How would an LD render a large crowd of people?

I don't know why, but this crossed my mind as in most of my normal dreams I never seem to see a lot of people in them, possible about 7 to 10 max, and that's mostly down to my dreams being in relatively closed spaces such as workplaces or houses etc.

This being the case, how would my mind react if I lucidly transported myself to a really large sporting event, such as the Indy 500? I mean, there'd be literally thousands of people there normally to make up the crowd, but can our minds create such a scene and if not, would it top-out on a relatively small number of people that the mind could handle more easily?

I keep thinking of being in such a place and then imagining myself looking around the spectators in the crowd and seeing nothing but perhaps early playstation 2D type of people with flat faces ( ie: Any early FIFA game ), very little detail and all wearing the same clothes, lol.

Maybe this could be a lucid challenge if you like, unless someone has actually been in this situation and could verify that the brain doesn't have any problems dealing with huge numbers of individuals.

I think I need sleep now because I'm thinking up weird stuff, lol.

I've been to two Areosmith concerts in my dreams, no problems with large crowds of people.

I don't have crowd problems either.

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Originally Posted by The Cusp

I've been to two Areosmith concerts in my dreams, no problems with large crowds of people.

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Cool! thank you, but can you say how clearly defined they were? I mean, from a distance they looked fine but up close if you were to walk around in the the crowd would they all appear to be different characters?

I guess from some of your previous threads on how the mind works then maybe you only bring into detail that what you're focused on and not necessarily the peripheral vision?

Yeah, it's hard to imagine your mind rendering huge detailed scenes if you think of it graphics-wise. However, dreams can recreate pretty much anything with hardly any effort. I mean, imagine yourself standing in a crowd, that's all your brain does.

I was right in the middle of the crowd close to the stage. They were all well defined. Hot chicks, old hippies, the sweaty guy with no shirt that rubs up against you. Everything I'd expect to find at a concert.

^ similar experience =]
Be careful, you may use up too much disk space and you'll have to delete uneeded files.

once i can lucid more, one of the first things ill do is go to some nirvana concerts and maybe some jimi hendrix.

ill tell you my results if it happens soon.

right now, to help my thought im listening to every nirvana song i have(its like 14 songs)

My lucids are usually desolate. My dreams have lots of people.

when you think of a brain as a computer, its amazing how you lot can do that, ive never tryed so i dont know, but the human brain (still compairing to computer) must have immense disk space, main memory and processing power to be able to do that without crashing.

I'd have thought it's very possible to have a lot of people in enough detail at one time. Really your brain would only have to "render" the people that you're focusing on. Think about it, in waking life, if the things in our peripherals weren't in a huge amount of detail you wouldn't notice. so in dreams, we wouldn't realise a lack of detail until we focus on them, but then it would become "rendered" for us.

Does what I've said make any sense? :?

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Originally Posted by gradient

I'd have thought it's very possible to have a lot of people in enough detail at one time. Really your brain would only have to "render" the people that you're focusing on. Think about it, in waking life, if the things in our peripherals weren't in a huge amount of detail you wouldn't notice. so in dreams, we wouldn't realise a lack of detail until we focus on them, but then it would become "rendered" for us.

Does what I've said make any sense? :?

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You hit the nail on the head there. Everything requires your attention to exist in dreams.

Theoretically speaking, there should not be any problem to "render" crowds of people because in waking life brain is able to do this (based on external sensory input).

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Originally Posted by Phantasos

Theoretically speaking, there should not be any problem to "render" crowds of people because in waking life brain is able to do this (based on external sensory input).

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good point. but in a dream you would have to either make up thousands of unique faces, or remember thousands of different people. both of them seem impossible to do, even if done subconsiously the brain would have a lot to do. in real life it is already there, just data in through eyes and into your brain.

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Originally Posted by slash112

good point. but in a dream you would have to either make up thousands of unique faces, or remember thousands of different people. both of them seem impossible to do, even if done subconsiously the brain would have a lot to do. in real life it is already there, just data in through eyes and into your brain.

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I think the brain will use faces it already knows. Such as friends and family.
Everyone has the ability to see someone once and then recognize them at a later stage. I think it might just a collection of the 1000's of people you already have stored in your mind.
But I reckon gradient has the right idea about this.

