Dream-warnings of the dead

[Zixinus]

My take on dreams from the dead and precognition of the dead: people are worried about other people all the time. When they are sick, they are especially worried. When there is a person in their life that may threaten them or their loved ones, they are worried even more. People also morn the dead, especially people they loved and cared about.

Human imagination is a wonderful thing. It allows us to envision, to create, to understand concepts, and many much more.
Another thing human imagination is good for, is that it helps us cope with mental trauma. It also helps us see our feelings that we suppress in real life. In our dreams, our minds are isolated from the outside world, as our body is partially shut down. Our imagination is free to run rampart. Essentially, we mentally try to self-diagnose our problems.

Images, feelings and sometimes conclusions from our life surface. Our worries for our loved ones that are worried about may surface and we may allow our worst fears to materialize in our dreams.
When it comes to illnesses, these worries can play out. Other times, these dreams become self-fulfilling prophecies. And sometimes, we win the lottery and our dreams become reality.
Of course, we don't remember our dreams very well. The car that hit our child might have been a truck, a tractor, a plane even. We don't remember specifically, because we weren't specific to ourselves. When our child is careless or unlucky and actually gets hit by a car, we unconsciously fill out the gap.

The end result? We dreamed of coming death. This gives us an era of comfort, as there is a mysterious reason why our child died, one that may justify his death.

And dreaming of talking to dead people is not much different. We morn. And we try to cope with it.

Short version: We dream of all sorts of shit. Sometimes we win the lottery. But mostly, dreams are just dreams.

[chitoryu12]

There is something similar that occured with my mother's best friend from school, who she still keeps correspondance with.

Apparently, she will sometimes have a dream of a plane crash. She will see all the people in their seats as the plane goes down. Sometimes, while others are screaming, some passengers are sitting peacefully. The creepy part is that oftentimes a plane will crash in real life afterward, and the number of people dead are the same number of serene passengers in the dream. According to her, she once saved her mother after refusing to let her board a plane after seeing her sitting peacefully in the dream, and the flight she was pulled from crashed.

What would explain this?

[Masami von Weizegger]

Wait, so your mother's best friend will have a dream of a plane crash. She'll see all the people in their seats as the plane goes down. She will count the exact number of serene passengers in the middle of a fucking dream about a plane crash, will remember that when she wakes up, will compare the number of serene passengers to the number found dead in a plane crash days, or weeks, or months, later, and the two numbers match up exactly?

Yeah, here's an explanation, she's lying. Maybe she doesn't think she is, but she is. She's obviously twisting her memory of her dream to fit into the reality.

Besides, oftentimes there's a plane crash? So is the dream accurate, according to her, one in five times she has it? One in ten? Twenty? A hundred?

[Darth Servo]

Every time I've had a dream that seemed to come true, the dream was so vague it could be anything, just like the psychic networks.

[Covenant]

Every time I've had a dream that seemed to come true, the dream was so vague it could be anything, just like the psychic networks.

I've never had a 'comes true!' dream, but I've had some extremely startling deja-vu, where I could swear I could actually tell what someone was going to say before they said it, or could form a picture both of what was going to happen, and when it did before.

Now, not believing in such things, I still have those moments. Just like with Near Death Experiences as a result of blood loss--or High G-forces, the brain can do an awful lot of stuff, and it feels completely real, because it is, to the brain.

You can't possible believe in dream messages from the dead, especially with things like warnings or lotto numbers, unless you not only believe in life after death, but a sort of afterlife in which your dead relatives have the freedom to travel into the future and observe events, and yet only deign to tell you a minor lotto number, or that someone just died now kthnx.

You'd think that'd be something they'd want to tell you a week before so you could check them out at a doctor's.

[Qwerty 42]

I don't know that I've ever had a "prophetic" dream, but I've certainly had a number of dreams that are negative and eerie in their realism, so I'm constantly on edge for the rest of the day.

[Surlethe]

Every time I've had a dream that seemed to come true, the dream was so vague it could be anything, just like the psychic networks.

Oh, yeah. I'll bet Chitoryu's mom's friend is simply putting a confident face on her lack of surety. Her thought process is probably like, "Were there really 135 seats on that plane? Yeah, it looked like there were somewhere between 100 and 150 seats -- there's no way it couldn't be 135. Yeah. There were 135 seats, counting them in my memory. Yeah, 135. 135 seats."

