If you've not felt it in waking life, the sensation in an LD is inaccurate...

[cyanidebaby]

A friend and I were discussing this. I don't see how the dream sensation could be accurate with something completely new, he thinks it could...thoughts?

[rynkrt3]

Sensations in a lucid dream are based on past experiences, expectations, and come from similar sensations you might have had. I had a friend of mine ask me what dream sex was like, he was still a virgin so I told him I had no idea. He had a LD not to long after, in which he had sex with some girl he liked. He told me it felt amazing, even though he's never had sex in waking life, so how would the mind create such a similar feeling? It's amazing to me what the mind can do. -G'day

[cyanidebaby]

I wonder if when he has sex it will be anything like

[Hukif]

As oppossed to popular belief, the sensation can be accurate if you have a good understanding of how it will feel, of course it depends on what you are trying to mimic.

[Loaf]

As oppossed to popular belief, the sensation can be accurate if you have a good understanding of how it will feel, of course it depends on what you are trying to mimic. I'm sorry Walms, but thats total crap. And even if you do now what the sensation is like, its not likely you'll replicate it to precision in the dream.

[Quark]

Sensations in a lucid dream are based on past experiences, expectations, and come from similar sensations you might have had. I had a friend of mine ask me what dream sex was like, he was still a virgin so I told him I had no idea. He had a LD not to long after, in which he had sex with some girl he liked. He told me it felt amazing, even though he's never had sex in waking life, so how would the mind create such a similar feeling? It's amazing to me what the mind can do. -G'day Well, I think it's because the preconception is that sex is amazing, and it's probable that this friend has previously masturbated, right? Tbh, it's probably better in a virgin's mind than in a non-virgin's.

[Quark]

In answer to this question, it is partly true and not. This is because we partly experience things and partly don't. If you had never tried icecream before, but I showed you a picture of it. Have you experienced it? Partly, yes, through visual perception. We would usually argue that we haven't experienced it. This is important. Many experiences are composed of previous other experiences. Consider the icecream example that you've merely looked at. It's Christmas time, and you're throwing snowballs around, but for some reason you've yet to try icecream. Conceptually, someone tells you that icecream can feel like snow, and it is just as cold. That covers two of the basic touch senses, coldness and texture. You are then teased by your 'friends' who have masses of icecream. They say you can smell it, but you can't touch it nor taste it. You smell vanilla. At this point, despite experiencing icecream in many senses, if you were to tell someone you have yet to taste icecream, they will say that you haven't tried it. It is because the usual sense to experience icecream is taste. Annoyed that you've not 'properly' tried it, you induce a W.I.L.D that night and try it for yourself. You will accurately see its shape and colour, feel its coldness and texture in your mouth, and have whiffs of vanilla as it enters. Taste and smell are intricately linked, and its taste should be easy to create. So I would argue that you can experience something in an LD you haven't in real life, so long as you've conceptually experienced it, experienced something similar, and experienced it through the non-dominant senses for that item. A conceptual and visual experience is necessary otherwise you couldn't even fathom the item in front of you. Ugh, long. >_>

[CyperAleksi]

Personally no, I don't see how it could be accurate if you haven't ever experienced it. Then again I haven't had any lucids yet, so I am not a professioner nor an expert, so... But I don't think so.

[Puffin]

I've been stabbed in dreams that was accompanied by a sharp pain; it was extremely realistic. Although I haven't experienced the real thing (and hope not to), I believe it felt like it should have. All in all, the sensations in my dreams are pretty accurate.

[Quark]

You have experienced a stabbing through visual perception, and you've experienced pain. Furthermore, you understand conceptually, at least in part, what it would be like to be stabbed in regards to body contortion and emotional outcry. It would only require an amplification of focused pain and a mimicking of this body language to believe it is an accurate depiction. I've been stabbed in dreams that was accompanied by a sharp pain; it was extremely realistic. Although I haven't experienced the real thing (and hope not to), I believe it felt like it should have. All in all, the sensations in my dreams are pretty accurate. So, the real question is, what does it mean to experience something? Nearly everything we say we haven't experienced, we have, at least mono-sensory speaking. It is seemingly impossible to assert that you haven't experienced --INSERT TERM--, unless that thing between the '-- --' is still just a word to you with no sensory or conceptual connotations whatsoever.

[Hukif]

I'm sorry Walms, but thats total crap. And even if you do now what the sensation is like, its not likely you'll replicate it to precision in the dream. Ah, you said likely... and I said it depends on the difficulty of what you are trying, for example sex would be really difficult, while, lets say you are a surfer and want to surf something a bit bigger than in reality, would be way more accurate, obviously it won't be perfect, but it can be done to a certain extent. Other than that, what quark said, very well put too.

[Puffin]

Ah, you said likely... and I said it depends on the difficulty of what you are trying, for example sex would be really difficult, while, lets say you are a surfer and want to surf something a bit bigger than in reality, would be way more accurate, obviously it won't be perfect, but it can be done to a certain extent. Other than that, what quark said, very well put too. It also depends on if you've felt it on a smaller scale before, therefore it might be more accurate. Eg. choking on a glass of water wouldn't be too different from drowning in a lake.

[CyperAleksi]

It also depends on if you've felt it on a smaller scale before, therefore it might be more accurate. Eg. choking on a glass of water wouldn't be too different from drowning in a lake. That makes sense.

[cyanidebaby]

Yeah, I drowned in an LD and it just felt like before I could swim as a child, being under the pool water but without a parent to pull me out. I also know the mechanics of drowning too, which will have helped I've had my head blown off by a gunman in an LD, and I was really worried about the pain in the few seconds before it happened, but I actually just disconnected from my body.

