Over this past summer, I decided to do some tests with my dreams. Overall this has gone nowhere (it doesn’t help that I’ve had difficulty keeping myself motivated enough to keep it going for long). I didn’t put it in Bayesian terms at the time (despite having been reading LessWrong), but ignoring weak priors is one of the biggest rationality fails I’ve experienced in dreams (I’ve documented quite a few incidents). There have been some cases where I have done something resembling updating dream priors, specifically as it relates to elevators, as there was a period from 2004-2006 in which elevators in dreams would frequently behave in an unrealistic manner (traveling more floors than would make sense, usually down, or having the door or floor become structurally unsound). It got to the point that I actively avoided elevators in dreams if I was interested in the situation I was experiencing. I’ve sort of half-tried for lucid dreaming, and consequently only been sort of half-successful. I’ve found that anxiety almost always outweighs desire when it comes to influencing the experience. I did try a little test where I would try to will the time on a display to be a particular number, then checked to see if it worked. I tried this several times, but by the time I remembered to write down my results, I only remembered two of the trials (though I do remembering them being pretty representative of the rest of them). I was able to get the time to appear close (no more than five minutes off, and usually much closer) to the target. I’d like to do an experiment involving my vision, but that’s proven much more difficult than I’d like. My left eye has been nonfunctional since birth, my right eye started scarring around age 3, stabalized at “I could read subtitles if you pause the video, give me inch-thick glasses and let me sit close to the screen for a couple minutes”, then dropped rapidly toward useless after I visited Las Vegas at age 14 (there are several factors that probably came to a head with that incident). Vision in my dreams took much longer to decline, but gradually got to the point where clear visuals are a novelty even while asleep.
Update: Finding this article got me to try again, and while overall it was a vague mess (though I attempted some more number experiments involving other people/NPCs), things got interesting near the end. I did have limited success working with visuals, and within moments of noticing this, observed a dog run up a slide and consciously decided that the probability of this having happened in reality and not having been made up just for the dream was pretty low. It’s worth noting that I was fully aware it was a dream by that point.
I should probably have mentioned what happened the day after my previous comment on this post, but was worried I was getting annoying.
I decided to test the teleportation method I used in dreams while awake, fully realizing that this was a very silly idea.
At first, I selected a destination that would be distinct enough from where I was at the time. With the target as a mobile home, and me in a place with a solid foundation, all I had to do was take one step to be convinced it hadn’t worked. I then decided to try a destination more similar to my actual location. Such a destination quickly came to mind, and I moved to the place I considered most similar (the hallway). Though I couldn’t help but go over in my head all of the little details that gave away how different the two locations were in spite of this; acoustics, differences in the rooms that would be clear as soon as I left the hallway, and especially the ambient odors.
Thoroughly primed to expect nothing, I stepped out of the hallway… and experienced genuine surprise as to where I was. It seems that, even though I was focusing on everything against me confusing the two places intellectually, the part of my brain aware of the setting had been convinced I was already at the destination! I’ve actually tried self-deception regarding setting in the past (more so around ages 12-13), without any success; that tearing the idea apart in detail somehow actually made it work was surprising, and something I kinda wish I could design experiments for and actually find some use for.
Improving my updating on priors regarding setting in dreams has been less exciting. I’ll need to try and remember to ask myself about the setting and how I got there if ever I find myself wondering.
Over this past summer, I decided to do some tests with my dreams. Overall this has gone nowhere (it doesn’t help that I’ve had difficulty keeping myself motivated enough to keep it going for long). I didn’t put it in Bayesian terms at the time (despite having been reading LessWrong), but ignoring weak priors is one of the biggest rationality fails I’ve experienced in dreams (I’ve documented quite a few incidents). There have been some cases where I have done something resembling updating dream priors, specifically as it relates to elevators, as there was a period from 2004-2006 in which elevators in dreams would frequently behave in an unrealistic manner (traveling more floors than would make sense, usually down, or having the door or floor become structurally unsound). It got to the point that I actively avoided elevators in dreams if I was interested in the situation I was experiencing. I’ve sort of half-tried for lucid dreaming, and consequently only been sort of half-successful. I’ve found that anxiety almost always outweighs desire when it comes to influencing the experience. I did try a little test where I would try to will the time on a display to be a particular number, then checked to see if it worked. I tried this several times, but by the time I remembered to write down my results, I only remembered two of the trials (though I do remembering them being pretty representative of the rest of them). I was able to get the time to appear close (no more than five minutes off, and usually much closer) to the target. I’d like to do an experiment involving my vision, but that’s proven much more difficult than I’d like. My left eye has been nonfunctional since birth, my right eye started scarring around age 3, stabalized at “I could read subtitles if you pause the video, give me inch-thick glasses and let me sit close to the screen for a couple minutes”, then dropped rapidly toward useless after I visited Las Vegas at age 14 (there are several factors that probably came to a head with that incident). Vision in my dreams took much longer to decline, but gradually got to the point where clear visuals are a novelty even while asleep.
Update: Finding this article got me to try again, and while overall it was a vague mess (though I attempted some more number experiments involving other people/NPCs), things got interesting near the end. I did have limited success working with visuals, and within moments of noticing this, observed a dog run up a slide and consciously decided that the probability of this having happened in reality and not having been made up just for the dream was pretty low. It’s worth noting that I was fully aware it was a dream by that point.
I should probably have mentioned what happened the day after my previous comment on this post, but was worried I was getting annoying.
I decided to test the teleportation method I used in dreams while awake, fully realizing that this was a very silly idea.
At first, I selected a destination that would be distinct enough from where I was at the time. With the target as a mobile home, and me in a place with a solid foundation, all I had to do was take one step to be convinced it hadn’t worked. I then decided to try a destination more similar to my actual location. Such a destination quickly came to mind, and I moved to the place I considered most similar (the hallway). Though I couldn’t help but go over in my head all of the little details that gave away how different the two locations were in spite of this; acoustics, differences in the rooms that would be clear as soon as I left the hallway, and especially the ambient odors.
Thoroughly primed to expect nothing, I stepped out of the hallway… and experienced genuine surprise as to where I was. It seems that, even though I was focusing on everything against me confusing the two places intellectually, the part of my brain aware of the setting had been convinced I was already at the destination! I’ve actually tried self-deception regarding setting in the past (more so around ages 12-13), without any success; that tearing the idea apart in detail somehow actually made it work was surprising, and something I kinda wish I could design experiments for and actually find some use for.
Improving my updating on priors regarding setting in dreams has been less exciting. I’ll need to try and remember to ask myself about the setting and how I got there if ever I find myself wondering.