Thread: How many DVers think LUCI will work?

Very interesting Highlander - always great to have access to insights from people knowing what they are looking at - the technical background - and also convey a sense of how to look at the project from it´s appearance-aspect - and deduct like you did.

It makes very much sense what you have to say - and I agree - a great idea to have a DV quality testing.
Is this possible, though - with this site not allowing "competition" in which form it might be defined - not sure there - not allowing direct links?

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ I know you did not ask me, but one thought leaped into mind when you asked the question:

If the natural state of nightly sleep included lucid dreaming for all, I think there would be an extreme risk of a great number of people allowing their LD worlds to become their lives' priority, and as they get lost in their own little universes, they would lose touch and emotional ties with their waking-life friends and family, and their lives would become very empty, very closed to the surprises of reality and social activity that encourage mental and spiritual growth.

This sort of thing -- this abandonment of "difficult" things like love, learning, and surprise (and their commensurate joy) already happens to many, many people in waking life without lucid dreaming; I think that if you opened the LD'ing door to those people -- and to the people struggling to keep their lives open to change, love and growth -- you might discover a substantial chunk of the population simply folding up into themselves and socially disappearing.

This is not a new argument, as it has been made on the onsets of (for instance) TV, video games, and the internet. Unfortunately, I believe the power of LD'ing is geometrically greater than the power of all three of those game-changers, combined -- so too would the risks to those who experience it without a good sense of self or mental and spiritual discipline.

I can't imagine anything else being a problem, and the benefits of "everyone" LD'ing might vastly outweigh the risks, but I had that thought and figured I'd share...

Oh - in a sense I did ask you - and I have been thinking about it before myself, actually - just forgot in this context, because I sensed a completely different line of attack in Karloky´s posts.

Yeah - why is it, that evolution does not make it easy to reach this state?
Probably because of the reasons you described above - that was basically what I came up with as well.
I have to take my above statement back - or at least put it in very theoretical terms of a mankind farther along the line of development overall - if such a state of affairs would be possible is a completely different question again.

Originally Posted by fogelbise

^^Absolutely Sageous, I wholeheartedly agree! The effort it takes and the things I have learned is benefiting me in waking life...things I may not have tried before...realizations I may not have come to for many more years perhaps(thank you, Sageous, for your help by the way!)...If it were too easy, it could be abused like drugs as a way to escape a "miserable life." What a strange juxtaposition(?), it can improve a less-than-ideal life if it comes with effort and self-growth or it can give the opposite effect when it is too easy if it is also abused.

Welcome StephL! Some of your previous posts have convinced me that you are going to be a great addition to the DV community as long as you keep coming back, which I hope you do.

Thank you for your kind words fogelbise!
This place has numerous fantastic people - and a quite unique openness - I feel, here people of very different mindsets are able to positively communicate and contribute to each other´s understanding. At the very least this is attempted time and again.
I am sure, I´ll keep coming back!

Cool.gif

Originally Posted by StephL

Yeah - why is it, that evolution does not make it easy to reach this state?
Probably because of the reasons you described above - that was basically what I came up with as well.

Excellent question. Here's my totally arguable take:

I think the simple answer to this is that LD'ing is a fundamentally unnatural event. It isn't that evolution doesn't allow easy LD'ing as much as it is the case that there is simply no "natural" inclusion of self-awareness in the mechanisms of sleep and dreams. At all.

To expand this a bit, I'm not even sure that self-awareness was meant to exist in waking-life either. Sentience may just be an accident of natural evolution (or God's plan, depending on your perspective) that came about as a side-effect of the amazing complexity of our brains. In other words, our brains became so powerful we became self-aware -- just like Skynet (only we're taking a skosh more time to destroy the planet than the machines did in Terminator ). This is why we still have a lot of trouble realizing we exist during waking-life, much less the dream state.