[Darth Wong]

There is something similar that occured with my mother's best friend from school, who she still keeps correspondance with.

Apparently, she will sometimes have a dream of a plane crash. She will see all the people in their seats as the plane goes down. Sometimes, while others are screaming, some passengers are sitting peacefully. The creepy part is that oftentimes a plane will crash in real life afterward, and the number of people dead are the same number of serene passengers in the dream. According to her, she once saved her mother after refusing to let her board a plane after seeing her sitting peacefully in the dream, and the flight she was pulled from crashed.

What would explain this?

That's easy: your mother's friend has recurring dreams of plane crashes, because she's afraid of dying in a plane crash. Every time she reads about a plane crash in the news, she conveniently decides to recall that her most recent plane-crash dream just happened to match its circumstances perfectly, even though nobody has such crystal-clear recollection of their dreams. As for the incident where she saved her mother, ask her to name the flight number so you can look up the historical record of the crash.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I have ocassional weird dreams, and sometimes I think I know I am dreaming.

But one thing is for certain, dreams are as random as the position and momentum of a particle, for the most part.

[Lagmonster]

That's easy: your mother's friend has recurring dreams of plane crashes, because she's afraid of dying in a plane crash. Every time she reads about a plane crash in the news, she conveniently decides to recall that her most recent plane-crash dream just happened to match its circumstances perfectly, even though nobody has such crystal-clear recollection of their dreams. As for the incident where she saved her mother, ask her to name the flight number so you can look up the historical record of the crash.

Mike's response is an excellent example of how anyeone with a decent university education and a willingness to apply a rationalist approach to problems can accurately identify cause and effect in supernatural claims. You wouldn't believe the number of people who watch this famous footage and can't see how it is obviously hoaxed, because they either don't want to believe it's hoaxed or are too intellectually lazy to do the work.

[Zac Naloen]

That's easy: your mother's friend has recurring dreams of plane crashes, because she's afraid of dying in a plane crash. Every time she reads about a plane crash in the news, she conveniently decides to recall that her most recent plane-crash dream just happened to match its circumstances perfectly, even though nobody has such crystal-clear recollection of their dreams. As for the incident where she saved her mother, ask her to name the flight number so you can look up the historical record of the crash.

Mike's response is an excellent example of how anyeone with a decent university education and a willingness to apply a rationalist approach to problems can accurately identify cause and effect in supernatural claims. You wouldn't believe the number of people who watch this famous footage and can't see how it is obviously hoaxed, because they either don't want to believe it's hoaxed or are too intellectually lazy to do the work.

Decent university education be damned, I don't have a university education.

You just need to be rational to be able to see through this sort of rubbish.

[Darth Wong]

Decent university education be damned, I don't have a university education.

I hope you're planning on getting one.

You just need to be rational to be able to see through this sort of rubbish.

Nobody is born rational. It is taught. Hanging around people who help you see through this kind of bullshit can encourage you to think rationally (or at least, to copy them, which is what I suspect happens with most high-school kids who think they're good critical thinkers), but the idea that you can just be an innately "rational person" is silly.

[Zac Naloen]

Decent university education be damned, I don't have a university education.

I hope you're planning on getting one.

In my field a university education counts for little compared to industry accredited qualifications, which I am getting. I went to Uni and simply didn't get on with the course, bad choice of uni perhaps.. but I left because I couldn't afford the debt of having to start over and am now pursuing a different way in and am much happier doing it this way.

Nobody is born rational. It is taught. Hanging around people who help you see through this kind of bullshit can encourage you to think rationally (or at least, to copy them, which is what I suspect happens with most high-school kids who think they're good critical thinkers), but the idea that you can just be an innately "rational person" is silly.

Of course it's taught, but my rationality is certainly something that I was raised to have. That's what I meant. I was refuting that you need to have a "decent university education" to see through it.

I don't, and as my earlier post shows I have a perfectly rational outlook on the cause of dream "clairvoyance"

[Darth Wong]

In my field a university education counts for little compared to industry accredited qualifications, which I am getting. I went to Uni and simply didn't get on with the course, bad choice of uni perhaps.. but I left because I couldn't afford the debt of having to start over and am now pursuing a different way in and am much happier doing it this way.

I didn't ask if you were happy. I'm quite aware that there are many careers where a university education doesn't help. However, generally speaking, those fields do not require nearly as much logical thought as something like science or engineering at the university level.

