[HN Gopher] Dreams are the default for intelligence
___________________________________________________________________
Dreams are the default for intelligence
Author : Amorymeltzer
Score : 33 points
Date : 2023-04-14 19:58 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kk.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (kk.org)
| zak1726 wrote:
| [dead]
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| Dreaming is the condition where the parts of your brain required
| to form memories, and to have consciousness are active enough to
| participate and take part in what the other awake parts of your
| brain are doing while the sleeping parts like sensory input and
| motor control are shut down. We already know the brain creates an
| active predictive model of the world that is what we experience,
| so it makes sense the brain can continue creating that model when
| asleep and untethered from sense input.
| crooked-v wrote:
| This also reminds me of some theories I've seen that sleep (e.g.
| mostly sessile behavior) is the biological default for Earth
| life, and being "awake" and highly mobile is itself a specialized
| adaptation.
| Grieverheart wrote:
| I once trained myself to recognise if I was dreaming by looking
| at something in my dream, looking away and looking back again. If
| the thing I was looking at had changed in any way, I was
| dreaming. This allowed me to partly shape my dreams, so I can't
| totally buy the conjecture that senses are what's taking the
| dream machine. Another thing supporting this is the fact that I
| could let my body fall asleep while keeping my consciousness
| awake. Even though the senses are technically shut off (sleep
| paralysis), I was not dreaming. I think the fact that dreaming is
| similar to generative models has more to do with how we learn
| shapes, and that is by learning sub shapes and categories of
| shapes. My theory is that that's also how long term memory works.
| Instead of storing the full senses senses at that moment, parts
| of those senses are replaced by concepts/sub shapes.
| sam8401 wrote:
| Wrong
| amelius wrote:
| Or perhaps dreaming is GAN-style training.
| harpiaharpyja wrote:
| I think it's an interesting potential answer to the ongoing
| question of "why do we have dreams, what evolutionary purpose do
| they serve?" Maybe the answer is that they do not need to serve
| any purpose because dreaming is actually the default mode -
| "normal" consciousness is the adaptation. From that perspective
| the evolutionary purpose (of normal rational consciousness) is
| obvious.
|
| Just musing here but I wonder if that line of thought could shed
| light on how non-sapient animals experience consciousness as
| well.
| molly0 wrote:
| From an evolutionary perspective, letting animals think/dream
| is an optimal way for them to explore things without risk.
| idleproc wrote:
| I read a book about lucid dreaming a while back, and it said
| something like: the easiest way to tell you are in a dream is to
| look at something mechanical or complicated.
|
| The idea seemed to be: if you could get your dreaming mind to
| look at your hand and then turn it over to the other side, you
| didn't have the mental 'bandwidth' to imagine the opposite side
| correctly, and you'd realize you were dreaming.
|
| Equally, if you were around a bicycle in a dream, and tried to
| look at the gearing mechanisms etc., it just wasn't possible for
| your brain to generate that level of detail; it would just change
| the bicycle into an elephant or what-have-you.
|
| I never got to lucid dreaming, but did notice a similar thing
| happening. So, I always found it interesting how the mind might
| switch from internal 'concepts' to external 'reality' in a way
| that isn't readily available to 'conscious' thought.
|
| Not really going anywhere with this, but if 'AI' can generate
| better bicycles than our dreaming minds, then...
| lisper wrote:
| Most of the time when I'm dreaming it never even _occurs_ to me
| that I _might_ be in a dream until I wake up.
|
| I have even had some cases where it did occur to me, and I
| started lucid dreaming (which was very cool), but then I
| reverted to my default this-must-be-real dreaming state. That
| was very weird.
| kgwxd wrote:
| I usually become highly aware I'm dreaming when I'm able to
| kind of float around (not fly, more like low gravity mixed
| with a near-floor hovering) but the "wow" of it turns into
| "this is just reality, no big deal" so fast I never get a
| chance to try to consciously shape the dream.
| burnished wrote:
| I read a guide that suggested looking at your hands - that
| night I dreamt and recalled that and it worked. I guess most
| people do not see their own hands accurately while dreaming and
| it acts as a cue.
|
| Just a little tangent!