Come to think of it, we might not have ever been meant to dream at all, so it makes sense that dreaming is normally a quickly-forgotten jumble of generally meaningless events* (at least until we wake up and start interpreting them) that occurs not for some evolutionary purpose but simply because that supercomputer in our skulls keeps whirring away long after sleep has ensued. Indeed, about the only thing nature seems to have done is create barriers to your waking-life self when sleeping, like denying access to memory, to keep this accidental thing called sentience out of the "natural" process of sleep.

Because of all this, bringing our self-awareness into dreams, or LD'ing, is a very unnatural process. But, just as bringing self-awareness into waking life has become routine for many, there is no reason LD'ing can't eventually be routine as well... we just have to get nature accustomed to the concept. Or, to be on topic, we just need to trick nature with machines or drugs. So we might ultimately counter natural evolution with an evolutionary step of our own making; one of mind -- our own intellectual evolution might pick up where nature left off (or screwed up).

This unnatural condition is not necessarily a bad thing though: Since LD'ing is not a tool created by nature, it might possibly be able to do more than nature allowed (or never programmed at all, as it were) to effect our dreams, explore our unconscious, and perhaps tweak that supercomputer to do even more amazing things.

tl;dr: We are not naturally meant to lucid dream, so our effort to do so is an uphill battle against nature (or God's plan) itself. Which kind of sucks, but also might point to LD'ing as a powerful tool for growth of the same scope that self-awareness i waking-life is.


* Quick note about meaning, before folks chime in to correct me: Yes, given that that same sentience is sourced in the unconscious, there is an excellent chance that some of the stuff popping up in dreams are relevant to your life and your mind's current unconscious concerns swimming around in the otherwise random projections of dreams...but this too is an accident of nature, I think, not its intention. By extension: If they exist, things like dream-sharing, AP, etc, are also either accidents or rather very carefully produced events of self-awareness holding no place in nature at all (which again is not a bad thing, just another hurdle).

It would of course be great if something like this could work. That hope is probably what fuels the investors. I myself (relative LD newbie, but not a novice) feel like I just need the smallest of nudges to become lucid, I've only had a handful of LDs so far and certainly am interested in anything that can boost that frequency.

A 50% (about one every two days) LD for two weeks success rate is a remarkable ("unheard of"?) frequency for LD novices. It does bring into question the reliability of the information.

Of course Luci could work, but it's in a very raw form as described in Kickstarter. For a start there is very little about how they intend to detect REM. It's not that difficult, but nor is it trivial. I now that with the Zeo headband, which works in a similar way, they spent ages developing the algorithms to detect REM from the EEG signals.
Also, as Sageous has said, recognising the sound signal is also very difficult. They haven't said what sound signal either. Most people will either wake up, or not become aware. It's not a sure-fire way to induce an LD.

Thanks StephL for that.

I did have to do some research on The Internet trying find, double-check and cross reference information which took a little time. Hey, but if it makes people think deeper ard read between the lines then I would like to think that my post has served a purpose.

I do have a background in Electronics and testing however, although it is a while ago so I'm quite rusty now as I haven't been following the trends, etc. This has wetted my appetite however!

Originally Posted by StephL

By the way and off topic - my husband has a very early commercial version of an EEG and eye-muscle movement detector, with which you can play simple computer games.
The thing with the eye-muscles is relatively easy to learn - but going by consciously manipulating EEG waves was beyond me - or lets say beyond my patience and interest - but he can do it.

I don't think it is off topic as such. In fact I have got an NIA myself. I did try the EOG function post-WBTB one time where it did 'detect' eye muscle movements (and occasional artifacts.)
However you needed the patience of a Saint as you had to keep your head reasonably still. The setup/wiring was uncomfortable, plus with the computer wirring away in the background and being on the bed upside down didn't help matters.

My main computer went into powesave mode after 20 min which ruined the test which was to produce a 'bleep' (either left/right) depending on sensitivity levels and the EOG NIA settings.

