Saturday, January 24, 2009

Your mind's eye?

Update, let me try to be clearer:
Close your eyes. Recall a building you looked at recently. Is the picture as detailed as reality? If not, how much less?

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Here's a survey I've been meaning to do:

What do you see when you remember or imagine things? How detailed are the pictures? Is there color? Is it three-dimensional?

Not long ago I had a "lucid dream", meaning I knew I was dreaming. But unlike usual, I didn't wake up soon, I kept dreaming. And more so, the dream was fantastically detailed and real-appearing visually. In fact I particularly noticed that everything I was seeing was at least as detailed and three-dimensional as what I see with my eyes when I'm "awake". It was amazing. (It was one of those things that proved to me that I can't prove the World is not a dream. But that's another story.)

The point is, though, that while I remember the experience, when I remember the dream, I don't see it very detailed. And it's the same for anything I remember, or for anything I imagine: even though I'm very visual, whatever I see in my mind is sketchy. In fact it's so sketchy that "conceptual" is probably a more precise word. Not clear at all.

So I am wondering what other people's experience is? Yours?

9 comments:

Kent McManigal said...

I went through a few years where I had many lucid dreams. I used the opportunity to do things I can't or won't do in real life.

I have very detailed memories, both visual and "information-wise" (what was said and such) about some things, and very sketchy memories about other things. I would say my memories of the lucid dreams were as clear as my memories of real life.

For some reason, I have not been having lucid dreams very often in the past few years, maybe due to the upheaval in my life.

Anonymous said...

Dear Kent, don't know if you already tried some research for yourself, but here are links to some quite informative lucid dreaming sites:
http://www.lucidity.com/
http://www.dreamviews.com/
http://www.lucidcrossroads.co.uk/LinksG.htm#best

Lucid dreaming is trainable, as good as remembering normal experiences in a non-sketchy way.

Dear Eolake, most people remember the way you do. Nevertheless, there are some schools of thinking and/or practicing forms of meditations or kind of mind shifting, which say that there are different forms of memory. And there it's starting to get real interesting. The short description is- if you are in one state of mind, you do only clearly remember the things you experienced in this state of mind, if you do at all. For a clear rememberance, you have to go back into this state. It's not all the same, but related to memory retrieval techniques dealing with hypnosis in a psychological context.
In case that's too psycho for you: Imagine you had some very exciting or elating experience, or the opposite, a rather frightening one. After some time you start losing your detailed memory of these, things get sketchy. Some time later it all comes back to you in a rush, detailed as HDTV, only through a word or a smell, which puts your mind back into the experience. Psychologists say, it's not memories, the retrieval is the real tricky part. Cues like smell or same places are helpful for connecting the bits and pieces, special memory techniques, too. But the latter have to be used in advance, of course.
Still I tend to the opinions of folks who favour the mind shifting or meditations way. When you have learned to be aware of your current state of mind/emotions and the like and you are able to shift it back where it once was, your memories will be much brighter and have more detail than ever. And maybe you will remember things you don't know you experienced in the first place (just like Matrix, take the red or the blue pill).

don't remenmber too much and don't let them get you :)

Monsieur Beep! said...

Eo's way of experiencing dreams is very much like mine: sometimes the my dreams had been so real and detailed and beautiful that I regretted waking up.
An interesting way how I memorize long (phone) numbers: eg for a 8digit number I memorize five digits as a real number, and the remainder as a mental photograph of the rest of the string.

(Makes 2222 2222 very easy to remember, hehee, scoundrel me).
But it's true for complicated strings.

Kent McManigal said...

Thanks Tobias! I will check those sites.

Speaking of dreaming, here's a look into one of mine: link

Bert said...

I kinda support Tobias' viewpoint, although I usually refer to this as a matter of context (same difference, really). For instance, I definitely will recognize the waitresses at my usual restaurant, but it is far from certain that I would recognize any of them on a chance encounter (crossing one of them on the street, not dressed as a waitress, for example).

In other words, if the context is really different and I don't know the person really well, I might get an impression of familiarity at best but I have no "index" point as to where to search in all the clutter in my head. The information has to be there, otherwise I wouldn't recognize them even in context, but I simply have no clue as to where to start searching, so the retrieval may take time.

On the other hand, some people are "good with faces", they always recognize other people, irrespective of the context and often even if significant time has passed. Those people must somehow have developed a classification system for facial features and thus possess a separate index for searching their memories for faces. Of course, this mechanism is usually subconscious, and those people that are good with faces generally can't tell you why they have this ability (yet I do believe that this could be trained and developed, just like any other ability).

