[krapp]

I think this is a phenomenon with a lot of variance. I'm able to read in my dreams and look at clocks. I don't recall whether or not I've ever looked at my hands in my dreams, but I also don't recall seeing sixteen fingers on my hand. What I can't ever seem to do is turn lights on or off, which is apparently a common thing.

I don't know that it's necessarily the case that there's a strong relationship between the way these models work and the way human brains, particularly dreaming, work.

[card_zero]

I theorise that dreams are more garbled than we realise, filled with pseudo-language and incoherent vague impressions, and ambiguous images, and that memories of dreams are actually post-hoc reconstructions formed at the point of waking, and are not to be trusted. So maybe in the dream there was a sense of a presence and a nearby blob with appendages that could be a hand, but with uncountable fingers, and it could also be an octopus, and it moves restlessly around: on waking, this resolves into a much more sensible memory of a person waving a hand.

The similarity of things observed in dreams to AI is then because both procedures involve constructing coherence out of noise. "Gradient descent" or something, I wouldn't really know about that. Pareidolia.

[krapp]

>I theorise that dreams are more garbled than we realise, filled with pseudo-language and incoherent vague impressions, and ambiguous images, and that memories of dreams are actually post-hoc reconstructions formed at the point of waking, and are not to be trusted.

This seems more like a post-hoc rationalization than a theory. If you can't trust memories of dreams, how can you even know you dream at all? What do you even base your assumptions on?

[bigfudge]

I think it’s a fair assumption that you cant trust memories of dreams. Heck, you can’t even trust memories of eyewitnesses very much. We are all doing a -lot- of active inference and post hoc reconstruction all the time. We just don’t notice the gaps because 1. We are good at it and are often right and 2. People rarely call you out on mistakes even if they’re obvious, because it’s impolite or they are not sure either.

[card_zero]

True. To be honest this is just based on having spent a lot of time half-asleep (for science), and trying to remember what's going on, and imagining that I'm better at it than you. I may be dead wrong. I get the impression of a process of rationalization at the point of waking up (which I like to do slowly). But then, you got an equally persuasive impression of a vivid detailed dream, probably, so at this point it's just one impression against another, that's qualia for you.

[Wowfunhappy]

> I theorise that dreams are more garbled than we realise [...] and that memories of dreams are actually post-hoc reconstructions formed at the point of waking

I theorize that our experience of life is more garbled than we realize, and that memories of life are actually post-hoc reconstructions formed at the point of recall.

[card_zero]

Yeah, that sounds about right. Then we get into the territory of the Mandela effect and false memories and suggestibility, and the idea that memories in general are fabrications, or guesses, to explain the facts (including neurological facts like sensations and emotions?) with a narrative, and - yeah, we can't process the world without imposing theories on it: for instance the raw physical world has no definite boundaries between objects, those are just ideas to organize it with.

[dylan604]

> don't recall seeing sixteen fingers on my hand.

to be fair, I don't recall that from generative images either. it's either 11 or 12 type of situations

[dragonwriter]

Extra hands as well as 4-7 fingers per hand are not that uncommon, so 16 total fingers is not unreasonable, though its a bit much (as is 11-12) for one hand.

[dylan604]

no, i meant 11-12 in total suggesting that i've typically seen 6 fingers rather than 7 or 8. AI is clearly trying to mess with Iñigo Montoya