So I’ve searched the forums for this sort of question, and although there were some relevant ones about solving math problems and stuff, none of them were quite what I was looking for.
Here’s my concern: I’m a university student studying physics, philosophy, and math. Some of the classes are quite difficult, and our weekly problem sets often take up much of my waking time. These are the sorts of problems that rarely involve any numbers, but mostly logical concepts. They’re the kind of problems that you’d have to think about for a while and come back to several times before you achieve the abstract insight necessary for the solutions. Generally it helps to sleep on the problems, so to speak.
But if I can pull off an LD, would it be effective to try and reason through the problems while I’m asleep? Doing so wouldn’t involve working out a whole lot on paper, but just conjuring up a comfortable chair and sitting down to think about the problems for a while. Is the LD environment conducive to this kind of activity, or will I be too distracted or too logically impaired to properly think?
Also, I know that LD’s should generally be used for pure enjoyment, fun, and exploration, but sometimes it helps to have a little extra time to do homework. Especially because I do like solving the problems, so the LD wouldn’t be altogether dull.
The chemist Kekulé deduced the ring structure of benzene while dreaming. After years of studying carbon bonding, benzene and related molecules, the solution to the benzene structure came to him in a dream of a snake eating its own tail. Upon waking he was inspired to deduce the ring structure of benzene. I have gained insights into my personal life during lucid dreams. These insights are presented more symbolically and intuitively as opposed to highly detailed, straight forward answeres. I’m sure if you dwell on and incubate any type of problem some type of answere will eventually present itself to you in a dream or lucid dream. Good luck!
Ah, that’s very interesting! Now that you mention it, I think I may have read about that somewhere before. It’s certainly promising, but it seems more of an example of accidental inspiration in a normal dream as opposed to intentional deliberation in a lucid dream. It also seems like more of a long term thing (after being a chemist for years and thinking about the problem for a very long time, Kekulé had the revelation), whereas I’m hoping for short term problem solving for homework problems that are assigned weekly. Still, like I said, it’s promising.
I’ve been able to perform simple math in a dream—multiplication and subtraction—but I have never tried anything more than that.
I think that your best bet for this would be transferring directly from waking to the dream state (WILD), and after 6 or 7 hours of sleep, but try it at all times when you succeed in LDing. Let us know what happens.
I don’t think you can do anything harder than what you can do in your mind IRL, because in LD, you are doing it in your mind! For example, if you want to solve some equation but you have to write it down, it’s because you can’t remember it all at once, but it’s (probably, I didn’t managed to try stuff like this yet) impossible because that paper is also in your mind!
But, because you have technically infinite amount of time in LD, you can memorize the equation in dream (logically you have to do it IRL, but I am talking about equation you create in LD), and then you can count it, memorize next step and so on…
…That was kinda OT, to your question: You are in a dream, and dreams are unstable, especially when you are concentrated to something else than the dream is, and you can screw something without noticing it.
Historically speaking, dreamin has helped creative thinking and inspired inventions. Salvadore dali’s famous painting of the clocks came from a dream. So did the realisation of the structure of DNA (the ladder shape), as well as mary shelly’s frankenstein, and the concept of the modern sewing machine. The thing is, I believe abstract reasoning is the only logical concept that dreaming can help with. Mathematics cannot be visually solved in a dream because the numbers will transpose themselves; the general nature of dreaming does not exactly conform to visualized sciences such as equation solving. But critical thinking definitely has potential to be condoned by your subconcious, or whatever you call your thought patterns in a dream state
The thing is, I wouldn’t go into a dream expecting to find an answe to a difficult problem. All of the historical breakthroughs in dream-inspired invention have been randomly realised, likely due to mental preoccupation. Then benzine ring and dna structure were realised (most likely) because scientists focus critically on these problems during waking like so often. You may wish to read into autosuggestion on that. A good anology is how teenagers adjusting to puberty have so many, let’s say, erotic dreams.
However I would expect to find answers to waking life questions in normal dreams to be just as likely as in lucid dreams, just due to the simple nature of your minds behavior during dreams.
I don’t really agree. What do you mean by “technically infinite amount of time in LD”.
I don’t remember where I read that (maybe in the guide from LD4all), but it was written that time in a LD is moving just as fast as in reality. (People were counting from 1 to 10 in a LD with their eyes moving, and a machine was counting in the real world).
So actually I think you won’t have that much time to think about your problem while you re dreaming.
But as you re thinking quite differently in dreams. Maybe you don’t need to spend that much time in your LD to have some kind of answers.
