this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
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Your dreams are a gateway into a parallel universe -- Can you prove it? (mander.xyz)
submitted 2 years ago by Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
28 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Your dreams and imagination evolved as a view into another universe. As with the current beliefs, you cannot decipher technical information -- no words in books, no details of how devices work, so even if you can describe things you see from another place, you could not reproduce a working version.

Now how do you convince others that the things your are seeing are really happening without being labeled insane? And how could you use this information to benefit yourself or others? Take a peek into the multiverse to see how other versions of yourself have solved these problems...

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[–] MrGG@lemmy.ca 20 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Would you really want to prove it? What would that accomplish?

You're probably going to be depressed either way: either your parallel life is worse or your parallel life is better. If it's worse then you have to witness it and (I assume) can't do anything about it. If it's better then it's not really you that gets to enjoy it, and is nothing more than an existential cocktease.

I guess if you're really lucky parallel-universe-you might have invented something world-changing and you figure out how it works and bring that information back to your universe. But if it's anything like most of my dreams it's mostly just uncanny anxiety-inducing quasi-nightmares.

[–] inspxtr@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

β€œEverything everywhere all at once” seems to be a great example of your first point!

[–] Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

My dreams always bring that moment of "this is so simple and it all makes sense," but as you wake up further and reality starts setting in you realize you can't actually remember much and the details don't really make any sense at all. It's so frustrating.

[–] downvotee@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

This week I had a dream I was singing an inxs song to little girl in the street as people watched, my voice was amazing and I was changing the lyrics on the fly to be more childlike and not adult. What in the actual fuck was I doing

[–] MrGG@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Was the INXS song Original Sin?

[–] downvotee@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

Lol! No it was never tear us apart

[–] Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You were seeing one of those realities where everyone expresses things in song and can bust out a lyric as easily as stating an opinion. πŸ˜€

[–] downvotee@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

So glad it wasn't a Bollywood dream then lol

[–] Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Or a porno!

[–] downvotee@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

When your dreams make you feel like you're a paedo

[–] Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 0 points 2 years ago

God I hope that never happens.

[–] Mothra@mander.xyz 3 points 2 years ago

I'm also throwing an accolade for the existential cocktease phrase. It will come in useful I'm sure

[–] GrayBackgroundMusic@lemm.ee 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

even if you can describe things you see from another place, you could not reproduce a working version.

If you can't functionally use any information from the other universe or vice versa, then what's the difference between a real universe or a fake one.

[–] Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 2 points 2 years ago

Honestly it comes down to a similar question about whether or not you are living in the Matrix. If you can't change or control anything, then it doesn't make a difference. But if you can find a way to hack the system, what could you do with it? I'm enjoying seeing the different theories that everyone has.

[–] shinigamiookamiryuu@lemm.ee 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

There are a few ways it can be proven.

  1. If the parallel universes are different versions of our own, I can use them to get information I couldn't get in my own universe. For example, if it's a universe where North Korea has an open border policy, I could walk in and observe my surroundings, then end the dream and describe things about North Korea nobody knows about. Though this is not super hard proof.

  2. I could venture into the parallel universe to get a better understanding of physics, and people in my universe would know something is up because I came back knowing about how things work that the average person could never know. Though, again, this is not super hard proof.

  3. I can play Marco Polo with other sleepers from my universe to see if I can find them in the parallel universe, using a system of identification that cannot be impersonated if any entity tried. This would be hard proof, but it would require that people end up in the same parallel universes.

[–] Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 1 points 2 years ago

I think most of what you're describing would require focused lucid dreaming, and with #3 it would require that you meet others who are also lucid dreaming? Sure that can be done, but #2 requires you to bring back critical details that the right brain just doesn't seem to be able to handle. This does give me an idea that might get around that limitation though -- what if you could remember images of artwork created in other realities? Basically steal their classic masterpieces (of course I'm still limited in that I cannot paint). And curiously, #1 sounds very much like the descriptions of remote viewing that are supposed to be proof that ESP is real but always fall apart because some details are wrong -- exactly what you would expect from an alternate reality though...

[–] DrQuint@lemm.ee 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I had dreams of omnipotence. Including omniscience - they knew I was dreaming of them. In fact, one of them was particularly aggravated that I was aware of them.

If those universes are real, then they could contact me in this one.

They have not. So those gods aren't real.

I dunno what this changed.

[–] Kissaki@feddit.de 7 points 2 years ago

I'm confused by the premise. Is it hypothetical? What's with the current beliefs assessment? Further narrowing the hypothetical?

[–] slinkyninja@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

You dream of things you’ve seen others accomplish. As you accomplish and grow yourself, your dreams will become reality, leaving room for new dreams to occupy your mind.

[–] inspxtr@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I feel like this is content for hypotheticalsituation sub from reddit. Not sure which lemmy equivalent is.

I think there needs to be some clarification to the rules. By imagination, is it an active process? Or is it a passive process like day dreaming?

By parallel universe/multiverse, is it known that it is only 1 consistent one every dream? Or is it random universes every dream, without guarantee of visiting the same ever again?

How long and short is each β€œview”? I’m assuming for simplicity it is passive viewing without being able to act upon anything.

Is it only me who can do this? Or is it everyone? Is it only a random subset of people (eg genetic mutations)? Am I the only one in the multiverse able to do this? Are all versions of me capable?

What am I seeing exactly? Am I only seeing through the eyes of my parallel selves or just random snapshots of people? If I only dream of mountains and random people, how do I ever know that this is just some generative biological process inside my brain rather than a link to another world?

Even if the premise is that there’s no details of how it works, I think I need to first convince myself I am not insane before trying to convince others or use any of the information in these dreams. Acting upon information from unreliable sources (how/why unreliable? cuz I can’t even convince myself) can cause harm not only to me but the people around me.

[–] Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz -1 points 2 years ago

(Yeah I don't know of any other suitable communities either, this seemed the most appropriate.)

In my hypothetical this would be the reality of everyone. Apply it to the world you know, but where you believe your imagination/dreams/whatever are creating new ideas, what you are really doing is seeing the possibilities of other realities. Except for that change, everything else is exactly as you know it now.

The way I see it, we would never know if the imaginative ideas that come into our head develop from the random crossing of neural pathways, or from a peek into a slightly different world. Maybe that peek is enough for you to piece together your own solution, but even in that case did you really just invent something or did you just happen to view a reality where a random set of occurrences caused something happen and it only feels to you as if you thought of it. The whole point of this thought experiment is that we really don't know where our imagination comes from.

[–] djmarcone@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago

I know there's many nights I've spent working on things in some other universe, like working on projects, building things, figuring out stuff, there's other people there, it's like I know them and they know me. Its probably just a dream but what if it isn't?

Reminds me of the st voy ep where 7of9 visits that alternate place while she regenerates.

[–] regalia@literature.cafe 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Define universe.

[–] Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz -1 points 2 years ago

One universe would be one reality. Go with the multiverse theory that every potential decision creates a new universe, a new reality that followed each option.