Aphantasia

[Kharakov]

Likewise with dreams. I remember interacting consciously with a dream world and being surprised at the level of details. It was a specific dream in which I was flying, and I was flying over ruins, covered in plants that were a glowing vibrant green, the sky was a pure blue, the water sparkled in the sun. I was flying, so I knew I was in a dream, and I remember thinking "this is fucking amazing that my dreamworld has this much clarity and detail".

I never was able to realise I was in a dream. I thought one couldn't do that.

A couple of over the counter antihistamines really increase the vividness of dreams (for me). My lucid dreams usually involved me taking extra a couple of antihistamines in the early morning to get back to sleep. A combination of chlorpheniramine maleate (25mg) and diphenhydramine HCL (25mg) seems to do the trick for me.

Anyway, this make me extremely relaxed (maybe take an ibuprofen as well, so incidental body aches don't wake you), and able to stay in a semi-conscious dream state for a longer period of time. Sometimes I could actual deliberately enter the dream state from consciousness, instead of "awakening" in a dream. It was actually quite awesome, although I don't do it deliberately for whatever reason.

Probably would be interesting to study whether others could do the same with combinations of antihistamines. The dream activity is probably due to diphenhydramines interaction with the muscarinic receptors, and chlors' interaction with serotonin, etc., and cross activity between the 2, instead of interaction with histamine receptors.

Anyway, I wouldn't recommend trying it before a day of work. These OTC chems can make some people very sleepy and lethargic for long periods of time.

Maybe part of the visualisation area in your brain has been somehow taken over by the "dream area" (relative to normal people like me ).
EB

I've thought that.... more that whole sections of my brain are their own entities, and I'm the slave who maintains the bodily functions. Certainly seems that way at times....

 

[Kharakov]

No, I did not "avoid" the context. The answer I gave was in context to the questions you posed.

The context was established by your incorrect claim that in order to remember dreams, you need to engage in visualization.

Conceptualization is fine. I can remember that the view from a mountaintop was exhilarating, without visualizing the view. I can remember things like seeing the power plant on the coast, without visualizing that there was a power plant on the coast. I can remember that when there was fog, what I saw was less clear, because once again, conceptualization.

So one needs no ability to visualize in order to know that dreams are more or less vivid than certain images. I'm not saying that I cannot recall flashes from dreams, I'm saying that the ability to visualize is entirely unnecessary if one is attempting to understand whether dreams are more vivid and detailed than voluntary visualization. If you remember interacting with a surprisingly detailed world, in a dream, you don't need to visualize the world, or the level of details in the world.

After all, my visualizations of the dreams are obviously not as vivid as the dreams themselves, considering that I've already indicated that my voluntary visualizations (sans drugs) are less vivid than dreams.

And no, you still can't actually know that one visualization (a dream) is less or more vivid/detailed than a regular mental visualization, if you're incapable of said regular visualization. Which is what the whole disagreement was actually about.

Except I don't have to visualize being on top of a mountain to know that the visual experience on top of the mountain was more vivid/detailed than my recollection of the experience. It's really a gaping hole in your reasoning- your idea that you need to be able to visualize something in order to know that you saw more details when you saw something than when you don't.

I remember being on a mountaintop. I know that the view from the mountaintop was more vivid than my memory of being on the mountaintop. I'm not visualizing the view in order to know this- it's not some big mystery.

But there's NO objective way for us (and that includes you) to determine that you're not actually full of shit.

Forget the objective/subjective divide- that's stupid and not pertinent to the conversation, we are both human, and have not entirely dissimilar experiences. You and I both see more external details with our eyes open than with our eyes closed (assuming you are not more visually cybernetically augmented than I).

You can close your eyes and realize that your view of the world around you became suddenly, and quite miraculously (according to your mind), less vivid, without visualizing the world becoming less vivid and detailed. You know how? Because you perceive a lesser amount of (not fewer) details about the world around you. The absence of details is noticed, without having to visualize the details.

