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Comment by SamBam | Hacker News Reader

I have this same idea about why it's hard to remember dreams, but even more so, why it's hard to remember my kid's or spouse's sleep-talking.

Sometimes I'll check in on my sleeping kid and she'll sit up in bed and say some utter nonsense. I'll find it hilarious, giggle silently to myself, and kiss her goodnight again and she'll close her eyes and lie back.

Why I try to tell her about her sleep-talking in the morning, though, I find that the words she said have completely disappeared from my memory, no matter how funny I thought they were at the time.

In my head-canon, this is because it's dream language, and slips away as easily as dreams. But, like the AI art, it could be because it's bullshit: completely devoid of content, all signifiers and no signified.

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I went through a phase of leaving notepads next to my bed to try to write down my dreams and it simply never worked.

I stopped after I wrote something on the pad while I was still asleep. Woke up to text with letters that were backwards, upside down, weird words — so close to real words that I was sure I ought to know what they meant and had really meant to write them down.

Scared me. Literally too weird to keep. I tore up the page.

In a way I think this is one part of the same continuum. There are thoughts that have meaning and can have no words, and words that look like they should have permanent memorable meaning and don't.

> Scared me. Literally too weird to keep. I tore up the page.

??????

Genuinely unsettling. Can’t even begin to explain why. Like a terrifying glimpse into how fragile our grasp of reality is. Because whatever it is I wrote down wasn’t my dream, it was something my dream self thought profound or important.

Nearest I can say to how unsettling it was is to nudge you towards the video of the angry cockatoo who doesn’t want to go to the vet. Everything he says sounds just like it’s on the edge of having meaning.

https://youtu.be/5UUjJysUMTw

Imagine something like that, something important, so close to symbolic meaning, only writing. In letter shapes that we don’t use. And you wrote it while semi-conscious. If that’s something you would want to keep, you’re a braver person than me.

This explanation again doesn’t get it across. Too weird.

This sounds like a basic LSD experience tbh :)

The memories of dreams evaporate remarkably quickly. Much faster than anything else. It can't be accidental; I think our waking brains must be purging those memories as a matter of urgency. If we remembered them, we'd "learn" from them, which would be a catastrophe.

You know how you try to run in a dream, and you don't get anywhere? Imagine if your motor cortex started to expect that, when you're awake. It would destroy you.

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