The good thing is you didn't have to worry about the calibration, which is more of an issue with the EEG part of the NIA.

I would like to try a hack or another go when I get more time as this sort of thing fascinates me.

Originally Posted by StephL

It makes very much sense what you have to say - and I agree - a great idea to have a DV quality testing.
Is this possible, though - with this site not allowing "competition" in which form it might be defined - not sure there - not allowing direct links?

I don't really see an issue providing you don't add the website link. I'm pretty sure people have posted their experiences and thoughts on the REMee dream mask (and other lucid dream-related devices) on the forum before now.
It gives other like-minded people an idea of how the product performs in the real world, and not that of the boardroom. At the end of the day you could be helping other member's with time and money. It would provide feedback to improve or modify the said (or updated) product should there be any issues.
Providing you're not (as a poster or contributor) blatantly advertising and work for the company then there shouldn't be a problem.

Whether the company would release a product early for a popular LD forum to test is another matter.

Ah - thanks for this post again Highlander!
I might actually dig the NIA out of my husband´s den and take a look again - and ask him, for how long he´s been at it in one stretch.

He´s from a mathematics/informatics background and was fantasizing about hacking the thing as well.
And he became quite amazingly good, too - he also regularly meditates - that might help with such things, I guess.

In the moment - I´m not really interested in technology for LD - maybe my husband - and I will report if he does test something one day - but that would first be him digging deep in The Internet and choosing hopefully well.

Edit: I´m working on further responses..

I wanted to leave a comment on the L-K site, addressing some of my concerns about the product and lack of information. However you have to be a backer in order to do so.
Even then it appears a lot of questions and concerns (from backers) are not being answered by GXP (for whatever reason?) which is causing a bit of angst.

Hm - sounds not so good - but I always smile when I find "angst" - or other things like "schadenfreude" or "gestalt" used in English!
But good, that such a product testing would be possible and such was done on here before..
Bit scared to re-read my above post - will do that later..

Very good point(s) - will call my mother later once more!

^^ Tell her I said "Hi!"

From the Luci-Kickstarter home page:


A simple third-party signal amplifier (TDA7293) used for testing the prototype.

(N.B. Note that the Kickstarter page NOW refers to the TDA7293 itself.)


Quote - Creator GXP Technologies about 9 hours ago

Yes, we used a TDA7293 mono amp in our prototype. Hence the note below the image of the TDA7293. It works extremely well to amplify the signal coming from the electrode. In actuality, there are 2 electrodes. One of them, located in the front of the head provides the neutral reference signal.

The TDA7293 amplifier (shown) is overkill for an audio signal to a set of standard earphones.

It is useless as a front-end EEG amplifier.

Note also that a 'reference' electrode is NOW mentioned. This is clearly not shown on the headband photographs below. (It should be at the front according to GXP.)






No reference electrode is shown in the original design sketch; let alone mentioned. An oversight perhaps? Or...

A typical adult human EEG signal is about 10 µV to 100 µV in amplitude when measured from the scalp.

Source: Wikipedia


Here's what the front-end amp has to do.

Each electrode is connected to one input of a differential amplifier (one amplifier per pair of electrodes); a common system reference electrode is connected to the other input of each differential amplifier. These amplifiers amplify the voltage between the active electrode and the reference (typically 1,000–100,000 times, or 60–100 dB of voltage gain).

Source: Wikipedia


Data for a typical high gain component used in various general EEG projects:

http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/ina114.pdf


Goalposts ... moving...

^^ Great work, Highlander! I hope the creator appreciates your input, and I know his customers ultimately will (especially if that 2nd electrode found its way into the unit because of you).

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ Great work, Highlander! I hope the creator appreciates your input, and I know his customers ultimately will (especially if that 2nd electrode found its way into the unit because of you).

I personally think IamCoder is the one to credit, because he raised his concerns directly on the Kickstarter comments page. GXP were forced to answer his valid concerns.
The information about the second electrode was then mentioned in their counter-argument.

