Doublethink, lucids and self-delusion: A summary

These are just some connections that might interest you guys. The common overlap of Doublethink, self delusion in general (although, they're pretty much synonyms) and lucid dreaming. First lets take a look at what doublethink is:

DoublethinkIf you want the one-liner, doublethink is "the act of simultaneously and fervently holding two mutually contradictory beliefs". Meaning you tell yourself one thing is true (and believe it) while at the same time knowing that the exact opposite is true.

Whats the relation to LDs? Well... pretty much everything to tell you the truth. To LD, you need to believe that the dream reality is true while still maintaining that the dream reality is indeed fake and created entirely by us.

To effectively use doublethink, one reality is generally chosen as the one that you "believe". This will be your dream reality. Then, you take ideas from the real reality and apply them whenever needed then "forget" they ever existed. Read the quotes on the wikipedia page linked above for this to make more sense. So, example...

You're in a dream and you're bull broke no money whatsoever. =( You have 2 options: 1. Pursue a course deemed logical by your dream logic in order to obtain money or 2. "Realize" it is all a dream and spawn the money. Lets look a at no. 2. Applying the fundamentals of doublethink, you reach over to reality, understand that its just a dream and you can simply make the money up then promptly "forget" that it's just a dream as soon as you have the money in order to preserve the illusion.

Not much more to say on the subject... I hope my random splatter of ideas up there comes together better then I think it probably does.... On to the next topic =P

Self-doubt and Self-delusion

In this section I want to focus on the following statements...

The realism of the dream is governed almost entirely based upon how well you can delude yourself.

and

The ability to become lucid implies the ability to doubt yourself.

Lets begin with the first one. It's pretty much the same thing that was talked about above. Good self-delusion makes really realistic dreams. Well, of course you're going to believe it more if you trick yourself into believing it more but this is an important concept to really think about. Doublethink is the main mode of application for this but... whats really going on?

I'll use pretty text drawings to explain

In real life, this can represent what you experience.

Experiences ----------> senses ----------> conscious mind ----------> reasoning core -----------> mental schemata

Over simplified (not as over-simplified as the next example is gonna be tho XD) but it shows it pretty accurately. You pick up experiences through your senses and it travels through your head to your "reasoning core" which attempts to determine if what you are seeing is real. To do this, it looks it up in your mental schemata. If you're unfamiliar with the concept of mental schemata, Billy has a good tut on the basics. The system works seamlessly and everything is A'OK.

Heres what happens in a dream...

Mental schemata --------> "senses" ---------> conscious mind -----------> reasoning core ---------> mental schemata

Now... does anybody see a problem with this? Essentially, your mental schemata feeds information to itself and thus tells you that everything matches, is A'OK and is real. The breakdown is: Your dreams are created through your mental schemata and are fed into what I can only think to describe as your "senses". From there, you treat it as you would normal input through the real senses. The "fatal flaw" being that everything is "true" because your mental schemata (or more loosely defined, whatever in your head that defines reality) both creates and checks reality according to the same precepts.

Example time again. Through the garbled and twisted sea of concepts (that I'm not even going to take a shot at trying to explain, let alone fully understand myself) in our schemata, we get a connection between pink and hamburgers. This is interpreted as a pink hamburger which we "see", is passed to our reasoning core which looks up for a connection between pink and hamburger and LO AND BEHOLD, It finds the same think from which the concept was created. The pink hamburger gets an A'OK by the reality checker and the dream logic is that pink hamburgers do indeed exist!

Huzzah, full explanation! Anybody left that I didn't lose along the way? Use this info how you will I guess... I think I had more to add in the ways of usage-wise but I forgots =/

Also, over, over simplification. I stripped it down to the bare bones and raped it a couple times to get it into something easily conveyed over the internet through words. Lets leave it at "some things aren't exactly accurate about that model".

It's really late so i'll do the second one quick-like..