| JoeyJoJoJr wrote:
| I would look at my hands in lucid dreams and they would appear
| in extreme detail, as if I could comprehend both its general
| form as well as every single grove in my fingerprints. I'm
| pretty sure I tried to turn them over and was able to see all
| around them.
|
| One thing I find fascinating about dreaming is that it seems
| that the dream wants to prevent you from staying lucid. When I
| become aware that I am dreaming I "wake up" and start going
| about my day, only to realise I am still dreaming, at which
| point I "wake up" again, and this cycle continues. This is a
| perceptual barrier that can be broken through, at which point
| you instantly gain hyper awareness awareness and control over
| you dream.
| robot_no_421 wrote:
| Another way to tell is to try to read things or look at a
| clock/numbers in your dream. Often time the information will
| not make sense, and will change if you look away and back.
|
| I've done this myself once or twice in a dream and I actually
| was able to tell I was dreaming but the shock of my realization
| woke me up.
| BulgarianIdiot wrote:
| Unlike most I can see things in great detail, including text
| in my dreams. Consistency in time is absolute mess, for sure,
| but then again, I don't find this odd to begin with. In fact
| I kind of expect this. As in I realize I'm dreaming, and yet
| I don't.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I've had dreams where I found myself traveling and was
| presented with maps (in one my car had a HUD where I saw the
| map on the windshield as I was driving) that seemed to be
| quite accurate when I recalled them after waking. Even
| freeway signs with names of towns, roads and freeway numbers
| that matched the map.
| allemagne wrote:
| >When I am dreaming, I am receiving images/stories that are
| produced for me, not really by me
|
| This can really only be partially true for lucid dreaming,
| though, right?
|
| Maybe all dreaming is really just lucid dreaming. We're all
| usually just in some kind of split-brain patient situation where
| around half our brain is "lucidly" controlling a dream and the
| other half just goes along for the ride.
|
| A lot of dreams are just kinda nonsense, but some I've had are
| pretty clearly well-thought-out metaphors for things that are
| happening in my life. _Somebody_ or _something_ pretty smart that
| knows a lot about me had to have come up with it.
| saghm wrote:
| > This can really only be partially true for lucid dreaming,
| though, right?
|
| I've had a lot of lucid dreams over the years (starting when I
| first was prescribed medication to help me sleep when I was a
| kid, where I'd have them several times a week, and gradually
| becoming less common over the years to maybe once a month). At
| least in my experience, being aware that I'm dreaming gives me
| the ability to choose how to act, the ability to force myself
| to wake up, and occasionally the ability to break minor
| "physics" rules (I pretty commonly find in lucid dreams that I
| can hover a few inches above ground and float around that way
| instead of walking), but I've never experienced the ability to
| change my environment, and the "people" in my dreams I interact
| with continue to act independently.
|
| Obviously my dreams are entirely a creation of my own mind, so
| some part of my brain is in control of it, but being aware of
| that isn't sufficient to let me control it arbitrarily any more
| than I can stop myself from feeling physical pain or disliking
| the taste of some food in real life. Ultimately, we're not
| really in "full" control of how our mind and body react to
| real-life stimulus either; if we were, things like depression
| and phobias wouldn't exist.
| molly0 wrote:
| I got completely lost in trying to understand the idea he is
| trying to convey.
| felipemnoa wrote:
| Hehe. I actually had a thought around the same lines a few days
| ago.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35516757
|
| And what probably gives us awareness or consciousness is the
| multiple GPT like structures running in parallel. It really does
| make me wonder if we are really close to true AGI. It does feel
| like it.
|
| Very exciting times! Just hope we don't end up doing a
| Terminator.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Oddly enough, we've been saying that since... The Terminator.
| NN's and LLM's are cool but not even close to the power of the
| human brain (maybe quantum llm's?). I'm keen to see how we can
| tap into our own minds as CPU's or at least drivers thereof.
| Consciousness is awareness and perception so one could say we
| are close to a rudimentary consciousness but we have a long way
| to go before it's aware.
|
| Still, even though we've been saying it for 30 years, exciting
| times indeed! #skynet
| irrational wrote:
| I hope this isn't true. I'm in my 50s and I have never dreamed.