Likewise when you wake from a dream, with your eyes still closed, you notice a drop in detail levels before you open your eyes. You've undoubtedly been between waking and dream states before (even if you don't recall it at this point in time).

For the study, six lucid dreamers were asked to sleep in a functional MRI machine so blood flow to regions of their brain could be monitored. Once asleep, the subjects were asked to confirm their lucid dream-state with a series of of eye movements. They were then asked to purposely "dream" that they were clenching their fists.

Researchers found that the subjects' brain activity during the lucid dreaming of this task was similar to their brain activity while performing the same task when awake. However, their brain activity during sleep was weaker.

Certainly it suggests something akin to what they're claiming (lucid dreaming) is happening...

Yup. Not much is proven outside of math. You can't prove that chlorine atoms won't start acting like iodine tomorrow, but you can rest assured that they won't.

although the whole point of it wasn't to establish a serious theory but rather to demonstrate to you that you do not actually have an objective way to determine you experienced a lucid dream;

No it wasn't. Maybe you think you can fabricate some bullshit, because you mentioned brains fabricating bullshit (that my memories of LDs could be fabrications), but you're not going to convince anyone that that was the point.

You tried to claim that visualization skills are required to know that dreams are more vivid than waking visualizations, which is totally wrong. Lack of the ability to visualize, and memory of seeing things in dreams, are enough. You remember seeing the room around you when you close your eyes, despite not being able to picture it as it is.

Then you tried to claim that memories can be fabricated, in order to attempt to be correct about something (a strawman in this case), and this is true in some cases, but so what- obviously I recall enough of my lucid dreams (being able to do things in them, going back into one after partially awakening) that I know that I've had them.

You're just attempting to salvage a tiny bit of credibility from this conversation, and you have none. If you said "ohh, I was wrong about that" in the beginning, we'd move past it. Instead, you kept being wrong, grasping at ignorance of objective reality like it would save you. You're still wrong.

Lucid dreams exist. People have experienced them. Nobody believes your bullshit claims that they don't exist, or cares that you really wanted to be right about something, so argued until you got to the objective/subjective divide, so you could appeal to ignorance, or whatever.

Wrong. <-- who dat?

 

[dystopian]

Yeah, I think I'm just going to stop trying to explain arguments to people who can not seem to comprehend their content despite multiple attempts to elucidate it to them. I tried.

 

[Speakpigeon]

My brother says that he does visualize complex images (when designing landscapes or layouts), but in his experience his visualizations of how things will turn out have been incorrect, so he does the stuff on paper. My theory is that his mind mixed how he wanted the landscape to look with how he knew the plants look (I should tell him this, and see what he says).

The question may be: How much did training contribute to his performance?
EB

I asked him, although I may have primed him with the answer because he didn't understand the question. Anyways, he said that it sounds likely that his visualization of how he wanted the landscape to look interfered with his visualization of how the landscape would actually look.

Well, it's interesting, interesting in a way which seems to have little to do with my question...

So, his desires and fancies seem to interfere with a hard, merciless look on how things will turn out to be once the thing is built. I believe any housing and office development looks very, very different once it's built compared to the nice little drawings full of colours that were supposed to give an idea of how it would look like. We realise that to an extent but there's little we can to do about it apparently.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

I have the sense that some of my dreams have amazing detail. But I say "sense", because like most people I can't actually remember enough of them to make an accurate assessment. If my 'sense' is on the mark, then I had a particularly detailed dream last night; but I only remember fragments now (I was an entirely different person, gender and age, and had just moved to Tokyo where I didn't understand anyone except someone who I think was my cousin or brother, whom I went to a massive department store with where he disappeared leaving me to wander the night-time streets in search of someone who could help me find my way and randomly showing up at some high society party... or something along those lines) so I really can't be sure. I can still remember (almost a day later now) a good chunk of what the store I got ditched in looked like, which is quite impressive given that I've never been anywhere that looks like it, and which does suggest a high level of detail... but again, I don't know for sure.

