Ad hoc theory of one of the reasons why time appears to flow faster in dreams.

A perplexing yet strangely familiar experience to anyone who has ever dreamed, would undoubtedly have been making the occasional observation that much more seems to occur in our dreams than the duration of our sleep alone can account for. After a night of intense dreaming we often remember the equivalent of much a longer time period then we had actually spent sleeping (which is generally much longer than the time spent dreaming). Or when we take a short nap during the day, we're often surprised to learn upon waking that only a few minutes have past after what had seemed like an epic adventure. 
So apparently there's a clear subjective disconnect between dream state and waking state with regard how we perceive the flow of time. I make the assumption that time doesn't actually undergo some substantial warping in our heads in a way that would account for this phenomenon.

Since we're under the impression that more has happened during our dream than the time being asleep can account for, there seem to be a few possibilities as to why that may be. I should mention that I'm writing this blog post without having consulted any particular, specialist literature on the matter, hence the post title. 
One possibility is that our brain processes inner-conjured dream-films with a higher temporal resolution. That is, the dream-films are presented to us with increased speed, but we perceive them as normal, since within our dream state there's no other reference frame other than the dream itself. This hypothesis appears to be amiable to empirical exploration.

The other possibility, which occurred to me recently, is closely related with how our memory works. So the following explanation requires both some assumptions about the mechanics of our memory, but also some assumptions about the actual content of dream-films. The vast majority of us, whenever recollecting some series of events---say our last birthday party, or the recent trip to the countryside---tends to recall vivid snapshots of the more intense impressions, which are more or less arranged in chronological order. The point is that most of us don't remember the entire experiencial continuum, but rater a collection of short vivid fragments. Now, if we think about it, this is how dreams often seem to manifest---in a bunch of , more or less, disconnected situations combined into one weird stream.

Of course when I talk about this, I have only my memory to rely on, so if our memory indeed works as I just have outlined, then I cannot justifiably rely on it to speak of the character of the dream-films. But the point is that it is possible that dreams may be arranged and have the actual content analogous to the way our memory works. That is, dreams may consist of vivid fragments connected haphazardly with a vague chronological cause-effect narrative sense, like a movie trailer. But because our memory also works, as assumed earlier, such that we tend to only recall movie-trailer-like imagery, and only infer all the in-between events that must have occurred, when presented with the dream-film trailer, we inflate its content by inferring that there must have been intervals in-between.

For example, in real life, when recalling our plane journey from one city to another, we may only vividly recall say, the departure and arrival, plus a few more interesting cloud formations viewed through the window on the way, but that doesn't mean that the journey only consisted of those few intervals (the sum of which may consist of less than a minute of vivid mnemonic imagery), because as a matter of fact the journey is much longer (say, a few hours) than the sum of our recollected and vivid fragments---we infer that there must have been in-between intervals, other than those that we can vividly access.

But it's possible that my dream of a similar flight would be a kind of film trailer actually consisting of only the vivid fragments of the departure, a view of the more interesting cloud formations, and the arrival, arranged in a sequence of one vivid fragment occurring immediately after the previous one, without any intervals in-between at all. However upon recalling this 3-scene act when we wake up, it seems much longer because our memory mechanism inflates this vividly dreamed sequence by filling it with inferential content, i.e. a journey like that must have lasted a few hours (there must have been many more scenes in this act).

So the ad hoc explanation of why time appears to flow faster in dreams is that dreams are much like film trailers, but because of how our memory works, we tend to have the impression that we've watched the entire film.

I've also written about about how our memory works in a recent post, and a short story written years ago.

Artykuły które napisałem, i te w których tworzeniu współpracowałem: Luty 2017

Nawet jeśli historie są zmyślone, to emocje i doświadczenia są prawdziwe.

Śmigaj jak mistrz Zen.
Guide to planning your Valentine’s Day in Crawley and West Sussex in 2017.

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Moda lat 20'tych. 

Nowa ustawa hazardowa wchodzi w życie na początku kwietnia.
Tutaj powinienem podkrelić że powyższy artykuł jest mało oryginalny, i w znacznym stopniu kożysta z innych artykułów oraz cytatów.

Group memory quality as a function of group size and interaction---an explanation.

I read somewhere, years ago, that species of birds that live in flocks tend to display better group-memory. I don't remember (pun intended) how that was measured, but have observed this to be also true of human interactions. Aside from mere cognitive stimulation---in a group we also tend to interact more, so there's a greater chance of certain facts being continually refreshed---I believe that there's more to what enhances group memory. That is, I think that there's another factor that influences group-memory, not by virtue of cognitive stimulation alone, but the kind of stimulation that has greater likelihood of occurring as the group size increases.



It has to do with both the abilities and limitations of each individual, and the fact (conjecture) that those abilities/limitations vary significantly among individuals. The hypothesis underlining this idea is simple---it's very plausible that given that we've been a social species for most of our evolutionary history, it would appear to be an adaptive trait to distribute cognitive abilities related to memory and recollection over the entire group. In particular, there may be a significant variation of the temporal ranges that individuals are capable of recollecting proficiently. That is some people would be better are remembering recent events, with high fidelity, whereas other's mid-term or long-term memory may be much better. After all it's the sum of all memories, fed into the social collective that counts, so it needn't be preserved by each individual---that would be an unnecessary over investment of neural-power.



