Random Thoughts

[Randall]

One Timeless Summer's Day

I had a dream in which I was part of a group of children who all grew-up together over the course of a sunny summer's day in a grassy field near the sea. I woke-up from this extraordinary experience and looked at the clock. It was 6:30 AM. I lay there contemplating how this dream could be made into a low-budget film festival movie.

I ran the scenes in my mind and imagined how it could all come together in an avante garde manner to expose a range of social behaviors we commonly think of as normal, but are in-fact due the socialization of the system that was absent in the dream. I thought that if only I won the lottery, perhaps I could actually make such a film, I glanced again at the clock. It was still 6:30 AM.

Was the clock broken? I thought to myself. I decided to watch it until the led turned from zero to one. It seemed to take forever. The "watched pot" effect, I told myself. Finally I had to blink, and in that moment the clock changed to 6:31. And so began my day. Perhaps there is more truth to the idea that the universe really is constructed in such a way that it only exists when we look at it.

Then I got-up, put on my overcoat, furry Russian hat, and went outside to confront the reality of the freshly fallen snow on my sidewalk. Do our dreams get weirder as we get older? The other day I had one about being a construction worker on a crew that was building a massive hydroelectric project in Latin America. Why I would dream that I have no clue.

Mind-Bending Study Shifts Our Understanding of Dreams

An international study of 36 participants from four different countries (United States, Germany, France, and the Netherlands) discovered a new

thedebrief.org

Protests against Latin America’s pursuit of hydropower are increasing as the environmental costs mount up. Is the end of the region’s mega dams in sight?

Why is Latin America so obsessed with mega dams? | John Vidal

Protests against Latin America’s pursuit of hydropower increase as the environmental costs mount up. Is the end of the region’s mega dams in sight?

www.theguardian.com

 

[Randall]

Generally speaking, Everyone wanders through life in their own little world bubble. I wander between them with something that looks suspiciously like a bubble popper. Not everyone is thankful. And now for something I bet you'd never expect ...

HYUNA - 'Bubble Pop!'​

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[Constance]

Mind-Bending Study Shifts Our Understanding of Dreams - The Debrief​

An international study discovered a new communication method when someone is sleeping; "interactive dreaming."

thedebrief.org

I think this article you linked is very significant for consciousness research and paranormal research, but I have to question the underscored segments of its last paragraph:

"Through these “interactive dreaming” methods, the future of the mind seems wide open. Perhaps one day, we could learn to extract secrets (think what the CIA could do with this), find repressed memories, create new methods of cognitive-communication that could spill over into artificial intelligence, and even venture into the weird and deep waters of telepathic transmissions."

I'm open to a discussion about this if you are.

 

[Constance]

I think this article you linked is very significant for consciousness research and paranormal research, but I have to question the underscored segments of its last paragraph:

"Through these “interactive dreaming” methods, the future of the mind seems wide open. Perhaps one day, we could learn to extract secrets (think what the CIA could do with this), find repressed memories, create new methods of cognitive-communication that could spill over into artificial intelligence, and even venture into the weird and deep waters of telepathic transmissions."

I'm open to a discussion about this if you are.

I'll start so as not to lose the thread. Sleep and dream researchers have long recognized that as we enter sleep states and intermittent dream states, the executive operations of the forebrain go 'off-line' and subconscious memories come forward [both individual memories and species memories carried along in the evolution of consciousness]. And in our own species, culturally significant archetypal memories carried along in our species' evolution also occupy and are expressed in our dream states, as Jung revealed. Thus, it seems to me, that the idea that the CIA would identify evidence of the activities, intentions, and plans of spies and others by somehow tuning into their dreams would likely bear little or no fruit.

The other suggestion in your post that I questioned -- i.e., that somehow tuning into and reading human dreams "could create new methods of cognitive-communication that could spill over into artificial intelligence" -- strikes me as an obvious category mistake. The layers of experience accumulated in the preconscious and subconscious mind over the evolution of species begin in bodily experience and only gradually lead to awareness, protoconsciousness, and reflective consciousness. I'm not aware of any evidence that robots evolve consciousness in the same ways, or indeed attain it in any way. I'm afraid we're all overly influenced by the title of the book out of which the film "Blade Runner" was developed -- i.e, Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep?

 

[Randall]

I'll start so as not to lose the thread. Sleep and dream researchers have long recognized that as we enter sleep states and intermittent dream states, the executive operations of the forebrain go 'off-line' and subconscious memories come forward [both individual memories and species memories carried along in the evolution of consciousness]. And in our own species, culturally significant archetypal memories carried along in our species' evolution also occupy and are expressed in our dream states, as Jung revealed. Thus, it seems to me, that the idea that the CIA would identify evidence of the activities, intentions, and plans of spies and others by somehow tuning into their dreams would likely bear little or no fruit.

The other suggestion in your post that I questioned -- i.e., that somehow tuning into and reading human dreams "could create new methods of cognitive-communication that could spill over into artificial intelligence" -- strikes me as an obvious category mistake. The layers of experience accumulated in the preconscious and subconscious mind over the evolution of species begin in bodily experience and only gradually lead to awareness, protoconsciousness, and reflective consciousness. I'm not aware of any evidence that robots evolve consciousness in the same ways, or indeed attain it in any way. I'm afraid we're all overly influenced by the title of the book out of which the film "Blade Runner" was developed -- i.e, Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep?

Octopus Dreaming?
They change colors during sleep

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[Randall]

From a certain perspective, we humans are time machines.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

So is that a random...thought.....?

 

[Gene Steinberg]

Or a thought that's....random....?

 

[Randall]

Or a thought that's....random....?

It's timely