I had a dream recently where I was guiding a civilisation over multiple thousands of years. Att the end of the dream when they had finally overcome their problems, one of them said to me ‘being a person, when really you’re just a blob of goo, is the most profound thing you could ever do.’
And it hit me so hard. All I am is a bunch of cells held together in a skin bag. And yet I’m a person with feelings and experiences and desires. And I did that, I live it. It makes us all so valuable.
Have your dreams ever had effects on you like that?
When I was in college I was super stuck on a calculus homework problem. I worked on it futilely for hours before giving up and deciding to email my instructor about it in the morning. That night I solved the problem in my dream, and when I woke up I actually remembered the dream and it was the correct solution. My instructor thought it was hilarious when I told him about it in class.
I remember a dream study that found if you’re working on a skill within something like half an hour of going to sleep, you’re markedly faster at learning the skill. I think they measured it using a skiing video game or something like that
A large part of me really wants to believe that skiing video game was SkiFree 95.
… Because I probably had bad dreams about that yeti as a kid LOL
Hah! I remember the game, but I don’t think that was it.
I saw it on a Discovery documentary or something in high school, as I recall. There were a few shots of the test subject playing a sports skiing console game of some sort