The ability to become lucid implies the ability to doubt yourself. Whats the proof for this? Well, building on the above, mainly... A dream IS what you believe. Dream and what you believe are pretty much synonyms. Thus, to make yourself lucid, it is essentially the act of doubting yourself.

I think there was supposed to be alot more to that too but now I forgets =/ I think I've probably confused you guys enough anyway..

So... thoughts?

After reading 1984 I started trying to figure out when I used doublethink in my life, and eliminate it, but I never made the connection with Lucid Dreaming.

A logical and helpful application of Doublethink...hmmm

Good read, and interesting.

Nice theory.
I never thought of lucid dreaming like that :P

There is an english term entitled "willful suspension of disbelief". This is when you choose to, as it says, suspend your disbelief.

Such as when you watch a horror movie, and you don't believe in ghosts... yet for the sake of enjoying the film you allow yourself to believe in them for the duration of the show.

Spiderman was an awesome movie. Do I really believe someone could do all the stuff that he can? No. But I suspended that disbelief so that I could enjoy the movie. It just wouldn't have been entertaining had I been shaking my head and saying "That can't happen!" the entire time.

Everyone does it. And I believe it is the same thing you do while Lucid Dreaming.

Thoughts?

I'm quite interested by your posted opinion on doublethink and LDing as well. Thanks!

Now the big question is, do you think that this doublethink eliminates lucidity? If we doublethink too much, don't you think we'd become unlucid merely to preserve/enjoy the illusion?

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Originally Posted by Einherjar

Spiderman was an awesome movie. Do I really believe someone could do all the stuff that he can? No. But I suspended that disbelief so that I could enjoy the movie. It just wouldn't have been entertaining had I been shaking my head and saying "That can't happen!" the entire time.

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What do you mean "Spiderman isn't real?!" :shock:

So, your saying we should just doubt ourselves that we can't have a lucid dream and we will have a lucid dream? lol i'm confused.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Einherjar

There is an english term entitled "willful suspension of disbelief". This is when you choose to, as it says, suspend your disbelief.

Such as when you watch a horror movie, and you don't believe in ghosts... yet for the sake of enjoying the film you allow yourself to believe in them for the duration of the show.

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Good term and good application of it =O. Never really thought about it for movies. Someone I know has a really big problem with this and always says in the middle of a movie "No way that could happen"

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Originally Posted by Abra

Now the big question is, do you think that this doublethink eliminates lucidity? If we doublethink too much, don't you think we'd become unlucid merely to preserve/enjoy the illusion?

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The precepts of doublethink holding both the ideas of being in reality and not being in reality at the same time. In the prefect scenario, you never lose that tie to the knowledge that it is all a dream.

I recommend reading 1984. It's a really good book and you get a good understanding of the doublethink mindset.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Reborn

So, your saying we should just doubt ourselves that we can't have a lucid dream and we will have a lucid dream? lol i'm confused.

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By self-doubt, I didn't mean to doubt your abilities. Never that. But rather a need to doubt your perception of reality as it is applied to the reality you are in. A doubt of "how real reality is" by doubting your perceptions of it.

Thanks all for your thoughts =)

I've read 1984, and love it. But in a dream, even a lucid one, some knowledge and awareness is swayed and corrupt. So the delusion, although natural, may lead to becoming non-lucid again if one is not able to ideally doublethink.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Abra

I've read 1984, and love it. But in a dream, even a lucid one, some knowledge and awareness is swayed and corrupt. So the delusion, although natural, may lead to becoming non-lucid again if one is not able to ideally doublethink.

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Yah.

I think I've been using the term "lucid" in a too broad sense in here. In my mind, lucid incorporates semis and full lucids (the "superior" one to me being the semi.) And I just realized, this explains the existence of semi lucidity perfectly. Non lucidity is the state where you think it's reality and you can pull no knowledge (or a minuscule amount) that it is a dream. Full lucidity is where you think it's "reality" but you can freely pull from the knowledge that it's a dream. Semi fits in perfectly as: You think it's "reality" but you pull from the knowledge from the that it is a dream as is convenient. What determines when the knowledge is "convenient"? Well, it depends on what your goal is when you're dreaming. Usually, mine is to have fun and adventures =)

So, I'm really happy right now as I've just nailed down what feels like the proper definition for semis. =O

Doubleplusgood thread! I think it explains it excellently.

