All of Varman's Comments + Replies

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?

It's important to note that only a small subset of lucid dreaming techniques are useful for rationality practice, as I mentioned in my first footnote. For instance, the first method that I used to achieve lucid dreaming as a teenager was to flash blinking lights directly in front of my eyes while going to sleep. This allowed me to see a blinking pattern through my eyelids while sleeping, realize I was asleep, and hence achieve lucidity. While certainly effective at achieving lucid dreaming, this technique has no relevance to rationality at all. Thus, I wouldn't expect lucid dreamers in general to be more rational than the general population. A person who sees lucid dreaming as their goal will select for certain things; a person who sees rationality as their goal and lucid dreaming as their tool will select for others.