It still remains about the vadility of the original design however.

Originally Posted by Highlander

I personally think IamCoder is the one to credit, because he raised his concerns directly on the Kickstarter comments page. GXP were forced to answer his valid concerns.
The information about the second electrode was then mentioned in their counter-argument.

It still remains about the vadility of the original design however.

I asked about it in the comment section, since I'm a backer.
I want to know why they only just started mentionning this second electrode, and why it doesn't show up on the first sketch, as well as the photos of prototypes.

I'm wondering how well the rear electrode will be able to pick up electrical activity through hair. Typical EEG procedures (in which shaving the head is not an option) involve the use of conductance gel and physically moving as much hair out of the way as possible in order to get a good signal. An amplifier is mentioned, which I guess must help by boosting the amplitude of whatever waves the electrode can pick up, but that leaves me wondering why all EEG isn't done with such an amplifier - thus negating the requirement for conductance gel and time consuming prep work. Unless of course all EEG is done with an amplifier (makes sense) and still requires gel. Although, this could be a much more sensitive electrode than I've seen before; I don't keep well-enough up to date with the technology.

Originally Posted by J.D.

I'm wondering how well the rear electrode will be able to pick up electrical activity through hair. Typical EEG procedures (in which shaving the head is not an option) involve the use of conductance gel and physically moving as much hair out of the way as possible in order to get a good signal. An amplifier is mentioned, which I guess must help by boosting the amplitude of whatever waves the electrode can pick up, but that leaves me wondering why all EEG isn't done with such an amplifier - thus negating the requirement for conductance gel and time consuming prep work. Unless of course all EEG is done with an amplifier (makes sense) and still requires gel. Although, this could be a much more sensitive electrode than I've seen before; I don't keep well-enough up to date with the technology.

They intend to use a 'dry' electrode which has little points on it to contact the skin. It does not need conducting gel. Like you say a good contact is needed to minimise noise, artifacts, etc.
There are different designs of amplifier, depending on requirements. It all boils down to time and money at the end of the day I guess.

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ Great work, Highlander! I hope the creator appreciates your input, and I know his customers ultimately will (especially if that 2nd electrode found its way into the unit because of you).

Aaha!!
I quote you here, Sageous, but I read - and believe to have understood you Highlander - well, well, hm!
And agreed - great that "we" on here seem to be taken note of - and such possibly being influential.
Well done - it really looks, you have rattled their cages Highlander!!

Yours would be a most positive spin, Sageous - there being an exchange of knowledge and expertise..
Can´t see it (yet?) - can´t see them commenting on here, for example..

Originally Posted by Sageous

That is a great relationship -- especially for you; you mother must be a simultaneously curious and patient person, which is an excellent combination... I hope you thank her now and then!

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ Tell her I said "Hi!"

I did call her just now, and it was great - she sends you greetings back and she listened to me and was very interested in LD, but she said, she now is in sort of an equanimity and likes it - and she stopped searching, being curious in such a direction, and building castles.
That is fine with me as well - I need not worry - and we laughed a lot!

Originally Posted by Sageous

That was a wonderful response, StephL, and a great exchange; thanks!

Just a couple very small things



That's not a bad idea, and though I wonder if we'd be surprised by the results, I have a feeling we'd be enlightened by the subsequent conversation about people's unnecessary but real fears of this sort of takeover.

Thank you!
I will not forget to do this - and I also expect a result, where addiction is by no means the typical thing to happen - will be interesting, I hope!

Originally Posted by Sageous

I'm not sure I would equate an OBE with the natural anesthesia that happens when an animal faces sudden traumatic death. I think Young was making a point about potentials, and offering a nice jump-off point for attempting (or at least understanding) OBE's and not necessarily saying that animals are having them. I may have misunderstood this, but if I did I would then say he might be mistaken, or has misinterpreted the literature surrounding neurological reaction to trauma.

