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Raw_Power comments on Discussion: Ideas for a Lesswrongian anticipation Sci-Fi set in 2060 - Less Wrong
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All that episode said is that Batman couldn't read in his dreams. I remember this nightmare I had. I was before an exam sheet. I read the exercise. I thought I understood it, but just to make sure, once i reached the bottom, I reviewed it, starting from the top. It had changed. I SPENT ALL THE NIGHT LIKE THAT: It was the most horrible nightmare I ever had, even worse than right after seeing Jurassic Park, when I dreamed of the T Rex coming to eat me on the toilet.
Anyhoo, I just checked the Internets for a while. No mention of a study (I must have made that up, somehow, which deeply disturbs me, it's the second time in my life my memory makes shit up), but plenty of people saying they can read, can't read, or can read but if they check for content they find the text changes offscreen.
More realistically, it's the second time in your life that you noticed that your memory made shit up. Memories do that all the time.
Not all memories: some don't . Except for those two instances, I have never, ever remembered something wrong in my life. Either I know or I don't. I don't want to get into a discussion on this: some people's brains work in subtly different ways from others. In my case, I never remember stuff wrong. When I'm making shit up or taking a guess, I actually know it, I know there's a gap, a blank. That's the way it is, period. Sometimes I'm tempted to fill it, but I systematically shy from that, like an instinctive feeling of danger.
Sorry for the harsh tone, it's just that I remember (heh) having a similar discussion on the TV Tropes fora, and it took me, like, pages to convince them of this, and I wouldn't replay it. Anyway, what's the accuracy of my assesment of my own memory have to do with the topic? Plus, you can't question people's subjective experiences of their own brain: there's just no way you can decide the discussion through evidence either way. I could argue that people who thought they read in their books actuall heard the words, or thought them without the intermediary of letters in the paper, or something like that. Such an argument won't lead anyone anywhere.
...
Hey, that's an interesting topic too: what if brainscanning or brain interfaces allow for an objective understanding of what happens inside? What if some "gifted" people have brains that have a functioning so far from the norm it's indecipherable for machines (at least until they come up with a better algorythm)?
It'd certainly help improving a lot of stuff, understanding how people think.
There's a difference between reading something where the text changes, and being wholly unable to read. It would be easy to create a webpage in which the text changed periodically, just using Javascript.
Also, note that in the Batman episode, he makes the same claim that you did, that the "reading" part of the brain doesn't work in dreams.
... I am so ashamed...
It must be Kevin Konroy's Goddamn Batman voice.
Yeah, but the text changing as soon as you look away... that's gaslighting... Anyhoo, I see how the disticntion you draw is relevant. i also see how most people wouldn't tell the difference until one pointed it out at them.
I remember reading about an experiment in which they did exactly that: change the text on a computer screen during eye sucades, when the eyes aren't processing data, IE while you're "Not looking". Which reminded me of trying to read in dreams, certainly.
I once had a lucid dream in which I decided to see how good my latent memory was by picking up a book from my self in the dream and reading the first line to see, when I woke, if I'd got it right. But it was just nonsense babble which, as you point out, kept changing. Oh well.