DC Math

How accurately was your dream character at doing the math?

  • Within 10 days.
  • Too high.
  • Too low.
  • Absurd answer, or didn’t respond.

0 voters

It has been theorized that less of our concious mind is available for calculations during dreams. However, I don’t know if anyone has asked dream characters to do math for them and see how accurate our subconcious is. So, I propose this experiment.

In your next lucid dream, simply ask a dream character how many days it is until your next birthday. If your DC gives you an absurd answer, say so and ask again. Write the answer down in a dream journal or when you wake up.

Go to this page ( monmouth.com/~jhstevens/web/ … tEx22.html ) and have it calculate it for you. Finally, report to the poll what your results were.

No cheating! :content:

My prediction is they would give an absurd answer and look at me like an alien :alien: I would be very impressed if they were right! :happy:

Sounds like a cool experiment! Next time i have an decent LD i will try this :smile:

I havent been able to test this experiment yet, but i did ask a dreamcaracther simple math questions, and she/it/me did come up with the right answer. :smile:

Dream faded as soon i was about to try this experiment :neutral:

Next LD il try :smile:

I have had a chance to try it, although i did not ask a dream character. I imagined to find the answer of my question in a closed envelope, written on a piece of paper. The answer was 182…not enough. The difference between the real answer was 25 days. Funny thing to add here: I was talked to a friend that the new Opeth album would be out on October 25th.
I assume ,In my dream, it was already october 25th according to my results…

In this dream, I also tried to answer simple math questions, but I found it really hard to concentrate. After the third try, I came up with the right answer :cool_laugh:

Wow… these results are really interesting. I really, really value the input. I can’t wait to try this one once I can concentrate enough to remember to walk through a photo (like someone else suggested… now I forget who it was…). Perhaps in any future experimentation of this sort I will be sure to have the person define what day it is in the dream.

I once had a dream where a dream character explained a maths problem for me, which I couldn’t get while I was awake.

I’m practically using this as my dream journal. I had this LD just seconds ago, literally. So excuse my spellings or whatever. I’ll post more of it later in the diary.

My birthday has just past in September.

I went into a classroom like setting to meet some people, I sat down in a chair to talk to a few of them. I noticed one was busy on his computer, Windows 95 :wink: , I thought it would be fun to either email myself or check out the forum. I reached for the mouse and started looking for the keyboard. I was just about to ask the DC how he has been using this thing, I was thinking he used it telepathically or something. … but right then I thought “Oh yeah! I’ve got more to ask him then how to work this darn computer.” I instantly remembered this experiment.

I asked the question to him, he was sitting to the left of me, he answered 5. I didn’t tell him right or wrong, I was just determined to carry this memory into waking reality. I wanted more input. I turned to the guy I was talking with earlier that was on my right. He answered “at the beginning” :bored: I suppose he meant at the beginning of the year. I don’t know. I walked over to a different row of computers and asked a guy that looked like he was busy doing homework. He answered with a tone in his speech that sounded like he was a know-it-all mathmatican with “4 and 1 slint …” ??? I cut him off because he wasn’t making sense, but yet sounded like he was saying some large fraction. Days are not a fraction. I tried asking this girl that was sitting slightly behind him. She was in a joyful mood and we started joking around. She had me laughing about something. Hmmm. Aw well, I eventually got her to answer with “28.” So she was way off. When she answered I remember trying to guess what she would answer before she did. I guessed 28, so I think I made her choose 28. The time we spent joking around gave time for me to “guess” what she would answer before I got a chance to ask her the question. I didn’t get a quick answer from her. … Women.

By then this LD has lasted about 10 minutes, very lenthy! :thumbs: So I decided to fade away from fun girl and drift to reality to post this message in the freshness.

I read Zewu post before I went to sleep and it reminded me of this neat experiment. So I was determined to give an answer. My birthday is now 330 days away. They gave “5, at the beginning, 4 and 1 slint, and 28” all are completely absurd.

My verdict. DC’s are not very good birthday guessers, yet I was amused with my psychic skills by guessing “28.” :smile:

I think there is a flaw in this experiment though. The DCs are not really performing math, it’s more of a guessing game. How do the DC’s know my birthday? … besides the point they are my minds creation. If I would have thought of it, I would have asked them simple math like 8+8 or something. I’m going back to sleep, maybe I’ll ask then. :sleeping:

Thanks for your results, DreamAddict. I only originally read your dream diary post, and didn’t look here for any elaboration on the topic (or pre-elaboration, depending).

