Thread: Inception- Is it possible?

Bear in mind that most things scientists believe now were laughed at when they were first proposed. Darwin's theories didn't sit well his peers, but over time they've come to be excepted. Even to take a more modern theory, the Gaia theory. Scientists scoffed when they first heard this theory years ago, but now many scientist are starting to seriously consider some parts of this hypothesis as fact. To outright deny anything is foolish to say the least. It's better to approach with an air of sceptisicm, no matter how ridiculous the thing may be.

But that's not what this thread was supposed to be about. I'll ask another question...
If you had to plant an idea in someone's mind, with zero budget, how would you do it? What about a close friend or a complete stranger? To keep to plot of the film, the person must think that it's their idea.

Originally Posted by TheEvilToaster

But that's not what this thread was supposed to be about. I'll ask another question...
If you had to plant an idea in someone's mind, with zero budget, how would you do it? What about a close friend or a complete stranger? To keep to plot of the film, the person must think that it's their idea.

get them interested.
most of the students in my fencing class didn't come because a friend told them to; they came because they saw us practicing and said 'that's awesome! I want to try'.
the same with Dreamviews. I convinced a friend of mine that couldn't stand online forums to join dreamviews just because lucid dreaming was an interesting subject.

I see what you're saying, but what if the person isn't interested? To give an example, if someone thinks dreaming is a waste of time, and never remembers their dreams, and says they don't even like dreaming, how would you convince them go from this, to starting a DJ?

Originally Posted by TheEvilToaster

I see what you're saying, but what if the person isn't interested? To give an example, if someone thinks dreaming is a waste of time, and never remembers their dreams, and says they don't even like dreaming, how would you convince them go from this, to starting a DJ?

again, get them interested. subconsciously force them to love it.
if they enjoy reading/watching sci-fi or fantasy, then slowly introduce the concept of lucid dreaming then. another strong counterpoint would be 'what else are you doing during that time?'
you just have to get creative if you want to persuade people. hnnng social telepathy.

Bear in mind that most things scientists believe now were laughed at when they were first proposed. Darwin's theories didn't sit well his peers, but over time they've come to be excepted. Even to take a more modern theory, the Gaia theory. Scientists scoffed when they first heard this theory years ago, but now many scientist are starting to seriously consider some parts of this hypothesis as fact. To outright deny anything is foolish to say the least. It's better to approach with an air of sceptisicm, no matter how ridiculous the thing may be.

Darwin may have been laughed at, but his ideas were always science, and those who denied them did not represent science. The reason is simple: he provided clear physical evidence which was totally at odds with other theories. There's a difference between somebody who claims to be a scientist, and a true scientist.

I don't think the Gaia hypothesis is truly a hypothesis. It doesn't make any predictions.

Because science has been wrong before in the past I find it dangerous to use science to decide the limitations of the human experience. If thousands of people have experienced something, how can we conclude they are wrong simply because science doesn't understand the nature of their experience

You still don't understand what science is. If you did you wouldn't be making statements like these.

How can science possibly be wrong? True science always acknowledges any areas of doubt if there are any, and all evidence comes with provisos.

Give me a single example of when the scientific method has led to an incorrect statement.

I agree with you! Famous scientists did think outside the box. But here's the problem. How many famous scientists were ridiculed by their contemporaries? A lot of them were!

Bruce Lipton has won an award for his work concerning biology and thoughts. But I can't even talk about Bruce Lipton on this forum without people shouting pseudoscience. I couldn't even get the people shouting pseudoscience to look at his video, book or website. It took Bruce ten years to get his research out to the public.

Pseudoscience is slander. There is genuine research being done that's slandered as pseudoscience just because of the nature of the research.

I honestly don't care to discuss what people may say about the work of others.

If some research is called pseudoscience because it happens to be in a particular area, that is wrong. However, if is being called pseudoscience because the people doing the studies are making unverifiable claims without publishing evidence, then that is correct.

Do you know of any experiment that took place concerning shared dreaming, that proved it was impossible? I don't know of any! How can we have evidence for shared dreaming UNTIL the experiments happen?

But that doesn't mean there is no reason to believe in its possibility. We don't have to wait for science to do a experiment to form our own ideas of whether or not something is real. We didn't sit and wait around for science to talk about lucid dreaming - most of us knew it was possible because we experienced it first hand as a child.

Knowing how powerful and affirming it is to experience something yourself, you honor the experiences of others. Especially if there are promises that you can experience it yourself!

Again, you haven't listened to me.

Science is equivalent to reasoning and evidence.

How can you justify believing in anything if you don't have any evidence for it (to yourself, let alone other people)? It's simply nonsensical.

