TheOtherDave comments on Better Rationality Through Lucid Dreaming - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (46)
One way to make sure you will notice absurdity in your dreams is to make a habit of small reality checks while awake. For a while I made a habit of checking clocks twice a few seconds apart and noticing whether the times were consistent, and I doubt this kind of check had any effect other than allowing me to notice a couple of times that I was indeed dreaming. But it might be possible to come up with different checks that would raise my overall sanity waterline. Any suggestions?
A frequently quoted one is to try to read or write text and pay attention to the individual words (rather than just the "general gist"). I don't lucid dream, but I've certainly had the experience of being frustrated during dreams by having text shift around as I try to read or write it. (I have no idea if I would have had this experience before being primed for it by being told to expect it.)
That doesn't answer the question? I'm pretty sure a honed attentiveness to the consistency of text wouldn't raise my overall sanity waterline.
That's an excellent point. I must admit, the whole premise that noticing reality-check-violations in my dream-scenarios has some relation to "my overall sanity waterline" (whatever that is) completely fails to resonate with me, so in retrospect it seems I just collapsed the criterion to noticing reality-check-violations in dream scenarios more generally... thereby, as you observe, failing to answer the question. Oops! Thanks for pointing that out.