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Permalink Reply by Rich on August 19, 2009 at 6:29am

I have to disagree with your original point that memory equals experience. This is just plain false. If you are watching a football game, do you have more experience with that game than the quarterback? He remembers the same game. If you go to a party and don't drink, but don't really socialize much, meanwhile your friend drinks way too much, ends up making a bunch of new friends and gets a new girlfriend out of it, but ends up forgetting most of the night, who has more experience? Memory does not equal experience, though i do agree that they are both important to a good life.

Considering the nature of reality, a dream is technically just as real as daily life. It can be meaningful, crazy, fun, sad, anything. Therefore when a dream is remembered, it is like any other experience, it is an additional memory, additional knowledge and experience gained while aware in this reality we live in.

To quote Philip K Dick: Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. You can have as many dreams as you want, and every dream can be different. Sure they are fun, exciting, terrifying or whatever else you can think of, but you wake up to the same reality every time. The waking world is a constant. I would then say that experience in the real world trumps all dream world experiences as they can be applied directly to the real world, and have a true impact on how you live your life. I'm not saying that its impossible to draw inferences through dreams, but they are usually very abstract and not directly related to the issue/situation itself.

I think what you are talking about is the illusion of living longer because they have more memories, that because they have more events to recall they have therefor lived a fuller life. Well, how about people with Alzheimer's? Would you say that they have not lived at all? Is their life now meaningless because they do not remember who they are? There are way too many situations that conflict with your theory.

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Permalink Reply by David Huntington on August 19, 2009 at 7:15am

You have some good points, it's clearly not a perfect analogy, but the main point is why not? If a person can have more memories without using up any additional time in their life, why not try to remember one's dreams?

And I think you misread me there, I was talking about experiences like experiencing a moment in time, not experience at playing football. Also, maybe I wasn't clear enough, my premise was not that memory equals experience, it was memory equals identity.

Sure, experience in the real world always will trump experience in dreams. But that doesn't mean it's worthless. It's there for the taking, and most people don't even realize it. Save the dreams!

And the discussion about memory defining life and its value is very deep and philosophical, which is a different thread entirely. Which could be a very cool thread, actually.

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Permalink Reply by Rich on August 19, 2009 at 7:38am

And I think you misread me there, I was talking about experiences like experiencing a moment in time, not experience at playing football.

Yes I understood that. My point was that the active player would have gotten more experience out of that scenario than the observer. The observer may have seen the linebacker coming around and taking down the quarterback, but the QB felt it when he hit, and knows now to watch for the next time should it happen again. He can use the information gathered in a practical way, whereas the observer can't.

Sure, experience in the real world always will trump experience in dreams. But that doesn't mean it's worthless. It's there for the taking, and most people don't even realize it. Save the dreams!

I agree with that to a point. Dreams are not quite as linear or as rational as reality is. Since that is the case it can become confusing or even harmful should you come to the wrong conclusion about an experience made within a dream. It could lead to a false hope or an assumption about a person.

Also, maybe I wasn't clear enough, my premise was not that memory equals experience, it was memory equals identity.

I think you are blending together the meaning of memory and experience a little bit, then. Memory is just the recollection of events, whereas experience is the practical application of thing observed and learned from those events. They do work together but are not the same. So your identity is based on your experiences, while your memory holds it together so that you can function in this reality. That brings up a question: Do you have memories in your dreams, or do you just experience what is happening in that moment? Do you have an identity beyond 'the self', or the active participant in that reality while dreaming?

PS: Just so you don't think I'm against you or anything, I actually do recall and write my dreams down. I find it interesting to see what my subconscious is thinking.

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