Dreams & Pattern Recognition

[dr_mabeuse]

Our senses aren't passive receivers of information. They're active. We actually engage the world and meet it halfway. You've seen those optical illusions were they show you some segments of lines and your eye finishes the picture to make a letter B, say, or M or whatever? That pattern recognition thing we do is apparently a big, big part of how our senses work, all of them. We're always looking through filters, looking for recognizable patterns in random information. We do it with sound, touch, everything, always casting a net of experience and memory on our perceptions of the world.

I noticed it the other day when I heard a funny sound. Might have been a voice or might have been a dog or a car's brakes and I could feel myself flipping almost automatically through my files trying to match it against my records. If it was a voice it was a person feeling this certain emotion, which might mean this for me so I'd need to be careful.

Anyhow, pattern recognition is why hallucinations are always something we know. We never hallucinate totally unknown things, things we've never seen or experienced before. It's always something known, even if it's a weird juxtaposition, like a pink crab or a joyous cereal bowl.

Apparently you can turn pattern recognition up or down. Drugs can turn it up. Amphetamines turn it up, and amphetamines lead to obsessive-compulsive-like behavior. It's kiind of cool to think of OCD as as attempt to superimpose patterns upon a random world. Amphetamines are also notorious for making users paranoid, and I guess paranoia can be viewed as seeing patterns and plots where most people wouldn't see any, with you as the center of them.

I heard this theory of dreams that I really liked. It says that in dreams you can see the pattern-recognition mechanism of the mind at work, only there's no sensory input for it to work on. Normally when you're awake you're looking around or whatever and constantly getting sensory input for your mind's p-r mechanism to do a hunt-&-seek algorithm on (is it a grape? is it a meatball? is it a baseball?...), but when you're asleep, there's no constraints on the p-r mechanism, so it just goes wild. The grape turns into a meatball turns into a baseball.

That's corroborated by sensory deprivation experiments, in which people also have dream-like hallucinations when their sensory input is curtailed. It doesn't explain how we're able to maintain images in our imagination though, without them morphing into all sorts of weird things, although I suppose the pattern recognition mechanism would have to be under conscious control, wouldn't it? Isn't that what like most think is?

Anyhow, you can recognize the pattern of the guy who'll do anything to keep from working on his %#$&@* story today, can't you?

Okay, I'm going...

 

[jomar]

Avoiding working. Me too. Hmm...I see a pattern here.

 

[rgraham666]

Hmmm. I wonder what is says about me that all my dreams are nightmares.

 

[Guest]

Zoot, that sounds a lot like Jung, doesn't it? How dreams present patterns that can be applied to unsolvable problems? And then how we can find more interconnections between the pattern of that problem and other areas of life?

I just wish I could remember my dreams.

(I wake up too damn exhausted most of the time.)

 

[slyc_willie]

The function of dreams has been long debated. Some would say it is a way for the brain to make sense of the day, others that we need dreams to keep us sane by trying to account for all the things we do in life.

Same with perception; there are numerous theories regarding why an individual might look at a pit bull and see a beloved pet, or a dangerous animal. Perception is based on experience, is it not?

Or perhaps dreams and perception are linked. Both deal mainly in the abstract, after all. What we see is, often, what we want to see. There are times when I look into a crowd and see my wife, or my sister, or my father, even though I know, intuitively, that they are all gone. Still, I want to see them again, so, for a brief moment, I do.

Dreams are far more complex, of course. What meaning are we to gain from dreaming about flying in a helicopter to Dracula's castle, and watching your grandfather fight him? Or taking a walk along a beach with an old girlfriend, and seeing two bicycles waiting for you?

Do dreams really have meaning? Or are the images that linger just somehow strong enough, unique enough, or weird enough, we simply cannot forget? It's like watching a Will Farrel movie . . . a whole lot of flashy crap but not much really means anything.

Or there's the alternative . . . *shudders, thinking Will Farrel might actually be funny after all . . .*

 

[cantdog]

Pattern recognition is IMPORTANT. When one is out in the woods all day, hunting or whatever it is, and scanning the landscape, it is faces you see, voices you hear.

Acid, mushrooms, all that stuff, teaches you the fulcrum role pattern recognition and 'sign stimuli' play in the landscape of the mind.

 

[slyc_willie]

Pattern recognition is IMPORTANT. When one is out in the woods all day, hunting or whatever it is, and scanning the landscape, it is faces you see, voices you hear.

Acid, mushrooms, all that stuff, teaches you the fulcrum role pattern recognition and 'sign stimuli' play in the landscape of the mind.

Maybe, for some . . . .

Experience is experience. Whether it is experience with drugs or just with the harsh vagaries of life, it is all experience.

