that goes on constantly but gets completely stifled by either consciousness or deep sleep. The notion that we rehearse our instincts at night makes me wonder why we don't dream about the full gamut of our instincts more often--things like: 1) Placing food in mouth, 2) Finding a designated area to defecate, 3) Forming social hierarchies, 4) Killing animals, 5) Enforcing mores, etc. I've never dreamed about any of those things.

randallsquared 19y ago
The suggestion here is not that dreams are rehearsing instincts, but that they're rehearsing of behaviors which are important for survival, and the selection of which behaviors to rehearse depends mainly on what the waking mind is concerned with, since that's a good indicator of "important survival behavior". Hence dreaming about code for those that program all day, or having World of Warcraft dreams after playing too much WoW. Er... not that I've ever done that last. Nope. Not me.

Alex3917 19y ago

That's funny because there is that BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares about how politicians gain power by attaching their message to whatever the populace is currently having nightmares about, and by creating new nightmares as well.

chaostheory 19y ago

Given all the new articles/submarine ads for drugs that let you stay awake straight for a week - probably not a good idea to use them now...

maurycy 19y ago

What about erotic dreams? What about abstract dreams? I frequently dream about the code, or, even, in the code. Quoting: "Dreaming is a sensitive system that tries to pay much attention to the threatening cues in our environment," Revonsuo concludes. "Their function is to protect and prepare us." So, the erotic dreams are here to protect and prepare us... ? But, more seriously, if you believe that erotic and mathematical dreams are yet another kind of survival scenario, it doesn't take a genius to realize that in more broader sense, all your activities, not only dreams, can be generalized to survival training. What's the difference between thinking about math during the sleep, or no?