Thread: A Guy In Spain Dreamed The Pope Would Be Named Francis A Month Ago

Originally Posted by hathor28

Yes this was a prediction dream of a new pope, not about the resignation. Dreams tell you short stories, not all of the story behind the dream meaning. I'm just confused on how she said "resignation today", if it was part of the dream or when the pope resigned?
Francis is also a french name, and i'm glad the pope decided to work for the poor, too bad he's in his 70s.

She didn't say resignation today, she said "pope resigns", as in to point out the apparent connection between the dream and the events after. As to the short stories, that characteristic of dream points nowhere to precognition. There's at least 3 or 4 theories about the function/value of dreams, and still no one can reach a conclusion in whether they hold any value for us. The fact that other animals dreams, and that dream recall isn't inherently present in us make pretty good arguments against any "practical" value.

Originally Posted by zoth00

She didn't say resignation today, she said "pope resigns", as in to point out the apparent connection between the dream and the events after. As to the short stories, that characteristic of dream points nowhere to precognition. There's at least 3 or 4 theories about the function/value of dreams, and still no one can reach a conclusion in whether they hold any value for us. The fact that other animals dreams, and that dream recall isn't inherently present in us make pretty good arguments against any "practical" value.

I think that that's a very pro-homo sapient biased viewpoint you got there. Why shouldn't other animals experience dreams for practical value reasons? For that matter we have no proof that other animals are not much smarter and much more advanced than we give them credit for. It has been established that octopus for example are extremely intelligent even when evaluated by human criteria of intelligence, and yet we know that their intelligence is very different from ours with many goals we would not understand because we are human. Who are we to say that an octopus dream does not have even more practical meaning than ours, on the other hand of course we cannot prove scientifically that it does. we can neither prove nor disprove the practical value of dreams for other animals. Since we cannot communicate with them, we cannot ask them about their dreams or what they get or do not get out of them. I wonder whether homo sapiens are the only animal capable of lucid dreaming, maybe we are or maybe we're not, who knows. While we cannot prove it, but I would not dismiss the possibility. Some primates have been taught to speak some, but we have no way of knowing whether they use these human words with the same meaning behind them as we do, and how applicable those words are to them - and that's other apes, let alone animals that are even different from us. I just think it is wrong to assume too much that we are necessarily the only ones, though it would be wrong to also assume that we are not.

Originally Posted by JoannaB

I think that that's a very pro-homo sapient biased viewpoint you got there. Why shouldn't other animals experience dreams for practical value reasons? For that matter we have no proof that other animals are not much smarter and much more advanced than we give them credit for. It has been established that octopus for example are extremely intelligent even when evaluated by human criteria of intelligence, and yet we know that their intelligence is very different from ours with many goals we would not understand because we are human. Who are we to say that an octopus dream does not have even more practical meaning than ours, on the other hand of course we cannot prove scientifically that it does. we can neither prove nor disprove the practical value of dreams for other animals. Since we cannot communicate with them, we cannot ask them about their dreams or what they get or do not get out of them. I wonder whether homo sapiens are the only animal capable of lucid dreaming, maybe we are or maybe we're not, who knows. While we cannot prove it, but I would not dismiss the possibility. Some primates have been taught to speak some, but we have no way of knowing whether they use these human words with the same meaning behind them as we do, and how applicable those words are to them - and that's other apes, let alone animals that are even different from us. I just think it is wrong to assume too much that we are necessarily the only ones, though it would be wrong to also assume that we are not.

Actually, it did sound very pro-homo from me to say that. If in the same paragraph I stated that we still don't have enough information to conclude that dreams are definitively an event that has practical value or not, then it would be a contradiction of me to say that animals also dream as an argument to point out in a direction. Especially since we share with other animals so many "ancient" brain functions and it's been indeed proven that they dream.

For that matter we have no proof that other animals are not much smarter and much more advanced than we give them credit for. It has been established that octopus for example are extremely intelligent even when evaluated by human criteria of intelligence, and yet we know that their intelligence is very different from ours with many goals we would not understand because we are human.

That's different. Intelligence is not necessarily related to dreaming. Unless....we took a certain dream theory that dreams act as memory consolidation, in which case they would indeed be linked to learning (as many studies seem to point out). But that wouldn't still point to variations in degrees of intelligence otherwise we would most likely find correlations between more time spent in sleep and intelligence. Besides, intelligence is such a broad term.

Who are we to say that an octopus dream does not have even more practical meaning than ours, on the other hand of course we cannot prove scientifically that it does. we can neither prove nor disprove the practical value of dreams for other animals. Since we cannot communicate with them, we cannot ask them about their dreams or what they get or do not get out of them.

Okay, now this I disagree. In what basis do you claim that we cannot communicate with animals? That is wrong, because we indeed can, and even take a very specific peak at their dream content. Just because you can't see or ask them, that doesn't mean that neuroscience doesn't have the answer. Take a look at this study and you'll figure it out. Interestingly, the same study makes some pretty good points as dreams having some value, but I hope you didn't misunderstood what I meant by "practical". When I say practical, I mean we are indeed aware of the entire experience and we are to use it for specific problems. People that state that dreams have practical values as for telling us something is wrong disregard the statistics about the amount of dream recall one can perform.

I wonder whether homo sapiens are the only animal capable of lucid dreaming, maybe we are or maybe we're not, who knows.

Pretty interesting question. I'm tempted to say no, because even though experiments like this (aww, so cute xD) indicate that certain animals (like chimps), possess a sense of self-awareness, in order to lucid dream you need to know what a dream is. It would be a pretty long shot to think that animals reflect on the nature of the sensory input world that is being presented to them. Besides, monkeys are able to communicate at some extent, but have they no theory of mind. Just try them at sally-anne test and they incapable to perform it (Tomasello and Call, 1994). That could also point to a minimum age for lucid dreaming (4 years old according to sally-anne test), but I don't think that test is enough to make any sort of conclusion.

Man, zoth00 crushed it.