There's been a few times in my life when I've heard a sound while sleeping that my brain decided "wasn't right" and woke me up. Often the sound is very quiet - perhaps a mouse in my bedroom or an event outside the house. Generally there's a very bizarre process where I'll sort of wake up and then "hear" the sound, allowing me to process it consciously. It's obvious that I wasn't awake when the sound happened, but that there's some sort of constantly running sound-comparator listening to the world and triggering alerts when something that isn't easily matched to the known is heard.
The similarities with FPGAs/ASICs are really quite interesting.
And as some more anecdata when my second daughter was born my wife would get up for her, and I would get up for the eldest. Nearly immediately I would wake up when my eldest cried and she would wake up when the new baby cried, and we would both sleep right through the cries of the 'other' child. It was very weird at first, but when I went on a business trip and my wife was 'on call' for both of them she had not trouble waking up if either cried.
I used to joke that my ears were like a wake-on-packet NIC card :-)
Light too. A DirecTv box with super-bright blue LEDs (don't get me started) decided to turn itself on randomly in the middle of the night, and that definitely woke me up from a deep sleep (maybe my brain thought it was a fire?).
Now, granted, we do fall in and out of stages of deep and less-deep sleep throughout the night, however in my experience I have definitely been woken out of deep sleep by an usual sound or light (although it seems like it takes less from a less-deep sleep to wake you).
>The similarities with FPGAs/ASICs are really quite interesting.
FPGAs are essentially the exact same thing as neuronal systems, but in silicon.
You have voltage-gated transponders with a slight delay. These transponders can have their output connected to one or more neighbors in such a way as to form arbitrary circuits.
A neuron isn't quite as capable as a LUT, but en masse they can do basically the same things.
I think it's very likely that the first strong AIs will be built in reprogrammable logic of some kind (possibly FPGAs).
Often when I'm pushing myself by staying up and reading something interesting, I'll start hallucinating sounds. Often electrical or crashing, or other non-vocal sources.
I wonder if it is an attempt to keep me awake, or if it is some sort of partial dreaming.
This is quite a specific test, but I often get creeped out by how well "sleeping on it" works. I don't even have to actively think many hards problem (in my usual problem domain, naturally) but a day or two later a solution will appear in a flash. This annoys some people, because they'll ask "how shall we do X?" and I'll want it to sit and compost for a few days as I know the solution will be better than something forced!
Oh me too. I've often the real smart person in my life was my subconscious. Like you said though, the downside is there is no progress reporting and it can take a really long time. But I would say many of the slick solutions to programming problems have come from my subconscious, either after sleeping or just taking a break and eating some food or something.
Has anyone here spent any time in a sensory deprivation tank? After going in one myself, the conclusion here makes a lot of sense.
While you're floating, you don't feel like you're actively processing everything that's going on around you as you do in a normal environment where all senses are available to you. While floating, it feels like you're spectating your mind as it processes things.
So when you shut off all your senses and let go, you enter this observation mode where information is being processed but it doesn't feel like you are doing it. It seems like the same thing is happening while we sleep only we're not as lucid.
I'm interested to see if others have had similar experiences.
In (I think) a slightly related topic, I sometimes listen to white noise when sleeping on the bus. I've noticed that I'll hear voices as I drift off to sleep - they sort of coalesce from the static and as I start focusing on the voices they disappear. I think it's my brain trying to make sense of the input, and as I start going to sleep the "reigns go free".
Sort of eerie. (No, I don't hear voices when I'm not listening to white noise).
This happens to me with the sound of running water even when I am fully awake, especially when I am expecting an important sound. For example, if I am in the shower and expecting an important call on the phone, I often get a feeling that the phone is ringing. But it's just my brain trying to be super alert and picking up noise as signals. If I turn off the water, the sounds go off.
I think that is hypnagogia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia. And it doesn't necessarily require environmental noise to be triggered. There's a lot of material out there on it being linked to lucid dreaming.
I have had this experience and many others in float tanks...
you become 'the witness' more clearly than usual, but such is always the case...instead of being 'trapped' in your ego/limited rationalmindstressedbodyunawarespirit, you are 'shifted' to your pure expanded enlightened spirit true being
I'm presently reading a book called Psycho-Cybernetics. It's rather old. I got it for free from an estate sale. Looked interesting because it has Psycho and Cybernetics in it; where could I go wrong?!
The main thesis is that the subconscious is a machine for doing things. Like a machine, it only reacts to data. It makes no judgement calls on the data. The goal of a person is to use their conscious mind to filter the information the doing machine gets. It was one of the first cognitive behavioral therapy books.
The book advocates sleeping on it for the reason given. The mind will process the data and come to a conclusion. The trick is to managing the data to get a good conclusion.
I discovered this by accident years ago, and now "sleeping on it" is absolutely essential to my making progress, in fact it's probably my most important work hack.