ANYTHING might be possible juroara. It's possible that gravity randomly stops functioning tomorrow. It's possible that there are blue men living on a planet orbiting alpha centurai. It's possible that I can levitate. And OBVIOUSLY you can never PROVE that any of these things AREN'T true.

That's distinct from the fact that there is absolutely NO reason to BELIEVE that they ARE.

Well, that's a kind of fishy analogy to what I said. Levitating is supposed to be a real time phenomenon. If someone says they can levitate, okay, show us. What I'm talking about is honoring the SUBJECTIVE experiences of others.

How do I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the lucid experiences you've shared on this forum aren't all made believe to boost your ego? Imagine if I felt this way about everyone who shared a lucid dream, and my reasoning was "well if you can't prove to me objectively that you lucid dreamed, then you're just lying" At some point, that's just paranoia. Numbers matter! It makes a huge difference if only one person in the world testified to shared dreaming versus one million.

That's what I'm talking about. It's however hard to get an accurate reading on how many people have shared dreams, because from what I've seen its generally something that happens between close friends. And that makes the experience even more personal - why do they want to open their personal experience for public ridicule?

But lucid dreaming was proven, juroara. Never heard of Stephen LaBerge? That's why lucid dreaming is scientifically excepted whereas shared dreaming is not.

Incidentally it's hugely more difficult to test lucid dreaming than it is to test shared dreaming. Doesn't that tell you something?

I'm not asking for something complicated. Just anything that shows it's something more than a dream with another person in; the kind of standards of proof that any sane person would ask for.

You make incredibly weak arguments for why nobody has done such an experiment. There are several huge flaws:

- Even if there were only a small number of people who could do this, it's extremely unlikely that none of them cares a single bit about all of the praise, fame, and money they would get. They could give all the money to charities if they wanted. The fact that they haven't would make them extremely selfish.

- Even if they didn't care about the money; if this experience is so marvellous, why don't they want to share it with the world, and let everybody do it?

- Lucid dreaming is just as 'personal', yet people had no problem with scientifcally proving that.

Along with the fact that shared dreaming is against our current understanding of how the brain works, there is literally no reason at all to believe that shared dreaming is true.

I am terrible at explaining experiments. I chop them up and make them sound horrible because I never use the right words. But here's my best shot. In one experiment they wanted to know if the intention to heal someone did anything - anything at all.

They grabbed what they thought would make the best healers, reiki healers, chi masters, shamans. And as for a control, they grabbed ordinary people untrained in the art of healing. They started out with their theory, which made them place the healers and the healee in a big box of a room made specially for the experiment. To block out interference.

First they thought they found electrical energy emanating out of the healers. But that could not explain the healing phenomenon that both the healers and the healees testify too. Then they reasoned the electrical energy was the by product of magnetic energy coming out of the electromagnetic human field. But that still did not explain the testimonies of spontaneous healing, when the healer was thousands of miles away.

Still optimistic that they could find something on the intention to heal another, they came up with a new theory based on what they had already found. That healing another uses light. Light on the spectrum outside of our vision.

They get new sensitive equipment, and they find evidence for their theory. Coherent light was emanating out of the healers hand that was more intense than any light the control group could produce. Not only did they find light a part of the healing process, but the healee's brain waves would often mimic the brain waves of the healer, as if the healer is conditioning the healee.

They even put green algae in the same room as the healers to see if the algae reacted differently.

I read about this in the Intention Experiment.

The book also reviews the old lie detectors on the plants, bringing to light the entire story. Sure people laugh at these experiments, the man wasn't even a trained scientist. But the book talks about how he conducted hundreds of experiments. In one live shrimp were dropped in boiling water. At the same moment the the plants register an enormous spike. Were it a human spike it would mean an intense emotion was just felt.

Now naturally people laughed at these experiments. How can plants have emotions when they don't have brains, let alone, how could plants know that live shrimp were being boiled alive when they don't have eyes? So everyone just laughs! End of story.

But a physicist today thinks there is something to look at here. His theory is our thoughts are composed of light. Plants absorb the light, the light which is still carrying the information of the intention or thought.

The ramifications are huge if it turns out to be true. And now that they have formulated a theory that thoughts or intentions are composed of light, they can make even better experiments.

Firstly, nothing you've said has anything to do with what I asked for, which is an experiment which showed people could have shared dreams.

Secondly, all the experiments you talk about are classic pseudoscience.

If you want to prove somebody has healing powers, then you let them meet with sick people and then see if the sick people heal at a greater rate than would be statistically expected. It's extremely easy.

Those studies unashamedly use all of the classic techniques of pseudoscience like using isolated data points instead of groups of data, use nonsensical technical sounding phrases (magnetic energy as a byproduct of electric energy causing long distance effects is totally meaningless), and make up all kinds of 'theories' which don't even have testable or meaningful results.

