Shared Dreams

[Zablorg]

On the internet one can find many fantastical tales of someone finding a person they know in their dream, then contacting them and finding that they had experienced much the same thing. Funnily enough, this kind of thing tends only happen to new-age people who believe they can make "balls" of energy from their hands.

What is your opinion on this occurance? Are all these people simply bullshitting?

[salm]

What is your opinion on this occurance? Are all these people simply bullshitting?

Um... Yes.

[Zablorg]

Maybe just have too much faith in humanity, but it seems a little odd to me that so many people would simuntaniously bullshit...

[salm]

Maybe just have too much faith in humanity, but it seems a little odd to me that so many people would simuntaniously bullshit...

I don´t think that´s surprising. Charlatans have always been around in abundance and billions of people claim that there is some invisible, supernatural guy up in the sky who created this whole mess. It´s not like bullshitery is uncommon.

[Zablorg]

Fair enough I suppose. I think the root of the problem is that you can't actually test it, and so they take an appeal to ignorance.

[Zablorg]

Now for the important part... There were several picnic tables under the large pavilion building (not sure how to describe this structure, it was kind of like a large open pavilion). Anyway, I decided to lay down on one of the pavilion (no I did not fall asleep, so don't ask, I wasn't tired and I hadn't been there for more than a couple seconds when the next part happened). My sister was nearby. I looked at her and noticed that she was staring at something with kind of a puzzled look on her face. Then in my head I heard this question, "what is hanchenburger?" Or some name like that. Immediately afterward, my sister said out loud, "what is hanchenburger?" I immediately sat up, and I was like "wow." It is much too unlikely that I would have had the same thought in my head as the phrase that my sister uttered. It had to have been some sort of telepathy.

I have to wonder though, what is their motive for bullshitting so? Fundies and such are probably just insecure about the magical land of fire and brimstone, but there doesn't seem to be any immediate point in telling stuff like this.

[Lord Pounder]

In the past myself and my older sister have shared the same dream on the same night. We both dreamed that a witch was at the door to colelct us and our parents where hiding us in the cloakroom under the stairs. For the record I am not a hippie nor do I keep a colelction of pet crystals and I don't swap UFO license plates with others.

[Zablorg]

This is what I'm talking about here people. Im pretty sure our good friend Pounder would not bullshit to me/us. Soooo yeah.

[Howedar]

Boy, that profoundly sound argument sure convinced me...

The human memory is terribly unreliable and variable, especially when it comes to dreams.

[Zablorg]

I'm not making an argument. I was simply saying that he's probably not lying, intentionally or not.

[General Zod]

I have to wonder though, what is their motive for bullshitting so? Fundies and such are probably just insecure about the magical land of fire and brimstone, but there doesn't seem to be any immediate point in telling stuff like this.

Because some humans have an unerring ability to strive to be the biggest attention whore possible perhaps?

[TheKwas]

In the past myself and my older sister have shared the same dream on the same night. We both dreamed that a witch was at the door to colelct us and our parents where hiding us in the cloakroom under the stairs. For the record I am not a hippie nor do I keep a colelction of pet crystals and I don't swap UFO license plates with others.

Typical breakdown of a shared dream:
Pounder: "I dreamt last night about a witch coming to our door"

Sis tries to remember her dream, but Pounder has already anchored some key concepts in her mind, making her vague memories form to conform his: "Y..yeah I dreamt that too I think." Sis then remember one aspect of her dream that included her parents, and makes that part conform to the general storyline: "And our parents were trying to hide us"

Pounder, remembering an aspect of his dream that had to do with the cloakroom, mashes this memory with the overall story: "Yeah, in the Cloakroom!

Another anchor, vague memories come together in Sis' mind and she concludes "Yeah, Exactly!"

Tada, both individuals being honestly conviced that they shared the exact same dream as each other, despite the fact that the dreams were likely to be completely different from one another.

[Nephtys]

I have to wonder though, what is their motive for bullshitting so? Fundies and such are probably just insecure about the magical land of fire and brimstone, but there doesn't seem to be any immediate point in telling stuff like this.

Because some humans have an unerring ability to strive to be the biggest attention whore possible perhaps?

Precisely. Attention and trying to feel special about ourselves causes people to be insane. Why do you think the occult section at Barnes and Nobles exists, and is so... serious?

It's the same reason that some people (on the internets lol!) think they're vampires. PSYCHIC VAMPIRES. Humans are capable of incredible self-delusion. Look at any religious revelation as an explaination for some weird experience.

[General Zod]

Precisely. Attention and trying to feel special about ourselves causes people to be insane. Why do you think the occult section at Barnes and Nobles exists, and is so... serious?

