Dream of the Future: Imagining Possibilities

  • Thread starter Turtle
  • Start date
  • Tags
    Future
In summary: Visionaries are rarely right on many issues. Companies are often wrong in their predictions of products. There are too many variables in the world.The photocopy machine was considered to be a non useful invention. IBM predicted that only a few computers would be needed in the world.That is not what is meant by the thread, when people dream of the future, is it done because that is what they want.I did not mean predictions of IBM stuff and what not.I don't think we're quite sure of what you're asking.Are you wondering whether or not someone can actually dream of the future? Yes.
  • #1
Turtle
52
0
Is dreaming of the future actually dreaming of the future or perhaps dreaming of what the future that you want?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #2
Visionaries are rarely right

Apparently future visionaries, like the type that speak, write articles, and books, are rarely right on many issues. Companies are often wrong in their predictions of products. There are too many variables in the world. The photocopy machine was considered to be a non useful invention. IBM predicted that only a few computers would be needed in the world.
 
  • #3
That is not what is meant by the thread, when people dream of the future, is it done because that is what they want. I did not mean predictions of IBM stuff and what not.
 
  • #4
I don't think we're quite sure of what you're asking. Are you wondering whether or not someone can actually dream of the future?
 
  • #5
Is dreaming of the future actually dreaming of the future or perhaps dreaming of what the future that you want?

Well, I remember growing up, and people telling me by the time I get old enough to drive we'd have flying cars like on The Jetsons.

It didn't happen.

For the most part, I do believe that peoples dreams of the future are there personal hopes of what the future will be like. However, while it seems that most visions of the future are merely a persons desire, this desire can effect the future.

For instance, and just an example I doubt it will be historically accurate to a T, Henry Ford had a dream to make affordable automobiles so that everyone could drive. He realized his dream by creating the assembly line, and revolutionized the world. Because of his simple dream, we've all benefitted.

So to answer your questions, I'd have to say yes and yes.
 
  • #6
It seems most likely to me that the dreams are a combination of two things.
1, as you have already pointed out, partly made up out of hope, and what they desire the future to be

and 2, it will also be largely influenced by what the brain actually predicts will happen. The brain is organised and functions in such a way that 'prediction' is a major function of it. Not prediction like psychics and atrologers claim to have access to, but predictions like predicting the flight path of a ball, predictions of how safe various actions are, predicitons of whether certain things are worth the effort, and more importantly than anything, predictions of how someone might react to one of our approaches/questions/accusations etc.

We are species who are irremovably stuck in a social setting, and being able to predict the reactions of other people is probably the most important thing we have available to us.

Now, that the brain should be able to dream up a possible future encounter with someone and 'guess' at what might happen is a very reasonable thing to occur.
 
  • #7
Hey Another God your post was interesting. Some of things you mentioned are true but other parts I don't know. Reason being I've have had precongitive dreams my whole live and what I can say is that I don't think it's a guessing game. I've seen too many things in detail for it to be a guessing game. The odds would to high to count, on guessing. One thing I can say is that when the human race finally figure out how the concesses mind and the unconcesses mind work, we as a whole will move to the next level of intelligence.
 
  • #8
Perhaps my final comment in my post didn't help at all. I didn't mean to imply that the brain randomly guesses at all, but rather that this 'guess' is an educated guess. A guess where you know all of the details leading up to the final step, and from those details you have a 'guess' at the answer, but you are pretty confident that your answer is most likely going to be correct.

As such, I don't think there are bad odds here at all. On account of the fact that our world, whether deterministic or not, tends to run on very predictable standards (the sun will rise, objects will fall, friends will be friendly, and your parents will tend to act in very much the same sort of way day in day out), the possibility that our brain may be able to combine all of these factors and reach an educated conclusion on what may happen next, is quite likely. (IMO)
 
  • #9
Originally posted by Turtle
Is dreaming of the future actually dreaming of the future or perhaps dreaming of what the future that you want?
It's a bit of both, dreaming of new ideas for the future can help develop them. However there are too many unpredictable changes that people don't take into account.
 
  • #10
You guys are missing his question. He's asking if when we dream about the future (when asleep) if those dreams are/can be real and accurate accounts of future events.

Answer: No.
 
  • #11
You guys are missing his question. He's asking if when we dream about the future (when asleep) if those dreams are/can be real and accurate accounts of future events. Answer No

Why? It occurred to myself and my friends, we have dreams of the future. The future though that we dream of is minute.
 
