When you are having a nighttime dream, it is very hard to convince you that you’re dreaming. Your mind will have a just-so explanation for any oddity that is pointed out.
This may seem straightforwardly true upon a quick or casual read, but if you think about what this sentence is saying, it doesn’t actually make any sense.
Who, exactly, is trying to convince you that you’re dreaming, while you’re having a night-time dream? Suppose someone is dreaming, and I want to convince them of this fact—how would I proceed? Any way that I have of talking to them would wake them up, and then it would no longer be the case that they’re dreaming.
How can the situation of “someone is trying [unsuccessfully] to convince you that you’re dreaming” actually come about? I’m struggling to imagine any plausible scenario that fits this description.
Oops—that was an accidental inclusion of part of a draft. I’ll remove it. Still, let me try to explain where it was going.
Various things can happen in your dream that might spur you to consider that you are dreaming. A green dragon may fly through the sky, or a dream character may tell you “you’re dreaming!” In either case, the mind can quickly generate a very convincing explanation: “duh, green dragons always come on Tuesdays.”
If you had your daytime rationality available, you could see through this deception. But you don’t, and similarly, in our normal waking state, we lack the cognitive ability that would reveal the dreamlike nature of this reality. “Yes, I have no reason to believe in a past, but duh, it’s true anyway because ….”
Various things can happen in your dream that might spur you to consider that you are dreaming.
I’ve never had characters in my dreams tell me I’m dreaming (or maybe I have—who knows? I rarely remember my dreams; but, in any case, to my recollection this has never happened), so I can’t speak to that.
As for green dragons, well, why should that make me conclude that I’m dreaming? If a green dragon flew across the sky while I was awake, I certainly wouldn’t conclude from this that I’m actually dreaming (why should I?).
(As for the rest of your comment—and your post—I may comment later, when (if) I’ve finished reading all of the linked posts, since you do refer to quite a few previous posts in this one, it seems.)
By itself it should not convince you that you’re dreaming. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a lucid dream, but often they are triggered by an oddity that you (for some reason) decide to take seriously in a particular way. A green dragon may prompt you to introspect in that way, but only if you don’t accept the mind’s trick offering. At that point it does become possible to know that you are dreaming.
From the linked post:
This may seem straightforwardly true upon a quick or casual read, but if you think about what this sentence is saying, it doesn’t actually make any sense.
Who, exactly, is trying to convince you that you’re dreaming, while you’re having a night-time dream? Suppose someone is dreaming, and I want to convince them of this fact—how would I proceed? Any way that I have of talking to them would wake them up, and then it would no longer be the case that they’re dreaming.
How can the situation of “someone is trying [unsuccessfully] to convince you that you’re dreaming” actually come about? I’m struggling to imagine any plausible scenario that fits this description.
Oops—that was an accidental inclusion of part of a draft. I’ll remove it. Still, let me try to explain where it was going.
Various things can happen in your dream that might spur you to consider that you are dreaming. A green dragon may fly through the sky, or a dream character may tell you “you’re dreaming!” In either case, the mind can quickly generate a very convincing explanation: “duh, green dragons always come on Tuesdays.”
If you had your daytime rationality available, you could see through this deception. But you don’t, and similarly, in our normal waking state, we lack the cognitive ability that would reveal the dreamlike nature of this reality. “Yes, I have no reason to believe in a past, but duh, it’s true anyway because ….”
Thanks for commenting!
I’ve never had characters in my dreams tell me I’m dreaming (or maybe I have—who knows? I rarely remember my dreams; but, in any case, to my recollection this has never happened), so I can’t speak to that.
As for green dragons, well, why should that make me conclude that I’m dreaming? If a green dragon flew across the sky while I was awake, I certainly wouldn’t conclude from this that I’m actually dreaming (why should I?).
(As for the rest of your comment—and your post—I may comment later, when (if) I’ve finished reading all of the linked posts, since you do refer to quite a few previous posts in this one, it seems.)
By itself it should not convince you that you’re dreaming. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a lucid dream, but often they are triggered by an oddity that you (for some reason) decide to take seriously in a particular way. A green dragon may prompt you to introspect in that way, but only if you don’t accept the mind’s trick offering. At that point it does become possible to know that you are dreaming.