Answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40758231

I do dream, but most of the time not with a visual representation. It’s more like reading a book. There are very few occasions when I wake up and really have the memory of an image. But this fades so fast that I’m not able to really describe the image. I retain the memory of having a picture in my head. And it’s boring most of the time, because it happens in the middle of a dream and it’s basically just the last frame paused.

And about the book: Haha, I never thought of visualizing the images described in a book. To rephrase: it’s like knowing the words from a book, but not how the described image looks like.

Not OP. I don’t recall any dreams since childhood. If I had not experienced a few myself, I would have a hard time understanding what a dream even is. And my 10 or so dreams only had abstract images. Defo not like a movie or reality where you can “see” things, people, objects. I don’t recall much about them anyway except being slightly mildly freaked out at the time for experiencing something which was not “real”.

Not op, but sleeping and shortly after waking (like seconds not minutes) are it for images.

I dunno how often you guys dream but a standard night for me is it's dark out and then it's light out without a dream in between.