  • #12
Originally posted by Turtle
Why?
According to the laws of physics, time flows forward. You can change the speed at which it flows, but you can't stop it or jump around in it.

Now, if for example you are going sailing tomorrow you may have a dream tonight about sailing, but it won't be a vision of the actual events to take place - just what you think might take place.

If you think you can see actual events that will occur, please try to dream about tomorrow's PA lottery drawing for me tonight. I could really use some spare cash.
 
  • #13
Dreaming

Hey Guys I hate to disagree with you, but it is possable to dream of the future. I've seen it too many times. These dreams are very detailed sometimes, enough to know that it can't be a guessing game for the mind. These dreams come and go at ramdom, you don't have control over what you see. I've been trying to figure it out my whole life, as to how it works. Afew theories but nothing more. I was raised to believe in science and this really does throw a monkey wrench into things. The only thing I can say is that you have to experience it to believe it. Before a statement like it's not possable is made, consider what we thought about the Galxily 20 years ago and what was not possable. I hope science does figure it out one day. That would be very interesting to see.
 
  • #14
I hope you see a vision of you learing to spell, soon.
 
  • #15


Originally posted by tomahawk
Hey Guys I hate to disagree with you, but it is possable to dream of the future. I've seen it too many times. These dreams are very detailed sometimes, enough to know that it can't be a guessing game for the mind.
Sorry, no. Again, if it were possible, Vegas would need to close and the lottery wouldn't be any fun anymore.

Dreams aren't a guessing game anyway. They are detailed because our memories are detailed. If you close your eyes and daydream, that's a good indicator of how detailed your dreams can be. They can be VERY real looking. That doesn't mean they ARE real. They are not. Just because something looks real doesn't mean it is.
 
  • #16


Originally posted by russ_watters
Sorry, no. Again, if it were possible, Vegas would need to close and the lottery wouldn't be any fun anymore.

This is a bit like someone back in the day telling the Wright Brothers "if flight were possible, we'd be on the moon by now."
 
  • #17


Originally posted by hypnagogue
This is a bit like someone back in the day telling the Wright Brothers "if flight were possible, we'd be on the moon by now."
No, its nothing like that at all. Flight at the time was well known to be an engineering problem and was clearly possible from a scientific/theoretical standpoint. After all, birds were doing it.

Psychic powers ARE scientifically testable and every time they are tested (which actually isn't very often because scientists simply don't bother and psychics try to avoid it) they fail.
 
  • #18
Dreams

Alright Russ you've made your point. I'll make mine. As I said you really don't have controll over what you see in those dreams it may be anything. I wish I did have controll of what I could see in my dreams. I'll give a few dreams to think about and you decide. One of them was, a women I saw murdered. What I saw was her dead wearing a red/Black dress with short blonde hair in her 40's, wearing a gold necklace. She was stabbed twice once in the front chest and once in the back. I had this dream on A sunday night, the murder took place two days from then on a Tuesday night. Right when I heard about it I knew it was her. I look at picture they had of her in the newspaper, same women, same dress, same age and same kind of hair cut. If I would have known here name Imay have been able to do something about it. You can't see a name in a dream. Another one I had adream of a person who work in a factory, who was going to lose someone in a fatal car wreck, the person in the wreck I never did see but they were driving a white Ford 150 truck. The following night whan I got home from work there a lot of people over at a person'e house in the next subdiv. The person's house they were at works in a factory and lost his 14old son in a wreck that day. His cousin was driving a Ford 150, white in color that wrecked and killed the 14yr old. I could go on and on with things I could tell you. After all the things I've seen you can only come to one concluison. If you have a better idea what it is Iam seeing please let me know.
 
  • #19
If you have a better idea what it is Iam seeing please let me know.

Hallucinations? Schizophrenic allusions?

I suggest a psychologist, seriously. You've got me a bit worried.
 
  • #20
Dreams

If hope that's not the best you can come up with Beren. As for me being mentally stable, well the job I hold is very serious, and at any sign of losing it they would fire me, quickly. As for halluinating, not. If you read what I posted you can see Iam seeing events of the future afew days ahead of when they happen. Just out of curisoisty where you do get Iam need help. I deal with hardcore reality ever day, these kind of dreams or images don't bother me, it's a mental dicipline. Now I do have to say are there a lot of people out there that say they can see the future. I would say yes there's a lot of fakes, there in it for money, fame or glory. I seek none of the above. There are afew humans that have certain abilities, that are for real. Maybe one day we will come to a full understanding on how they work and why. It would be very interesting to find out how the unconcess mind can go against all the law of physics we how dear.
 
