Anti-Materialist

Think about this - your brain is a brilliant data processing device. However, it is really not all that good at generating a virtual reality in which you can practice actions.

Say, for example, that you are hunting mammoths. In order to calculate how to throw your spear, you visualize inside your mind the distance, the shape of the spear, the path it will follow, and a number of other factors. After you have visualized it properly inside your mind, you carry out the action you have planned.

From an evolutionary perspective, the ability to visualize things is clearly of great value. The better you are at visualizing, the more likely you are to survive, and thus the more likely you are to pass on your specific set of genes.

Therefore, you'd think that we would all evolve with powerful conscious visualization abilities. I consider myself to be pretty good at visualizing. I can even visualize in 4 spatial dimensions - although I do it rather poorly. However, my best visualizations inside my mind are at best wire frame images. If I really try hard, I can add detail, but it takes time.

However, when we dream we experience a virtual reality world that is brilliantly detailed. It is rich in color, it is 3 dimensional, and it moves in real-time.

Why would we evolve with the ability to dream in technicolor detail, and yet only have the ability to consciously visualize in such a limited fashion?

And what about cats and dogs - they dream too. We know this from experiments where they lesion the part of the animal's brain - I think it is a section of the medula oblongata - that causes sleep paralysis. With this part of the brain lesioned, the animals act out their dreams while sleeping. Cats chase imaginary mice, and that sort of thing. So, clearly, these animals are seeing some sort of image when they dream.

Now, my dog isn't smart enough to poop in her poopy box. I am quite sure she doesn't possess the brain processing power to generate a virtual reality environment. And yet - she dreams.

I am quite sure that my own brain does not possess the processing power to generate a vivid, real time, virtual reality environment. It is not a question of processing speed - there are plenty of neurons firing at ultra high speed inside the brain. It's a question of having enough neurons dedicated to the task of forming an image. These neurons are dedicated to many functions - it takes an awful lot just to process images and emotions and feelings and the like. If my brain were capable of generating a virtual reality environment inside my own head - then I should be able to use that ability on a conscious basis.

And yet, we dream.

Why would we evolve to generate a virtual reality world in our own minds while we are unconscious, but not have the ability to do so while conscious. This just does not make sense.

So, the question arises - what are dreams?

It gets even trickier from here. I have taught myself to leave my body. I cannot do it very well. I can only get a few feet from my body before I pop back in. But, I am able to do it - and take the time to observe my surroundings while I am out-of-body. Materialists would argue that this is just another form of dream - or hallucination. While out of body, the world appears very different from what it seems like while we are inside the body. You can go out of body, and open a door, and walk through that door. However, that door will not be open in the 'real world'.

This makes it clear that wherever you go when you are having an out-of-body experience, it is not the same place as this world. It just looks similar.

I can imagine a number of different models of reality that would explain this phenomenon. The one that seems most sensible to me is that there are more than three spatial dimensions. Our universe has three spatial dimensions, but there is more to existence outside of our universe. The out-of-body world must conform to the shape of the physical world, yet must somehow also be directly responsive to thought. It is going to take a hell of a lot of research and analysis for mankind to figure out how our universe is integrated into the larger multiverse in which it is defined. It'll be fun trying, though

So, my point is this - the brain simply does not possess the dedicated processing power to generate a real time virtual reality environment. Therefore, the brain must serve as both a data processing device and an interface. I think we have an etheric body and an etheric brain in addition to our physical bodies and physical brains. Neurons work to allow our etheric brains to interface with our physical brains.

Now it gets even weirder - I have figured out how to use etheric vision. So far it does not work very well. Specifically, it does not work well enough for me to pass any sort of verifiable scientific test. Nevertheless - I can do it.

In the future, I'd be glad to tell you guys how to do it - but first I want to get your feedback on my hypothesis that the brain just does not have the processing power to generate a virtual reality world.

Yours with hope,

Jonathan Dawson Lynch
PS - read my book - Ozhynism.Blogspot.com

nermal

What am I wearing?

Ed

keyser_soze

Three main problems.

My wife dreams with no sound. Many people do not have what you would call a "vibrant" dreamscape. They may be missing color, sound, or some other aspect.

Dreams are not acting out anything other than stress. Most scenes in your dreams are not even in order. Your mind "makes" a storyline out of what are really short, random imagery and sequences.

BTW, your dog IS smart enough to do those things, you just have not trained it correctly. There are very well trained dogs that have better manners than some people I know. It doesn't exactly take genius level intellect to generate imagery of chasing a rabbit.

You might consider therapy for that problem.

Anti-Materialist

Ah - but some people do have vibrant dreams. That is enough to make the point.

And what about out-of-body experiences? These are not short bursts of images. When you get out of your body and walk around, it is highly detailed, and long lasting.

My hypothesis - that the brain is working as an interface, fits the data much better than the materialistic hypothesis.

God Fearing Atheist

You seem to be thinking dreams must serve some adaptive function, anti.

Its just as possible (and much more likely, in my opinion) that dreaming is just a by-product of the way our brain works *independent* of the dreams themselves.

Of course, i dont know anything about the subject, and am thus unqualified to say.

-GFA

Anti-Materialist

But then that is even more unlikely. Am I supposed to believe that the processing power that is required to generate a virtual reality world just happens by accident? Why would it?

Doubting Didymus

Look up "spandrel".

God Fearing Atheist

What im saying is that this "processing power" that is there for other reasons is co-opted during dreaming, for whatever reason.

An example: the reasons for human blood being red are very complex, having to do with the chemistry of hemoglobin, oxygen and color vision. Of course, it does not follow that the color arose in the context of blood-color variation, with one color increasing fitness over the others. Instead, the redness is the result of those selection pressures which gave blood the chemical composition it has, and the workings of vision the way it does.

It is incidental that blood is red, just as its probable that dreaming is a by-product.

-GFA

Anti-Materialist

What I am saying is that the odds of such a byproduct coming together by coincidence are just too low to be believable.

galt23

I certainly hope that you can visualize in a 4 spacial dimensions, otherwise things would very much seem to disappear, then reappear certainly by some magical means no less. And as for the out of body experiences, you do have documented proof of this, right? Or could it possibly be your brain playing tricks on you while you dream? And as I've heard it, we only use an estimated 15-20% of our brain mass for the total activities processed by the brain, so a "virtual reality, real time, real dimensions" would seem to be most plausible by our grey matter. But even this isn't exact, or easy to nail down, since our brain is constantly breaking then remaking contacts between synapsis on a constantly evolving basis. I think you may need a little more positive and negative proof on the abilities and processes of the brain before you can accurately nail down the ability of the brain to create dreams on the grand scale that we do dream. Also, if brains do not create dreams, then why is it that deaf people dream without sound? Seems like if dreams came from somewhere besides the dreamers brain then that information of that sort wouldn't be left behind.