Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to You're right. I don't.

Dreams
TB — (archived)

For the record, it has been proven by a number of experiments how easy it is to plant false memories in people. That's a well-known phenomenon.

You could have easily seen that Groucho newscast on some TV blooper show in Pittsburgh some time later, and by sheer coincidence run across the newscaster in Pittsburgh. Lots of explanations.

Dreams are indeed strange, and it's completely understandable how so many cultures would come to invest them with supernatural characteristics.

Most of my dreams involve doing relatively normal things, but in some unidentifiable environment or city I have never been in, or even seen. The weird part is that my dream self is comfortable in this environment, as though having been there all my life. I know where the streets are, and my way around houses I have never been in. Things shift constantly, though, as they do in dreams.

It's tempting to believe that one's mind dimly crosses the barriers between alternative timelines, places where your life turned out differently. Still, there is always enough familiar territory that this doesn't really make sense. I'm always married to my current wife, and have the same kids, but oddly, sometimes there's an extra kid or two.

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