Sane

Last night, I went to bed after 6 straight hours of studying algorithms.

That doesn't sound too healthy, right?

Well, the strangest thing happened. I managed to think algorithmically in my dream. From my experience, dreams are very one dimensional. Everything acts and reacts based on a previous experience. But to make decisions, or create a new thought... I've never had that occur in a dream before to any significant degree of complexity.

But in my dream, I managed to formulate some sort of programming problem, involving cappuchinos of various prices and volumes, where the cheapest combination of cappuchinos had to be purchased to acquire a specific total volume.

It is similar to one of the problems I had been working on that afternoon, but in a completely different context, and without this clever twist of an added cost-factor. I don't know how the hell I thought up such a problem. Or how I even started to formulate an approach to solve it... (I can't recall the specifics, but I do remember I was thinking about it to some degree. Not sure how successfull I was either...)

It seems almost impossible. If you could make yourself think in a deliberate fashion during sleep, would it not be possible to harness that potential to solve other questions? Perhaps do homework? Even things as silly as trying to memorize the alphabet backwards?

This is all very confusing for me, because I have little understanding of how dreams work. Maybe I'm over-stating the significance of a dream like this. Have others had something similar happen to them?

dr.p

That sounds somewhat like lucid dreaming. I'm not sure if there would be benefits to doing mental work, consciously, while sleeping... but I have seen studies on sleep cycles which suggest that our minds process information and experience in unique and vital ways while asleep.

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Jimbo

I had a dream about work related stuff the other day, except for some reason I was handling features and tools that I'm not responsible for...

And yeah, I've had similar problem-solving dreams too

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Ooble

I generally dream about whatever I was focused on the previous day, with some random exceptions. Last night was about Super Mario Galaxy.

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hollystyles

I often get bogged down with a problem one day, only to sleep on it, come in the following morning, and solve it simply in five minutes. I am often thinking about the problem just before falling asleep but I don't recall ever dreaming specifically about a particular programming problem. But the solution very often hits me shortly after waking up.

I imagine this is where the well known phrase "To sleep on it" comes from.

OpenLoop

I played Mass Effect for 7 hours straight yesterday, and guess what I dreamed about? Nothing! I rarely wake up and remember my dreams and I'm fine with it. My brain works hard enough when I'm awake, it's only fair for it to completely shutdown at night.

Ooble

There's a big difference between not remembering your dreams and not having them.

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Sane

It's true. I only seem to remember dreams when I try to continue thinking about them as soon as I wake up. If I don't try, I remember nothing.


To dr.p, would there not be benefits? No longer could sleep be viewed as something unproductive. I'd say sleep is generally a pretty pointless process with functions that are, at most, incidental (such as restoring mind and body, growth, storing long term memory, etc...). But if that idle time could be used to process information and think deliberately... then sleep, in some circumstances, could be even more productive than being awake.

So, some sort of line must be drawn. Where is the line that divides the limit of complexity of thought while asleep, and the average complexity of thought while awake... and what determines the position of that line? Seems fascinating to me.

It also reminds me of the very rare disorder that some people have. It's a disorder that does not require them to sleep, but they may still live a perfectly healthy life. However, they experience hallucinations for an hour or two, and then they're set for the rest of the day.

Sleep is such a waste of brains.

OpenLoop

I wouldn't go that far. There was an article on /. the other day about dreams. Basically, the theory was that dreams are nothing but virtual reality exercises that prepare us for extreme situations that our life or line of work might put us through one day.

For example, if you're a police officer, you might have a dream about being pinned down and outnumbered and trying to defend yourself. Since your body is in partial paralysis when sleeping, you can't hurt yourself with rapid movement but you'll learn a thing or two about making the right decision in tough situations.

Sane

Yes, that even supports my argument!

Examples like those seem to be rare circumstances. The average dream is entirely useless. The useful ones you get are luck of the draw. So why can't the brain be more productive and use the time its given to run simulations and "virtual reality exercises" for the full 8 hours? I know the obvious answer is that the brain is incapable of that, but it's intruiging to consider the possibility.