It's the same reason that some people (on the internets lol!) think they're vampires. PSYCHIC VAMPIRES. Humans are capable of incredible self-delusion. Look at any religious revelation as an explaination for some weird experience.

Not to mention Alien Abductees, "werewolves", people claiming to have "magic powers", sharing some incredibly meaningful, powerful and old reincarnation or similar bullshit, and so on. There's even the fairly modern phenomenon of otakukin. *twitch*

[Feil]

The "balls of energy" thing has a perfectly reasonable explanation - with very limited skill, you can make it feel very much like there are indeed balls of energy in your hands. Similarly, people dreaming of one another in the same night is not at all surprising. People often dream of people they know. People have several dreams in the same night but lack a way to determine when that night they had the dream. People forget negative returns and remember positive returns - there may be a dozen dreams involving a person you know that did not occur on the same night that that person dreamed about you for every one that did, but people will assume that the positive return means something because they're too credulous to understand that it's just the law of averages applying.

A good number of them are probably bullshitting, but a large number - perhaps a majority - are also just deluded and desperately in need of a copy of The Demon Haunted World.

[General Zod]

The "balls of energy" thing has a perfectly reasonable explanation - with very limited skill, you can make it feel very much like there are indeed balls of energy in your hands.

Except that doesn't actually explain anything.

[Molyneux]

The "balls of energy" thing has a perfectly reasonable explanation - with very limited skill, you can make it feel very much like there are indeed balls of energy in your hands.

Except that doesn't actually explain anything.

I think he means they're fooling themselves.

If anyone claims to be able to share a dream with someone else, then it's quite simple to test, if at least one of them is capable of lucid dreaming.

Have them go to sleep, observed. If they "share a dream", have them each swap a short, distinctive code phrase which they have, prior to the experiment, written down at some place where the other cannot see it.

When they wake up, have each write down the code phrase they received. If the phrases mesh significantly beyond what chance would predict, there just might be something to it.

[Darth Wong]

Maybe just have too much faith in humanity, but it seems a little odd to me that so many people would simuntaniously bullshit...

Yeah, it's not as if a pleasing fantasy might be repeated by more than one person, right? Surely humans would never do such a thing!

[Darth Wong]

In the past myself and my older sister have shared the same dream on the same night. We both dreamed that a witch was at the door to colelct us and our parents where hiding us in the cloakroom under the stairs. For the record I am not a hippie nor do I keep a colelction of pet crystals and I don't swap UFO license plates with others.

Two questions:

1) Are you certain that this dream was not triggered by some shared experience in the real world?

2) How do you know how similar this dream really is, since recollection of dreams is foggy at best and you have no way of actually comparing a video record of the dream?

[Zablorg]

Yeah, it's not as if a pleasing fantasy might be repeated by more than one person, right? Surely humans would never do such a thing!

I see your point, but it doesn't really sound very "pleasing". It's cool and all, but it doesn't really appear to have much more appeal than meeting someone in real life.

[Darth Wong]

Yeah, it's not as if a pleasing fantasy might be repeated by more than one person, right? Surely humans would never do such a thing!

I see your point, but it doesn't really sound very "pleasing". It's cool and all, but it doesn't really appear to have much more appeal than meeting someone in real life.

Must I spell this out for you? The idea of "psychic connections" is pleasing, because it satisfies our longing to believe that we are something more than mere biochemical machines. That's why people love to peddle these kinds of stories, because it is always implied that there was some sort of psychic connection.

[Zablorg]

Point conceded.

[TheKwas]

1) Are you certain that this dream was not triggered by some shared experience in the real world?

This is a really good point. The vast majority of the time the people who claim to have shared dreams are husband and wife, siblings, or something of the same sort. One could explain this simply by saying that you're more likely to share your dreams with these people, but the much more logical explanation is that they people live in the same house and tend to do the same things before going to sleep. Derren Brown (a British mentalist) can, with much preparation, essentially dictate what a person will end up dreaming about through subconscious stimulation, so if there's a strong subconscious trigger in the environment that you're both in, then it's not a huge surprise that your dreams are very similar.

[Lagmonster]

Two questions:

1) Are you certain that this dream was not triggered by some shared experience in the real world?

2) How do you know how similar this dream really is, since recollection of dreams is foggy at best and you have no way of actually comparing a video record of the dream?

If I'd arrived at this thread sooner I'd have said the same thing. I used to hear this kind of thing from the self-proclaimed psychics all the time. Fact is, similar dreams or similar dream content is actually far MORE common than most people think, because while people don't normally share their dreams, or forget after a matter of minutes of being awake what they were dreaming about, they do share physical and emotional stimuli. Any stimulus or information you share with anyone else while awake or asleep can result in extremely similar dreams or nightmares.