 Originally Posted by PostScript99
Ok, throwing this question out there for fun and to satisfy my own curiosity.  Some people, when something great happens to them or when something horrible happens to them, they immediately pinch themselves and tell themselves they must be dreaming. One person even ruptured an artery doing this.
Anyway, why don't these people get lucid in their dreams?
Maybe they do, briefly.
First, something great or horrible must happen to them within the dream in order for them to pinch themselves; this might be less likely than you'd think -- people with the personal wherewithal to recognize "pinchable" moments in waking life might be a bit more likely to ignore them in dreaming life (this really does make sense, if you think about it) -- so opportunities to pinch might be rare.
But when they do happen, that pinch will likely operate exactly as prescibed: when the dreamer pinches and feels nothing or, more likely, realizes during the process of pinching that this is a dream, they'll immediately dismiss the pinchable event as unreal (thus ending their brief flash of lucidity) and go on with the dream -- without ever becoming fully lucid and likely without ever remembering they did any pinching. Go figure.
So, pinching (or rationally using "pinching" as a cue for sorting out the odd) might work quite well for those who pinch ... but doing so need not have anything to do with self-awareness in a dream. Pinching may be an acknowledgement or test of an odd moment, but it does not equal lucidity.
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