[forkandwait]

Inception also understands "Big Oh" ideas -- when you are looping inside the third level down, you have 10 seconds on the outside giving you 10^3 seconds on the inside. (EDIT: a single "tick" in one level allows for 20 or so "ticks" at the next level of dreaming, because of extra brain capacity during sleep.)

Hehe -- I loved the movie...

[Griever]

Haha, I was thinking the same thing while watching it last night. Terrific movie indeed.

[ilovecomputers]

Except the human brain doesn't have the capacity to process so fast that seconds turns into years.

None the less, the movie was entertaining and I'm just gonna leave it there. I know movie logic shouldn't be a comparison to real world logic, but the geek in me can't help but point out illogical happenings in the film.

[ardit33]

in real life dreams are very short. Minutes 1-5. And they feel a lot longer. We can dream a lot 1-5 spinets withing one hour, and they feel like hours.

Hence you see your dream to shift from one place, to the other. Here is a very good NOVA documentary on netflix about it: http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/What_Are_Dreams_Nova/70129639...

[Tycho]

I dot think that's true. Someone did a study where they observed when people entered REM sleep and later woke them up and asked then how long their dream had been going on. They generally said they'd been dreaming for the same amount of time as they were observed to be in REM. Which pretty much proves they were experiencing time at the normal rate, and their dreams weren't condensed (there's even a myth going about that dreams only a couple of seconds). I suppose the possibility remains that people have many dreams in the REM period and each on just happens to seem like it's the same length as the total REM duration (incrementing each time in a =+ fashion). Not seen that documentary you linked to but I'll post the link to the study if I find it.

[ilovecomputers]

I'm referring to turning minutes into decades. I doubt the brain has the capacity to process that fast.

[philwelch]

Do you remember every single second of the past 10 years? Me neither. If your brain wanted to, it could skip around and fill in fuzzy memories so you only really experienced the last 10 minutes but remembered (fuzzily enough) 30 years before that point.

[CamperBob]

As long as it has the capacity to make you think decades are passing, it doesn't matter that they aren't.

[ilovecomputers]

Well Cobb stated that when he and his wife woke up from their limbo, he stated that they woke up young again, like they lived an entire life. That's what I'm referring to because that's not thinking you did something but an experience.

[Scriptor]

Another cs-related theme was the massively parallel capabilities demonstrated by the unconscious. It's also interesting that it's decentralized and actor-based. No two projections were aware of each others' knowledge or events unless they directly communicated.