Dreaming

[slipstrike0159]

Now dreams are a random assortment of our experiences and the life we have been through so far in some sense of the phrase correct? Also, our dreams can be influenced by sometimes still semi-concious senses like when you dream around a tv show that is playing while you sleep next to the tv or when you fall asleep listening to music.
Assuming most of our dreams are influenced based on perception, the lack thereof, and the subconcious aspect of it, then wouldnt it be easy to somehow create a dream scenario that you want to happen while you are asleep? That is to say, have a dream about what your concious mind wants you to dream? How then is it any different than a subconcious form of virtual reality? Supposing we get the technology to simulate stimulations of our senses to the point where virtual reality becomes almost completely real to our perception then wouldnt it be just like having a dream? Following along this same process, couldnt we then come up with a means to produce such a controlled dream environment by backtracking to the most simplistic human anonalmy?
Then again, how would we know what our subconcious mind wants us to experience if we artifically make our own dreams, and yet, would they still be dreams in the same sense of the word?

Just something to think about i guess...

[FreezinIce]

If humans ever achived the ability to do this, life as we know it would very likely end. People would spend more and more time in their own dreams, until nobody is left in the waking world. There's a reason why we only dream when we're asleep.

[MixMasterLar]

I would think the earth would end before the layman would get such machines.

I do see assassins being trained in such way, prehaps. Like in the book Bourne Utimatuim except that instead of a huge camp they would put people in a tube at night and do this. It's a scary thought really.

I wouldnt count it as dreams in the true sense, simply due to dreams being made of the subconcious mind and what you write about is clearly not.

[Izzy-chandess]

Um, isn't that whole concept kind of like "The Matrix?" Honestly, you never know. We could be just one big battery... *cough cough* >.>

[arelik]

Lucid dreaming is a way of controlling your dreams.

http://www.dreamviews.com/

I never had a lucid dream but remember a few dreams that I could control, without realizing that I was sleeping.

Humans can sleep for a limited amount of time every day. Don't worry about everyone sleeping forever.

[group xtreme]

REM sleep occurs periodically during a night as the sleep cycle repeats itself. There are four stages to the sleep cycle, each with their own set of brainwaves. I'm not going to get into any of them other than REM sleep. REM sleep occurs during the beginning of the first stage of the second cycle of sleep. It generally lasts a short period of time and gets longer as the night progresses (because your stage 4 [delta wave] sleep decreases). You have multiple dreams during the night because dreams occur, and only occur during REM sleep.

And dreams are nothing more than sudden, random outbursts of neural activity. Or so would argue the Activation-Synthesis theory.

[FallenXxRaven]

I have nothing to contribute to this discussion, but it seemed to be the appropriate place to ask this. For about a month straight when I fell asleep, I would know I was dreaming, but could not control anything, and then, for lack of a better term, scary stuff would happen, and I would not be able to move or wake up. I would literally be in my dream trying to wake up, and sometimes I would wake up into another dream, several times before I was actually awake and could move and, sometimes even breathe again. Does anyone know what the hell went on (and still periodically does), or maybe even how to stop that? Once again sorry for the lack of contribution but you guys seem to know dreams better than I do, and when this happens it keeps getting worse and worse.

[ShastaTwist]

www.dreammoods.com

[lacrosseman22]

Very interesting... I have to agree though that we would spend too much time dreaming because we could dream about what we wanted to. Read the book Pendragon: The Reality Bug. The main 'problem' in the book is basically the same thing. I think you would find it interesting even if it is a work of fiction.

[group xtreme]

Dream interpretations are fake.

No one knows what dreams really are. As there are many different theories of what dreams result from. How can we find the meaning of an aspect when we don't even know what causes it? It may have no meaning whatsoever if we aren't somewhat subconsciously creating it (again with the theory of Activation-Synthesis).

Freud most famously has contributed to this enigma with his...interesting...idea of manifest content...

"Sometimes a cigar...isn't a cigar!"

[ShastaTwist]

Sigmund Freud was on cocaine, don't blame him.