I'm of the mind that drugs can induce false pattern recognition by making you see things acording to a skewed point of view. Not necessarily a bad thing for some, but for me, I'd rather not view the world through Hash-colored glasses.

 

[mismused]

delete

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Zoot, that sounds a lot like Jung, doesn't it? How dreams present patterns that can be applied to unsolvable problems? And then how we can find more interconnections between the pattern of that problem and other areas of life?

I just wish I could remember my dreams.

(I wake up too damn exhausted most of the time.)

Those dreams you don't remember are the subconscious mind storing those experiences that you had during the day. Those patterns you recognized are now being added to the others in long term storage.

Dreams that you remember are the ones that are trying to tell you a possible answer to a problem you might have been mulling over.

 

[Frank Noir]

Our senses aren't passive receivers of information. They're active. We actually engage the world and meet it halfway. You've seen those optical illusions were they show you some segments of lines and your eye finishes the picture to make a letter B, say, or M or whatever? That pattern recognition thing we do is apparently a big, big part of how our senses work, all of them. We're always looking through filters, looking for recognizable patterns in random information. We do it with sound, touch, everything, always casting a net of experience and memory on our perceptions of the world.

My favourite Pattern Recognition story:

A friend and I were driving through an unknown town, looking for the venue for that night's gig. And of course we were late. All we knew was that the venue was supposed to be close to the town theatre. So of course we were desperately looking for a sign of that.

Suddenly, my friend said: "Look - there's a sign that says Theatre!"

(When in fact the sign was too far in the distance to clearly make out)

We drove a little closer, and his excitement turned into disappointment.

"Oh," he finally said. "It's just a painting of a horse."

True story.

 

[gauchecritic]

Pattern recognition also helps us to actually not use our brains as much. If we look out the window we know what we expect to see, what pattern is there and what we look for are differences in the known pattern. Which is also how we both spot and miss speeling eros.

Even though I'm pretty plausible at dream interpretation I'm actually of the opinion that dreams have no meaning whatsoever, in any context except that the recipient can apply them, like newspaper horoscopes, to their life.

I've read that sleep is useful only to the body. In order to sleep the conscious mind is switched off from its default position. The subconscious works 24 hours and when asleep has very limited sensory input so just potters around in the most recent memory and tries applying patterns.

As the sleep cycle nears waking the body and conscious mind are 'booting up' in case we need to be fully awake. Which is when the subconscious begins getting vague external stimuli, stiff muscles, full bladder, unusual noises or smells. Because vision isn't yet invoked the stimuli have to be applied to memory rather than the environment and this is when we dream. This is when we begin applying patterns to 'unknown' events.

 

[mismused]

delete

 

[Dr_Strabismus]

I personally cherish each and every dream I awake from and remember, as a gift from G-d. I still keep a pen and notepad by my bed to write them down.

They're the ultimate creative tool for any writer

 

[wishfulthinking]

I wonder if when dreaming our mind thinks of an idea and creates an image that best fits, or the vision comes first and our mind interprets it into a sequence of events.

Dreams are powerful and are not restricted to memory and experiences. Because of this I would have to think pattern recognition is leashed when we dream, or at least not as heavily superimposed over our dreams as our conscious thought when we are waking. I think pattern recognition is both something instinctive and trained (I don't mean trained as in eg learning different sounds, but trained from birth to look for differences and sameness and make findings and act accordingly etc).

 

[Huckleman2000]

Okay, here's a crazy dream I had last night.

I flew to England to see some former colleagues of mine who work for a consultancy; also on the trip and at the site of the reunion were old college classmates that I worked with on theater productions. The site of the reunion was some sort of old house in a smaller English village, related to the consultancy, but I don't know whose house it is. But it's old enough that it has an unusual layout, almost Dickensian, and a restroom that is horrendously inconvenient. And I need to use it.

My colleagues and classmates have been practical jokers at the party so far, teasing me about I don't know what, and I'm wary of using the restroom. Sure enough, when I sit on the toilet, it becomes sort of an outboard motorboat, and I'm flipped out onto the highway, into a stream running in the ditch alongside it, sitting on the toilet with minimal control over my direction. There is a motorcyclist racing next to me on the road, and I fear that he will overtake me. [This reminds me of several Japanese 'candid camera' videos I've seen, where unsuspecting men sit down naked thinking they're in a toilet or steam room or something, and suddenly the thing flips them on their back, opens up a trap door, and sends them schussing down a ski slope. Kind of hilarious, but I really don't understand Japanese entertainment sometimes....]

