Slashdot Mirror
New App Aims To Track Your Dreams
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Liz Stinson reports that 'Shadow,' a new app recently launched on Kickstarter, will make recording and remembering your dreams simple. 'There's a lot going on in the subconscious mind that if you can start to pull out little details, you start to get a wider picture of yourself,' says designer Hunter Lee Soik. Most of the time, alarm clocks abruptly blast through your consciousness, ripping you from the depths of sleep. In contrast, Shadow's alarm system gradually transitions users through their hypnopompic state, that not-quite-asleep, not-quite-awake phase, which has be proven to help you better remember your dreams. Once you deactivate the alarm, users are prompted to record their dreams either via voice or typing text. The app then transcribes your dreams and stores them in an ever-growing digital dream journal that keeps track of your long-term dream and sleep patterns and helps you visualize patterns and make connections between your sleep patterns, daily life, and what you dream about. 'We're socialized to think of sleep as inactivity, but certain parts of our brain — the parts that handle things like problem solving and memory — are most active while we're sleeping,' says Soik. 'That's a huge amount of potential data we're forgetting each morning.'" I prefer a notebook on the nightstand, myself.
data?
I say, if the NSA wants half coherent snatches of the population's dreams, let'em have it.
This is definitely a Do Not Want for me. Think about it. Look at everyone here. How much of their subconcious do you really want to know about? Doritos lazily floating in a sea of Dvorak keyboard caps? Belly button lint black holes?
Not a fucking chance, guys.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
There is one simple, proven, way to help remember your dreams.
When you wake up, don't move. Recall your dreams then write them down.
With practice you can easily recall 3 or more dreams.
I have this on my Mac:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070602172914/http://www.dream-recorder.com/
That was from 2007. There were newer versions:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080704183437/http://www.dream-recorder.com/
Never tested it seriously. And I remember reading about an iOS-App in the last year or so ...
Is EVERYTHING on slashdot about the frikkin NSA? Here's a picture of a kitten : OMG its an NSA spy!!!
Because dreams provide an insight into your superconsciousness (subconscious has been mislabeled)
Because you can Lucid Dream.
Because you explore higher realities and learn about yourself.
Have any of the people that push dream diaries, including this modern version, thought that perhaps there's an evolutionary reason that we don't often remember our dreams, and most of us, rarely in great detail?
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Because dreams provide an insight into your superconsciousness
How has this assertion been demonstrated empirically?
Because you can Lucid Dream.
And what's the benefit of that?
Because you explore higher realities and learn about yourself.
What reason is there to believe that "higher realities" exist? What reason is there to believe that dreams help you "learn about yourself" any more than reading tea leaves?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It has been speculated (by this fellow, before you start getting cranky and waving around questions about credibility) that the whole sleeping and dreaming process might actually be a maintenance procedure. A certain type of artificial neural network, called a restricted Boltzmann machine, undergoes a process where it back-calculates fake input data based on what it's seen (much like human dreams) and then uses that fake data as a guide to correct errors in its weights (i.e. to remove and correct false correlations.) If true or even approximately true, this would provide a much more coherent explanation than the idea of a wildly unreliable sub- or superconscious, and explain why people who don't sleep or dream at all experience hallucinations, neurosis, and other impairments consistent with bad neural net bookkeeping.
Under this proposal, the dreams we remember might actually be a bad thing, because it suggests they invoked something too powerful to sleep through. This could explain why nightmares recur: our brains are trying to forget, but we keep remembering them consciously. It's not a shut book, though, as I don't know how lucid dreaming would fit into the model. (Maybe the part you have control over is only very minor?)
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Fast forward, I'm a lot older now and have moved on to other problems, in a more scientific environment. For the last 13 years I applied this same technique to all the unanswered logical paradox in physics and have worked through all these issues as well. The answer is rather simple physical model that naturally gives rise to gravity through quantum processes, describes entanglement, double-slit, etc, but now I am left with the hard core mathematics of trying to actually prove the resulting theory. Unfortunately, I have found that this sleep/problem-solving technique apparently hits a proverbial brick wall when you get into an area where you are not properly schooled to work things out completely in your head.
Are there any physics oriented mathematicians out there who love GR, SR, QM, and thermodynamics and could do this kind of stuff in their head? Thought not, but I had to ask! Tried to hire one last week, but couldn't find one who knew this stuff _and_ was willing to be associated with a non-mainstream theory. So I guess I just need to retire, go back to school, and to learn all the math that I need. If I'm lucky enough to even live that long. Writing scientific papers doesn't work in my sleep either. Boring... My sleeping hours are so much more fun these days, if I can remember what I was doing. I'm now spending way to many hours up at night trying to pick up the math I need instead of 'sleeping on it'.
It's called "sleep as android". It not only has that same alarm feature, but also uses phones built in motion sensors to graph your deep sleep. Why does this need a kick start? it's a very simple app
But what happens if you like a lot of the dreams that you remember?
Am I broken or something?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You're like a blind man asking "What's so important about sight?"
How can you understand the answer if you don't have a frame of reference?
> What reason is there to believe that "higher realities" exist?
They do whether _you_ believe them or not.
Lucid Dreaming and the Out-of-Body experiences provide an option to face your fears, to learn about yourself, to understand your Higher Self. Now if you don't wish to understand yourself that is your choice if you wish to remain ignorant. I'm just telling you have a choice. No one can prove anything to you except by your own experiences. They may prove beneficial. But you will never know unless you try. I suggest reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming
Who knows, maybe tea leaves will work better for you. How do you know unless you TRY it?
The more important question for you is: Why do dreams use symbols to communicate?
If you would actually make the time to understand your own dreams you would eventually learn they are a form of communication. They have the potential to teach you IF you allow them.
Or you can remain arrogant and dismiss what the universe is trying to tell you. Your choice.
Make a cellular peptide cake, with mint frosting?