Thread: If you had to choose between lucid dreaming or reality for the rest of your life...

Originally Posted by Mario92

In a dream, you're basically with your subconscious....you just kind of jive with what your brain already knows. You don't take in any external knowledge or experience, so you don't really grow at all. In reality, you interact with others, gather new information and data, and improve yourself (typically).

That sounds like an opinion to me. I learn things I didn't know before in dreams all the time. You might say I just 'didn't know' I knew them already, but then that logic can be applied to the supposedly new things I learn in my waking state as well.

Okay...when you're asleep, all you have to work with is what your brain has already learned. Sure, you may "learn" new things, develop new skills, and the like, but really, you aren't taking in any new information. There is a good chance that you won't be able to teach yourself advanced thermonuclear dynamics in your dreams...

Originally Posted by Mario92

Okay...when you're asleep, all you have to work with is what your brain has already learned. Sure, you may "learn" new things, develop new skills, and the like, but really, you aren't taking in any new information. There is a good chance that you won't be able to teach yourself advanced thermonuclear dynamics in your dreams...

Hmm. How do you know?

Hmm...I suppose no more than you know. HOWEVER, you do seem to be implying a positive claim: "Our minds already know a great deal, and instruction only draws out this knowledge." If this is the case, then the burden of proof would be on you...

But along the same lines of logic, I could conclude that I am a brain in a vat and you do not exist. This could be true, but is highly unlikely.

Originally Posted by Mario92

But along the same lines of logic, I could conclude that I am a brain in a vat and you do not exist. This could be true, but is highly unlikely.

You don't know anything about the likelihood of that particular possibility, only that it is impossible to test and useless to base ones worldview on (until it becomes possible to test that is) since it was only a hypothetical philosophical question in the first place.

Whereas, my suggestion that what one experiences during the waking state is no different than the one that is experienced in a dream is supported by several worldviews that at least suggest the possibility of testing for oneself. See; Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, Sufism.

...but, taking this degree of uncertainty into account, would you commit yourself to a lifetime of dreaming? What if, five years into your dream, you found out that you were dead-wrong? Could you cope with the fact that you'll never know any more than what you do now?

Originally Posted by Mario92

...but, taking this degree of uncertainty into account, would you commit yourself to a lifetime of dreaming? What if, five years into your dream, you found out that you were dead-wrong? Could you cope with the fact that you'll never know any more than what you do now?

My original thought was that given a certain amount of time in a dream, one would tend to just forget they were dreaming in the first place. Characters in dreams can often seem as real as characters in waking life. The longer you stay in the dream, the more those characters would develop and the more real they would all seem. The only reason I ever know I'm dreaming is because it is compared to waking life. Without the waking life there to compare, I think I would soon forget that there could be anything else but the dream world, and so it would be reality.

As for not knowing any more than I do now, your opinions on the subject are hardly able to convince me that it is not possible to learn new things in a dream, or that it is possible to learn new things while awake. Some of my most profound discoveries have occurred in dreams and often times when I'm awake I feel like I already know how things will go. You make a distinction because you've seen other people asleep and feel like that is evidence that you do not take in information when you are dreaming, but I've never seen myself asleep. In other words, my experience does not match your assertions.