From careful observation of my family and friends I have noticed that some of us display great proficiency in recollecting great amount of detailed information of current affairs, i.e. information gathered in the recent days or weeks, but may struggle holding that detail for a long period of time, and their memory of current affairs progressively fades over time. Others, on the other hand, display much better long term memory than others.

Perhaps such traits can be shown to be more generally diversified with respect to temporal ranges of optimal recollection. Moreover, there may be variance regarding the kind of of information that is remembered---some people may be better at remembering how to perform certain actions, others at phenomena that occurs in the surrounding environment, and others still may be really good at keeping a moral tally of group members, i.e. those displaying altruistic actions and those that exploit the benefits offered by the group. Combining those individual abilities in a social group would obviously enhance the group memory, simply by virtue of mutual compensation of individual limitations. So, such a social mnemonic mechanism would result in the group super-organism as a whole displaying much better memory than each of its members alone, on the condition that information flow is unhindered.

Those ruminations on the nature of memory are an unintended interest of mine. I just can't help but make conjectures about it. I've explored this subject matter before, via a short story---in particular how perception influences our memory and recollection.

Generating fiction from fantastic hypotheses (counterfactuals) & thought experiments.

I've been carrying a couple of ideas for a while now, but have never had the patience to expand on them. Each could easily suffice for at least an idea for a short story, however aside from entertaining some implications of those fictional and fantastic scenarios, I have neither had the time nor the patience to develop them further in writing. Perhaps one day. I suppose this entry is a small step in that direction. Recently I realized that they're related, yet capable of standing alone as seeds to a good story or even some philosophical speculations. I doubt that those scenarios are completely original, but are worth analyzing nevertheless.

The hypothetical premise of the first idea is a simple one: imagine a world, much like ours, where people live a fixed number of years, say a hundred, but are otherwise immortal up to that point. That is, in that world all humans have a determined lifespan. The details of how they maintain their longevity are irrelevant at this point, but could be expanded on. However, since human nature is assumed to be the same the same otherwise, it's doubtful that this scenario would lead to a peaceful utopia. With greed, fear, and stupidity still in place, it would be naive to suppose that things would be altogether different in that regard. The world would merely differ in details---of how our wicked human nature would manifest---corresponding to its stipulated peculiarity.
Surely in this scenario warfare would have a completely different form, as killing would be impossible. Also, capital punishment would be impossible. However, given this single restriction, it seems that youth would be a universal commodity, e.g. young people would have a higher potential energy output, to be utilized one way or another. This wouldn't be that much different from how things actually are, so it's quite likely that warfare would resort to fighting for that resource, and protecting it. Moreover humans would still be free agents, and arguably could be persuaded to join any side more effectively than via brute force coercion. So it's possible that ideological wars for the youth's minds would still persist. 

The second scenario/thought-experiment assumes the capacity of every human to annihilate another human by a single thought, in a way that it wold be impossible to trace. That is, person X merely thinks 'I wish Y to die', and Y dies. Now, each human would be aware of this ability, and could perform it with some limited frequency. This would be really an interesting scenario to consider. What kind of people would be most willing to use this ability indiscriminately? We could even not focus on criminals, and terrorists, but on "ordinary folks" in our investigations. Is there a monster lurking in all of us, which given the right opportunity would pounce with a lethal strike? Surely, guaranteed effectiveness plus impunity appears to be a set-up that offers precisely this kind of opportunity. Perhaps ordinary criminals, psychopaths, and terrorists are just either stupid, unaware of the immediate repercussions, or desperate in their actions, and that's why they're caught. Perhaps if the conditions for killing others were greatly facilitated, and the burden of responsibility completely eliminated, we'd realize that a lot more of us are potential killers in disguise? Or perhaps it would become evident that we're capable of doing great evils in moments of emotional upheaval and fury? I mean, what if every-time entertaining a thought 'I wish X were dead!', in a moment of rage, could actually make X drop dead? Would people be dropping like flies? Would this ability inevitably lead to extinction of the human species?

Artykuły które napisałem, i te w których tworzeniu współpracowałem: Styczeń 2017

Czy zagłada Wielkiej Rafy Koralowej jest nieunikniona?

Jaksztuczna inteligencja zdominowała przestrzeń gier.

Pozytywny wpływ gier na funkcje poznawcze.

Szlakiem pomników Kopernika.

Auto Capgras delusion.

Capgras delusion is a disorder whereby a person holds a delusion that a friend, spouse, parent, or other close family member (or pet) has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor. 

I was wondering this morning what it would be like, if possible at all (I think it may be) to suffer from the peculiar case of Capgras delusion, whereby one believes themselves to be an impostor.

A paraconsistent emoji.

Whose smile is both dead and alive at the same time.