I, for my part, have little interest in how people look (except for pretty girls), but am more interested in what they have to say. This might explain, at least in part, why I am so bad with faces, yet seldom forget a voice.

Now, to answer Eolake's original question, everything is quite sketchy for me, I'd even say abstract. The information is there (because I will recognize the place or person or whatever when the need arises), and I know it's there (not completely senile yet ;), but I usually have no need nor means to retrieve it totally out of context. For example, I will definitely recognize any place I've been before, but (in general) I won't be able to help you if you need a description of such a place. Kinda frustrating, at times.

But just before waking up, I sometimes have dreams that are so vivid that I'll wake up totally confused and disoriented for a few seconds, and sometimes minutes.

Just recently, I dreamed some wild ride in a Dodge Challenger from the '70s, and I still remember the smell of the car, the shape of the door handles, the upholstery details, etc. Almost scary, especially considering that I never owned one of those, and *definitely* never performed any of the stunts in that dream...

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

The brain automatically rationalizes all that you encounter in a dream. If something is of little interest, you'll barely notice it. Conversely, if you're focusing on something, it can be as detailed as you could dream it to be, pun intended.
For that very reason, there's no possible way to know whether we are maybe rationalizing a "real world" because its non-existence would be just too scary.

Remember that decades-old raging debate in Physics, about whether "all stuff" is made of particles or waves? Quantum "particles", literally, behave as one or the other depending on how you "look" at them with a measuring/detection experiment.

In fact, a recent experiment has demonstrated precisely that. It was designed to verify whether there is any way to trick a particle (a photon in this instance). There isn't. If you detect for a particle, you'll see one; if you search for a wave, that's what you'll get, even though both are mutually incompatible, and in spite of the fact that, by the settings of the experiment, the type of detection was set AFTER the photon was emitted, avoiding any possible causality.

The most satisfying conclusion, which is still markedly imperfect, is that elementary particles are something specific, which may "look" like a particle or a wave depending on the "angle" of your view. Like a cylinder that'll project a 2-D shadow which can be a circle or a rectangle, depending on the position.
It's an imperfect explanation, because a particle photon reacts with a photo-electric cell as a whole, while a wave photon creates interference bands with its own wave. One is an undivided entity, the other is a floating motion of spreading energy. Pretty twisted stuff!

Hence the most recent synthetic theory, which I find very alluringly elegant, and which Eolake will unfailingly find spooky: the "information theory". It says that by essence, definition, and inescapable fact, we can only know the Universe through information, provided by our senses, our mind, and our measuring instruments. Instruments which will always measure -and detect- what they were designed to. Therefore, it is hopeless to try and know the "true nature" of the Universe, because all our knowledge, in fact everything that our thinking processes can envision, is information.
You could sum it up in a nutshell and lay man's terms: if we were all Sims in some cosmic-sized computer simulation, programmed by "God" if you wish, then there exists no way for us to find any proof OR any counter-proof of it. Our physical AND mental nature are within that Universe; whether it is "real" or virtual or whatever, is in fact irrelevant, a forever pointless search with no possible solid answers. Only questions echoing in a vast mystery, and back at us.

Another interesting consequence, is about religions themselves. Religions define God as being "outside" the Universe, transcendent, unfathomable, unreachable, untouchable, invulnerable, et caetera. Therefore, God doesn't care about whether we "believe" in Him/Her/It. We are "programmed" with the freedom to believe or not to, and "Whomever" IS allowing it, so... End of debate. Therefore, belief and worship and prayer and liturgy and all that are purely a human need.
And there you have the paradox of the diversity of religions fully explained.
It doesn't mean we should advocate, or furthermore enforce, complete anarchy, chaos, mayhem, mad violence. For we are also with intrinsic moral principles. And atheists prove that these do not need either a faith or a knowledge of "God" to exist.

Religion is arbitrary. I know fully well that I am of mine because of where I was born and raised. Fine. That's that, no point in throwing a desperate tantrum, it won't change the way the Cosmos is.

As for the world, the Universe, or our oniric realms... more real or unreal? With the -optional- exception of lucid dreams, we act in our dreams just as if they were reality, in coherence with ourselves. Until we wake up.
But if we do "wake up" from the Universe, it is when we die. And the next "dream" is a new life/existence/identity/karma. Remember: sooner or later, there comes a moment when we must exit it anyway, no use trying to cling beyond the reasonable.