  • #21
You honestly do need to see a psychologist, your department should have one. The line of work you're in is a very stressful one, and you have to see a lot that that most humans should never have to. That does alter the subconscious more than perhaps you're realising. For the good of the people you protect, you need to see someone about these beliefs.
 
  • #22


Originally posted by tomahawk
Alright Russ you've made your point. I'll make mine. As I said you really don't have controll over what you see in those dreams it may be anything.
Actually, you CAN control your dreams. Its not easy, but one way psychologists help people deal with nightmares is to learn to control them.
If you have a better idea what it is Iam seeing please let me know.
I don't know. I will say that contradicts how dreams normally work in the sense that dreams occur in your short-short term memory and fade very quickly after waking. Are you writing these down as soon as you wake up (that's also something psychologists recommend)?

If I had to guess, I'd figure its simple deja-vu. You read about something and you think you remember seeing it before. It happens all the time. You may very well be having such dreams, but memory of dreams is sketchy and I'd guess you are making connections that aren't there. Deja-vu is like that. And being in a stressful line of work can certainly be reflected in your dreams. (maybe I missed it, but what line of work is that?)

I won't say you are sick, because I'm not a psychologist. But a psychologist might have some useful insight into what you are experiencing.
It would be very interesting to find out how the unconcess mind can go against all the law of physics we how dear.
So far, all testing has shown that the unconscious mind can't beat the laws of physics.

Heck, if you DO have these abilities, seeing a psychologist could validate them.
 
Last edited:
  • #23


Originally posted by russ_watters
No, its nothing like that at all. Flight at the time was well known to be an engineering problem and was clearly possible from a scientific/theoretical standpoint. After all, birds were doing it.

Psychic powers ARE scientifically testable and every time they are tested (which actually isn't very often because scientists simply don't bother and psychics try to avoid it) they fail.

This is a good argument for why my analogy was not exactly like the development of flight, yes. :wink: But I think your arguments are still a bit like my analogy.

The scientific community has never come to a consensus on the existence of psychic phenomenon. This doesn't mean that there haven't been any positive results. Whatever positive results are had are swept under the rug and explained away as being due to such-and-such explanation that fits neatly in the established scientific paradigm. Understandably so, of course-- all I want to say in this paragraph is that it is a myth that scientific inquiries into psychic phenomena always 'fail.'

Anyways, let's just accept for the moment that there is no compelling evidence for psychic phenomena. You say if psi did exist, then the lottery would have to be abolished. But if psi does exist, and yet we have no scientific understanding of it, how could we expect it to be refined to any appreciable degree, much less to the point where someone could win the lottery at will?

The point is that we need to learn to walk before we learn how to fly (no pun intended). I'm not saying that psi exists, rather that it could be that it exists, albeit in some weak and poorly understood sense.
 
  • #24
Dreams

Hey Russ from what I can tell you the dreams in which I see future events stand-out like a sore thumb when I wake up. I have close to a photographic memory, and those dreams I remember right when I wake up. The only problem is that the bad ones, the images never fade from memory. There always in the back of your mind like an imprint. As for De-juv don't think so. The two dreams I mentioned I never had a chance to read anything about them. Before I found out about them. The first one I mentioned I found out about it minutes after it happened. There's no way I could of read about it somewhere. The other was close to the same, on that one it was the next day. As for my job causing these dreams, no the dreams started when I was 13 and I've been trying to understand it ever since. As for my job Iam a police officer.


Hypnagogue: I will agree with you on some of the statements you made. I think there's a lot to learn about the human mind.
 
  • #25


Originally posted by hypnagogue
This is a good argument for why my analogy was not exactly like the development of flight, yes. :wink: But I think your arguments are still a bit like my analogy.
Nope.
The scientific community has never come to a consensus on the existence of psychic phenomenon.
Nope.
Whatever positive results are had are swept under the rug and explained away as being due to such-and-such explanation that fits neatly in the established scientific paradigm.
Nope.
it is a myth that scientific inquiries into psychic phenomena always 'fail.'
Nope.
Anyways, let's just accept for the moment that there is no compelling evidence for psychic phenomena.
Yep.
But if psi does exist, and yet we have no scientific understanding of it, how could we expect it to be refined to any appreciable degree, much less to the point where someone could win the lottery at will?
You wouldn't need to understand WHY to see it happening. Heck, didn't you say that earlier in this thread? You dream about stressful things because you have a stressful job. Wouldn't someone with a bad monetary situation dream about winning the lottery all the time (actually, they do).
The first one I mentioned I found out about it minutes after it happened. There's no way I could of read about it somewhere.
Deja Vu is when you THINK you've seen something before. It doesn't require that you HAVE actually seen it before. However, since you see the same type of thing all the time in dreams and in waking life, you likely have seen it all before, at leaste vaguely.
 