[slipstrike0159]

Originally Posted by group xtreme

Dream interpretations are fake.

No one knows what dreams really are. As there are many different theories of what dreams result from. How can we find the meaning of an aspect when we don't even know what causes it? It may have no meaning whatsoever if we aren't somewhat subconsciously creating it (again with the theory of Activation-Synthesis).

Freud most famously has contributed to this enigma with his...interesting...idea of manifest content...

"Sometimes a cigar...isn't a cigar!"

Still, you cant say its completely unfounded to believe that in some way interpreting dreams isnt beneficial. It can help with a variety of different things concerning the subconcious psycological mind such as therapy. There are things about yourself like habits, phobias, pet peeves, and things of that nature that youre concious mind just cant give reasoning to at any given moment. These things are stored in the subconscience and are taken into consideration when dreams are being formed. Remember that your subconscience takes everything into account, the things you can remember and the things you cant remember.
I have a hypothesis that your subconscience can very accurately calculate what might happen next in your life based off of the choices and characteristics you have displayed in the past which may be displayed during dreaming sessions. Also along these lines i believe that the "deja vu" feeling comes in part with these subconscience predictions. Considering you have so many dreams most of which you cant recall, you probably have played out many possible future scenarios in your head and when you get the deja vu feeling in real life it is just merely a recreation somewhat similar to a scenario you thought out, subconsciencly of course.

[devonin]

Just to interject, I'm pretty sure that the current standard definition of deja vu is the feeling that results from new stimuli being accidentally routed through your memory centres, which gives you the feeling of remembering something as it happens.

Functionally: Deja Vu is a neuron misfiring, and the wrong part of your brain processes the incoming sense impressions.

[slipstrike0159]

Just an alternate theory, thats all.

[devonin]

Does your alternate theory have any evidence?

[slipstrike0159]

Originally Posted by slipstrike0159

I have a hypothesis...

I mean really, if you are going to get all nitpicky you might as well reread what my phrasing was. In no way did i say it was justified, i just said that it was my own personal thought that i believed might have some relevance.

[Roy Campbell]

By lucid dreaming, it is possible to create your own virtual reality in which you can do anything you want and you can control every aspect of a lucid dream without even using technology. However, the complexity of your dream will be limited to your imagination, which has its limits. If we had technology that could transmit information into your brain as you enter the rem sleep cycle in the right way then technology could create a virtual reality in your head and even limit what your brain can do to control the dream, which could have some very positive and very negative or horrifying results as the length and intensity of your dream could be changed and waking up could be made impossible. Death by shutting off the brain might even be possible. Time could be stretched in the dream so a 1 minute dream would seem like forever, and the reverse could also be possible. Anything our minds could process would be possible and technology could do anything to our dream within the limits of technology. By limiting what your brain could do to influence the dream a form of virtual reality with the same physical laws as reality or that of any other form of reality within limits could be created. In short, although we can lucid dream, I believe that eventually we might be able to use technology to enhance our lucid dreams. Technology can already utilize brain power to control external devices, as discussed here. There's many other websites too about this, do some google searching if you're interested. Our conscious mind, subconscious mind and technology could control our dreams and technology could be more detailed than our conscious and possibly subconscious mind in doing so.

Technology is already able to connect with our minds on a basic level by controlling the mouse cursor with mind alone, so I could see this as a possibility. Technology will still have to advance significantly before the connection between our minds and technology is possible at that level, but it does seem like the idea is within reach. The possibilities are endless, and although technology has its limits, there's no telling how advanced it will be in the years to come.

To specifically answer your question, you could program exactly what you want into the supercomputer, connect that to your brain, go to sleep, then have a dream based on what you programmed. Programming could be done somewhat easily because you could transfer your thoughts into the computer. We'd know what our subconscious wants because the computer would detect it, thus the computer could give us dreams it created.

Edit: Pardon my structure if it's a little poor, I typed this in like 40 minutes late last night and just wanted to present some sensible ideas while the thread was still active.