Indeed. Maybe we do dream of a few detailed items that may give us the impression that the whole dream was similarly detailed, not unlike vision where you only have a detailed view at the centre of the vision field. A few nights ago I had a dream that featured what I thought was a big spider but looked as I recall more like a crab. It was the size of a big crab too but a lovely shiny green. It was suspended on a thread I thought was ordinary spider silk that I held at the other extremity in my hand, moving it up and down to juggle the critter a little. The "silk" was actually more like an elastic and I definitely remember the inertia of its chunky body. That's detailed allright but the surroundings were barely suggested (as far as I can recall) and I woke up before any substantial development. No story but that was still way more fun than anything I dream most of the time. I guess we are supposed to rehearse things somehow when we dream, like a cat who dreams perhaps of chasing a mouse. Beats me. How are we going ever to form any convincing theory about that?
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

And no, you still can't actually know that one visualization (a dream) is less or more vivid/detailed than a regular mental visualization, if you're incapable of said regular visualization. Which is what the whole disagreement was actually about.

I also don't know whether what I saw yesterday walking the streets was equally detailed as what I see today as I am walking the same streets. I have to compare what I see now, which seems vivid and detailed, to whatever I remember seeing yesterday, which is foggy and uncertain. Memory of actual vision seems to me as sketchy as visualisation, suggesting the two processes are closely related. Yet, in the case of a dream, not only there's the problem that we have dreams while asleep, presumably in a very different state of consciousness, but we can only rely on what seem to be unreliable memories of our dreams. I can compare to an episode when I had passed out. I was able to remember afterward the impression I had at the time. Somewhat weird of course but the point is that my memory of that was much more vivid than any dream I could remember, to the point that I have no doubt as to what was actually going through my mind at the time. So I guess we assess the level of detail of various type of visualisations based on our memories of them but we can also look at something and visualise it at the same time. I'm not sure how it's more reliable but it's more convincing that visualisation is less detailed and vivid than actual vision. And again, it seems a good thing for our survival that our imagination cannot compete in vividness with actual vision. I guess this is what gives us the sense we have of the reality of the actual world (or the illusion of that).
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Conceptualization is fine. I can remember that the view from a mountaintop was exhilarating, without visualizing the view. I can remember things like seeing the power plant on the coast, without visualizing that there was a power plant on the coast. I can remember that when there was fog, what I saw was less clear, because once again, conceptualization.

So one needs no ability to visualize in order to know that dreams are more or less vivid than certain images. I'm not saying that I cannot recall flashes from dreams, I'm saying that the ability to visualize is entirely unnecessary if one is attempting to understand whether dreams are more vivid and detailed than voluntary visualization. If you remember interacting with a surprisingly detailed world, in a dream, you don't need to visualize the world, or the level of details in the world.

Ok, I get it.
EB

 

[dystopian]

That's detailed allright but the surroundings were barely suggested (as far as I can recall)

With me, I have the sense it's usually the reverse; things like faces and what people are wearing and all that is stuff I never remember; presumably because it's just generic "it's a person" type of stuff. On the other hand, my surroundings, regardless of whether it has a function in the dream, appears much more detailed. Last night I dreamt that I was wandering through the village my grandmother and my two uncles lived in... except the village looked completely different; had a few streets which had a layout that reminded me of the city I went to school in (though the buildings were very different) and had magically transported to what seemed to be an Alpine valley. I still distinctly remember a field of grass behind my grandmother's house (except, again, the house didn't look like hers at all); the way that the sky was dark as evening fell; the way the grass felt and smelled (it had just rained in the dream), what the hill on the other side of the field looked like with all the trees on top, and so on. But people? Not a clue.

Then again, I'm not a people person to begin with; and I'm quite visually inclined (I *am* a graphic designer, after all), so that surely might have something to do with it.