  • #26


Originally posted by russ_watters
Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

Let's not be so cavalier, Russ. I'm not saying that there aren't a lot of people spreading misinformation about psychic phenomena and giving the idea a bad name, or that well-conducted studies that show positive results are necessarily a validation of the existence of psi. But there are serious, scientific studies conducted on this, and sometimes there are positive results. Could the positive results be the results of some flaw in the experiment? Of course, but just because we have an explanation that fits into the current paradigm doesn't automatically mean it's the right one.

The current paradigm has no satisfactory explanation for consciousness either, but consciousness self-evidently exists, and yet every so often people will go to the ridiculous length of denying even the existence of consciousness because it cannot be plugged intelligibly into the current understanding. But if people will go so far as to deny the existence of consciousness, I suppose it should not be so surprising that some would fail to even entertain the possibility of psi existing.

I am not trying to get anyone to believe in psi, only to recognize the possibility-- a possibility that certainly has not been ruled out altogether, however terribly unlikely it might seem from our current vantage point.

You wouldn't need to understand WHY to see it happening.

You would need to understand why it occurs to be able to develop the ability to the point where you could do outrageous things like predict the winning lottery numbers at will. We wouldn't have been able to build a functioning Boeing 747 if we never understood the principles of flight. Perhaps a more apt example, you need to understand the principles of nutrition and muscle training if you ever hope to unlock the maximum muscular potential of your body. If you have not even the foggiest notion of how the body works, you may be vaguely muscular naturally, but nowhere close to where you could be.
 
  • #27
My dreams were not of murders, but of events that are that have no importance.

There is no evidence for psychic phenomenon, perhaps because the human mind is unable to do it.
 
  • #28


Originally posted by hypnagogue
But there are serious, scientific studies conducted on this, and sometimes there are positive results.
I would be happy to read and comment on whatever you can provide. One note however: I am a real stickler for credibility in my sources.
I am not trying to get anyone to believe in psi, only to recognize the possibility-- a possibility that certainly has not been ruled out altogether, however terribly unlikely it might seem from our current vantage point.
Ask Ivan what I think of the 'anything is possible' view - when something seems "terribly unlikely" it does more harm than good to recognize that the possibility exists. Sorry, until there is some credible evidence (like I said, I'll gladly read some) I (and most scientists) will not consider the possibility.
 
  • #29
Dreams

Hey Turtle I didn't say all my dreams were like that. I too have see some things that seem unimportant. Just because something seems trivel, it's not. Reason, The small things keep the mind wondering, how or why. It keeps your mind open. The more a puzzel is placed in front of a human, the more determinded one becomes to figure it out.


Russ: I understand your point from a scienctist view. There's no proof only people's word that it does exist. Oh darn that sounds like religion. All I can say is that it does exist. I've looked at it from every sciencetific standard I can think of. There's something there, we just don't have a grasp for it, not yet anyway.
 
  • #30


Originally posted by tomahawk
Russ: I understand your point from a scienctist view. There's no proof only people's word that it does exist. Oh darn that sounds like religion. All I can say is that it does exist. I've looked at it from every sciencetific standard I can think of. There's something there, we just don't have a grasp for it, not yet anyway.
If you've looked at it scientifically, then you have all you need to publish a scientific paper on it. Do it. Or at least send it to a psychology prof at a university (find a few through google) and ask them to evaluate it. I suspect you will find they say it is not up scientifically acceptable research standards.
 

Similar threads

Replies
2
Views
453
Replies
15
Views
1K
  • General Discussion
Replies
4
Views
911
Replies
1
Views
1K
Replies
13
Views
1K
  • General Discussion
Replies
28
Views
1K
  • General Discussion
Replies
33
Views
2K
  • General Discussion
Replies
1
Views
635
Replies
14
Views
824
Replies
7
Views
1K
Back
Top