[Loaf]

We can philosophize over whether or not you can "accurately" feel a pain in comparison with reality while dreaming when you haven't experience it in reality before. You might think you've felt the pain realistically, but if you've never felt it you can't make that call. Accurate, by one of many definitions, means to be "correct in all details; exact". Very little in dreams is exactly like in reality. It can be closely simulated, but its not accurate. So lets just move away from that description altogether. Dreaming, while we all do it, has a huge individual spin. I can confirm that I can not replicate realistic pain in dreams (at least not in my 9 years of memorable dremaing) so as far as I'm concerned it doesn't occur. And even if it did, its irrelevant to me.

[JamesLD]

ive had this same argument on other forums. i can fly in lucid dreams and it feels incredible, though ive never actually flown in real life. i believe the dream world is another plane of existence, quite like the waking life where you can experience new things youve never done before, therefore i believe i have in fact experienced flying. i find that most of the people that argue against this have never actually had a lucid dream.

[Matte87]

I had several sex dreams when I was a virgin, and it was amazing how similar it actually felt. I think Quark is right. I mean, I haven't flown for real, but I have experienced being shot up in the air at an amusementpark attraction, and felt zero-gravity. That's how I feel when I fly in my lucids. Perhaps an experience in the waking world can enhance the experience in a dream. And even help sometimes. Or perhaps it's even better to let the brain cook something up, and let the expectations be sky high. Like tasting this incredible candy. When you imagine tasting it in a dream, it's so delicious. Only to find out when you taste it IRL that it's not very good. Ruining the whole future experience. Dreams are still awesome!

[chase]

As crazy as it sounds, even if you've never seen a certain someone NAKED your mind makes up its own image of what she/he looks like naked and it appears to be completely accurate by nature. So this only makes me wonder if we already know all these things even if we haven't seen/done them before so our dreams can seem incredibly realistic no matter what we've experienced. I've never flew up in the air in "real life" but it feels pretty damn accurate in my dreams. -Chase

[elucid]

I believe that when sensations reach us in waking life, they reach us through the electric signals, which can then be seen as set of vibrations. So to put sensations in the same category as vibrations, then all the mind has to do is mimic the vibration/electric signal to create the accurate sensation. That makes sense as to why the mind can create realistic sensations even if they have not been experienced before because it is merely electric signal that is being mimicked.

[Loaf]

I believe that when sensations reach us in waking life, they reach us through the electric signals, which can then be seen as set of vibrations. So to put sensations in the same category as vibrations, then all the mind has to do is mimic the vibration/electric signal to create the accurate sensation. That makes sense as to why the mind can create realistic sensations even if they have not been experienced before because it is merely electric signal that is being mimicked. ... what.

[Foul]

I believe that when sensations reach us in waking life, they reach us through the electric signals, which can then be seen as set of vibrations. So to put sensations in the same category as vibrations, then all the mind has to do is mimic the vibration/electric signal to create the accurate sensation. That makes sense as to why the mind can create realistic sensations even if they have not been experienced before because it is merely electric signal that is being mimicked. That's gibberish, mate. Vibrations have nothing to do with the way your nervous system delivers the information regarding pain. And even if we take out the vibration stuff, your mind, or rather your nervous system, wouldn't be able to mimic the messages needed to feel a certain type or amount of pain unless you've already felt that paint. Even if you had felt that pain then attempting to accurately remember or mimic it would most likely be pretty hard. PS Having said that, if you could either be really lucky and get the sensation, or your interpretation of the sensation, right or you could be extremely empathetic and thus able to interpret it properly. I suppose we'd need to have a lucid dream, cause ourselves a certain amount of pain or cause ourselves to experience a certain sensation, then replicate it in our waking life and see if the two feelings were the same.

[MythicDreams]

Can you imagine what something feels like? I don't know about other people, but based on past experiences that seem similar, or what other people have said, I can almost vividly imagine a sensation. A lucid dream is a lot like this, I think, in terms of things you haven't experienced. Yes, the sensation in an LD may be innacurate, but if you can make an informed guess in your waking life, your dream self will be able to mimic what you think it would be like.

[Invader]

I'd posit that the sensation of flying/hovering would be similar, if not the same.

[elucid]

Loaf wrote: ... what. lol....lol. Let me rephrase that, it was misunderstood by you as well as "foul". This is not gibberish by the way, once it is cleared, you will understand. Ok, the confusing part seems to be the vibrations, so I will just cast that aside and use instead the word electricity. In the world, we get sensations such as sight, sound, feeling, taste and hearing, but in the brain, those things are nothing but electric signals. So therefore, to mimic one of the senses, the actual sense does not have to enter us but merely the electric signal can be manipulated to create the sense. There have been experiments where sensations were created without the stimuli, which makes perfect sense if it is just electricity that is being produced. This is based on our understanding of we perceive the world around us. Of course, I could be wrong though, just makes perfect sense is what I am saying. Invader wrote: I'd posit that the sensation of flying/hovering would be similar, if not the same. I believe that when flying, the sensation that would stand out most would be your emotional response.

[Foul]

I get that sensation is communicated to the brain, from the receptors in your hand, via the nervous system as electrical pulses or messages. But being able to mimic those messages is what we're talking about here, not the delivery method. So the question is how can you, or your brain, or even a computer hooked up to your brain, mimic those messages or electrical pulses if you haven't felt it? In the case of a computer delivering those messages to your brain, the computer would have to have recorded the attributes of those messages prior to attempting to deliver them. That would be the same as a person having previously experienced the feeling which their brain is trying the mimic.