signal_and_noise z signal and noise. i think that the noise inherent in any sensory input system is worth examining. i have begun to wonder if dreams consist of short term memory storage of noise produced by sensory systems during unconsciousness which is interpreted using comparisons to patterns stored in long term memory of stimulus actually experienced. this interpretation carries the associative meaning and symbolic value over to the new "memory". this might explain why in most dreams the "narrative" and subjects of the dreams seem so random. they are. in this model a dream is actually experienced as you remember it not as it happens. it is post processed. from: life_intelligence_and_technology 040327 ... notme . 040328 ... somebody Z, You tend to speak so above my level that I rarely understand what you say but I'm going to try to interpret what you just said any how so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong in any way. - so what your saying is that dreams are kind of like word association, for instance if you had a confrontation w/ a friend earlier in the day then your subconscious stores that info and then puts it into your next dream but in a more distorted warped that some how relates to other things that have gone on in your past and so you don’t quite understand what your dream is trying to express to you. like to you some how orange relates to phone and phone relates to concrete and concrete relates to fingernails and fingernails make you think pain witch is then associated to the heart and some how your brain takes of this scrambles it around like in a laundry dryer and throws it back at you in dreams and their for that’s why dreams don’t seem to make much since right off the bat. But if so what about dreams that foretell the/your future? Or dreams that help you solve problems you’re currently having? 040603 ... not as smart as you There are multiple variables if dreams foretell your future it would be a product of the experiences of the past and prior day mixed with unconscious chatter between other minds or souls. And how to solve a problem is simple if you think hard enough on a subject and give yourself the suggestion that you will find the solution you would dream about it. 040603 ... You make me smile I always thought that one could communicate w/ (and/or unintentionally spy on) other ppl when in the dream state and that not all the ppl in my dreams were made up figments representing other ppl from my real life but you’re the first who seems to agree w/ me (granted its not a topic I talk of often w/ others), and the same goes for places as well, I could give you numerous examples of times when I'd dreamed of being some place I'd never been before and then later on down the line actually finding myself in the edzact same place in real life. I suppose must be real uncomphy w/ the unknown if my subconscious feels the need to dream about it before hand ^.^ 040603 ... z somebody: (sorry about the delay, symbolic_fatigue and circumstance have kept me from answering until now). i think your comparison to word association is apt in that the mechanism of connection can be obscured by the act of association. i think, however, that where in word association the connection is recoverable through introspection, parsing dream content for "meaning" or "significance" might be viewed as an essentially creative task. i am wondering if the "meaning" part is imposed after the dream occurs in a relatively random way as we wake (or pass from rem into a more self aware condition of sleep). with this line of reasoning i am questioning the whole concept of the subconscious component of the mind or at least it's mechanisms. in your excellent interpretation lingers the ghosts of freud. the goal oriented, intentional treatment of dream content with the assumption that it has intrinsic significance (however obscure) that can be treated as if it has representational or symbolic value to our waking selves is what i am questioning. i was merely wondering if the act of "remembering" the formless sensory impressions that accumulate during unconsciousness is really an arbitrary comparison to true stored memories. what criterion are used in this mechanism i do not know, but i have some guesses. i think it may be something akin to your word association concept but more related to the non-language areas of cognition. i think at root they might be closer to a lexicon of kinesthetic and other sensory impressions which are cross compared to a variety of context based associations with other sense memories. these very complicated associations might be the root of complex gestalt memories that could have rudimentary symbolic and linguistic place holders attached. this chain of associations (my intuition tells me) should eventually lead down to a level of simplicity that is non-verbal and based on discrete sense impressions. if those were being collected by memory buffers while you slept from noise generated from internal sensory channels in the brain that had no connection (temporarily) to the senses they serve during wakefulness. let me pose a thought experiment that demonstrates this in reverse: think about the word tree. now write everything you know, have observed, feel, remember and can imagine about the idea tree. i imagine that you could spend the rest of your life getting that down on paper (or into blather). how then can we infer that treeness has a discrete value in internal emotional symbolism, or that it is representative of a specific psychological meaning. if however some tiny aspect of treeness in your personal sensorium is similar in form (by what criterion i can only imagine) to some part of the noisy, spurious leakage that was stored in short term memory during unconsciousness then might the brain (which is hungry to classify everything) decide they are related. once "tagged" with a sensory classification might the brain not attempt by some equally arbitrary form of comparison add on a temporal component. this time array might be used by the part our cognitive engines that follows narrative to construct a sequence of sense impressions (all borrowed from stored sense memory) that would be very strange if it were a natural memory. our symbolic intelligence and emotional process might pick up here and suggest significance drawn from recent history, concerns and ideation. this would all happen while we wake or shift from one kind of sleep to another. my idea does not really disrupt any value in dream interpretation symbolically or emotionally. it just tries to explain why dreams are so strange. regarding foretelling and prescience i can not really say. i to have had dreams and dreamlike experiences that appear to presage future events. i have always felt that it is the same kind of cross comparison and classifying modality that i have described above. your ideas are interesting. 