A related thought: an intelligence can only work on the information that it has, regardless of its veracity, and it can only work on information that actually exists.
My hunch is that the plan of "AI boostraps itself to superintelligence, then superpower, then wipes out humanity" relies on it having access to information that is too well hidden to divine through sheer calculation and infogathering, regardless of its intelligence (ex: the location of all the military bunkers, and nuclear submarines humanity has), or simply does not exist (ex: future Human strategic choices based on coin-flips).
Most AI Apocalypse scenarios depend not only on the AI being superhumanly smart, but being inexplicably Omniscient about things that nobody could be plausibly Omniscient about.
this might not actually be always beneficial. Lucid dreaming also means you remember much more from the dreams, which can extend the lifespan of your recurring nightmares. Not to mention, if you dream lucidly, your consciousness is not resting, and intrusive thoughts will pile up.
My hypothesis is that a lot of things that seem impossible or very hard in a dream, are simply too boring to focus on. Its totally possible to consciously dream up a page of text, but who would really want to waste precious dreamtime to type?
I have a suspicion that "flying dreams" have more to do with the state of your physical body than just your mind. I noticed I only dream of flight (or rather, levitation) if my muscles are very relaxed, like after a good massage, long hot bath, or good stretching. If im physically tense, either from effort or from stress, then I either cannot fly in a dream at all, or I keep losing the ability and falling, often with enough distress to wake myself up.
In my experience, conscious Daydreaming can achieve the same results but more consistently. But then again, my imagination is extremely visual, I tend to "think in VR movies", so Lucid Daydreaming comes easier than Lucid Dreaming, and is far more controllable.
I noticed that the ability to LD is strongly correlated with the condition known as "Maladaptive Daydreaming" (the "maladaptive" part here is subjective and situational, but it basically means the ability and need to have very addctive, vivid, VR-like daydreams that obscure waking reality).
I used to suffer from MD, until I learned to control it well enough to just be benign Daydreaming. Simultaneously, I achieved the ability to LD, which works on very similar principles to controlled Daydreaming.
The trick to LD if you are a person who daydreams visually, is to focus on plausibility. Trying to consciously train your daydreaming mind to enforce realistic, plausible daydream scenarios leads to the same mental need to "fix" unrealistic dreams, which either wakes you up from the dream or makes it Lucid.
Now, all that being said, LDs rarely approach the quality of Daydreams. Its extremely hard to make a Lucid Dream realistic and detailed enough not to feel trippy. Moreover, while most Daydreamers can make their Daydreams simulate tactile sensations, you cannot do the same in an actual dream. For one, erotic Lucid Dreaming is almost always pointless, because your lucid mind cannot force your sleeping body to actually experience sexual pleasure, let alone orgasm. If you are a bio male, it is likely you won't even achieve erection, so LD sex feels like trying to play pool with a rope.
The only good use I ever got from LDs is that it lets you remember bits of your dreams better and use it as raw footage to edit into your Daydreams.
As a side tangent, I noticed lately that over a half of the distance I used to drive on a normal day, would take nearly the same time if I just walked, due to insane traffic.
For example, my morning work commute takes about 25 minutes by car, about 12 minutes by bicycle, and about 30ish minutes just walking briskly. This is because at least 60% of the "driving" is just sitting in traffic, so even though I can drive much faster than I can walk, it does not matter much. The car in traffic is not really a vehicle to move around in, but a movable couch to sit on while waiting.
This is especially true in the age of Google Maps and some such, which allows me to plot my walk/bike-ride through shortcuts that would be impossible to use if I was driving a car.
Running could probably be about 40% faster than walking in such circumstances, making driving all but pointless, unless I need to transport heavy loads or the weather is truly atrocious (but then again, atrocious weather makes driving yet harder and less efficient anyway).
Some stupidly obvious hacks that worked for me. Most were designed to help me push through ADHD issues, but would be just as useful for neurotypicals:
I notice I fail to see a difference between Deep Honesty with Reasonable Caveats, and just ol' regular Shallow-ish Honesty that allows small bits of Deep Honesty when convenient (which is something all of us do reflexively). If you (reasonably) refrain from being Deeply Honest in all situations where being so would be tactless, cause you harm, harm others, divulge sensitive information that should not be shared, and damage social relationships, you are left with very few options in which to exercise Deep Honesty (which would basically only include conversations with your therapist and writing LW comments).
I have a strong intuition that in order for Deep Honesty to work and not horribly backfire, society would have to be first restructured to make it possible, specifically by making it impossible (or just awkward and ineffective) to punish people for their Deep Honesty and honestly shared views.
Dominance underlies the things that can be done most efficiently with dominance. The moment dominance is no longer the most efficient force, it collapses, because in the vast majority of cases, dominating others takes a lot of time, energy and effort. This is actually how and why slavery (pretty much the most powerful example of dominance) was abolished: it started to make less economic sense than Bargaining (paid employment of freemen) and just Getting Things Done (through better tools and ultimately machines), so even its most ardent supporters became dispirited.