Imagine if you could instantaneously travel anywhere you wanted. Create any object you could imagine. Do everything you ever thought possible or impossible.

How? Lucid dreaming is the answer.

True to our blog title, I think lucid dreaming would be a nice way to ‘push the edges of reason’ after our previous posts on polyphasic sleeping.

Today, I had my first lucid dream. A lucid dream is a dream in which you know you are dreaming and are able to control it. People have claimed to be able to create anything they wanted and to be anywhere they wanted in these dreams. Like polyphasic sleeping, the research seems to be few and far between. The best start for a person interested in lucid dreaming is to start a dream journal. I tried this, but gave up quickly due to lack of results (mainly my impatience). Since I have heard about it a few years ago, this is one of those things which has been, well, like a dream of mine. It was intriguing and after reading about many others’ experiences with lucid dreaming, I was envious to say the least.

To give you a short story of what happened in the dream: I was jumping down long flights of stairs in my dorm building because there was an earthquake and I wanted to leave, and I noticed that I was falling rather slowly. I also noticed that the lights in the stairwell were reflecting very oddly off the walls and seemed too dim. The logical side of me said, “Hey! You’re dreaming!” At that point, I decided that if I was really dreaming, I could walk through a wall if I wished to. So I did. From there, it was an exploration of the most vivid and colourful dream I have ever had in which I had almost full control. I also had powers of telekinesis! In short, it was the most glorious and exhilarating experience in my life. I just wish I had more time before the maid in my room woke me up.

Most mammals, if not all, dream. It occurs in the REM stage of sleep. Many people just don’t remember their dreams and very few actually lucidly dream on a regular basis. However, there are many suggested techniques to help you gain lucidity on a regular basis. One famous researcher, Stephen LaBerge, was able to have several lucid dreams a night, after a few years of practice that is. If you feel interested in reading more, check out this forum.

A resolution was just passed in the UN Human Rights Council which urges a global prohibition on the public defamation of religion.

The resolution was formed by the group of Islamic countries on the UN Council and did not make specific mention of any other religion besides Islam!

If we allow these people to keep gaining ground, we will witness the death of our freedom. This is a direct impingement on all of humanity’s freedom of speech. I do not condone hate speech against anything, but when I am not allowed to speak out against irrationality, I will give up hope for this world.

We need to be pushing back these fundamentalist views! Europe and America, get your act together and give me back my freedom! The “Human Rights Watch said the resolution could endanger the basic rights of individuals.”

I do not care what laws you impose on your own society, provided a member is allowed to leave whenever they wish (this is rewarded with the death penalty in many Islamic countries), but please, do not stop me from printing cartoons in my own country.

I write this blog as I think about an apathetic friend of mine. She is content with letting people believe whatever they want to believe. I do not share her opinion. We both draw a line. She draws it at the point when another person’s beliefs are openly causing harm to somebody else (a suicide bomber for example). However, I draw the line when another person’s beliefs start to change the way I have to live my life and how I am treated.

For instance, I do not want my potential children to have to take Bible (or the Qu’ran if Islam takes over the world) Study in school. Nor do I want to die because the possible cure wasn’t researched due to people’s objections to stem cell research. These concerns are very distressing to me at times and I would like an equal amount of freedom for everybody. It is not an easy task to accomplish and I believe our current democracy is doing pretty good.

I do not want to control other people’s thoughts. But when a belief, which I think is irrational, starts to change the way I have to live my life, I will challenge it and try to put an end to it. I lived in Saudi Arabia for two years. I could be apathetic to the point where I do not care what happens to people in Saudi as long as they do not bother me. But this isn’t the case; besides terrorist threats being spawned in Saudi, I care about human rights. If the women in Saudi Arabia had been brought up in a rational world without their theocracy, they would rebel instantly against the society they are born into.

Another example of infringement of rights was the cartoon incident. It was irrational on the part of America and Britain to back down. This is not the direct we want to be heading in, which was the appeasement of a religious majority where we gave up one of our most important rights. Overall, I believe that a person who is content with the world as long as it poses no obvious direct harm to them, will not send the world in a good direction. We have to be active and be aware of current situations which might have dire consequences later on. And currently, one of these is the recent growth in radicalism and at times, the overwhelming religious beliefs in America and especially the Islamic world guiding us in some very wrong directions.

Voltaire – “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

I have recently heard this word being used in a negative connotation: “Scientism“

“Scientism is a term often used today as a pejorative to describe someone of holding the view that science has primacy over all other interpretations of life such as philosophical, religious, mythical, spiritual, or humanistic explanations.” – wikipedia.com

I heard it on a video of a discussion about religion where a person involved in the Templeton Foundation was talking about it negatively. The wiki gives a little bit of history and claims that it was used awhile ago and was not initially a pejorative. It only recently became a word used in a negative way.

