[FRIAM] Unpleasant dreams

[Jochen Fromm]

I do not find Paul's book completely convincing. Randolph M. Nesse's book "Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry" shows much more clearly that bad feelings prevent us from doing things which are bad for us. They are threat avoidance programs from our genes. His remark about dreams are interesting nevertheless. He mentions for instance this paper from Antti Revonsuo, "The reinterpretation of dreams: An evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming" in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23(6) (2000).  877–901; 904–1018; 1083–1121.http://behavioralhealth2000.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/The-reinterpretation-of-dreams-An-evolutionary-hypothesis-of-the-function-of-dreaming.pdfRevonsuo argues one function of dreams may be to simulate threatening events. They may help to improve threat prevention by predicting dangerous situations and preparing us for unkown dangers. Some fears seem to be hardcoded but this method has limits. For example we are much more afraid of spiders and snakes than of cars and fast food which are more dangerous to us in the modern worldhttps://nautil.us/how-evolution-designed-your-fear-236858/-J.
-------- Original message --------From: glen <gepropella at gmail.com> Date: 6/3/24  11:04 PM  (GMT+01:00) To: friam at redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Unpleasant dreams I had a conversation with a psychiatrist friend of mine wherein she assumed the dichotomy between "good feelings" and "bad feelings" (e.g. an angry or relieved reaction to some thing like the Trump verdict). Through about an hour of conversation, I'd tried to convince her that dichotomy is false. Bad things are good and good things are bad. The valence we assign is post-hoc. I failed, of course. But...I feel the same way about phobias. It's a bit trite to suggest that we like exploring our fears in a safe environment like at a movie theater with a friend or two. But it's testament to the milieu that monsters vs treasures is a false dichotomy. And it goes beyond some complementarity like banking present pain for future pleasure. It's truly a dual. The highs *are* the lows and vice versa. If there is such a thing as free will, your assignment of valence might be the only freedom you have.I don't know if Bloom explores this aspect. But the body of work spawned from Friston and the minimization of surprisal targets it directly. It's reasonable to believe that *agency* is what provides the common substructure for an explanatory model of the ascription of valence to an experience. The hypothetical to explore is whether those experiences that promote agency are more often ascribed as (or felt like) "good" ones, whether painful, pleasurable, fearful, triumphant, or whatever the token ascribed.On 6/3/24 13:15, Jochen Fromm wrote:> Did you notice that some of the most successful movies from Spielberg are about our deepest fears? Jurassic Park is about monsters from the past. Jaws is about monsters which lurk in the deep blue sea. Indiana Jones is about monsters (and treasures) hiding in dark tombs.> > > Paul Boom remarks in his book "The Sweet Spot" that psychologists have long known that unpleasant dreams are more frequent than pleasant ones. Why is that so? Do unpleasant dreams prepare us for possible dangers or are we just relieved that the are over if they end?> > https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-sweet-spot-paul-bloom?variant=40262533840930-- ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listservFridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriamto (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.comFRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/archives:  5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/  1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
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