Why don't light's work in dreams very well?

I've been thinking about this a lot and it's bugging me. Dreams are about belief, if you believe you can do something, you can do it. By that logic, light switches/ lamps/ etc should all work because we use them all the time. Unless you're someone who's never been around electricity, they should work.



Dreams tend to follow a level of reality too. Example: say you're outside in your front yard and you see some zombies coming.



Say your porch has metal railing like this: http://designcoalition.org/features/.../porchpost.JPG


You could try to pull a piece off and use it, but most locations in dreams are like Resident Evil backgrounds: they're pre rendered and you'd know it was attached pretty tight, so it'd be hard to pull it off. Of course, you could use a dream power to do it, like super strength, but you'd probably still have trouble pulling it off, it might bend but not come off, it might do nothing, you might hurt your hands.


Think about all the times you've EVER turned a light on, or a lamp. It's been ingrained into our minds since we were born, it's a given that it's going to work. Sometimes lights burn out, blow out, there's a power outage but these don't happen that often, even if you live in area where the power's always going out, you'd still have more days of the power being on then off.


So why don't they work in dreams? I saw Waking Life recently (past week) and they mentioned this along with small printed material. I can understand the small print messing up, since there's so much of it there, and hard to keep focused, but not the light.



Light switches/ lamps do this for me: they won't work, they'll work but won't add much light if any, they'll work fine, but then go out for no reason, not even a dream reason like someone cut the lines.



I know there's no definite answer to this, since no one really knows why, but any ideas/ theories are welcome.

Hmmn. I think that a large factor could be that your mind doesn't like it when the light levels change in dreams. I think it is the light that is the problem and not the switch.

Whenever I want to change the lighting I have to use magic.

I think it's because light is like a thing that you need to summon. So if you click a swich it's hard for it to turn right on. You need to "summon" it like persons in dreams. Just look for it and it will appear eventually.

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I think it's because light is like a thing that you need to summon. So if you click a swich it's hard for it to turn right on. You need to "summon" it like persons in dreams. Just look for it and it will appear eventually.

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I think I see what you mean, how if you flick a switch it is not you doing it.

"Hmmn. I think that a large factor could be that your mind doesn't like it when the light levels change in dreams. I think it is the light that is the problem and not the switch."

"Whenever I want to change the lighting I have to use magic."




Why wouldn't your mind like changing light levels? It changes everything else.








"I think it's because light is like a thing that you need to summon. So if you click a swich it's hard for it to turn right on. You need to "summon" it like persons in dreams. Just look for it and it will appear eventually."




You don't always need to summon people though, just go somewhere, they're usually there, and they're almost always there in non lucid dreams. That and light should be like places in a dream. Wherever you are in a dream, you're somewhere, and it's solid mainly. Lights should be the same way.

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Why wouldn't your mind like changing light levels? It changes everything else.

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You don't always need to summon people though, just go somewhere, they're usually there, and they're almost always there in non lucid dreams. That and light should be like places in a dream. Wherever you are in a dream, you're somewhere, and it's solid mainly. Lights should be the same way.

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Speaking from myself (and others') experiences light levels are a little harder to change than anything else.

Random speculation.

Perhaps it is due to how light alters the appearance of every object that it touches. For instance, your mind has rendered your bedroom with every item in it; however, the lighting is somewhat low. Now, if you were to increase the light intensity then, technically, everything in your environment would have to be re-rendered. This in itself is quite a formidable task for your mind to simply 'do', without 'you' fully taking into account the alteration of every object in the vicinity. To ignore this and continue to increase light intensity would, essentially, be bending a fundamental? law (which, I have heard, can be done with practice).

I have span and the light has increased, and that's most likely because during the spin my vision is of nothing. Thus, it gives my mind the opportunity to render a more light intensive surrounding.

Wow, well done Quark! I think you've nailed it there.

In my most recent dream (and first lucid!) the lights went out. It was realistically dark. I hurried to turn on the light (because I thought someone turned the lights off) and nothing happened. That's when I realized I was dreaming and woke up.

Quark, that's funny. Treating a brain like a computer :P .

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Originally Posted by Venomblood

Quark, that's funny. Treating a brain like a computer :P .

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Ahh, that's what happens when you study too much cognitive psychology hehe.

The only piece that really bugs me about Quark's explanation is that it only applies to light. What about when a turning on other electric equipment fails? Surely generating a television image isn't all too strenuous, nor is picking up a phone and listening for a tone. Starting a car shouldn't be too hard, either. The resulting scene change would mimic that of flying or running, which most know isn't too difficult a task for the mind (although movement would cause a 3-D shift in the entire surroundings, would that be considered harder than a shift in lighting?).

I'm unsure if it's the difficulty to process new lighting so much it is a flawed perception of cause and effect.

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Originally Posted by Abra

The only piece that really bugs me about Quark's explanation is that it only applies to light. What about when a turning on other electric equipment fails? Surely generating a television image isn't all too strenuous, nor is picking up a phone and listening for a tone. Starting a car shouldn't be too hard, either. The resulting scene change would mimic that of flying or running, which most know isn't too difficult a task for the mind (although movement would cause a 3-D shift in the entire surroundings, would that be considered harder than a shift in lighting?).

I'm unsure if it's the difficulty to process new lighting so much it is a flawed perception of cause and effect.

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Good point.

However, surely a shift in surroundings when moving is gradual, whilst a sudden change in light affects everything almost instantaneously? I think that it is synonymous to changing all of the dream surroundings instantaneously, no one seems to. In fact everyone seems to open a door, walk through a wall/mirror/tv or look away: something that would lead to a new rendering. If not, they change things around them gradually. Essentially, I think everyone finds it difficult to instanteously change all of the environment that they are observing. Whether this be light (which affects all of surroundings) or the surroundings themselves.