| By that I mean, I have never woken up from sleeping and
| remembered anything happening between the time I fell asleep and
| I awoke. It's a complete blank. Maybe I do dream, but I have no
| proof or indication that I do. I never have.
|
| As a side note, it really bothers me when dreaming is used as a
| plot device in books. I can't relate at all to the concept of
| dreaming and remembering the dream.
| felipemnoa wrote:
| You almost certainly dream. I believe there are medical tests
| to confirm that you are indeed dreaming. As to why you do not
| remember them? Beats me!
| nomel wrote:
| There are devices made to detect and disturb you (with light,
| vibrations, etc) during REM sleep, to help with lucid dreaming.
| If you want to experience a dream, something like that might
| help, with the fairly safe assumption that you do enter REM
| sleep.
| jhot wrote:
| I didn't realize this until I had kids and my sleep became
| constantly disturbed, but the only times I'm consciously
| aware of my dreams are when I'm awoken during the dream. If I
| am given the chance to have a peaceful night, then it's just
| an instantaneous time shift from falling asleep to awake with
| nothing in-between.
|
| So I could see how one of these types of devices could be
| handy to gently bring the consciousness out of deep sleep.
| [deleted]
| ThalesX wrote:
| Interestingly enough, I could be considered the opposite.
| Having aphantasia, I've never had a mental image, but I have
| very vivid dreams. Talking to my dad, he only dreams in black
| and white. It's just awesome the variability we humans have.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Childhood exposure to black-and-white television seems to
| be the common denominator. A study published this year, for
| example, found that people 25 and younger say they almost
| never dream in black and white. But people over 55 who grew
| up with little access to color television reported dreaming
| in black and white about a quarter of the time. Over all, 12
| percent of people dream entirely in black and white.
|
| > Go back a half-century, and television's impact on our
| closed-eye experiences becomes even clearer. In the 1940s,
| studies showed that three-quarters of Americans, including
| college students, reported "rarely" or "never" seeing any
| color in their dreams. Now, those numbers are reversed.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/health/02real.html
| pessimizer wrote:
| Don't worry about it. There are no such things as dreams;
| they're the brain bullshitting itself when you wake up in an
| inconsistent state. If you have a very complicated or
| imaginative life, your brain has to do a lot of work at night
| doing a very lossy compress of everything interesting that
| happened that day. If your sleep is restless or interrupted,
| you're more likely to still be in this process when you awake.
| Your mind can then attempt to rationalize how it reached this
| state [edit: filled with malformed images, associations and
| features that lack wholes.]
|
| If you have some combination of a life of habit and adequate
| rest, you'll less often fool yourself into thinking you
| dreamed. If you immediately start writing when you wake up,
| you'll fool yourself into thinking you have the most elaborate
| and profound dreams ever, although you'll code this as
| _remembering_.
|
| Dreams are so insubstantial that we very recently believed that
| everybody dreamed in black and white, and that dreaming in
| color was a sign of mental illness. This is a belief that faded
| completely and quickly alongside the rise of _color tv and
| film_. The implications of this are pretty devastating. People
| _themselves_ believed they only dreamed in black and white, and
| later _largely forgot that this was their experience._
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/health/02real.html
|
| _Why Did We Think We Dreamed in Black and White?_
|
| http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/DreamB&W.htm
|
| _Media Influences How We Recall Our Dreams -- Do We Dream In
| Black And White Or Technicolor?_
|
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/12/021224091445.h...
|
| -----
|
| edit: so I disagree with the OP. There are no dreams, only
| recollections of dreams. When you look at the "dreamlike"
| imagery of generative AI, you're looking at something similar
| to what awake people construct dreams _from_ , not dreams
| themselves.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| People who go under anesthesia routinely have significant
| amounts of time where they are conscious and interacting with
| doctors, that are completely lost to memory. Everyone is
| configured uniquely, and you could just be someone whose memory
| is more shut off during sleep and still be "dreaming", if we
| just define dreaming as the brain continuing to operate on its
| model of the world in some capacity while sleeping.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Retrograde amnesia as in Versed?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-04-14 23:00 UTC)