 Originally Posted by Tsen
But you CAN give scientific theories as to how lucid dreaming works and how to achieve lucid dreams. That's what Stephen LaBerge is doing. It isn't as clear-cut as other subjects, but that doesn't mean it can't be scientifically explained and rationalized--that's how WILD works: It plays with known variables to trick your mind into jumping into an REM phase immediately. All lucid dreaming methods can be scientifically validated, so its not too far out there to expect that a new method for LDing explain the how and why of its inner workings.
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If you ask people in Psychological circles (i.e. at a university, where "science" supposedly happens), they would all tell you that Steven LaBerge, if they'd ever heard of him, is pseudoscientific or on the margins. Remember the old quip that psychology is biology (and biology chemistry)? "Ok, so he associates his loony theories with really old studies on sleep cycles. Who cares."
I'm not saying this as a slight to LaBerge - I don't care about him - I'm saying ask anyone, it's pseudoscience. It's not because what he says doesn't work again and again - ask a tarot reader, they will tell you the same thing. His results aren't precise enough to resemble the physical sciences. And, well quite frankly, because so-called scientists are snobs: they often define what kind of research and results are called science and what is called pseudoscience. Dream theory is in the gutter of psychology right now, it's not faddish. Study it at the risk of everybody's respect but a couple of New Age nutjobs. In their eyes, we are those nutjobs. Sad but true.
So he found a few dream tricks that work but that aren't very new at all, that doesn't make it science. You strike stone and flint you get a spark, it works, but it doesn't explain anything. You can validate that stone + flint = spark millions of times, and still be light-years away from explaining one single thing. A thing that works is closer to the world of practical guides than academia.
Researchers don't look for things that work, they look either for NEW, INTERESTING things that work, then place them within a larger framework of understanding. They make connections. We understand dominant and recessive genes and then bam, we get get DNA. We understand gravity on earth, then bam we get Newton's laws.
The problem with dreaming is that we don't understand jack squat about it. No clue. How are you supposed to put a thing that works in any framework of knowledge?
I think this guy's work should be labelled science, but alas.
PS I've heard of studies that indicated that the brain is more active on full moons, people are more agitated etc.
Yeah, good luck explaining that with gravity, if it's even true. Sugar pills could pretty much explain all that away, but who knows, maybe it's true.
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