I stand correct. Science by it's very nature can't be wrong. What I should of said is the scientists who made certain claims are wrong. It is also impossible to scientifically prove/disprove something technically. Because the human sphere of experince is so small, it is possible that everything we have observed up to this point is some flukey coincidence.
There are many things that scientist believe, even without much evidence. How much evidence is there for the multverse theory? (That's a genuine question, I don't know, but I don't think there's a lot)

Shared dreaming could be possible (without technology).

We're a long long way away from even the most basic scientific understanding of consciousness (the first personal quality of it).

Nope, I'm pretty sure we have a basic scientific understanding of consciousness.

Originally Posted by Xei

I think extrapolating from the current trends in technology, what you can expect is some kind of totally immersive virtual environments in which you can interact in real time with anybody connected to the net. In fact I'd imagine that's what the internet will end up looking like (or at least some subset of it).

It's not related to the dream state, but it is effectively the same experience as 'shared dreams'.

Gives a whole new meaning to getting a virus.

Gives a whole new meaning to getting a virus.

WARNING: INCOMING GAME. WARNING: INCOMING GAME.

A little Reboot, anyone?

Originally Posted by Samael

Nope, I'm pretty sure we have a basic scientific understanding of consciousness.

No we don't, read some philosophers of mind - Colin McGinn, John Searle, Roger Penrose, - on this subject

Although I agree we have little scientific understanding of consciousness, I also think John Searle and Roger Penrose are totally wrong about their opinions. I haven't read McGinn.

I think this all has much more validity and testability when it's concerning shared OBE's, rather than shared dreams (Although LaBerg did acknowledge shared dreams, calling them "mutual dreams").

I'm pretty confident to say that this can be probably be done at the Monroe Institute and make very realistic and practical claims.

Nice web page below shares some relevance on this topic:

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread596260/pg1

Shared dreams are 100% testable... as are shared OBEs. Easily.

I don't know what your post is about.

What's your point?

I think OBE's can potentially be more distinctive and objective in terms of evidence and collective data, since they can take place in real geographic locations in real time, whereas dream content is typically very diffuse, colorful, sporadic and unique.

Are you saying it's possible to detect an OBE body, or what?

All you need to do is get one person to share some information with another. It's extremely to test both, with very persuasive evidence (if they were true).

It's also extremely easy to test if OBEs are possible, by putting some kind of information outside of a sleeper's room.

However these experiments always give a negative result.

What was the nature of the experiments done to detect shared OBEs? I wouldn't be surprised at all if they waited for the OBEs to happen and then looked for vague similarities between experiences with no statistical critique at all.

Concerning OBE research that's supposed to be positive I only know of the Monroe Intitute that was founded after Robert Monroe wanted to work scientifically again, so with independent researchers and a few physicists as far as I know. (One being Thomas Campbell)

The Monroe Institute

Can't tell you anything about the actual research though.

Yeah I should've mentioned, Dajo. Thanks for bringing that up.

Originally Posted by Xei

Are you saying it's possible to detect an OBE body, or what?

I'm not so sure about "detecting it", since it isn't exactly physical. What I'm talking about is the connection with the real world. If you are going out of body and are going to collect information or travel together, then it is easy to verify the information collected and come to see how accurate your findings are. Dreaming, on the other hand, is most often scrambled and independent of external reality, rendering it much harder to rely on.

All you need to do is get one person to share some information with another. It's extremely to test both, with very persuasive evidence (if they were true).

It's also extremely easy to test if OBEs are possible, by putting some kind of information outside of a sleeper's room.

Yes, I'm pretty sure that's true.

Incidentally it's hugely more difficult to test lucid dreaming than it is to test shared dreaming. Doesn't that tell you something?

Hugely more difficult? I don't think you really meant that.

However these experiments always give a negative result.

An explanation would help, I don't believe that.

What was the nature of the experiments done to detect shared OBEs? I wouldn't be surprised at all if they waited for the OBEs to happen and then looked for vague similarities between experiences with no statistical critique at all.

I've heard that people at the Monroe Institute may work together in a group projects, for example; e.g. agree to meet somewhere or do activities (may or may not be in the ordinary physical world, as far as I know). Actually, that's probably how they/you can confirm that you actually went out of body in the first place, and didn't simply drift off to sleep in a fanciful dream. You may be surprised of the correlations between people's activities and their observations.

i think that with the advance and importance that dreaming is getting in modern times shared dreaming will become possible i the near future, i mean we are all ready able to read the brain waves and stuff like that so i dont think it is entirely impossible.

Did you guys know that brain waves synchronize during good conversations? I thought that was pretty cool

Hugely more difficult? I don't think you really meant that.

