During my time at university studying pure mathematics I had an interesting experience of doing a challenging sheet of combinatorics problems during a vacation. Every day I attempted one question and got stuck on it. Then the next morning I woke up knowing the solution. It was a recurring thing: this happened every day for about 2 weeks until I had solved all the problems.

For me this a big eye opener about the importance of sleep and relaxed thinking to solve challenging problems.

I once solved a particularly nasty bug, causing a c++ server to segfault in production about once a week, in a dream! The eureka adrenaline woke me up, and I rushed to my laptop to find the insight was real. I had been trying to comprehend that segfault for several long days. It wasn't the most restful night though.

yeah i hate it when i work while sleeping

Me: "I'm gonna plan the workshop tomorrow, more than enough time."

7,5 h Later

Brain: "Hey, here is everything, worked the whole night, no need to thank me!!!"

Me: "I need coffee..."

There's a long history of doing yogic practice in the dream state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_yoga

I read a short novel about a technology that allowed you to have a VR like experience while dreaming. Of course, there was all the fun/perverted stuff you can think of but also it was immediately put to use as a corporate tool. Over a few years, more and more white collar jobs shifted to night shifts where you worked via dream VR. Then people were available during the day to do whatever, watch their kids, pursue hobbies, etc. In many ways- it was a very promising future.

AI does the work during the day and we learn while sleeping. Society doesn't collapse from ignorance. We have a new movie plot gentlemen.

Sounds like mental rehearsal more than magic. Interesting, but I'm not sure what to do differently day to day.

So I guess having dreams about recurring meetings is... honing corporate skills?

Aside, but I struggled a long time with regular sleep. I have been a night owl since I was a kid. I experience late hours as magical, don’t know how to describe it. So I always slept too little, then not at all, then drifting and sleeping in.

But I somehow managed to have a regular schedule and now I start to sleep at 00:00-01:00 very often, sometimes even earlier.

No idea how I managed to do that. I guess I just did improve many small things, like getting rid of bad habits, being more content, appreciating sleep more, prioritizing things differently.

I wish everyone good, healthy sleep.

Two months ago my partner recorded me speaking in my sleep. I was speaking fluent Mandarin. I always thought sleep time is used for learning (among healing etc), but now I am convinced.

The newyorker has fascinating and well written medical stories. For example, Dhruv Khullar always writes amazing columns https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/dhruv-khullar

I feel walking outside and thinking is a better way to practice skills and solve problems. A tired mind just sleeps and usually doesn't remember current events.

Referenced Paper: https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niaf067

Lucid dreaming is a cool concept but I've never been able to pull it off. I still try, though!

Edison, famously, solved problems in a light dream state [1].

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thomas-edisons-na...

Have anybody managed to use sleep to learn language? How ?

Is this dream yoga?

https://selfdefinition.org/tibetan/Tenzin-Wangyal-Rinpoche-T...

While you're sleeping I'm practicing my skills. Enjoy being poor, suckers!

> In perhaps the most striking example of learning during sleep, Konkoly, Paller, and several collaborators witnessed what amounted to conversations with people who were in the midst of dreams. Independent lab groups in the U.S., France, Germany, and the Netherlands asked lucid dreamers to answer yes-or-no questions and solve simple math problems. Electrodes measuring body and brain activity verified that the participants were not awake. Martin Dresler, a sleep researcher at the Donders Institute, who ran the Dutch experiments, said that they were able to verbally deliver new information to the sleeping mind—and to receive responses. Some people could remember the questions they had been asked when they woke up. “This is a form of very complex learning,” he told me.

https://xkcd.com/269/

My wife used to think that I had terrible sleep apnea because I'd repeatedly quit breathing for a minute or two at a time and then gasp for air, but it turned out I was just dreaming about freediving for lobsters.

It's gonna be really sad in 10-15 years when all the sc bros are hustling and grindsetting their dreams away.

Now there is no excuse anymore to be working less than 24 hours a day.

tl:dr "Andrillon warned against trying to harness the sleeping mind in the service of the waking world." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-024-00276-0

There is no such thing as "should". The thing is possible, therefore humans will do it. The only question is, who is we?

After two weeks I woke up and didn't notice it was German tv. Eventually after 5 minutes an unknown word came along. I still can't speak it.

When 13 i use to code till 1-2 am. In school I slept with my eyes open till 11. The information was stored and organized but I was unaware of it. I remember tests where all of the questions talked about topics I never spend a conscious thought on. But I knew all the answers. Quite the surreal experience.

Teachers sometimes wondered if I was still in the room or they just asked questions. My mind would grep the most recent chunk of speech, parse it and respond as if nothing unusual was going on. The mind raced but I talked slowly to portray the slight delay more natural.

I learned you don't want other people's bullshit in your head. It needs to be questioned first.