Thread: Password shared dreaming experiment

Originally Posted by Mindraker

What might you suggest would improve the exercise? I appreciate everyone's feedback.

Awesome.

As follows...

Originally Posted by Mindraker

That hasn't been decided yet.

Might I suggest 30 days for each run? Not too long, but at least people will know what they're getting into. What's more, 30 days (a month) a fairly standard timeframe for research involving dreams.

Originally Posted by Mindraker

I was planning on posting the results on the dreamviews forum.

Where though? Maybe contact the staff about setting up a group Dream Journal? Or, see if you can collaborate with the IOSDP and make use of their forum. You'd probably get more participants from there, as well.

Originally Posted by Mindraker

That all depends on what the results are. I mean... if we've got different people with a surprising number of different coincidences over time, we might need a graph... but if nobody has anything similar to my dream, then it can be summarized in one short paragraph.

I meant more along the lines of participant reports. Something like:

Report Type: Experimental Group

Password: xxxxxxx
Times Spent Asleep: 9PM - 6AM
Brief Description of Dream: Blarg, blah blu blor.

And any other fields you think might be useful.

Originally Posted by Mindraker

Good question. For now, I'm just leaving it as a 24-hour time period, from 10 PM to 10 PM EST. I know, that's pretty rough. But for right now, let's just see what results we can get by doing this.

Sounds good. Just make sure that's explicit.

Originally Posted by Mindraker

You can't. That's why I wrote the password down on a piece of paper before I go to bed... that way I (the one who is doing the experiment for myself) can't change the password. That is, if I'm an honest person. But yes, you just have to trust me not to change the password. Which sucks on your end.

And this is the crux of the issue. I suggest taking a time-stamped photo of the password.

If you don't know how to do that, try uploading the photo and taking a screenshot of it locally opened next to a time measurement from a reputable site. (like this one: The official US time (NIST & USNO))

Originally Posted by Mindraker

Another good question. I should use a dictionary or something. The password I used last night and the one before that was just something I pulled out of my head. Which really isn't random. But I figured it was something reasonably common enough for everyone to find.

If you go the dictionary route, check out RANDOM.ORG - True Random Number Service

Get two random numbers. The first should be the page number, and the second the nth word on the page.

Also, decide beforehand what types of words you will not use as passwords and which you will. Restricting yourself to nouns, verbs, etc.
You don't have to reveal the rules you'll be using to set the password, in fact, I recommend you don't. Just have them in place so that if a word like antidisestablishmentarianism pops up you'll be ready.

Originally Posted by Mindraker

Oh, I thought we had kind of agreed to that. We're going to place it/find it on the altar of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia, Bulgaria. See post #2

Right, but what procedure will you use to do this? It has to be consistent. If you can't do it reliably every night, then your results (positive or negative) will suffer for it.

Originally Posted by Mindraker

Well, I have no idea what works and what does not work in shared dreaming. This is completely a discovery experiment.

This was, in my eyes, the biggest failing of the IOSDP. They worked from the assumption that there existed a "dream world" in which objects could be placed and people could "meet up" at a certain location.

Why not just focus on the telepathy claims for now?

Originally Posted by Mindraker

I'll post my findings of whatever I find, be they positive or negative results. I did have a *lot* of dreams last night, but I had no evidence of them being *shared* dreams with anyone else.

Yes, but will your reports follow a similar outline to the ones participants are filling out? What additional information will you be including?

Originally Posted by Mzzkc

Awesome.

As follows...

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Oh, yeah I'd love to have everyone post the time they sleep every night, as well as have everyone sleep the same time every night. However, I didn't want to make the experiment a burden on people, either. If I could just get people to post their impressions about any objects they might have seen on a table last night while dreaming... I'd consider that a success. If people want to post more information, go for it.

OK, it seems like people are really wanting the test for each word to go longer than one night. That's fine. I think your suggestion for a month is reasonable.

Yes, I was planning on making the "words" noun-only. It's kind of hard to envision verbs, adjectives...

Good point about the "dream world". We need to make the experiment simpler. So somehow I just need to focus on object X -- and you all will figure out what object X is, without any location reference or even having met me in real life? That sounds tough.

I have an unabridged German-English English-German dictionary here... in the future, I can pick a word for the next month by having a number select any page and word from the 816 pages.