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Comment by personalityson | Hacker News Reader

Have you ever noticed than even after using screens/computers/phones for 12 hours a day, they almost never appear in your dreams when you sleep?

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My phone has come up in some dreams. But it seems my dream world can't properly render it cause it's always blurry, but even when I'm doing something specific, it has never, not once, worked the way its supposed to. My dream phones always do about 1 action and then completely stop responding. Then i get confused because i had a specific task in mind that's slowly fading and all i know is this diffusing rectangle in my floating palm is disobeying me. The dream moves on

I have a recurring dream where I'm trying to type something on my phone, and it never comes out right, I delete and try again and again, can't hit the right buttons

It's a security limit in the simulation to help prevent sandbox escape.

There's a "threat simulation theory" that sort of explains it, but it's not 100% correct for everyone. TL;DR: in dreams your brain often seems to practice "threats"/stressful situations. E.g. you're more likely to dream about missing work, having exams, car breaking, running from someone, interacting with someone you care about etc. rather than doing something you're completely used to.

I wonder if very small children dream about screens then don't understand. Like, if a poor small child got hit with the car commercial or the maze jump scare, would that get added to the threat list? I'm talking young enough that they can't tell you it's a screen. Do babies dream? What could they ever dream about? Is there a library of set concepts that we're all genetically made to fear, if so, how would that be represented in dreams? Gosh

Honestly probably yes to all of those. Except for small children the dreams are probably also non-visual like in the case of blind people. They probably dream about "weird feelings" (chills, shivers, cold, heat etc) and smells and sounds and whatnot. The TST also assumes that some of the instincts are inherited from our ancestors (e.g. that uneasy feeling when you walk alone through the forest at night - because for thousands of years predators could kill you in that exact scenario) so a baby's brain might dream about those feelings too (probably without visuals, just chemically induced feeling of uneasyness).

And back to the screen scenario: To the brain "excitement" is also "stressful" from a chemical PoV. So if you really really enjoyed some game (as a kid or whatnot) you probably dreamt about it too.

I have never thought about that!

Even if the last thing going through my head before sleep is related to programming (which is quite often the case), I cannot remember having dreamed of computers, ever.

that's interesting, i don't remember my dreams often but I do remember books and comics - I even distinctly remember being lucid, reading a really good comic - but not my screen work or apps. Perhaps my brain just cannot LLM them convincingly? Are there lucid dreamers that sit behind their dream computers? If so, what are they doing, and do the programs give coherent responses? Are people playing chess or solo card- en boardgames or with dream characters?

you just blew my mind

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