Is Dreaming an Encryption Procedure?

[Michael McMahon]

Good luck Sculptor!

If the world was 100% superdeterministic or if each person was completely causally separate then reincarnating to a life in the past shouldn't be impossible? How do you know your next life won't be back in medieval era? Afterall if you have no control over your decision-making and your consciousness is epiphenomenal then you can't affect the actions of others nor alter the course of history!

[Sculptor1]

DO you not understand the question?

Self-control is a virtue under both determinism and the worldview of free will. So dreams that aid self-control can also be said to aid free will even if some of the logic behind it is deterministic.

So how do you exercise an act of will?
Was essentially the question.

Good luck Sculptor!

[Pattern-chaser]

Perhaps I could define myself by what I am not. The unconscious minds of others are inaccessible to me. Everyone's temporal experience of life is unique where as physical objects can be duplicated.

The conscious minds of others are inaccessible to you too...?

[Michael McMahon]

I awoke from an evening snooze. I was lucid briefly where I appeared to be swimming underwater. A voice from my unconscious mind asked me if I am God. I told myself that I am me. I could see the colours of a goldfish and I was again asked the same question. It felt like I was about to embody the goldfish when I twisted around rapidly and floated past. Next a premeditated thought-line inquired if I was a whale. I could feel myself accelerating through the blue water. Yet again I said that I am me. Then I woke up and immediately wrote this very post. The word according to Michael!

[Michael McMahon]

Fish seem to live a more tranquil life than animals by virtue of having to withstand very little of their own bodyweight in the sea:

Enya - Caribbean Blue

The conscious minds of others are inaccessible to you too...?

No, but they're more accessible to me than the conscious minds of others. In other words I cannot tell by a person's behaviour what they had dreamt about.

[Michael McMahon]

(I mis-worded the above reply... "The conscious minds of others are more accessible to me than the unconscious minds of others.)

[Michael McMahon]

This is an ordinary vivid dream I witnessed a few weeks ago. Initially I didn't think to write it down but I thought I might as well to give more examples to others who might be considering lucid dreaming themselves. I was walking around a village on an island. Then I looked for a harbour to get a boat but all I could find was a car dealers. It sounds bland but such a dream could still help me practice my orienteering skills.

[Michael McMahon]

At leat that's my afterlife sorted! Back to the sea!

[Michael McMahon]

(At least...)

[Michael McMahon]

I went to bed early again and have just awoke from a series of complex storylines. Soon after I dozed off I could feel myself gliding along a wave to the shoreline. I reinterpreted this weightlessness as being on a fast train. Through this revisualisation I became lucid. I moved around in the dark but heard mumbling conversations and party trumpets. Occasionally I could see imprecise outlines of people as if I were at a bar. I told myself I'd pray until the dream disappears. Soon after I awoke. I tried going to sleep again and it was much later in the night that a close sequence of semi-lucid dreams appeared. I was in a shop where a relative was buying clothes. Afterwards I placed some goods into the boot of a car and tripped where I lifted a piece of wood high into the air. Someone laughed that I must of thought the wood would attract the car through gravity. I then received information from a little girl that some people were trying to catch me out of a mistaken grievance. Finally I was back in rented accommodation. I saw people out the window and went running to nearby rooms to cry for help. I returned to my room and took out my wooden tennis racket. I lifted the racket in a defensive manner as I approached the front door. People barged in with handguns and I'd no choice but to surrender. I was sat down and inquisitioned in the kitchen. They asked me for a few details about the owner and sent members of their team to retrieve items from the rooms. They then presented me with powdered drugs demanded I take them. They told me they wanted to use them to get information out of me as if they were a truth serum. I struck a sycophantic tone and pleaded that they could take whatever they wanted from the house instead. I was worried that the drugs contained poison. Eventually I agreed to take a minuscule amount of the drug but they insisted that the person beside me would use a straw on me and check that I had taken it. I did so and felt slightly tipsy before awakening.

[Michael McMahon]

It's not often you can say you were knocked out into awakening!

[Michael McMahon]

Violence can sometimes be justified if it's in the name of proportional self-defence. Likewise bad traits can very rarely come in handy. Typical examples might be an aggressive drill sergeant needed to toughen up troops before a war or a psychopathic businessman willing to fire subordinates to prevent bankruptcy. However we can see that in 99% of circumstances such traits would be wholly unacceptable and be little more than bullying. There might be tiny silver linings to all evil dispositions but this doesn't mean we should try to rationalise it away and indulge ourselves. Just because starving ancient tribes might have had to vie against each other for unclaimed land doesn't imply that we should be tempted to do so in the modern era. The decadence of evil is one reason why sinister individuals can deceive victims by displaying a hedonistic false charm. You could say that evil is fun until you become the victim. So evil themes in dreams might also be there to test our adaptability should we ever need to fight evil with an opposing form of evil.

[Michael McMahon]

The latest vivid dream to report was where I visualised Russia invading the south of Ireland instead of Ukraine. I was livid at how outnumbered we were. I watched news reports of Cork residents ambushing the invaders. I checked into a hotel near the conflict zone and the receptionist had a lyrical tone of voice that made me suspicious of her. The next scene was where I was on the roof of the hotel. A soldier on a ladder then captured me and threw me off to my death! The dream not only helped my empathy towards Ukraine but the simulation of bravery gave me more confidence to deal with my own personal problems.

[Michael McMahon]

I was waiting for court to become free for a tennis tournament match. I was called to the club house and told that we'd play boxing instead of tennis. I took off my shoes and was about to put on sandals before I noticed a few centipedes crawling on them. What a surprising dream! I'll need to toughen up my tennis game!

[Michael McMahon]

Speaking to yourself in the third person might begin to sound like a prophetic dream!

Stranger Than Fiction (2006) - Narration Freakout Scene (2/9)