I think he may instead have been trying to instill the Vipassana-esque point of view, which is one of non-dual observation, if that makes any sense at all... and if that's the case he was spot on, and well worth listening to at length.

That´s where I might not follow him either - but seen from a view of a higher animal indeed having a "higher" consciousness, than we tend to believe - in the sense of a point of view, on which can be reflected - then it would make sense.
Then there would be this need of dissociating this point of view from the body-awareness.

This "non-dual observation" - wow - the content-list for chapters on Wikipedia of different philosophical context is overwhelming - so no - I am not sure, how exactly you mean it. Since connected with Vipassana - there seems to have been a philosophical collision on a complicated framework historically - after some mini-research of mine - I backed out.
Maybe this: "seeing things clearly, free from projection and obsessive attitudes, with calm and insight into heart, mind and body"?

I am not putting it beyond higher animals - but there we are once more what is "higher" - I had to spend hours probably, and wouldn´t come to an opinion...?

Originally Posted by Sageous

I hope you'll post here if you do find one, as it would help unravel a lot of misunderstanding on these forums regarding childhood LD'ing.

Noted down under - well - "LD Stuff"..

Alright, about the second electrode, GXP just answered me in the comment section, here's their reply:

"The second electrode is in the front and the very thin wire is hidden under the folded edge of the headband and comes down along the same wire as the main electrode. Can't see it in the photos."

Originally Posted by StephL

Originally Posted by Sageous:
I'm not sure I would equate an OBE with the natural anesthesia that happens when an animal faces sudden traumatic death. I think Young was making a point about potentials, and offering a nice jump-off point for attempting (or at least understanding) OBE's and not necessarily saying that animals are having them. I may have misunderstood this, but if I did I would then say he might be mistaken, or has misinterpreted the literature surrounding neurological reaction to trauma.

I think he may instead have been trying to instill the Vipassana-esque point of view, which is one of non-dual observation, if that makes any sense at all... and if that's the case he was spot on, and well worth listening to at length.
That´s where I might not follow him either - but seen from a view of a higher animal indeed having a "higher" consciousness, then we tend to believe - in the sense of a point of view, on which can be reflected - then it would make sense.
Then there would be this need of dissociating this point of view from the body-awareness.

This "non-dual observation" - wow - the content-list for chapters on Wikipedia of different philosophical context is overwhelming - so no - I am not sure, how exactly you mean it. Since connected with Vipassana - there seems to have been a philosophical collision on a complicated framework historically - after some mini-research of mine - I backed out.
Maybe this: "seeing things clearly, free from projection and obsessive attitudes, with calm and insight into heart, mind and body"?

I am not putting it beyond higher animals - but there we are once more what is "higher" - I had to spend hours probably, and wouldn´t come to an opinion...?

That is partially it, but this "seeing" is done with the understanding, the confidence, that there is not a "you" separately encountering your reality, as is the standard stance of the duality we naturally practice, but that you are one with reality. This same sense of non-duality can exist when looking inward, too, where you can realize that there is no conscious/unconscious, no Id/Ego/Superego, no mind/body...only You. Non-duality is a very difficult concept, much less a functional perspective, for humans, especially for those of us from the Western world, whose philosophies, religions, and sciences have preached and assured duality for millennia.

From this non-dual perspective comes a certain clarity, especially in dreams, where you are not only one with reality, but you literally are that reality. By contrast, looking at a dream from a duality perspective is unhelpful to lucidity, as it amplifies the waking-life assumption that the real world is a place separate from you and thus innately unapproachable by you. This amplification makes you think that the dreamworld you are encountering is real, and separate from you, your will, and your imagination. Non-duality is a central tenet of dream yoga, BTW.