Sure I did, I could do an experiment for no cost at all to confirm shared dreaming using no equipment at all except a pen and paper, but to prove lucid dreaming you need to develop expensive equipment to monitor eye or brain signals.

An explanation would help, I don't believe that.

Nope... no, that's not how science works.

If you've got an experiment that gave a positive result, tell me.

Otherwise I'll assume they're all negative.

Originally Posted by dajo

Did you guys know that brain waves synchronize during good conversations? I thought that was pretty cool

Nice, you got any links for that?

Originally Posted by Xei

Sure I did, I could do an experiment for no cost at all to confirm shared dreaming using no equipment at all except a pen and paper, but to prove lucid dreaming you need to develop expensive equipment to monitor eye or brain signals.

Oh right ok. I've been presuming shared dreams = shared lucid dreams, in my case.

Nope... no, that's not how science works.

If you've got an experiment that gave a positive result, tell me.

Otherwise I'll assume they're all negative.

Assuming they're all negative is not how science works either. You shouldn't assume a conclusion about something without knowing what has happened. Do you acknowledge what I said in my previous post? There have been some complementary instances, just listen to peoples experiences with each other and it is obvious. Better than a pen and paper.

Oh right ok. I've been presuming shared dreams = shared lucid dreams, in my case.

I don't see how that matters. I was presuming they'd be lucid too. But you don't need to prove a shared lucid dream is lucid in order to prove that it's shared.

Assuming they're all negative is not how science works either. You shouldn't assume a conclusion about something without knowing what has happened. Do you acknowledge what I said in my previous post? There have been some complementary instances, just listen to peoples experiences with each other and it is obvious. Better than a pen and paper.

No, that is how science works. Until somebody provides evidence for an extraordinary claim, you have no reason to believe it.

I don't feel like repeating myself fully all over again, but basically the lack of any positive experiments for shared dreaming, when there is such high incentive to produce one, and it is so easy, is extremely hard to reconcile with the idea that it's possible.

Anecdotal evidence in this case is totally useless, because it's so easy to imagine how two people could fool themselves into thinking something is a shared dream. If they both preordained to meet each other at some location, and then both had dreams in which they did so, their reaction would probably to be to tell everybody that they'd had a shared dream. However they'd have no way of knowing if this was actually a shared mental environment, or if they were both just having separate dreams about the same thing (which wouldn't be surprising at all as they'd preplanned it). That's why they have to share some kind of information. This isn't excessive, it's just basic damn standards of rigour which any sane person would ask for.

Originally Posted by Xei

I don't see how that matters. I was presuming they'd be lucid too. But you don't need to prove a shared lucid dream is lucid in order to prove that it's shared.

That's kind of beside the point but whatever.

No, that is how science works. Until somebody provides evidence for an extraordinary claim, you have no reason to believe it.

Yes, but having lack of a reason is not the same as assuming a negative reason, which is bias. What you said here is fine, but not what you said before.

I don't feel like repeating myself fully all over again, but basically the lack of any positive experiments for shared dreaming, when there is such high incentive to produce one, and it is so easy, is extremely hard to reconcile with the idea that it's possible.

What do you mean "and it is so easy"?

Anecdotal evidence in this case is totally useless, because it's so easy to imagine how two people could fool themselves into thinking something is a shared dream. If they both preordained to meet each other at some location, and then both had dreams in which they did so, their reaction would probably to be to tell everybody that they'd had a shared dream. However they'd have no way of knowing if this was actually a shared mental environment, or if they were both just having separate dreams about the same thing (which wouldn't be surprising at all as they'd preplanned it). That's why they have to share some kind of information. This isn't excessive, it's just basic damn standards of rigour which any sane person would ask for.

Remember, I am talking about OBE's in this instance. We both agree that evidence is important, but you seem to be ignoring that there have already been positive correlations between personal experiences, and as far as I know, they're not exactly suggestible by predefined ideas or goals.

E.g. Let's say you agree to travel to a destination with another friend via OBE. Some time after meeting and traveling together, you notice that your mate is limping at some point and is walking slower. This was not specified as part of the deal, but it is not wrong either. Afterward and unasked, your friend spontaneously confirms it is true that she was limping and says that she found it hard to walk. How is this suggestible beforehand? There are only two things to remember: 1. Staying with a certain person and 2., traveling to a location together. They can go further to the destination and find out something; collect information. Easy. Afterward, they can even talk about everything that happened, in 'real life'. It is then very easy to spot how accurate the whole mission was, and understand how unlikely this was to be independent program or imagining. If this was all somehow a hallucination, you would need more evidence to support that instead, because the depth of correlation is enough to conclude that the experiences were actually not separate; the experiences were shared via out of body.