The purpose of dreams

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This article is speculative. It covers topics that are not straightforwardly derivable from current knowledge. Take it with a grain of salt. See: "exploratory engineering" for what can be predicted and what not.

It is widely believed that the purpose of dreams is not well understood yet.
Here's a uncommon possible explanation that may make sense to the reader (or not).

In just two words dreams are the consequence of our brain doing data compression.

Introduction

When active on daytime there is no time for the brain to conjure up stuff that is deeply buried down in long time memory. Stuff that most likely has nothing whatsoever to do with the current situation at hand. Stuff that would just make one unable to make decisions fast enough.

All the new experiences of the day that just passed lie just slightly below short term memory in a very labile and ephemeral state. They must urgently be analyzed for deeper integration into the existing mental world-view. For deeper integration the importance of new information must be ascertained in more depth. Only at nighttime (where we, as the human species, in the past couldn't do anything else but sleep anyway because we can't see in the dark) there is the time to do that deeper analysis (beside some physiological body & brain cleanup).

To ascertain importance of new still fragile and ephemeral memories the brain needs to check if links can be made to older memories that already have been integrated deeper down into the "memory stack". The more links can be established the faster and deeper the memory integration. Links to strong emotions play a important role too, naturally.

New experiences that come with strong emotions need less links to be integrated as new memories and will be faster integrated. Long time memories may be associated with strong emotions or not. The relevance of srong emotions in memory integration is well known.

Pattern matching for mental link creation at different levels

So dreams may match memories on different time scales.

  • just below short term to mid-term
  • just below short term to long-term
  • maybe also mid-term to long-term

(Whether the dream depth levels correspond to sleep phases is an interesting question.)

Since (at the deepest dream level) the brain wants to establish entirely new connections it conjures up some completely "random" long term memory and tries to match the newly made short term memories to it. This may explain the absolute ridiculous absurdness of dreams that we sometimes experience.

At the deepest dream level the randomness maybe even be derived from the effect of thermal noise amplified by chaotic systems. (in computer science terms a true random number generator TRNG)

Successful unexpected random matches could be considered a form of in mind serendipity.

At less deep dream levels the brain may conjure up semi-randomly mid term memories from a few days ago.

Proper dream interpretation

See also: Lucid dreaming#Proper dream journal

One can even test this!

By regularly documenting and analyzing ones dreams (abiding particular rules outlined further down ) one can find and retrace those links that ones dreams make eventually leading to surprising realizations about ones own mind and psyche (character, "heart" and "soul" if one will).

Its about the identification of those memories that the dreams linked up together in some more or less meaningful way. Especially for the less deep dream levels it can be become quite clear where the memories came from despite the fact that those memories where already decently long ago (e.g. weeks) and so dim that they would never ever have returned to the mind in a state of awakeness.

First, one needs to get good at remembering ones dreams. All people do have dreams. Other wise they would likely quickly develop mental problems. Why should become clear through the text further down. Many people though do not remember their dreams. A good thing is that remembering ones dreams is a skill that can be acquired. A necessary prerequisite though is some freedom to manage ones time and a lack of strong stress factors. Most adult people do not have this luxury. Sorry.

Poisons in regards to fostering ones dream recalling capabilities are:

  • first and foremost: lack of sleep - physical recuperation probably takes priority before dreams for which may be left to less.
  • alarm clocks: especially if set to inconsistent constantly varying times

Learning how to remember ones dreams largely coincides with learning how to consistently and properly document and analyze ones dreams. This would also be the second requirement for retracing ones brains compression process.

For proper documentation of dreams one needs to resists the temptation of prematurely interpreting ones dreams. One instead needs to records the nonsense as-is, as it oozes out, without any criticism. One must not care about any chronology. Documentation needs to be done totally relaxed and instantly after waking up (that means that pen and paper to jot down stuff needs to be right beside sleeping place and need to be low distraction => paper may be better that smart-phones). Do NOT start to think about what the dream could actually mean, do not think about some matters of the day lying ahead, the past day(s) or something else. All these are aggressive short term thoughts potent in pushing out dream remnants. They will near instantly overwrite all the valuable highly delicate remnant memories that one still has remaining in memory. In other words: Premature interpretation attempts load short time stuff that overwrites valuable remnant memories. Changing inconvenient dreams to ones liking is absolutely not allowed. Be aware that ones human psychology tends to conveniently interpret away inconvenient problems that dreams want to show oneself.

If one feels that trying to remember a specific part of a dream paradoxically starts to push one into the direction of fully awake consciousness (all recent data loaded, all fragile dream memories overwritten), then it's better to not force it and let it go, it may come back later eventually.

(After all recallable memories of dream fragments are as-is drained to notes an instantly return to sleep / doze state can sometimes allow one to recall even more memories of dreams)

Only later once all recoverable remnant dream memories have been drained one should come back to look at ones records for interpretation. The chronology of the recorded dream fragments may now be recoverable, but this is not too important.

Techniques for learning lucid dreaming dreaming may help too, but actual active lucid dreaming disrupts and re-purposes the natural dreaming process. It's still positive since lucid dreaming phases make up only a tiny fraction of the dreaming time (unless one is really good at it maybe?) and it greatly increases ones capabilities in recalling normal dreams.

If successful in retracing ones brains in dream memory linking and compression processes one will uncover and recover new subconscious deep links between last-day-memories and a-few-days-ago-memories that ones brain has made while dreaming.