I started off by decoupling programming from analysis, doing each at a different time in a different place. This led to doing analysis at bed time. I may not have figured things out that night, but invariably, elegant solutions "came to me" in the next day or two.
I have talked about this many times here. My earliest comment:
Kouider, S., Andrillon, T., Barbosa, L. S., Goupil, L., & Bekinschtein, T. A. (2014). Inducing Task-Relevant Responses to Speech in the Sleeping Brain. Current Biology.
Years ago, for a period of about 3 months, 2 friends and I would get together after work and play an XBOX fighting game for 4-5 hours (We had literally nothing else to do. No money, no cable, just this one game). Winner plays again and loser waits his turn.
Everyone's style and character picks would constantly evolve during this process. But generally, one friend would lose far more than he would win, and we would tease him mercilessly, as you do.
One day, out of nowhere, he was unbeatable. Winning game after game, to all of our amazement.
My other friend, who I don't think graduated high school and almost certainly never read anything about sleep science or brain development, made the following comment, which struck me as profound at the time:
"JP was dreaming this shit last light. No doubt, dreaming it all night"
Another example of sub/unconscious learning happens in sports. Another pastime of mine is playing pickup basketball.
One of the best ways to get into a hot shooters head is to simply say "You're shooting really well today. What are you doing differently?" the same applies to things like a golf swing.
The first time it happened I thought I was dead, because I felt completely conscious but could not control my body nor receive input from my senses. I kind of panicked, and with what felt like an extreme effort was able to become fully awake.
Since then it happens from time to time (I can't make it happen) and it's a very pleasant experience since you're in a dreamy state where you can pretty much decide what you dream about.
It's a state that is between awake and asleep; when in that state, it's very easy to fall into actual sleep (to lose consciousness), and very difficult (but possible) to awaken completely.
I keep good memory of the experience each time.
I would like to talk about it with people who experienced the same thing, but could never find anyone just by talking about it to friends around me. Where should I look? Does this thing have a name?
The Wikipedia page about Sleep paralysis make it sound like something horrible where you're attacked by monsters that you can't escape because you don't control your body.
I actually enjoy it when it happens (and would like it to happen more often!) but apart from that it seems that, yes, that's what it is, so thanks.
Lucid dreaming (at least according to Wikipedia) is something different -- a brief lapse of consciousness inside a dream. That happens to me also, quite frequently, but is quite a different experience. When I dream about unpleasant things I often begin to think "meh, this isn't real, it's probably a dream", and the dream takes another direction -- but not one that I control. I wouldn't say I'm fully conscious then; it's more that my dreaming self is aware he's in a dream.
I enjoy and dread sleep paralysis at the same time in a very odd way. When my sleep schedule gets extremely messed up and/or I'm extremely stressed, sleep paralysis can resurface which makes it a sign that I'm not currently healthy. At the same time though I understand what you are saying. It's an extremely unique and harmless experence and gets the juices flowing so to say.
I gotta say though, the first time it happened (I must have been 12 years old), I thought that was it. I thought I'd never move again.
I hope the world can educate children and bring more awareness to what sleep paralysis is. It's an extremely stressful and unusual experience and one you would not be able to recognize unless you knew about it beforehand. God knows how many "I've been abducted by aliens" lunatics have actually just experienced that.
So if you have kids, take 10 minutes to tell them about it.
Good point; I was maybe 30 the first time it happened to me and didn't think I was paralyzed -- I thought I was dead, and it was kind of interesting in some way: "so that's how it's like to be dead; not what I had imagined!" but also frightening of course.
You're right it happens more often when I'm super tired.
About telling my kids, I don't know. Kids have a way of taking everything you say very seriously, and growing it in their head like it's an Important Thing (which is good and bad at the same time). Why bother them with something they may never experience?
It's so much more important to teach them how not ti be run over by a car!!! and something I have to repeat every. single. minute. (They don't generalize; they know they shouldn't cross the street without looking when we're walking to school; but during weekends if they drop something they'll run after it in the middle of the street like it's a totally different situation. But I digress).
I experienced sleep paralysis a few times. What bothers me about it is not that I see monsters (I don't) but I that I feel like I'm not breathing .. and as hard as I try .. I still can't breath. That's why it feels like something is suffocating me.
I had a friend who described this exact same thing, I obviously thought he was making it up, since I don't remember 99% of my dreams and experience dreamless nights most of the time. I know about REM state and how everyone dreams, so I know I dream but simply don't remember anything, only thing I can sort of pick up from the dream is whether it was a happy one or a unhappy one. I guess this thing you describe must have a name, can't be a coincidence.
I suggest exploring the subreddit dedicated to Lucid Dreams [1]. Falling asleep while somewhat conscious is a very interesting experience and this even has a name, Wake-Induced Lucid Dream (WILDE).
