A theory about DCs

I often wonder how dream characters in lucids can seem so real. It’s not how they look or move that blows my mind, it’s the conversations you can sometimes have with them.

Not all DCs impress me. Actually most of them are more like zombies or robots who give nonsense answers. But from time to time you come across a character with whom you can have an actual conversation, and I find it amazing.

I have no idea how this works, or what is going on, but I’d like to write about an idea I had that seeks to give an explanation. It will probably seem far-fetched, and will probably not be correct (I’m not a trained psychologist or anything of the sort). The idea goes like this.

Most of the time, we act “on automatic”. If I make myself a cup of tea, I have learned that I need to boil water, fill the cup, put in the tea-bag, wait a bit, add milk, add sugar, and then drink when beverage has cooled a little. When I want tea I do all this automatically. I don’t have to think about the sequence of events, or about which ingredients are needed. I would guess that the “make tea” program is stored in my brain as a package (a meme?).

I would guess that a great many such useful mini-programs are stored in our brains, ready for use. The simpler ones are probably for things such as “making tea”, “taking the bus”, or “getting dressed for work”. Slightly more complex programs might be “visiting Grandma on a Sunday afternoon”, or “dinner with the in-laws” – events that require certain patterns of behavior.

I’m getting to my point. So my idea was this: what if DCs are the representations of some of these slightly more complex programs?

If we have a program for visiting Grandma, we might have one for “helping a lost stranger staring at a map find his way to the museum”. If, in a lucid dream, we were to come face to face with the representation of this last program, we could indeed have a conversation with it about, say, how to locate our dream guide. The DC would convincingly listen, respond, guide, just as we would if helping a lost stranger. The DC would be very convincing because... he was programmed that way – by us!

(I also have suspect that a lot of human beings spend 99.9% of their waking lives just acting out pre-programmed behavior patterns...).

I've had a few times where the DC would talk to me before spoken to, My last dream most likely. There was one DC that was with me twice, And he reacted on its OWN. But, I wasn't Lucid so maybe that's why. But, however. He the DC, I don't know his name but before entering a False Awakening he left the room telling me "I'm gonna get out of here before your cousins get here" and soon after he left (maybe a minute later) a little girl (cousin) came running in and annoying my character. Then my character told her im going to bed. And went to sleep, then I awoken in the dream ( No reality check here >.< because i am still not how we say used to do a RC after awakening)
and walked upstairs, in the hall a door was openned arcing into the hallway and i looked inside and the same guy was there getting dressed (he had his pants on already and was putting his shirt on) he noticed me and said "You forgot to do that thing." <- Mentioning I forgot to do a Reality Check? Maybe :shock:

I entirely disagree with your theory. Brains do not work in that way, and they never will. The brain is much more complicated than you seem to think.

And as for dreams, scenarios which have never cropped up before in waking life can appear in dreams. This is because your subconciousness is as intellegent as the rest of your brain. It is fully capable of stimulating a realistic enviroment with realistic people and realistic dialogue because your imagination is good enough to do this. Ever since you were born your brain has taken in information, and so your subconciousness has plenty to base its dreams on. Your subconciousness can remember things that you didn't think you could.

Anyway, dreams do not follow a set pattern. Your brain can act erratically and produce unexpected things, it is not a simulation of waking life.

You are seriously underestimating how good your mind is at dreaming.

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Originally Posted by Barns

I entirely disagree with your theory. Brains do not work in that way, and they never will. The brain is much more complicated than you seem to think.

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I disagree with you here. Sometimes our brains do owrk that way. We don't have to think about walking, we do it automatically. A "walking program". Martial Arts students train themselves so that when under attack, their body will respond in a different way than basic instinct. "Switching programs" Whether these aspects make into our dreams as DC's, or into our dreams at all, is a different matter though.

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I would guess that a great many such useful mini-programs are stored in our brains, ready for use. The simpler ones are probably for things such as “making tea”, “taking the bus”, or “getting dressed for work”. Slightly more complex programs might be “visiting Grandma on a Sunday afternoon”, or “dinner with the in-laws” – events that require certain patterns of behavior.

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:?

doesnt really work that way

This is kind of like Stephen Laberge's theory in Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, except he was explaining dreams in general not just DCs. Acording to the theory your dreams run on "scripts" your mind has on situations, and scripts will lead you to think of other scripts. Stephen's example was if you are in a dark street you might think of a mugging script and therefore someone will mug you. So it is possible that your DCs are running on different personality/conversational scripts which is kind of like what you are saying.

If what you are saying is true, it could be possible to ask DC's questions to help you learn more about yourself. I think a lot of times people are running on automatic. I know I am; I often have to remind myself to try and be more aware of what's going on--I get that "I drove here but I don't remember the trip at all" kind of feeling a lot.

Anyway, to find out things going on in your mind beneath the surface, questioning DC's might be a good way to find out. If you can find some that will give you a straight answer, that is. :roll:

I was thinking I might test out how much of what DC's say is your own conscious expectation, maybe by asking some really obvious questions that my mind would fill in if it is in control, like "What's my favorite color?" or something like that.

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Originally Posted by aceboy

:?

doesnt really work that way

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Would you care to tell us how it DOES work?

Thanks, frostyelf, I looked into EWOLD and found a passage about "schemas", which are described as "building blocks of the mind", in Chapter 5. (I must have read that a while ago and forgotten about it".

The idea is that we do often run scripts, which define how we do things. So I think my point remains valid: I'm not saying I'm certain that DCs represent scripts that we have developed, I'm just saying that they seem to sometimes be behaving in a way that seems scripted, and therefore I wonder if there might be some relationship between our DCs and our scripts...

Moonbeam, have you ever asked one of your DCs to tell you about yourself?

Hey there,

I'm a little surprised by your surprise about how DCs can have complex conversations. Why does this require an explanation or a theorem? I mean, a writer can write down the most amazing dialogues between several people in a book or a play, a poet can write down great lines that move millions of people.

So why would the ability of a dreamcharacter to have a complex conversation surprise you? Surely, the writer and the poet too are just 'working alone'. Our mind simply has a great creative depth to it that we can tap in to. It seems quite natural and normal to me, and I fail to see what this has to do with behavioral and cognitive scripts.

Just my 2 cents,

-Redrivertears-

Good point, Redrivertears!

I guess what I find so surprising is the notion that the DC is talking to me as if he really had a mind of his own. I mean, it certainly doesn't feel like I'm telling him what to say - I'm "me" in my dream, and he's... well, who exactly IS he?

Last night in one of my lucids i was watching a football match up the football pitch (my brother was playing on one team) and shortly after becoming lucid he approached me and asked me what was the matter (perhaps he noticed i wasn't following the dream script) and i said i just realized i was dreaming and he said i thought so, can't recall anything after that annoyingly.

I don't know whether this was my dream guide, sub-conscious, or what but i do not believe it was a dream character. (just the way he was acting)

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Originally Posted by three and four

Moonbeam, have you ever asked one of your DCs to tell you about yourself?

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I'm working on that one now.

Thats an interesting concept, but my DCs tend to be rude.:P