Quote:
Originally Posted by sivason
No offense intend towards Zoth
Quick remark: I probably speak for several people here when I say that no one (especially not you :hug: ) needs to make these disclaimers. My ideas/positions/perspectives are in a box, they aren't myself. In this and every single discussion, whenever someone proves me wrong/challenges my input/criticizes my approach, it's my privilege and pleasure to update the box, taking out older stuff in favor of more correct/better information that fits the model of reality.
On the topic of "No experiment can ever prove shared dreaming." brought by Sivason
While at some point I agree with you Sivason, and even with several remarks made by The Cusp, I can't help but think that's not the case for everything.
Let's analyse the scientific study of lucid dreaming: if you look throughout story, many individuals tried to achieve understanding about the event itself and the process that leads someone to be aware that they are dreaming. It seemed clear from the beginning that subjective reports were all there was. But then, due reports and reports, eventually people managed to understand some characteristic that allowed the observation of a phenomenon that seemed impossible: communication between dreamer and non-dreamer.
You say that we can't prove shared dreaming, but we can certainly "disprove" it (when I say disprove, I'd say have a very high degree of certainty that it isn't happening): this reminds me of a study that showed that even if consciousness/dreams had some external subtract that doesn't show up in the brain, the events would stick to memory themselves. This allowed an experience to be made regarding ESP.
(You can read about the ESP experience in here)
In my point of view, then even if you can't ever confirm the null-hypothesis, you can certainly ignore self-report, which are extremely subjective, and go to other ways (like neuroimaging) to prove/disprove what those people were experiencing.
In the topic of "the experience in and out of itself" by flowofmysoul
Quote:
2. What would make you change your mind regarding the existence of shared dreams? What would convince you that they aren't possible/real?
2. Lack of success. More and more lack of success.
Quote:
It's important to understand shared dreams do not occur in a shared dream space.
The contradictions start here: in one side, we may have people that believe shared dreaming occurs in the same plane for both dreamers, in the other, The Cusp says they do not. Right here, a massive discrepancy that despite different interpretations, is already a clue on how we can analyse dream reports, and develop a science of shared dreaming.
According to flowofmysoul, his lack of success seems (I'm assuming because he didn't mention anything else) would be the only thing that would convince him to be wrong: the argument speaks for itself.
Regarding the Cusp finding about a shared dream here on DV
Quote:
Sounds far fetched, yet it had the key markers I look for in any shared dream account, which is archetypal differences. In the father's dream, they went into a Denny's, in the son's dream they went to a Wendy's. That was the only big difference. Different yet kind of the same. You see that kind of thing in almost all shred dream accounts where you can track down both versions, and there's just no way everyone would "make up" that kind of odd detail. Hell, most people don't even understand those types of differences even after I try to explain it, so how could they possibly make it up?
Really? How about the woman that knew how to speak german (I think it was german) without anyone else teaching her? How do you explain that? It's impossible right? Turns out, nope, there was a very simple reason why she could understand/speak it.
My point is: you're picking evidence and then interpreting based on your own experiences. Not to devalue that, but wouldn't it make much more sense to gather 100 shared dreaming reports and see how they differ/are similar? Don't take this personally, but you're a onironaut with tons of experience: are you saying that confirmation bias is not relevant in these kinds of reports?
This also goes to flowmysoul by the way: I've yet to see attempts at proving yourselves wrong, which is the mark of a skeptic. That's fine if you're not looking to do so, but like I said:
Quote:
there’s a line between going from what we know, assuming X or Y, and explore the unknown, AND using arguments/theories that have zero predictive value to build up evidence for the unknown and because of that CANNOT be proven wrong.
If you're only trying to prove yourself right, you're automatically classified as biased. How about we all try to evaluate information and try to make some model that would allow us to rule out dreams that seem but are not SD and true SD dreams?
I might seem way too assertive, but honestly, throughout all these decades, still not a single experiment managed to produce some unmistakable results towards shared dreaming? If experienced SDers tell us the characteristics of SD, even we in this thread are capable of thinking of a model that would work at least to INDICATE that there's an actual transmission of information. If it's impossible, then this largely disproves shared dreaming, as in the same manner as that ESP study indicated above did. Is this asking too much Sageous (I'm talking to you since you're the one who made the thread ^^)? I'd say it worked out pretty well for lucid dreaming.
Quote:
It's been awhile since I've last delved into the theory behind shared dreaming, but I've been doing some light research into physical processes which could account for sync-ups which were not explicitly induced. I stumbled upon a few lesser known properties, effects, and triggers of mirror neurons. For the sake of time I'll assume you all know the basics of what mirror neurons are and/or can use Google. And to help you shortcut some research: apparently visual stimulus isn't necessary for all types of mirror neurons to trigger. Thus, it's not unreasonable to think folks who regularly chat over the phone or via skype are susceptible to the mental effects of these neurons--which could potentially result in shared dreaming experiences arising without explicit induction.
This right here is great, helpful information (regardless of right or wrong) because it gives us something to work with. Besides, if we have/had a clear definition that everyone in this thread agreed (by the way, what are your definitions flowofmysoul/The Cusp?), we could advance discussion I believe. Or not 0o
Quote:
What is shared is the mental and emotional state that spawns the dream, so to speak. It is like being the other person for a moment. What makes this remarkable in a dream, is the dream often draws its imagery from future events (???), or expresses things about the other person that could not have been guessed through external means, which you can see objectively if you first encounter the person the day after the dream. This shows that there is real internal sharing somehow, that it is not some kind of extrapolation or projection, hence our interest in it.
What else in your opinion could be the interpretation of said observations?
Quote:
Nobody with enough experience and understanding of what to look for has been doing those kinds of experiments in an academic setting at all. This shouldn't be surprising if you realize how much research is dominated by corporate interests, or corrupt resume-building schemes where in order to do a study and write a paper several other more senior people have to be willing to buy into your idea and put their names on it. Between just those two dynamics, almost nothing in this subject area is investigated by 'experts' at all.
You know this is a pretty common argument for proponents of physic phenomenons: actually, we know that loads and loads of studies are published with negative findings. How do you respond to the data? Can you point flaws of these studies to us? What expertise do you think it's needed?
Oh and once again, comments on the ESP study mentioned above?