I've done that once before falling asleep, and more often while napping. It feels like I have conscious control of my imagination- whatever I think about becomes my reality. I find there's usually a theme that it starts out with, and while I might be able to change that I usually just roll with it.
For me it's easier to wake up from it than to fall asleep. Usually to actually fall asleep I have to wake myself up for 5 minutes then drift off again. However, I know that if I open my eyes the effect is gone, so I choose not to which is what makes it "difficult" to wake up. I have successfully opened my eyes and even moved around a decent amount, and then gotten back into that state, one time.
Rich Hickey's Hammock Driven-Development[0] talk is a good talk about how getting away from the computer, and sometimes even sleeping, can be the best way to solve technical problems.
Anecdote: I once came up with a joke in my dream and laughed so hard at it that it woke me up (and my girlfriend). I also sometimes speak in English in my dreams although it's not my native language. There's also several stories of famous writers and scientists who had their "haha" moments while sleeping (James Cameron claims the idea behind Terminator came in a dream).
> But most importantly, our work revives that age-old fantasy of learning during our sleep
Can someone elaborate on how responding to preconditioned stimuli (a voice repeating the same question over and over) can translate to learning things while we are asleep?
My guess - and it is nothing more - is that there may be a possibility of learning procedural tasks, making them more and more automatic, provided that one begins the procedural task prior to falling asleep, as in this experiment.
As noted in the article, brain centers associated with attention are deactivated during sleep, so the possibility of acquiring semantic or episodic knowledge seems remote, as does the possibility of acquiring procedural knowledge without the "start it just before falling asleep" condition.
I thought the same thing, especially right after they explained that the subjects had no memories of the words they "responded" to while they were asleep. I know learning != memorization, but it seems like being able to remember a lesson is at least a part of learning.
Fast forward to the point where we're able to utilize this sleeping brain function to some level of usefulness. I wonder how this sort of sleep-work will affect the quality of one's sleep and their cognitive functioning in the long term.
The dystopian-cyberpunk perspective would say that it'll be a new kind of sweatshop, with poorer people slowly burning out, selling their sleeping hours as the lowest form of labor.
Alternately, we might find that certain people are very good at certain tasks, and it'll be a more like trade guilds.
When I was studying piano as a child, my instructor required me to practice the song I was working on just before going to bed and again when I woke up.
I always assumed this helped my brain solidify the mechanics of the song.
Only slightly related, but I often solve hard(ish) programming problems while I'm in that state between asleep and awake throughout the night. Take that, cliche!
As noted in the article, brain centers associated with attention are deactivated during sleep, so acquisition of semantic knowledge seems unlikely, as you suggest.
The experiment's novel condition was to begin a procedural task before sleep then continue the task as subjects fell asleep and slept, monitoring them the whole time.
This does remind me of a Peanuts comic that my 6th grade teacher had up on the cork board. It had Charlie Brown putting his school book under his pillow, and he said he was going to study for his exam through osmosis.
> At the end of the experiment and after they woke up, participants had no memory of the words they heard during their sleep, though they recalled the words heard while they were awake very well. So not only did they process complex information while being completely asleep, but they did it unconsciously
I think that even while awake, the decision making happens first unconsciously, then it gets brought into our consciousness.
You think that you are thinking about it, but actually you're just waiting for your subconscious to arrive at the answer and tell it to you.
"I think that even while awake, the decision making happens first unconsciously, then it gets brought into our consciousness."
If you aren't familiar with Benjamin Libet [1] and his neuropsychology experiments, I think you will find them absolutely fascinating.
From the article: "This work soon crossed into an investigation into human consciousness; his most famous experiment was meant to demonstrate that the unconscious electrical processes in the brain called Bereitschaftspotential (or readiness potential) discovered by Lüder Deecke and Hans Helmut Kornhuber in 1964 precede conscious decisions to perform volitional, spontaneous acts, implying that unconscious neuronal processes precede and potentially cause volitional acts which are retrospectively felt to be consciously motivated by the subject."
"you've already made the choice. Now you have to understand it." -- The Oracle
Edit: If that's true, its freaks me out. Maybe our intelligence is overrated if we make our decisions while unconscious.
In other words, if I'm making choices while unconscious, are my knowledge, belief, moral compass, etc involved?
Its hard to discuss this topic because the words are used in different ways. We all know what it means to be conscious - aware of our surrounding, alert and responsive. It means the same thing as 'not asleep'.
What's the word for the mental processing we do when awake, but are not personally aware of? Is it also 'unconscious'? Isn't there another word we can use?
>What's the word for the mental processing we do when awake, but are not personally aware of? Is it also 'unconscious'? Isn't there another word we can use?
The similarities with FPGAs/ASICs are really quite interesting.