What is very interesting to consider is that we forget most of our dreams, including nightmares.
Consequently, it may be the case that a tremendous amount of negative subjective experience is transpiring without being remembered… One can imagine that many people go to hell for some period of their slumbers, migrate to subsequent dreams, and they have no memory of many of the horrid experiences they had.
Also brings to mind the differences between the experienced life and the remembered life discussed by Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow.
It is a bit curious that the exploration of the dreamscape hasn’t been more thoroughly ventured by EAs, given their proclivity for being willing to consider out of the box subject matters and, cumulatively, so much time is spent in dreams.
Consequently, it may be the case that a tremendous amount of negative subjective experience is transpiring without being remembered… One can imagine that many people go to hell for some period of their slumbers, migrate to subsequent dreams, and they have no memory of many of the horrid experiences they had.
Makes you think—it’s at least 1.66x as important as we usually think to be mentally healthy and able to flexibly and skillfully respond to distress if we need those skills when we’re asleep too. Maybe more important than that if we deal with more extreme and less reality-constrained challenges in sleep!
Nitpicking, but don’t you mean 1.5x as important? If we neglect 8 hours of sleep, there are 16 hours of daily experience. If we include 8 hours of sleep, there are 24 hours of daily experience. And 24 is 1.5x as large as 16.
I love your thinking here. I was only considering dreams people remember. Now I’m wondering what affects a dream can have even if it’s forgotten, kind of like how things that happen to babies can affect them even though they can’t remember them, as MichaelStJules notes in an above comment.
Yes, the effects of forgotten dreams is an interesting matter to be considered. But even if there are no negative long-term consequences associated with forgotten nightmares, the negative subjective experience still has significant disvalue. Bad experiences are bad for their own sake, and not just as a function of how they contribute to later dysfunction.
What is very interesting to consider is that we forget most of our dreams, including nightmares.
Consequently, it may be the case that a tremendous amount of negative subjective experience is transpiring without being remembered… One can imagine that many people go to hell for some period of their slumbers, migrate to subsequent dreams, and they have no memory of many of the horrid experiences they had.
Also brings to mind the differences between the experienced life and the remembered life discussed by Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow.
It is a bit curious that the exploration of the dreamscape hasn’t been more thoroughly ventured by EAs, given their proclivity for being willing to consider out of the box subject matters and, cumulatively, so much time is spent in dreams.
Makes you think—it’s at least 1.66x as important as we usually think to be mentally healthy and able to flexibly and skillfully respond to distress if we need those skills when we’re asleep too. Maybe more important than that if we deal with more extreme and less reality-constrained challenges in sleep!
Nitpicking, but don’t you mean 1.5x as important? If we neglect 8 hours of sleep, there are 16 hours of daily experience. If we include 8 hours of sleep, there are 24 hours of daily experience. And 24 is 1.5x as large as 16.
I love your thinking here. I was only considering dreams people remember. Now I’m wondering what affects a dream can have even if it’s forgotten, kind of like how things that happen to babies can affect them even though they can’t remember them, as MichaelStJules notes in an above comment.
Yes, the effects of forgotten dreams is an interesting matter to be considered. But even if there are no negative long-term consequences associated with forgotten nightmares, the negative subjective experience still has significant disvalue. Bad experiences are bad for their own sake, and not just as a function of how they contribute to later dysfunction.