Thread: What's the difference between a dream and reality?

2. The experience of time is different in dreams than in reality.

3. Dreams can have little or no orderliness. If I walk into my room three times in real life, I should enter the same room each time. If I enter my room in a dream, I may enter a different rooms each time.

I think that Difference #1 pretty much summed up the rest of the differences that have been listed.

4. Reality is most likely caused by real physical objects in space and time, while dreams are in the mind and don't involve non-mental physical reality.

5. I get laid in dreams.

Difference: Dreams tend to rewind themselves and play out the same scene three or four times, with subtle or not-so-subtle changes to the plot. In reality, though history itself tends to repeat itself, our individual plotlines move in no direction but forward.

Similarity: In the waking world, it's hard to remember exact words from a dream, especially if they were in written form. In dreams, I've forgotten the words to songs that awake-me has had memorized since forever.

Key distinction: In reality, sensory input from a supposedly real physical universe places constraints perception. In dreams perception is constrained by only the brain and it's ability to experience.

Waking life is experienced serially/sequentially, dream life less so.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

5. I get laid in dreams.

So that's why you're so ornery. Should have guessed...

6. You never wake up

Originally Posted by AscendedSleeper

Key distinction: In reality, sensory input from a supposedly real physical universe places constraints perception. In dreams perception is constrained by only the brain and it's ability to experience.

But can we know the "real physical universe" other than our perceptions of it? What defines physical reality? Is it the objectivity of the perception (You and I both perceive a "red" (same wavelength) car)?

I haven't had any shared dreams so I don't "know" (empirically) if they exist. However, shared dreams do meet the objectivity requirement of physical reality.

Originally Posted by kidjordan

I'm looking for a list of similarities and differences.
Similarities:
1. perceive with the 5 senses.

Differences
1. Waking reality is subject to the laws of nature. Dreams aren't.

What you asked is what is the difference between a class and a member of a class. The answer is the remaining members of that class.

Originally Posted by Philosopher8659

What you asked is what is the difference between a class and a member of a class. The answer is the remaining members of that class.

So are you saying that reality is merely a member in the class "dream" or the other way round? What is the class, and what is the member, and what are the other members?

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

So are you saying that reality is merely a member in the class "dream" or the other way round? What is the class, and what is the member, and what are the other members?

Your a big boy, you should be able to figure it out. Which can be made? reality qua reality or a dream qua dream?

I often hear people say, "I dreamed." but never "I realed." unless they were Irisih--in which case, you just add it to your music collection.

That is because the proper conjugation in english would be "I realized".

Originally Posted by Philosopher8659

You've asked is what is the difference between a class and a member of a class. The answer is the remaining members of that class.

You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with
his golden feet?
I reply, the ocean knows this.
You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent
bell? What is it waiting for?
I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.
You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms?
Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.
You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal,
and I reply by describing
how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies.
You enquire about the kingfisher's feathers,
which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides?
Or you've found in the cards a new question touching on
the crystal architecture
of the sea anemone, and you'll deal that to me now?
You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean
spines?
The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks?
The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out
in the deep places like a thread in the water?

I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its
jewel boxes
is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure,
and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the
petal
hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light
and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall
from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl.

I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead
of human eyes, dead in those darknesses,
of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes
on the timid globe of an orange.

I walked around as you do, investigating
the endless star,
and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked,
the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.

I often confuse reality and dreams. Sometimes a dream feels reals or wakeing life feels like a dream. The point is is that you can never be 100% sure. The differences are often found that objects change shape or location but in the dream you dont noticed and take it as reality. For all we know in wakeing life it could be a dream becasue we can never be sure what we are missing becasue we often dont know when the wools over our eyes.

When awake we respond to stuff coming from outside. When dreaming theres not that part so imagination gets full control as it wont be stopped by real signals all the time.

I see the structure of reality more like a frame than a picture. We still fill the picture in with our minds. In fact our minds are basically wired to dream all the time, our sense are just able to pick up on real experience and then fill in the gaps to create a reality based on what is essentially random and senseless.

A dream is shared with only yourself
Reality is shared with everyone

The things you listed are pretty much all I can think of, in a broad sense.