I like to think that when I wake up in an LD, behind every wall is nothing. Only that what I can percieve exists. In effect, my room is floating in the middle of space until I exit the room and render a new piece of environment.

Isn't a brain pretty much a computer anyway?
Everything displayed on a computer screen is calculated with some algorithm using relatively small amounts of information received from wherever.

A brain interprets things using its preset ideas and "algorithms" using the small amounts of information received from the environment.

Nice idea, Quark!
The letter "Q" looks really cool in this font, too. :shock:

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Originally Posted by Quark

Random speculation.

Perhaps it is due to how light alters the appearance of every object that it touches. For instance, your mind has rendered your bedroom with every item in it; however, the lighting is somewhat low. Now, if you were to increase the light intensity then, technically, everything in your environment would have to be re-rendered. This in itself is quite a formidable task for your mind to simply 'do', without 'you' fully taking into account the alteration of every object in the vicinity. To ignore this and continue to increase light intensity would, essentially, be bending a fundamental? law (which, I have heard, can be done with practice).

I have span and the light has increased, and that's most likely because during the spin my vision is of nothing. Thus, it gives my mind the opportunity to render a more light intensive surrounding.

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That makes sense, I didn't think about it like that.

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Originally Posted by Kanano

I've been thinking about this a lot and it's bugging me. Dreams are about belief, if you believe you can do something, you can do it. By that logic, light switches/ lamps/ etc should all work because we use them all the time. Unless you're someone who's never been around electricity, they should work.



Dreams tend to follow a level of reality too. Example: say you're outside in your front yard and you see some zombies coming.



Say your porch has metal railing like this: http://designcoalition.org/features/.../porchpost.JPG


You could try to pull a piece off and use it, but most locations in dreams are like Resident Evil backgrounds: they're pre rendered and you'd know it was attached pretty tight, so it'd be hard to pull it off. Of course, you could use a dream power to do it, like super strength, but you'd probably still have trouble pulling it off, it might bend but not come off, it might do nothing, you might hurt your hands.


Think about all the times you've EVER turned a light on, or a lamp. It's been ingrained into our minds since we were born, it's a given that it's going to work. Sometimes lights burn out, blow out, there's a power outage but these don't happen that often, even if you live in area where the power's always going out, you'd still have more days of the power being on then off.


So why don't they work in dreams? I saw Waking Life recently (past week) and they mentioned this along with small printed material. I can understand the small print messing up, since there's so much of it there, and hard to keep focused, but not the light.



Light switches/ lamps do this for me: they won't work, they'll work but won't add much light if any, they'll work fine, but then go out for no reason, not even a dream reason like someone cut the lines.



I know there's no definite answer to this, since no one really knows why, but any ideas/ theories are welcome.

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Hi, yes I have been thinking about this too. The reason is doubt...the worst thing that can happen...the light fails. It's the default in anyone to fear the ultimate thing that can happen. I'm into lights and lighting and the lights in my dreams rarely fail unless I expect it to...:P. And also about the brightness of light sources....usually it's not very bright...about half the brightness of an actual light source if U compare it with it's real counterpart....I think the reason for this is that the brain cannot create so bright a light as seen in reality otherwise it would wake itself up..wouldn't it?...:P.

IMJ

Dreams [i]are[/] about beliefs, but they are also about association. Your mind doesn't associate a switch with a light. If your switch scheme is activated, your light scheme isn't activated enough to change the lighting.

Also, changing brightness is difficult (computationally) for you mind so it doesn't want to change it. If you are lucid then you can easily turn on a light because you are forcing your mind to.

Maybe because when we walk by and flick a light switch, we just expect it to come on even though we dont know how. I am probably not making a lot of sense but thats all i know

Strangely lightswitchs always work in my lucid/normal dreams.
But there are one of the few things which are normal in my dreams.
The stories and characters, including myself are completly bizarre.

Lights work in my dreams too! :D so much for Waking Life!

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Originally Posted by Eternalhope

Strangely lightswitchs always work in my lucid/normal dreams.
But there are one of the few things which are normal in my dreams.
The stories and characters, including myself are completly bizarre.

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...Does this surprise you?

Most dreams are pretty random.:?

@Grod They are more than random :paranoid: . Now and then I get pretty cool, real dreams, normally when I want to dream about a certain topic, but most of the time ... they are more like surrealistic paintings than anything else.

For example big heads without bodies who spit fortune cookies at me :banana: .

Yea, electricity works fine in my lucid dreams. However, things like computers don't usually work right and almost always have some sort of problem. Like, in one normal dream, when I went to use my computer, it kept crashing.

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Originally Posted by Eternalhope

@Grod They are more than random :paranoid: . Now and then I get pretty cool, real dreams, normally when I want to dream about a certain topic, but most of the time ... they are more like surrealistic paintings than anything else.

For example big heads without bodies who spit fortune cookies at me :banana: .

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It's cool you can control what you want to dream about. I wish I had that kind of pre-control.

But I mean basically all dreams are strange. Last night I had a dream where I was in some sort of epic conflict with Santa Claus.

The only reason some things don't work is because you are expecting them not to work.

It's your dream, do whatever you want in it. Just make sure you believe.

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Originally Posted by Barns

Speaking from myself (and others') experiences light levels are a little harder to change than anything else.

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I believed that it was a test to check if you are lucid dreaming or not, so today I woke up learning that its not. I tried to change the lights and they did. So I thought that wasn't a dream after all.

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