loqi comments on The Modesty Argument - Less Wrong

26 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 December 2006 09:42PM

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Comment author: BethMo 21 April 2011 04:56:41AM 4 points [-]

Greetings! I'm a relatively new reader, having spent a month or two working my way through the Sequences and following lots of links, and finally came across something interesting to me that no one else had yet commented on.

Eleizer wrote "Those who dream do not know they dream; but when you wake you know you are awake." No one picked out or disagreed with this statement.

This really surprised me. When I dream, if I bother to think about it I almost always know that I dream -- enough so that on the few occasions when I realize I was dreaming without knowing so, it's a surprising and memorable experience. (Though there may be selection bias here; I could have huge numbers of dreams where I don't know I'm dreaming, but I just don't remember them.)

I thought this was something that came with experience, maturity, and -- dare I say it? -- rationality. Now that I'm thinking about it in this context, I'm quite curious to hear whether this is true for most of the readership. I'm non-neurotypical in several ways; is this one of them?

Comment author: shokwave 21 April 2011 05:42:15AM 1 point [-]

Endoself mentioned lucid dreaming; in the few lucid dreams I have had, I knew I was dreaming, but in the many normal dreams I did not know. In fact, non-lucid dreams feel extremely real, because I try to change what's happening the way I would in a lucid dream, and nothing changes - convincing me that it's real.

When I am awake I am very aware that I am awake and not dreaming; strangely that feeling is absent during dreams but somehow doesn't alert me that I'm dreaming.

Comment author: loqi 21 April 2011 06:21:36AM *  1 point [-]

In fact, non-lucid dreams feel extremely real, because I try to change what's happening the way I would in a lucid dream, and nothing changes - convincing me that it's real.

This has been my experience. And on several occasions I've become highly suspicious that I was dreaming, but unable to wake myself. The pinch is a lie, but it still hurts in the dream.