I pull a fast one on the motorcyclist at the top of a hill, and do a 180 turn to head downhill with the stream and outrun him. By this time, I'm planing out on my toilet-seat/jetboat, and really zooming along. At the bottom of the hill, I run into a towncar sent to pick me up and return me to the party, driven by my best friend from the consultancy, who is in disguise. I get back to the party, and my younger colleagues/classmates have already made out or had sex with the daughters of whoever's house we're at, and they're all asleep. I'm gratified that they're not repulsed by my toilet episode, as I seem to have soiled myself in all the excitement. That was, after all, the reason I sat down on the fake toilet in the first place. At any rate, I try to find clean underwear in my suitcase, and also realize that girls I knew in high school are now at the party, and completely disinterested in me, though I lust after them.

I try to reconnect with my former colleagues from the consultancy, but they, offended by the behavior of my theater friends, have mostly left. Most everyone else at the party is now asleep, except for a little girl who lives at the house and is sort of ill. I comfort her, and put her back to sleep. [There is nothing sexual about this part of the dream - I just reassure her like a parent, and she goes back to sleep.] Then I pack up my stuff, and try to figure out how to get back to the airport.

Yup. Pattern recognition.

 

[elsol]

*burp*

Green Ketchup...

People freaked when you put green ketchup in food... because they couldn't recognize the taste because they could SEE the color and it didn't match the 'ketchup' color.

I actually saw it happen and it's really strange.

 

[Vermilion]

I was awake in the middle of the night with very bad stomach pains. When I eventually went back to sleep I dreamt that I had been pregnant without knowing it and the stomach pains were contractions. I gave birth and had this beautiful baby which the Fiance was really happy about being a boy.
Then I kinda skipped forward a couple of days and I kept going out and forgetting that I had a baby and I'd get home and be like 'Oh my god - the baby!'

so yeah.
My weird dream... and like, the third baby/pregnancy dream in a fortnight
x
V

 

[elsol]

Actually, the interesting thing about dreams and technical problems.

You can dream the answer...very freaky.

 

[neonlyte]

Actually, the interesting thing about dreams and technical problems.

You can dream the answer...very freaky.

Thank God someone else does that, it's freaked me out for years.

 

[Guest]

Actually, the interesting thing about dreams and technical problems.

You can dream the answer...very freaky.

But isn't that just the result of leaving the problem to simmer, so to speak, at the back of your mind?

When a problem like that presents itself and I can't quite figure out the next step I leave it and go on to something else. I just let it go. An hour or two later, once I've stopped agonizing over it, the solution usually becomes obvious.

 

[cloudy]

But isn't that just the result of leaving the problem to simmer, so to speak, at the back of your mind?

When a problem like that presents itself and I can't quite figure out the next step I leave it and go on to something else. I just let it go. An hour or two later, once I've stopped agonizing over it, the solution usually becomes obvious.

That's what I've always thought - giving your mind room to work on it, sort of.

 

[neonlyte]

But isn't that just the result of leaving the problem to simmer, so to speak, at the back of your mind?

When a problem like that presents itself and I can't quite figure out the next step I leave it and go on to something else. I just let it go. An hour or two later, once I've stopped agonizing over it, the solution usually becomes obvious.

Yes and No... though I can't speak for Elsol.

And in fact, I'm not shown a solution through dream, I enter a kind of suspension which allows me to work out a solution. Of course it requires a particularly large amount of sleep deprivation, to the point where you're not quite sure if you're halucinating/sleeping or lying in a suspended state. I hold two electronics patents filed thirty years apart, the second one, I don't understand at all, I recognise the idea, I have not a clue how I worked out the solution

 

[elsol]

But isn't that just the result of leaving the problem to simmer, so to speak, at the back of your mind?

When a problem like that presents itself and I can't quite figure out the next step I leave it and go on to something else. I just let it go. An hour or two later, once I've stopped agonizing over it, the solution usually becomes obvious.

For me, it's slightly different...

I work with a lot of data so I'll look at rows upon rows of related information looking for the 'bad thing'. I pretty much dream the data and wake up with the connecting lines.

 

[Guest]

Yes and No... though I can't speak for Elsol.

And in fact, I'm not shown a solution through dream, I enter a kind of suspension which allows me to work out a solution. Of course it requires a particularly large amount of sleep deprivation, to the point where you're not quite sure if you're halucinating/sleeping or lying in a suspended state. I hold two electronics patents filed thirty years apart, the second one, I don't understand at all, I recognise the idea, I have not a clue how I worked out the solution

That is truly fascinating. I've never done anything like that.

 

[elsol]

Yes and No... though I can't speak for Elsol.

And in fact, I'm not shown a solution through dream, I enter a kind of suspension which allows me to work out a solution. Of course it requires a particularly large amount of sleep deprivation, to the point where you're not quite sure if you're halucinating/sleeping or lying in a suspended state. I hold two electronics patents filed thirty years apart, the second one, I don't understand at all, I recognise the idea, I have not a clue how I worked out the solution

That's it exactly.

It's like your somewhere between waking and sleeping worlds.