I think ideas that your brain wouldn't be able to handle the amount of detail, probably comes from people taking the idea that the brain is like a computer, a bit too seriously. The brain is more powerful than any computer - even super computers - so it wouldn't have a problem with the detail of it. :D

I've made a quick search, and found some articles on human brain's power, for example:

http://www.merkle.com/brainLimits.html - here is author came to conclusion that human brain has a raw computation power between 10 teraflops to 10 petaflops (the top supercomputer now has about 1 petaflops)

That's quite a lot I guess :D.

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Originally Posted by slash112

good point. but in a dream you would have to either make up thousands of unique faces, or remember thousands of different people. both of them seem impossible to do, even if done subconsiously the brain would have a lot to do. in real life it is already there, just data in through eyes and into your brain.

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Then again, IRL you don't pay much attention to every single face, do you? Your brain would make up the details if you decided to look at people.

But, if we are comparing the brain to a computer, can't the brain use a random-face-generator method? =P

That nullifies the need to remember a thousand faces--you'd just need to know what qualifies as a face!

Conjuring a crowd shouldn't be any different than conjuring a single person. It's the same thing, but there's a lot of them. If we're comparing ourselves to computers, creating a couple thousand faces is easy. And now for proofless conjecture: Especially easy if, when the faces aren't being noticed, they blurr out. I bet the faces in crowds change if you look at them twice, much like text.

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Originally Posted by Abra

But, if we are comparing the brain to a computer, can't the brain use a random-face-generator method? =P

That nullifies the need to remember a thousand faces--you'd just need to know what qualifies as a face!

Conjuring a crowd shouldn't be any different than conjuring a single person. It's the same thing, but there's a lot of them. If we're comparing ourselves to computers, creating a couple thousand faces is easy. And now for proofless conjecture: Especially easy if, when the faces aren't being noticed, they blurr out. I bet the faces in crowds change if you look at them twice, much like text.

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You make some good points here indeed. I've yet to experience the changing text or digital watch anomalies, but one other thing might be at work here and that concerns our own eyes in waking life. Do dream eyes work the same as in real life where you can only bring into focus that which is in centre vision? Ie: If you look at your PC keyboard right now and focus on say the letters G and H then they will pretty much be in focus but the letters either side or above and below them will be out of focus. Yes, you'll still roughly know what the other letters are but you'll notice that you'll flick your eyes left or right or up and down slightly to truly bring them into focus.

If there's any experienced LD'ers out there that can confirm if the dream eyes mirror the narrow-focus of our real eyes then I'd be glad to hear of your experiences. I'm kinda thinking of how hard-wired our brains are to gravity for example and that some people have troube breaking that mindset in the dreamstate that the same thing might happen with our eyes and that we can't have all round sharp focused images in a wider perspective in our dreams.

If your mind truly did have trouble rendering a vast amount of people, it would probably find a way to handle it...like you would feel the presence of a thousand people, but looking at them, you'd probably just see a big mass, and maybe the people closest to you would be rendered individually.

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Originally Posted by Dream scaper

I think ideas that your brain wouldn't be able to handle the amount of detail, probably comes from people taking the idea that the brain is like a computer, a bit too seriously. The brain is more powerful than any computer - even super computers - so it wouldn't have a problem with the detail of it. :D

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I agree, I think the idea of our minds just being computers is a product of our current technological paradigm: we interpret things we don't fully understand (ie our minds) with the symbols and language of whatever time period we are living in, and we are living in a time where everyone owns a PC. Our minds (whatever their true nature is, we don't know as of yet) have no problem whatsoever "rendering" huge amounts of information. I bet creating an entire crowd is a drop in a bucket compared to their full potential. The idea of disk space or RAM of the brain seems pretty silly to me. If you could create a computer with enough processing power and complexity would it just pop into self awareness and consciousness? When would be the turning point for a macintosh to become complicated enough to become aware? Scientist finally add the very last bit of coding necessary and consciousness just spawns all of a sudden in the computer? We obviously don't quite grasp something fundamental about our minds. But if you go into a LD with ideas like lack of disk space and memory, your mind will behave accordingly because of your beliefs