In terms of OBE, and the video, I think he was using the natural shock reaction of traumatized animals to show that we are all already wired to change our perspective when necessary, to the point where our consciousness can be apparently observing events from an external, safe, place while terrible things happen to our body. This can happen because, since we are already one with reality, shifting our consciousness to another position in that reality is not only possible, but quite natural.

Here's the catch, though: you might shift your perspective, but your consciousness hasn't actually "gone" anywhere. Just as the consciousness of that doomed critter in the video is still very much encased in its traumatized skull, a person experiencing an OBE isn't really going anywhere; she's just shifting her perspective a bit. Though this perspective shift should not be difficult in a non-dual environment, it is made difficult -- and exciting -- by the paradoxical attachment of duality to the experience. In other words, a person experiencing an OBE tends to be impressed (or frightened, as it were) not by the shift in perspective, but by the alarms set off by her duality-engine incorrectly announcing that she is in a different place than her body.

Did that help, or did I make things worse?

Also, though I don't intentionally practice it, Vipassana meditation seems a great foundation for lucid dreaming and its cohorts (OBE, AP), and well worth the research.

Quote - Creator GXP Technologies about 7 hours ago

BTW, detecting eye movement with an EOG monitor was the very first thing we tried. The results were extremely inconsistent. And the reference electrode didn't need to be mentioned since it doesn't serve any purpose as for the input. We will still call LUCI a single-electrode device since it reads from only one electrode.

The clue is in the name - a reference!

No Sageous - that does definitively not make it worse!
It actually sheds a lot of light on it!
Thank you!


And what else comes to my mind on topic - "hypocrisy-alert"..

Apparently LUCI's gone from kickstarter now. What a farce.

Kickstarted Luci Lucid dream inducer's creators leave backers deserted and cancel funding, completely contradicting with previous statements made less than a day earlier. : LucidDreaming

...
Seems in the 60s while hippieness etc. - some children were given LSD.
With the "amazing" - but explainable result - that they didn´t think a lot of it.
Reporting life wasn´t really that different from how it usually was. Need a source for this - might find one, even.

Nope - I did some research and this is not, as I remembered it.

There were very young children´s case reports up to older kids - mostly anecdotal - but seems the very young kids (two cases of babies even) started screaming and being afraid of things - at least at the onset, while the older the children were - the more the similarities to what adults tend to report.

But no indifference or failing to recognize a vast difference to normal reality.
Ranging from intense bad trips to an 8-year-old girl expressing herself amazingly well and reporting transcendental/religious epiphany.

What is very interesting, though - while the initial above line of thinking seems not tenable at all - there have been studies done on autistic children and ones with very early onset schizophrenia with seemingly great success.

These are two old studies - logically they can´t be followed up nowadays, since it is a class 1 prohibited substance almost everywhere in the world - mainly due to commercial treaties with the USA, who force this classification on all partners.
So - you have to hold up doubts concerning these studies - not large groups - probably not properly done according to guidelines of drug-testing these days.

So I will refrain from linking up - and express the in my eyes justified reluctance to blindly accept any of it, until further confirmation (next millennium maybe..?).
You´ll find, if you look!

So if im not getting this wrong, (please tell me if i do) luci makes a sound when you're in REM and that will make you lucid since you're suppose to hear it in your dream. Why cant you just make a app that does the same thing? I know luci has a brainwave thing that sees when you're in REM but cant you just try to find out when you actually are in REM instead of spending 100$+? If theres anything else that ive missed please tell me!

Sorry for my spelling, English is not my language and im writing this on my phone

Originally Posted by Ethral

So if im not getting this wrong, (please tell me if i do) luci makes a sound when you're in REM and that will make you lucid since you're suppose to hear it in your dream. Why cant you just make a app that does the same thing? I know luci has a brainwave thing that sees when you're in REM but cant you just try to find out when you actually are in REM instead of spending 100$+? If theres anything else that ive missed please tell me!

Sorry for my spelling, English is not my language and im writing this on my phone

App for that already exists. Search DreamZ on your smartphone for example.