My concern is how this idea, of someone placing a scientific view above everything else, is used to attack science. A recent conversation of mine revolved around the fact that my friend was trying to claim that we should just take the most beneficial perspective and be done. The argument was over the existence of free-will, and thus far, nothing but “personal experience” (which means nothing in science) has made anyone believe in free-will. All of science is based on the fact that the physical universe, which is all that we know of, is deterministic. The only flaw thus far is that quantum mechanics has yet to be shown as random or deterministic. If someone asked me if I believe in free-will, I would say no. However, I live my life as if I had free-will because it is impossible to base my life on a deterministic world, furthermore, that is even an illogical statement if everything is deterministic.

My point here is that to explain the workings of the universe, I choose the best model, the most-supported model, the most tested model, the simplest model (where possible) and the one that has yet to be proved false. So, determinism is what I will use as a scientist to analyze and explain things. To live my life, I will always be rational, and will use the scientific method as the basis of my knowledge and beliefs. Yet, I act as if I had free-will even though it is not a belief I hold, because from my perspective as a human being, I want free-will and cannot function without pretending I have it.

To bring this back to scientism, my friend tried to attack the deterministic model because he claims it is not beneficial to a human living his life. He tried to discount the science by saying it cannot be placed above every other view. However, the use of the model comes into play in all of science. The extension of the deterministic model, to look at the possibility of free-will, is just a predictive application which I accept as part of my knowledge because it makes complete sense and there is almost nothing to contradict it.

I do place the scientific view above all else. The philosophical view is logic which is part of science when there are things we cannot directly test. I discount any religious/mythical/spiritual views as I have yet to see them add anything useful to my knowledge base (I already have a moral standard). And at the end of the day, I will act as a humanist, yet I will be able to explain why I act like a humanist with my scientific view :D.

I’ve been reading into Buddhism recently. It started with an interest in meditation as something to help with the polyphasic sleep. Suby’s sister had given him a book called “Buddhism, Plain and Simple,” which he loaned to me when I first expressed the interest. I never knew how much I didn’t know about Buddhism!

First of all, many people consider Buddhism to be a religion. I used to be one of those, out of ignorance. It’s true that many forms of Buddhism are religions, including worship and rituals, but other forms are just philosophies or less. The particular form of Buddhism that I’m interested in is just a mindset from which to perceive the world. Most importantly, it doesn’t seem to be at all incompatible with atheism and rationalism. I haven’t yet figured out if there’s a particular name for this school (it’s not mentioned in the book) but it seems closest to the Theravada school of Buddhism. So when I talk about Buddhism, this is the version I mean.

Atheism does not technically imply no religion; anyone who denies the existence of supernatural beings can be called an atheist. But in the modern use of the word, atheists also reject religion and most of the hooey that comes with it. Religion, again, depends on your exact definition, but I’m going with what I call the ‘mainstream’ definition which excludes cults and philosophies.

Buddhism, at its most basic, is about seeing the world as it really is. This aligns nicely with rationalism, don’t you think? It does not conflict with science. It doesn’t offer alternate explanations for anything. It does not present a world that is at all different from the world described by science and reason. It’s just a different way of thinking about the exact same world.

Let me give an example of how to think of the same thing in two different, yet equally correct, ways. Consider a bubble. A bubble is a bunch of air and water molecules all behaving in concert. They don’t try to make a bubble; each molecule is just interacting with other nearby molecules in a fixed way. That’s how science sees the world: every detail. So is it really there? Is there such a thing as a bubble at all? Of course there is. We all know what a bubble is, how it looks, how it acts. This is Buddhism. A person can subscribe to both models at the same time. In fact, it can even help to be able to use either model.

It’s worth thinking about.

Let me be perfectly clear: I am an atheist. I deny the existence of supernatural intelligences, and I think organized religion is a foolish waste of time.

I’m not usually so direct. I think the vast majority of atheists subscribe to “If you don’t bother me, I won’t bother you.” We’re not out to destroy religion, we just don’t want to get any on us. The problem is that the vast majority of this country underestimate the reach of religion. There are some obvious bits, such as ‘God’ on our currency and in our pledge, that I think most people could point out, but what I’m talking about goes deeper. Ideally, I would be able to live my life with only an intellectual knowledge of religion, with no personal contact. That means no acts of violence, no wars carried out in the name of a god. It means no one would say “Bless you!” to me when I sneeze. It also means no random acts of kindness or charity if those acts were motivated only by a religious belief. If the only reason you’re nice to me is that a figment of your imagination wants you to be – well, I can do without the kindness, thanks.

I recognize that religion is closely integrated in our history so we’ll never be able to purge it completely. I’m not going to lose sleep over silly details. I just want to see an increase in awareness of what religious people are doing to those of us who do not share their faith. And I wanted to get this in the open so that anyone reading my later posts knows where I’m coming from.

It has been brought to my attention that my posts tend to be overlong. From now on I’ll try to trim them down to a smaller size and then keep my longer article-style posts separate.

Also, I haven’t posted in a few days because my editor has been wonky.