 

[Malintent]

I missed where posters seem to have indicated some incredulity towards lucid dreaming... it appears, though, we have lucid dream deniers in this thread. If I misunderstand, I apologize. However, I can say for certain that lucid dreaming exists, and I have personally experienced it exactly 4 times in my life. They are unforgettable experiences.

In the first 3 of these experiences I have had, they all happened in a very similar way. I was walking along a sidewalk and it just dawned on me all at once - I am dreaming. After a 1 or 2 second pause to appreciate that I just realized this, AND I stayed asleep (that is the key), I simply 'willed' myself up into the air and flew around. In the second and third instance I landed and began 'summoning' objects and people... and then I did nasty things to them... In all 4 cases the dream eventually 'faded' away, in that reality began to fade in (the reality that I was laying in my bed, not up and about). The 4th lucid dream (and last) that I have had was very disturbing. It was nightmare that I 'pulled' myself out of by realizing it was a dream, and then I forced a change in what was happening... but it went south fast and I just willed myself awake.... to find myself in bed with an evil succubus that was only very slowly fading out. It was very creepy... and while it was lucid in that I had full awareness it was all imaginary, I lacked complete control over the imagery... only had partial control of the dream. Very weird.

 

[dystopian]

I missed where posters seem to have indicated some incredulity towards lucid dreaming... it appears, though, we have lucid dream deniers in this thread. If I misunderstand, I apologize. However, I can say for certain that lucid dreaming exists, and I have personally experienced it exactly 4 times in my life. They are unforgettable experiences.

You've indeed misunderstood. At least with me. I have not said that lucid dreaming does not exist; simply that it is impossible to objectively verify that it does and that it isn't something else instead. You're dealing with subjective experiences after all, and there's explanations for them that allow for these experiences to feel like they were lucid dreams as traditionally defined without actually being so. I accept that there's probably something there, but just because you can "say for certain" that they exist and you've experienced them, doesn't mean that we can actually objectively say this is so. You are, after all, just relaying an anecdote which I can not verify actually happened.

The subjectivity of them and the claims surrounding were the point of the argument for me, as it directly relates to the rest of the thread.

 

[Kharakov]

Yeah, I think I'm just going to stop trying to explain arguments to people who can not seem to comprehend their content despite multiple attempts to elucidate it to them.

I assume, by your comment that doesn't address the numerous stupid ideas you've brought up, that you know:

A) arguing that one must be able to visualize a dream in order to judge whether it is more vivid than something you cannot see is completely stupid.
B) arguing against the implications of the MRI studies is equally as stupid, although yes, an idiot can say "well you don't know for certain".
C) lucid dreams exist, arguing that they do not is stupid.
D) making up some bullshit about the brain creating "dreams" when one is waking up, while it sounds plausible, doesn't jive with various neurological studies of lucid dreams

The whole thing stemmed from you recklessly arguing for a strawman before you fact checked...

 

[Kharakov]

Look at this word a little while: procrastination.

Now, close your eyes as you are looking at it. You should have a more or less faint mental image of the vision you had just before closing your eyes and in particular of the word "procrastination", or part of it, including the underlining of it and the colour. Yes? No?
EB

Yes. I apologize for the lateness of my reply.

 

[Kharakov]

I missed where posters seem to have indicated some incredulity towards lucid dreaming... it appears, though, we have lucid dream deniers in this thread.

No. Dystopian brought up the strawman about LDs because he didn't want to accept my experience of having them. They aren't actually even necessary to discredit his original false statement, I just thought his claims about them were stupid, so pursued correcting them.

He knows better, but just doesn't admit it, which I'm fine with, although it would serve him well to admit his mistakes publicly, because it establishes character (being willing to admit when your statements are incorrect).

If you can not visualize then you can only rely on the vague 'feeling' that they were vivid in a way you can't reproduce while awake; and a feeling like that is useless as any sort of accurate metric.

I know because of my experiences of lucid dreaming-...