And there is always only one thing we can take with us when exiting: ourselves. Earthly possessions do not come along, and most memories neither. (It is well established that the mind fabricates memories when pressed to recall more than it has retained, as with the infamous "recollections of incest in early infancy" under hypnosis which led to much debated trials.)

So, the natural conclusion is, we dream AND we live to build ourselves. To learn. To improve. To mature. To awaken in peace.
Does that encourage selfishness? Nay, fine sirs, not at all. Altruism, solidarity and generosity are beneficial for us as well. They are part of the learning process of our eternal soul.
Again, the information theory: we view others under the light of our own selves. And we view "God" the way we view education and parents. Which explains why within a single, theoretically clear religion, you'll find so many different conceptions of the WHOLE thing, love and understanding versus fear and cast-iron severity. And you'll find such diverse conceptions of what it is to be human, to live, to exist. It's all in our mind.

There is no "one Truth". It would make it "All" so boring. No, my fellow bitmap avatars, each of us is unique, specific, and fascinating, with his/her own paradigms encompassing the whole tortilla. God doesn't replay the level 50 times with the same game save.
Well, not in THIS timeline that we are aware of, anyways. :-)

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've spent the whole night working and then blogging, so it's time for me to exit this plane of subjective perception and go to my [presumed] bed, where I shall awaken to the depths of my unconscious being.
ZZZZZZZZZ...

Besides, the sunlight burns me when I've been too long without fresh blood. BLAH!

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Funny, Jed McKenna uses vampires as a metaphor for awakened people.

(Me, I'm clearly a werewolf, though. Traditionally mortal enemies of 'pires, but why fight.)

Anonymous said...

I tend to remember things very clearly. Right now, as I sit at my computer at work, I can "see" what the entryway to this building looked like this morning from the color of the morning light reflecting off the glass door, to the frost on the crabapple next to it. Maybe it is familiarity as much as my memory, but then again, I can remember the wallpaper in detail in the kitchen of the house I lived in when I was ages 2-5 as well as the layout of the furniture in the living room. I am very visually oriented. If I have seen someone put their car keys somewhere and then they can't find them, I can describe in great detail exactly what I saw when they put them down and where.

All my dreams are extremely vivid right down to colors, odors and sounds. They are truly another world I live in. I've also had about 5 lucid dreams and have always meant to train myself to have more, but just haven't taken the time.

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

8 hours of sleep a day isn't enough free time for you??? ;-)

I once heard that you can't read in a dream, presumedly because you dream with the right brain hemisphere while reading is purely a left brain function. Haven't gotten to ask my Neurology teacher about it. Odd thing is, unlike that Batman animated episode, letters are never gibberish in MY dreams, I often read there. And yet I'm "normally" right-handed... Is anybody else here capable of reading in a dream?

Funny thing, that: I've been preparing a "very serious" medical publication about vampirism and lycanthropy, also known as "magical diseases". It is, of course, all from my imagination and popular culture researches, but you might find it extremely interesting once I get to publishing it. Problem is, I have several projects awaiting completion and publication. Or merely translation to post on my blog.
But you'll positively love all I have "discovered" about vampirism. It is not unrelated to viral cancers, explaining why vampires are biologically immortal in theory. It also exhibits elements identical to substance addiction. And the patient case I have studied has avoided homicidal psychosis thanks to a unique and very bold therapeutic innovation. (Happened somewhere in the Caucasus mountain, but professional secrecy forbids me from revealing his/her name. ;-)

Oh, and the vampiroplasmic infection also notably affected the patient's dreams, even causing episodes of "awake dreaming". That's when you pass from being awake to dreaming without transition during ordinary day life. Fascinating stuff. I'm working with a specialist who also happens to be a field operative and an expert in cryptopathology. His name isn't Mad-Eye Moody, but there is some resemblance...

Intriguingly, this patient's condition also caused a very weird phenomenon of mnemonic transfer, which is probably at the origin of those speculations about the "initiated" vampire being "possessed" by the contaminating one. Happens when the latter is centuries old and markedly mutated... It's as if his memories were also contagious.

But I could go on and talk about it for days. Let's just be practical : if you get bitten by a wolf that's foaming at the mouth, contact the Pasteur Institute, they have an excellent rabies vaccine. If you get bitten by a pointy-toothed, corpse-smelling, devilish-looking, NOT foaming at the mouth human, try the Vatican, if you're lucky they might have someone available. Otherwise, eat lots of garlic and try reaching Hogwarts High's Potions teacher ASAP.

I also have a thesis on dragons in plan for some day. And on several other presumedly fictional species. You'll love to read my revelations about Satyrs and Naiads, I guarantee. :-)