Since dreams are based on ones individual memories and thus are highly individual, it is clear that the dream interpretation schemes cannot possibly work. Well except maybe for the most primal things maybe like e.g. primal fears of the dark in young age or dreams directly induced by physical health problem. But those most basic primal things are usually not the topic of these books. Your typical dream interpretation schemes (aka oneriomancy/oneirocriticism schemes) are as accurate as tea leaf reading done by oneself for oneself. Pure fantasy not even giving useful psychological help. (These lines authors viewpoint).

Dream interpretation needs to be done tailored to the individual (by the individual). It could be considered an advanced self reflection method. It maybe even help to overcome traumata, but those are often difficult to repair, (In case the reader suffers from such, please consider consulting a doctor and don't hold the author responsible for any actions taken based on these lines.)

Effects of exposing parts of one owns subconscious to oneselfs awake-consciousness

It's interesting to think about the effect of this activity of consciously retracing the processes that ones brain does in the semi-conscious dreaming state.

  • One may find connections that ones brain didn't find worth to strongly integrate in "dream mode" but now in "wake mode" one values them.
  • One may find connections that ones brain did find worth to strongly integrate in "dream mode" but now in "wake mode" one does not see any value in them and wonders why.
  • ...

Consequence of no opportunities to dream

All humans dream, its Just that many do not remember their dreams. (Side-note: The purpose of the capability of remembering dreams is an interesting question too. It may well be an evolutionary accident.)

Loosing the opportunity to dream is only possible via a lack of sleep (or some severe neurological illness maybe?).

The consequence alack of dreams (including lack of dreams that are not memorized over to daytime) is basically similar to never cleaning up the data on your computer one gets a big bucket unsorted mess of data in which one can't find anything anymore and once all the memory is full you can't delete just the most useless stuff because you just do not know what actually is the most useless stuff. As dreams cannot anchor new experiences properly to deeper levels and memory space is still needed more valuable information will get tossed ot (sacrificed). In short one gets forgetful.

The Epiphany phenomenon

An epiphany is a realization of some "higher truth". An epiphany is a brand new very unexpected and surprising discovery. An epiphany is often obtained via a dream or via "pure thinking" possibly initiated by an inspiring dream

Epiphanies are often associated with religious or supernatural phenomena. Some may consider these explanations a psychological avoidance phenomenon "shifting of the problem" to answers that conveniently explain everything.

How ununexplainability of epiphanies does not necessarily quench undemystifiability of human consciousness

There will always always be parts of reality that cannot be explained. Those can only be ignored or shifted to the aforementioned supernatural or religious. Actually the more one knows the more areas one knows in which one misses knowledge. And that to an non-proportionally faster growing degree! In math there is this fundamental theorem of Gödel. Making even math a religion believing on axioms. A very practical and successful religion at that. In physics there is this quantum random mystery where we currently have no explanation for. This plays into and mixes with the fundamentally unpredictable thermal motions. Thermal motions which could (as mentioned before) maybe be used by our brains as true random number generators to decide which long time memory to conjure up next for trying to pattern match it with recently encountered experiences.

So, no worries, deeper understanding of our consciousness likely will not degrade the human mind to a fully deterministic clockwork (see: the something). There's this potential source of "true randomness". But note that "true randomness" does not actually mean "random". What it actually means is:

  • we do not yet have any clue how it came to be
  • we do not yet have any clue whether or when we will have a clue
  • we do not yet know if we fundamentally can have a clue how it came to be

In summary even without reliance on the supernatural and religion as an explanation for epiphanies the deep mysteries of our consciousness are not necessarily demystified. They just switch to coinciding with the deepest mysteries of our hole universe itself. (Side-note: Clarifying structure and workings of the brain in the process of AI research likewise won't demystify consciousness at this "universal level".)

The origin of Epiphanies

Structured information like complex ideas cannot originate from nothing. In the end the brain alone (fully isolated from any information providing environment) cannot get to know some new wisdom when the basic crude information that is absolutely necessary to gain that wisdom is simply not present.

Another maybe less intelligible but more abstract formulation would be:

Dreaming is a process that can only convert ones personal subconscious unknown-knowns into known-knowns of the wake-state. If all this (un)known (un)knowns is confusing, then check out the page about the knowledge matrix.

Side-note: Unknown knowns would in this context be the (subconscious) presence of all the needed parts of a not yet solved mental puzzle and the presence of the knowledge to put the pieces together. An "epiphanic dream" is then only the process of putting the subconsciously existing pieces together with the subconscious existing knowledge how to do it.

Side-note: Before becoming conscious known-knowns the subconscious unknown-knowns can be both conscious unknown-unknowns and conscious known-unknowns.

The Déjà-vu phenomemnon

A Déjà-vu might be a detection of very strong similarity to some (potentially emotionally laden) deeply subconscious almost completely faded long term memory.

A Déjà-vu may activate the dream functionality of conjuring up a remnant of a long term memory at waketime. The conjuring up of a memory remnant that would normally never be conjured up at waketime because it is pretty out of context without any obvious and clear relations to the current wake life situation.

The spontaneous day-dream and burst-like effect that a Déjà-vu is manifests itself as this ominous vague feeling of repetition. A Déjà-vu. Especially if the long term memory is more anchored by association with emotion rather than by information context the likelihood of a Déjà-vu may be higher.

This relates to:

(wiki-TODO: this section needs improvement)

Disclaimer

Its possible that the discussion of mind related ideas here in the context of data compression gets a bit lopsided. The "when you have a hammer every problem starts to look like a nail" phenomenon.

Misc

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