Are dreams better than reality?

Great Debates
21

Dreams don’t compare well to the real world. Dreams are generally not as vivid, nothing that you do persists, and the majority are forgotten almost immediately (if, in your hypothetical, any of these is not true then already we’re talking about something superior to dreams as we know them).
Also I question whether it’s indisputably a good thing that you choose your own reality in lucid dreams: I actually like new experiences and information. So I prefer non-lucid dreams to lucid dreams, and the real world to non-lucid dreams.

But (and putting my “crazy VR guy” hat back on, where it belongs), I can envisage a time where we have VR with all of these drawbacks flipped: more vivid than the real world, persistent, shared, content as interesting and unique as the sum total of human and AI imagination can conceive etc etc.

22

What if you kept a journal of what the dreams were like? Isn’t that sort of remembering them?

23

Most dreams are forgotten upon waking. We don’t get a chance to write them down.

Dreaming is notable for its paralysis of long-term memory. That’s how a giraffe morphs into a coffee-table, and it doesn’t strike the dreamer as odd. The dreaming mind has quite forgotten it was a giraffe in the first place. So we forget much of our dreams, while actually in the process of dreaming them.

24

It’s weird that they would ask you to journal your dreams when trying to lucid dream. There has to be some memory.

25

Me, I prefer reality, even though it is a lot of work. I come back to the virtue of honesty- reality is honest, while dreams are a simulation or something- fiction at best, lies at worst.

I get a lot of enjoyment out of what modest success I have been able to achieve in the real world. At this rate, things might be slightly better in a little while! :cool: I’ve got an angle, I am living pretty well, it is a lot of work in the real world but it is worth it for the genuine reward of it.

At some point things have to refer back to my dreams though. What is the goal? Given enough success, the goal can only be achieving ome’s dreams.

26

I keep a journal.
For me, roughly once every two weeks I remember a dream on waking with enough detail to be able to write some notes. So the vast majority of my dreams are forgotten (since you’re in REM about 30% of every night IIRC).

Anyway, there are things that happened to me when I was a child 30+ years ago in the real world, that I remember far far better than the most detailed dream I’ve ever experienced. There’s no comparison in this respect (or the other respects I listed).

27

First of all, the question is ill-posed: dreams are, of course, completely real, and hence part of reality. So we’re really debating whether the sort of ‘bottled’ reality you get in a dream is ‘better’ than the everyday reality (that includes dreams).

For me, the answer seems straightforward: there’s lots of things you can do in the full reality that you can’t do in the dream version—meet new people, for one. But also, you can’t look up who the present king of France is on wikipedia in a dream, if you don’t already know the answer. Likewise, you can’t learn carpentry or playing the trumpet—you can neither acquire new knowledge, nor new skills. Anything you encounter in a dream is brought there by you, and what you bring to the dream is a function of what you’ve encountered in reality—that’s just an alternative way of expressing the fact that dreams, perhaps contrarily to appearance, aren’t some ‘alternate reality’ where you have total control, or some approximation thereof, but are merely a subset of reality, of experiences shaped by those you had in actual reality.

A defining factor of reality is that it pushes back when you prod it; dream realities don’t do that, since both the thing pushing and what appears external to it is in fact the same thing, the dreamer’s mind. So dreams are invariably less than waking reality.

Reality sometimes says no—it opposes our intentions. But it’s this opposition that ultimately allows us to acquire new knowledge, to grow and adapt. If this factor is rebuked in favor of some ever-acquiescing virtual world, we’ll lose that possibility. Indeed, inasmuch as thought is simply a reaction to external hindrances—you have to think about how to accomplish something, reflect on external factors you can’t change, and so on—meaningful thought might not even be possible in such a world. There’s nothing for it to act on.

So for me, it’s reality all the way; although I can to a degree understand the appeal of the kind of power fantasy dreams, particularly lucid ones, represent, especially to those afraid (on some level) of opposition, contrary viewpoints, and change.

28

Dreaming may be considered an escape from reality, like going to a good movie or other enjoyable experience. Good because it is a escape =/= good to live in, or to put it another way too much of a good thing is not good.

In that it does offer us that nightly escape and in that does well, and is sometimes helpful to get through tough times.

Dreams can also be helpful dealing with reality, offering insight into our subconscious and perhaps a different perspective that can be helpful in life.

As such dreams are a complement to living in reality.

But since dreams are based on our reality and experiences in ‘real life’, if their was no ‘real life’, where would dreams come from? (though I do believe that God gives dreams - but putting that aside), as such dreams are a reward for living in reality. Perhaps that’s what our conscientious will exist in after the physical body does and all we have in the dreams to exist in gathered from our experiences in reality. As such perhaps a basis for a afterlife and even heaven and hell for those who believe that the afterlife is desirable or not as what they chose to life in after.

But are they better? Perhaps, perhaps that’s the goal of living in physical bodies, to gather experiences through living in a realm and body where there is pain and suffering, where they the pain and suffering can be left behind and all is left is the ability to create a universe full of life to experience forever.

29

Not as far as I’m concerned. I want my life to have meaning, and for me that meaning comes from have a real positive impact on the world and the people around me. Now, you might say that I could simply dream that I’m contributing in a positive way. But this is not a real impact and so offers no real personal satisfaction for me.

30

My dreams suck.

Last night the back seat of my car (a car I had in 1981) was absolutely full of guinea pigs, and it looked as if no one had changed the bedding for a very long time. And I was sad when the guinea pig on my back fell off and broke his arm. But then it turned out that they were actually rats and kept pestering me for Cheetos. Which was bad because I had to get to a job interview.

31

That seems to defeat the goal of living in a physical body. Why not just find a way to never wake up then? Why bother improving your life if you just create a better one at night.

32

Let’s all just go do that then. It is just so simple. I don’t know why we all didn’t think of that before. You’ve opened my eyes and freed my soul. Thanks.

33

My life is good and I’m in the category of several others where my dreams are on average definitely worse than reality. Some dreams I remember are amusing in their strangeness, but pretty rarely some fully perceived situation that’s better than real life. OTOH my bad dreams are pretty bad. They don’t even occur in anything like a normal 3d world but some alternate kind of dimension, it’s hard to describe, but not good. Also some of my dreams set in a normal 3d world while not nightmares exactly involve me feeling profoundly sad and lonely, which I’m blessed not to be in real life.

34

Except food and water, and the necessities of life. You want to spend all your life in a pleasant dream world, while your body starves and deteriorates without you noticing?

Plus, I don’t know about you, but most of my dreams are based on things I learned and experienced and people I’ve known in my waking life. They’d get pretty monotonous if I didn’t provide my brain with new source material.

35

But I’m saying if you could control them and have whatever you want.

So we just trudge through the day just to get more material to play with at night? Seems like a foolish reason to bear with the waking world.

36

And now you’re the one telling us that it matters if things are actual and concrete?

37

What’s the alternative that you are suggesting? Are you trying to make a case for suicide? What exactly is the point you are trying to make with this “debate”?

38

It sounds like he’s making the case for “The Matrix”. We’re plugged into a machine and we can control the reality we experience. Wouldn’t that be better than the reality we actually have right now?

My answer is: maybe as a place to visit, but not to replace my life. Like a vacation. Nice to visit, not to live there.

39

I’m saying that given the choice between a world where your desires could come true no matter what, why remain in a reality that is limiting and doesn’t allow you to get what you want?

40

Yeah that’s pretty close to what I’m getting at.