I wanted a really good visual representation of all the states of consciousness and thus I made one:


http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/9...realityyt1.gif

Alright, let me explain it now. Lets ignore the bottom green bar at first =P

The blue bar represents how aware you are of what is real and what is not. The red bar represents how much you have deluded yourself. As you can see, lucidity happens when the two overlap and are shared in your consciousness as dictated by the precepts of doublethink.

Lets go through the labels from left to right and give each a phrase that you'd probably use in that state:

Non-lucid: 100% delusion, 0% awareness. The delusion you have put yourself in is flawless and everything feels perfectly vivid and real. Stereotypical phrase: "OH SHIT! I'm gonna die! I'm gonna die! I'm gonna die!"

Semi-lucid: 80% delusion 50% awareness. The delusion is still almost intact but you have a good amount of awareness hidden behind the wall of doublethink that can be accessed when needed. Stereotypical phrase: "That thing's inconvenient. Go away!" *poof*

Full lucid: 50% delusion, 80% awareness. The delusion is still intact enough for it to form a dreamworld but the vivid, "this is right" feeling is all gone. That may be a good thing however because this allows you to manipulate the dreamworld. Stereotypical phrase: "You don't actually exist, and in a moment you're going to exist even less." *poof*

Daydream: 20% delusion, 100% awareness. You fantasize about something but you never lose any sort of awareness. Stereotypical phrase: "I wonder what it would be like to be rich and famous"

Reality: 0% delusion, 100% awareness. Warning: Higher levels of delusion may appear in some people =P Stereotypical phrase: "Life sucks."

The bottom bar at the bottom is slightly unrelated but related enough that it makes me hum with joy. It is a reference to this old thread of mine. When I made that thread about a year ago, it seems that I was able to provide a system that measured this with uncanny accuracy even though I had no idea what I was actually measuring. Now that I have this background stuff figured out, perhaps a new system is in order? One that incorporates the entire delusion-awareness spectrum as pictured above.

Thoughts?

Intersting connection. I'll have to keep that in mind!

Man... I just finished 1984 last weekend. It was great, but very disturbing. (And it's one of those books that'll mess you up for life. During my French quiz, there was a section of matching pictures to phrases with avoir. So for avoir tort, "to be wrong", the picture was of a girl who had written 2+2=5 on a chalkboard...)

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Originally Posted by L33tsaber

"to be wrong", the picture was of a girl who had written 2+2=5 on a chalkboard

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:lol:

1984 is a great book. I should probably read it again to reimburse myself with it. I read it a couple years ago, but some of it escapes me right now.

As for this topic...

I like how the doublethink is applied to lucidity. The application of this would have something to do with willfully changing lucidity levels, which is a pretty nice idea.

The only problem that I have is:

Quote:

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Mental schemata --------> "senses" ---------> conscious mind -----------> reasoning core ---------> mental schemata

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I'm a big fan of BillyBob, and his schemata article is great, but I think that this is a misrepresentation.

If this were true, then lucidity would be impossible. I understand that your representation is bare and "raped", but there has to be a different source or ending of this process.

Well, since dreams aren't objective, we can conclude that mental schemata is probably the best representation of dream formation, so we have to say that the ending of the reasoning process is different. On the Discovery Channel's "Human Body", they say that during dreams, our reasoning core or logic center is basically shut down for various reasons, which results in acceptance of nearly every illogical dream element. This would make the reasoning process stop at "conscious mind".

This is an interesting topic. I'd like to see how one can apply doublethink to improving lucid efforts.

I think one of the two main reasons I have so many LDs is that I doubt my own senses in waking life. I have schizoaffective disorder (kind of like schizophrenia and bi-polar mixed).