040607 ... Connecting..the.dots.. Have you ever talked to someones subconscious before? I know some one vary well who has MPD (Multiple personality disorder) and was trusted enough by her that she allowed me to go with her when she saw a hypnotist, the subconscious is not bits and pieces of random thoughts/feelings from past and present all intertwined into one big ball of ruberbands and gum. While at the hypnotist he put her under and spoke to her subconscious this part of her was named Constance bc as her subconscious she was contently their, contently aware, Constance spoke elegantly clearly and at a higher intelligence level then she ever had previously and I know bc I'd met all her other personalities. To this day just thinking about Constance disturbs me bc it makes me think of my own subconscious, still if Constance was able to be able to hold on coherent conversations than why would our subconscious be any different, yet the only time in witch it (our subconscious) has to communicate with us is when we are dreaming, and so while I don’t think all dreams mean something I think that most of them do, that our subconscious -is- indeed trying to communicate with us during the _only_ time it has available to do so, just like after you've been meditating a while (for some it only takes a few weeks others longer) you get to the point of where thoughts and answers and so on flow freely and everything begins to make since, its not because some all wise all knowing god or being or what not planted those thoughts into your head but because it was their all along you just weren’t listening before, things make more since when your meditating as apposed to when your dreaming, and I don’t know if this was just me but once I stopped it felt much like a dream I had to clutch and grab at what had been going through my mind as I was meditating much the way I felt when I woke up from what I felt was an important or odd dream, I've found writing things down works. As for seeing the future, it has happened to me far to many times for me to just be able to dismiss it, to many times have their been complete strangers in my dreams and I don’t understand why they their and then later on I will meet the vary same person that was in my dream, the same goes for places, like the last place, I found myself in the back of the house, I was looking out a glass pained door onto the backyard, it was white to the right of me were large bags and a few square and round plastic buckets, and to the left their was a window, but it was weird, I cant even really explain it, but bc it was so weird I looked at it trying to understand it, and as I was doing that I smelt, well something that wisent a pleasant odor, and look down to see at lest 10 cat litter boxes, and as that happened I realize that I must be dreaming, but I explore the rest of the house any ways out of curiosity - any way so as not to be too long winded, I found my self in that edzact same odd house nearly 4 months later, the house belonged to a friend of my uncles that I'd never previously met before, while unbeknowce to me at the time meeting him put me on a different path then the one I had been on, he gave me a since of direction that I haddent previously had. Granted some dreams of people and places aren’t really to important, like when I dreamed of talking to that doctor about music and interments (why on earth would I dream about talking to a doctor about that subject?), it did in fact later happen, the appointment was made last minuet and scheduled the day before I was to leave, any way it turns out that I had asked him what made him want to go into this profession and he starts talking about how this hadn’t been what he originally aspired to be and how he had wanted to me a musician and how he use to play in a band but that he took the practical path in life instead bc his dad had done this he had been raised around it so that’s why he became a doctor instead of a musician like he had wanted to do, I asked him if he still played and he said no, so I encouraged him to do so, don't know if he ever actually did, but personally that conversation had no real bearing on my life, so why I dreamed it in the first place is beyond me, *L* he wasn’t even the doctor I was originally scheduled to see when the appointment was made! Any way I guess what I'm trying to say is that yes some dreams can and do come true (at lest mine do) and that while it may be some what warped and distorted that dreams are the way that your subconscious trys to communicate with you. I only did the cliff notes of my thoughts and experiences here bc I didn’t want to be longwinded or bore you thus if this seems some what jumpy and not seem to fallow a strait line/flow of thought I'm sorry As for what you said above, I can understand what your saying (even though I had to re read though it a few times) and can see for the most part why you would say that and if it wenrt for my own life experiences I would probably even agree with you to an extent. Our brains and how they work is truly a mystery. 040613 ... Elegantly Eloquently 040614 ... minnesota_chris I do listen to people's subconsciouses. Often it is shouting down the words that people are trying to say. 040614 ... z i prefer be entirely integrated. i do, however, recognize some background processes, but prefer to think of them as co-directed and working in a distributed manner toward a common goal. i believe that it is a semantic issue, ultimately, describing a common experience. (i refer her to the experience on cognition, not external stimulus). i choose not to segment myself or enclose some part of me as remote. philosophically, i try not to say "i did it but i did not want to" or "i want to but i cant". instead i say "i have done it because..." or "i do not want to because..." this supports my belief that i am one, not many. i remain myself semanticly and in actuality. personality disorders, real or percieved, are puzzling. i do not doubt your friend's condition, having not seen it for myself. i have doubt about hypnotism, however, but the uncertainty is based only on supposition, not observation. it seems to be dependant on the idea of the subconcious for it's veracity, and as i stated above i mistrust that idea. meditation and alpha states seem related. to me this seems like the exploitation of a part of cognition used for gestalt pattern recoognition and intuition. 040616 ... misstree quiet_please 050829 ... (z) (?) 050829 ... They call me Truth i need a dictionary jus to read this, but im too lazy at the moment 070630 ... - - 100512 ... lantaren/venster signal to noise ratio 100512 what's it to you? who go blather from