I have now tried the polyphasic schedule for twelve days. I would have hoped I’d be better adjusted by now, but I’m really not. Yesterday I had the worst oversleep so far. It was only about two hours, but what made it so bad is that it was completely not my fault. I did everything right and still I overslept. All of the other times I had made some poor judgment before the nap and set myself up for the failure. I can’t say that it means much unless it keeps happening.

Suby is not going to be around for the next several days so now I really am on my own. For the last few nights he’s been hanging out with me and helping me wake. When he’s around I can afford to sleep with earplugs in. On the plus side, a very close friend of mine – who knows more about sleep physiology than I do – showed me several flaws in that disheartening article I linked to before. It doesn’t refute the argument, but it does discredit the author a bit. I would very much like to see another source with science in it. Over at the Polyphasic Sleep Group on Google there’s a post with several informative links, including the one above, but the other links are testimonial style: the original post on everything2, as well as several other first-hand accounts. Some are positive. Some are negative. All are untrustworthy. I will continue to search for scientific perspective on this.

I have other things to talk about besides polyphasic sleep. One of those other things is the Dvorak Keyboard Layout.

I consider my switch to the Dvorak layout to be the first of my self improvement initiatives. Here’s a bit of background: the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard is an alternative to the more common QWERTY keyboard layout. It’s just another way of positioning keys on a keyboard. Most people are aware that QWERTY was designed to prevent typewriter keys from jamming at the ribbon. The designers did not have typing speed or efficiency in mind, and may have even intentionally slowed typists down to prevent jamming. By contrast, the Dvorak layout was designed with specific typing principles in mind (I won’t go into them here) with the overall goal of increasing typing speed and accuracy. There is some controvery over the claim that the Dvorak layout increases typing speeds, but while some claim Dvorak is faster and others claim it’s no better than QWERTY, I have yet to see anyone put forth the claim that it’s worse.

So why not use Dvorak? The major downside is that every keyboard everywhere you go will be in QWERTY layout. However, this isn’t nearly as big of a downside as the naysayers will have you think. I can type equally well in Dvorak or QWERTY now, and it only takes a few minutes to mentally adjust. I would compare it to knowing two programming languages; it’s not really that hard to use them both regularly. There is also the actual time to learn the layout. For me, it took about a week of casual use. On the first day I did some drills online to help me memorize the key locations, but after that I was only doing my normal activities such as chatting. One could probably adapt much more quickly by practicing. After that first week speed increases gradually.

It’s difficult to say if the Dvorak layout increases my typing speed. However, it definitely increases my typing comfort, which is actually far more important if you do a lot of typing throughout the day. When I switch from QWERTY to Dvorak I’m always amazed at how stationary my hands and fingers are.

Well, Suby beat me to it while I was working on this post. Like he said, check out this webpage for a strong and very interesting case against the viability of polyphasic sleeping. The author, Poitr Wozniak, seeks to uncover some of the many myths about polyphasic sleep and how it works.

It should be mandatory reading for anyone considering going polyphasic. My biggest single problem with the idea of polynapping is the extreme bad science behind it: there is virtually no hard evidence in favor of it working, and a fair bit of hard evidence against it. Supporters do a lot of hand waving, saying things like ’supposedly…’ or ‘in theory…’ We point to testimonials and made-up facts, and they get passed around enough that we believe them. That article does a great job at laying out the evidence against polynapping.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I like it. For someone who is currently trying to transition, and who would very much like it to be true, it can be hard to read an article that’s so hostile to polynapping. The author is very dismissive and takes no pains to spare my feelings. What’s more, he uses fairly good science to make his point. As a rationalist I am forced to concede. He can’t provide evidence directly against polynapping (such as actual studies) but he does show why polynapping is incompatible with our current ideas about how sleep works, and that looks like as good as we’re going to get.

Still… if everything he says is true, we must not be getting the whole picture. How do you account for the successes? The people who succeed in becoming polyphasic overwhelmingly report how great it is. Are they all delusional from sleep deprivation? The author outright claims that they are making it up. I can’t disprove it. However, many of the claims against polyphasic sleep also hold against a schedule with core sleep and three naps. That was the schedule I maintained for four months last year, and it was either great for me or it made me crazy enough to think that it was great for me.

The rationalist in me is very happy to finally find someone acting like a scientist here. There are a lot of things that science can’t explain yet. Polyphasic sleep, and indeed much of sleep in general, is one of them. Sometimes the evidence just doesn’t line up and all we can do is more science. At some point we’ll be able to say, “Oh look, we were just thinking about it wrong; the evidence really does fit,” or else “Huh. I guess we were wrong before.” In the mean time I’m just going to suppress my rationalism and see where the ride takes me.

When Suby first read the article he took it a bit harsher than I did. I’ll admit it is somewhat infuriating, but then I pointed out to him the similarities between how the author feels about polyphasic sleep and how the two of us feel about religion. In short, we can’t believe that anyone would rationally buy into it. The author writes condescendingly because to him, there’s scarcely anything to debate. Never forget to put yourself in the shoes of the opposing entity.