The other main reason is that I work on it all the time.

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Originally Posted by Stephent91

:lol:
I'm a big fan of BillyBob, and his schemata article is great, but I think that this is a misrepresentation.

If this were true, then lucidity would be impossible. I understand that your representation is bare and "raped", but there has to be a different source or ending of this process.

Well, since dreams aren't objective, we can conclude that mental schemata is probably the best representation of dream formation, so we have to say that the ending of the reasoning process is different. On the Discovery Channel's "Human Body", they say that during dreams, our reasoning core or logic center is basically shut down for various reasons, which results in acceptance of nearly every illogical dream element. This would make the reasoning process stop at "conscious mind".

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hm... good point... Perhaps the explanation then is that you do not check for reality at all? If you simply accepted everything at face value, it would be to the same effect...

I think that actually makes more sense. If that is true, to get from non-lucid to lucid you'd probably have to leverage it from your reactionary core(I'm almost positive that this must be active or else it would be impossible to do anything without a logic core) . Just background on the reactionary core(as I understand it, I might be using the wrong word for it but this was what it was called in the books I've read). When you get sensory input, it goes to two places, your reactionary core and your logic core. In your reactionary core, you have things "hard coded" into you. This means that if you have a ball flying at your face, you know to get out of the way. As I understand it, your logic core would be too slow in analyzing the situation and you'd probably end up with a face full of ball.

So, the bottom line is: In a dream you're probably going to do whatever is in your reactionary core. Does this mean that making yourself do RCs until it sticks is a good idea? Thats what it seems to point at.

But stephent, how much of the logic core is still active? I'd love to see the info on what parts of the brain shut off during sleep. And how does it scale in relation to lucidity? If the logic core were more active during lucidity, we could conclude with a fair degree of certainty that the act of using your logic core brings awareness because you can use reason to understand that it is a delusion where as if you are relying entirely (or almost entirely) on your reactionary core(which makes up a large chunk of your mental schemata) you will delude yourself.

Does that model make more sense? =O

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Originally Posted by arby

hm... good point... Perhaps the explanation then is that you do not check for reality at all? If you simply accepted everything at face value, it would be to the same effect...

I think that actually makes more sense. If that is true, to get from non-lucid to lucid you'd probably have to leverage it from your reactionary core(I'm almost positive that this must be active or else it would be impossible to do anything without a logic core) . Just background on the reactionary core(as I understand it, I might be using the wrong word for it but this was what it was called in the books I've read). When you get sensory input, it goes to two places, your reactionary core and your logic core. In your reactionary core, you have things "hard coded" into you. This means that if you have a ball flying at your face, you know to get out of the way. As I understand it, your logic core would be too slow in analyzing the situation and you'd probably end up with a face full of ball.

So, the bottom line is: In a dream you're probably going to do whatever is in your reactionary core. Does this mean that making yourself do RCs until it sticks is a good idea? Thats what it seems to point at.

But stephent, how much of the logic core is still active? I'd love to see the info on what parts of the brain shut off during sleep. And how does it scale in relation to lucidity? If the logic core were more active during lucidity, we could conclude with a fair degree of certainty that the act of using your logic core brings awareness because you can use reason to understand that it is a delusion where as if you are relying entirely (or almost entirely) on your reactionary core(which makes up a large chunk of your mental schemata) you will delude yourself.

Does that model make more sense? =O

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That makes great sense. :)

I'm not sure whether we would gain lucidity from our reaction core, because this would mean that we should frequently do random RCs for no reason, with the result of doing a random RC in a dream. I know from experience, however, that I become lucid from recognizing illogicalities in the dream for more than random RCing from conditioning.

Perhaps, the reactionary core triggers the logic core to become aware by RCing based on illogicalities in waking life. This would require the logic core to notice the illogicalities, though. :?

I would also be interested, and if there isn't already researched information, research should be performed to know how active the logic and reactionary cores are during lucid and non-lucid sleep, as well as during wakefulness. Also, how intertwined they are.