Of course it's taught, but my rationality is certainly something that I was raised to have. That's what I meant. I was refuting that you need to have a "decent university education" to see through it.

The fact that you've seen other people shoot holes through similar arguments means that you can copy their logic. It doesn't necessarily mean you have well-developed logical critical thinking skills. We see it all the time with people who can shoot holes through a particular class of arguments, but spout laughably illogical bullshit in other areas.

I don't, and as my earlier post shows I have a perfectly rational outlook on the cause of dream "clairvoyance"

"Perfectly rational", eh? Sounds like someone is pretty sure of himself.

[Zac Naloen]

I didn't ask if you were happy. I'm quite aware that there are many careers where a university education doesn't help. However, generally speaking, those fields do not require nearly as much logical thought as something like science or engineering at the university level.

My Career choice is Technical IT, take that however you want. But problem solving skills are very important in my current role.

"Perfectly rational", eh? Sounds like someone is pretty sure of himself.

It's a figure of speech Wong and you know that, but i'd love to know whats actually irrational in my thinking. My post reflects my method of thought as I immediately woke that morning and how it relates to the OP's idea of dreams coming true. I.e I had a dream about my grandfather just as I woken to be told he'd died. But, I knew he was dying. It was in my thoughts and naturally my dreams, I never actually had the thought "wow that dream came true."

Copying someone elses arguments is how any critical thinker starts, the earlier they start the better. A lot of teenagers aren't that good at it because they don't have the same experience as someone who's had years doing it day in day out. I know I'm not great at it ,my exposure is limited, but I came to the conclusions I posted before my main exposure to critical thinking.

The only way to learn something is to practise, practise and practise. Critical thinking is no different to any other skill in that regard. Going to University is one method of learning proven to work for those willing to stick at it, but what do you do at university except learn from someone elses experiences and build on them? Essentially, it starts by copying someone elses arguments/knowledge until you have the experience to be able to build on those ideas yourself. Wouldn't you agree?

Personally I believe that serious critical thinking is something that should be taught at a much earlier age than university level even if it is just used as a foundation, it would certainly help people to see through a lot of political bullshit. Which can never be a bad thing.

[Lord Poe]

The only thing that I can think of that comes close to "foreseeing" (sp?) is the 1898 novel "Futility" about the ocean liner Titan that struck an iceberg in the Atlantic at night in April. The Titanic disaster happened 14 years later. THe similarities in the book to the Titanic disaster are many, from the "unsinkable" ocean liner, to the lack of lifeboats, the watertight compartments, etc.

[Darth Wong]

It's a figure of speech Wong and you know that, but i'd love to know whats actually irrational in my thinking.

In this particular case it's fine. The problem is that you're just parroting. It doesn't mean that, when faced with something really tricky and unfamiliar, you'll be able to break it down properly. Sure, there are exceptions to the rule (albeit far fewer than there are people who THINK they're exceptions to the rule), but in general, there is a pretty direct correlation between higher education in maths and sciences and the ability to apply logic to real-world situations without simply parroting other peoples' work.

My post reflects my method of thought as I immediately woke that morning and how it relates to the OP's idea of dreams coming true. I.e I had a dream about my grandfather just as I woken to be told he'd died. But, I knew he was dying. It was in my thoughts and naturally my dreams, I never actually had the thought "wow that dream came true."

Copying someone elses arguments is how any critical thinker starts, the earlier they start the better. A lot of teenagers aren't that good at it because they don't have the same experience as someone who's had years doing it day in day out. I know I'm not great at it ,my exposure is limited, but I came to the conclusions I posted before my main exposure to critical thinking.

The only way to learn something is to practise, practise and practise. Critical thinking is no different to any other skill in that regard. Going to University is one method of learning proven to work for those willing to stick at it, but what do you do at university except learn from someone elses experiences and build on them? Essentially, it starts by copying someone elses arguments/knowledge until you have the experience to be able to build on those ideas yourself. Wouldn't you agree?

Personally I believe that serious critical thinking is something that should be taught at a much earlier age than university level even if it is just used as a foundation, it would certainly help people to see through a lot of political bullshit. Which can never be a bad thing.

I agree, but that really works only for the most obvious fallacies. The more tricky and devious it gets, the more likely that someone who tried to self-teach himself will get into trouble.