Maybe I should have elaborated a little more on the origins of this topic before I asked for participants… Evidence has been provided through different experminets that different parts of the brain are used in approximation and exact calculation, such that someone who can’t tell you exactly what the answer to twenty plus twenty is, they know that it is closer to fifty than it is to one hundred. This is a math test for DCs in the sense that I want to know which portion of our mind DCs use to answer quantitative questions. If they give absurd answers mainly, perhaps they use neither. If they give approximately correct answers, we can assume that DCs still use our approximation powers while asleep. If they give exact answers under certain circumstances, perhaps we have found a direct connection to some amazing supercomputers: our minds.

Determining which of these is true is the goal of this experiment. Any other methods for experimentation would be of great interest.

In my tests, i found that the DCs was correct with simple math questions, but askin them about my birthday, wasnt too acurate. I guess they are limited by my own math skills.

I’ve always been interested in what dream characters say in a lucid dream. I’m sure many of you have encountered all kinds of personalities, ranging from staring at you blankly to running after you with crazed looks on their faces. There almost seems to be more variety in DC personalities than people in RL. :smile:

In the case of this topic, you have to find the right person to ask the question to. For example, I once talked to an old white-bearded man sitting cross legged in the house next door to mine, and he was the most enlightening DC I’ve ever interacted with. Equally, I’ve often found it hard to get so much as ‘hello’ out of characters taken directly from video games. Maybe because I don’t know how they talk? :wink:

I think saying that “they’re limited to my math skills” is a two-way statement. They’re limited to what you might know, but not to what you can adapt them to.

As in, some people can speak languages they do not know in their dreams, simply because they’ve heard someone speak it in their presence.

So if you’ve learned how to do high-level algebra but don’t get it, possibly a DC can.

I often buy things in my normal dreams and the DC’s serving me usually get the change wrong, I have to explain it to them. I dont know if this will help you.
~Quartz

Funny, I had a dream where I missed a train because I found it impossible to count the change, a friend of mine appearing as a DC kept shouting the sum,

I heard him shouting the number but the harder I tried to concentrate on the coins in my hand or on the ticket dispensers screen the number just jumbled, even the coins changed value!! I haven’t got any DC to do math for me but I sure find it hard to do myself!! :bored:

An interesting problem, but I am not sure it is the way to find what parts of our brain are used when dealing with DCs. The result will be valid only in one case: if the person reads this topic first time and immediately goes to bed, falls asleep, has a LD and performs the experiment, at least when speaking about me… Because, since I read it, I notice that I am thinking about this stuff. I may not try to count the days myself, but my brain can try to do it, so by the moment I meet a suitable DC the result can already be prepared. Knowing it would be very informative, too (I’m sorry I didn’t do it yet, anyone can delete this reply :shy: ), but not as something concerning dream state. But thinking out simple sums like 8+8 is not a decision either, because every one can count it before the DC has time to say anything. It will only help to test how predictable and controllable are DCs at all…
I have already met an idea about maths in dreams. It was a list of funny reality checks for people who think their life is a dream. I’ll try to remember what was written there: :read:
“Try to find a functioning calculator, a piece of paper and a pen. Write any big non-trivial number at the top of the paper and input it in the calculator. Get the square root. Copy the result to your paper and then, without using the calculator, multiply the result by itself. Check every digit. Compare your production with the first number. In fact, in a dream you wouldn’t even have been able to find a good calculator and would never have been patient enough to multiply big numbers. But if you found a calculator, if it gave you a square root, if the digits you were writing didn’t change, if the last number was near to the first number – alas, your world is real. And would it matter, if it were not real, when calculators calculate and pens write?”
But if we can really use our brain computers while dreaming, this could be wrong. You could see a calculator giving you right square roots and still you can be dreaming. It sounds rather scary. :bored:

Extract from my lucid dream dated 20-Nov-04:

When I made the estimate, I knew that it was not right!

I asked mom how many days it will be, but she didn’t answer. What I got was a piece of paper with three numbers, that moment I didn’t think that they are anyhow relevant and mostly forgotten, but they were something like 120, 140, 180. It is quite near to 164 (the true number), so later I thought they were the answer.
What’s more funny (though off-topic) is the reason to remember about this experiment. I got a dream where i was reading a book, something like a fanfic to the tales by Volkov. And one of the heroes was called “the-guy-with-twenty-four-words-long-title”. I know these books very well, so, when I was typing this dream, I counted the words in the titles of “that guy”. He had two titles: one was forteen words long, but later he took a shorter one, of ten words. 14+10=24, for sure, and i can swear i never tried to count words in his idiotic titles. :smile:

can i make an addition?

this isn’t math but it is reasoning. tonight i will try to ask a DC who won WWII, who is the president, what are Smorgozies, and how often do they invade earth (the last 2 are to get funny inistes)