Except lucid dreaming is something to take a very large chunk of salt on one's spoon; there is no way to verify it whatsoever. We're supposed to believe that someone has experienced a lucid dream purely on the basis of them saying so..... We have no way of determining that you actually experienced a lucid dream at all, or whether in the moments after you woke your brain produced a feedback loop that gave you the strong *impression* that you had a lucid dream.

Well, except for the MRI studies of lucid dreamers. http://news.discovery.com/tech/brain-scan-lucid-dream-111102.htm

Except that doesn't show that they're lucid dreaming, it just shows that they're experiencing a certain kind of brain activity; you're still relying on nothing more than self-reporting to determine what they're actually experiencing....
Furthermore, consider the possibility, as I already pointed out, that the whole "lucid dream" is nothing more than a feedback loop that occurs during the waking process, and was not ever in fact a dream that you were lucid in: it would be little more than a variation of deja vu.

The whole thing was about his incorrect claim that one needs to be able to visualize in order to know that a dream is more vivid than a visualization.


He still hasn't described how visual synthesis of images is analytic, rather than synthetic. Seems like a weird thing to believe....

 

[dystopian]

Yeah, I think I'm just going to stop trying to explain arguments to people who can not seem to comprehend their content despite multiple attempts to elucidate it to them.

I assume, by your comment that doesn't address the numerous stupid ideas you've brought up, that you know:

A) arguing that one must be able to visualize a dream in order to judge whether it is more vivid than something you cannot see is completely stupid.
B) arguing against the implications of the MRI studies is equally as stupid, although yes, an idiot can say "well you don't know for certain".
C) lucid dreams exist, arguing that they do not is stupid.
D) making up some bullshit about the brain creating "dreams" when one is waking up, while it sounds plausible, doesn't jive with various neurological studies of lucid dreams

The whole thing stemmed from you recklessly arguing for a strawman before you fact checked...

Ow, the irony.

 

[Kharakov]

The whole thing stemmed from you recklessly arguing for a strawman before you fact checked...

Ow, the irony.

Wait, are you saying you strawmanned this thread deliberately, instead of recklessly.

 

[Kharakov]

My brother says that he does visualize complex images (when designing landscapes or layouts), but in his experience his visualizations of how things will turn out have been incorrect, so he does the stuff on paper. My theory is that his mind mixed how he wanted the landscape to look with how he knew the plants look (I should tell him this, and see what he says).

The question may be: How much did training contribute to his performance?
EB

I asked him, although I may have primed him with the answer because he didn't understand the question. Anyways, he said that it sounds likely that his visualization of how he wanted the landscape to look interfered with his visualization of how the landscape would actually look.

Well, it's interesting, interesting in a way which seems to have little to do with my question...

I believe he was trained to draw layouts and plans, because these are what people pay him to produce, but I don't think that I asked him your specific question. I asked him more about his usage of visualization, not "how much did training contribute to your performance?" If he calls me back, I'll ask him your specific question.

He basically said that a garden didn't turn out like he wanted, when he visualized it instead of creating a graphical depiction of the garden before it was planted (2 plants did not have the correct color balance, which he would have noticed if he had put photos of them next to one another). That's the example that he gave me: 2 plants not looking the way he visualized they would, and if he had looked at the photos side by side, he would have known they would not fit together.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Then again, I'm not a people person to begin with; and I'm quite visually inclined (I *am* a graphic designer, after all), so that surely might have something to do with it.

Maybe you've trained yourself to have detailed dreams...

Or, possibly, you've become a graphic designer because the dream part of your brain wanted more basic material to work dreams out of.

Or your work is basically just another dream.
EB

 

[dystopian]

Or your work is basically just another dream.
EB

But my work doesn't follow the arbitrary rules of dream logic. For instance, on this flyer right here I'm just making sure this block of text lines up properly with the header on the left side so that the giant toad that's staring at me won't eat the princess dooming the planet to certain destr--OH MY FUCKING GOD.

 

[Perspicuo]

Aphantasia is too young a nosological category to answer the OP.

This is science, not theology, philosophy or ideology.