Dreaming in Many Worlds

Examining the topic of dreams, generalization and overfitting.

In Erik Hoel's paper, "The Overfitted Brain:  Dreams evolved to assist generalization",   Hoel proposes that dreams may have a specific purpose --  for the mind to sample a vast realm of possibilities related to a topic of interest, exploring fringe possibilities as well as good possibilities.   This process of exploring the realm of possibilities in our dreams leads to improved "generalization" of our understanding about a topic, or a skill.    

Hoel proposes that humans (and AI neural networks) have an issue when they learn new information and new skills --  This issue is called "overfitting".   

Overfitting is when a person is confronted with a new problem, or wants to master a new skill, they will practice and try to solve the best way to overcome the problem, but the various ways in which they go about solving the problem will be somewhat limited.   They will focus in on some successful variants, and some not successful variants.    They may fall into an intellectual rut, or develop bad form, due to learning non-helpful patterns.  These non-helpful patterns are "overfitted" in our conscious mind, and we get stuck on them. 

Learning to Shoot Free Throws - Day One and Night One
Take for instance, a person learning to shoot at basketball from the free throw line.   If you're just now learning to shoot the basketball, and spend all day doing so, you will improve over the day, and you will learn (via cognitive and muscle memory), the specific flow and pattern of motions that lead to making baskets.   But you'll also fall into some patterns of failure, where some of the pattern is corrupted by poor form or distraction, that leads to missing the basket.   At the end of your first full day of practice, you might be a 40% free throw shooter.   Your body and mind has learned much during the day, and remembers some good patterns and some bad ones.  The bad patterns, that you may repeat because you have learned bad form, could be considered "overfitting" -- Overfitting is a remembered pattern that is not helpful to your progression.   

In Hoel's prognosis, if you've spent all day practicing free throw shooting, and go to bed thinking about your technique, your mind will most likely re-run the basketball shots in dreams, and explore the various possibilities for movement and the patterns of muscle and focus.   In dreams, you will "re-run the simulation" an indefinite amount of times, and your sub conscious mind will practice and try a variety of different patterns... many of which might produce ridiculous results in dreams and some of which might produce perfect shots.   

Magnus Carlsen

Chess Grandmaster

"I think that dreams can be a good way to tap into your subconscious mind and get a sense of what's going on in your chess game... Sometimes I'll have a dream about a chess position, and when I wake up, I'll have a new idea about how to play it."

The Magnus Method

This process of the mind trying out a variety of possibilities leads to "generalization" of the knowledge/memory of how to shoot a basketball.   When you wake up, you might focus in on the fact that your dreams were especially bad (dreamed of missing shots), or especially good (dreamed of making shots)... but in both cases, you conscious mind has worked to generalize the muscle memory and cognitive memory, which can help to break any bad form / bad patterns which you might otherwise exhibit going forward.  As you head back to the court on your second day, you may experience that after a nights sleep, you quickly improve the next day, and have less of a chance to fall into any bad form / bad patterns that you may have fallen into previously.  

Hoel, in his paper, says that this is the reason we dream is to "rerun the simulation" of things we are trying to figure out.   By rerunning all the possibilities, even the ridiculous ones, our conscious minds can generalize knowledge of a topic, leading to a better understanding of what is productive and what is not.   Bad patterns will be dissolved / diluted by generalization, and good patterns may be improved by variance and juxtaposition.   

The same process is true of more intellectual pursuits -- if we're learning a game like chess, or trying to solve some mystery of the universe, if we focus on the topic in dreams, our conscious mind will explore all the possibilities, leading to generalization and dilution of potentially bad patterns, and also provide us with new / novel juxtapositions of good ideas which may lead to improving our good patterns. 

The Consciocentric View of Dreams
This analysis by Hoel perfectly fits within the model of Consciocentrism -- Consciousness is constantly traversing this plane of Time * MWI (Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics)   When we dream, our conscious minds are allowed to wander far  away from the moment of now, and explore the realm of many worlds possibilities and time.   Our consciousness runs, and re-runs simulations of possible actions and outcomes and juxtapositions of events in time and many worlds.   We store the information in memory, and when we wake up, we have expanded our conscious view of given topics.   We have tested both probable and ridiculous extremes, and both types of exploration are valuable, to either generalize our understanding of a topic, by diluting bad possibilities with a variety of extreme examples, or by giving us peeks at new, novel possibilities which we may want to try, in order to improve our skills, or solve our problems.   

AI and Deep Learning Neural Networks
Hoel mentions that Neural Networks encounter similar issues to humans when then sample information and try to build knowledge about a given topic.   The neural networks encounter some misleading or fringe information that contradicts truth... this is analogous to humans learning a new skill or topic, and experiencing bad form, or digesting information which is untrue, misleading, or not well suited to the problem at hand.    Hoel, in his paper, suggests that we may actually want AI and Deep Learning systems to explore the idea of dreams... it may be helpful to task AI and Deep Learning Networks with purposefully exploring various fringe and extreme cases which may fail, or new/novel patterns which may lead to better understanding of what is true.    By letting neural networks explore the extremes and the possible "noise" surrounding an issue, it may help to generalize and dilute any noise which would lead to reporting back untruthful information.    

Link to Erik Hoel's Paper - The Overfitted Brain:  Dreams evolved to assist generalization:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.09560

Isaac Newton
Mathematician, Physicist, Astronomer, Philosopher

"Truth is the offspring of silence and meditation. I keep the subject constantly before me and wait 'til the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into a full and clear light."

Magnus Carlsen
Chess Grandmaster

"I think that dreams can be a good way to tap into your subconscious mind and get a sense of what's going on in your chess game... Sometimes I'll have a dream about a chess position, and when I wake up, I'll have a new idea about how to play it."

Magnus Carlsen
Chess Grandmaster

"I've had lucid dreams where I've been aware that I'm dreaming, and I've been able to control the dream... It's like I'm able to manipulate the chess pieces in my mind and try out different moves."

Sara Walker
Astrobiologist, Theoretical Physicist, Professor

"Imagination illuminates the classes of things that can exist only because a conscious agent dreamed of them."

Jason Cooper
Information Systems Engineer, Data Scientist, Consciocentric Creator

"We are three-dimensional beings living in four-dimensional spacetime.   In a state of meditation or lucid sleep, one can consciously detach from the habitual focus of ones individual 3D vessel (our body), traveling forward on our 4D timeline -- and we can experience the wholeness of the 3D environment and 4D space-time block universe.  At this transcendent state, consciousness peers into the five-dimensional many-verse -- The "many worlds" indicated by Hugh Everett's Relative State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics.   The 5D Many Worlds is the canvas for quantum probability, freewill, and the alternate pathways that collective 4D reality may take."

Brian Greene
Physicist, Mathematician, String Theorist, Author

"When the brain’s penchant for simplified schematic representations is applied to itself, to its own attention, the resulting description ignores the very physical processes responsible for that attention. That is why thoughts and sensations seem ethereal, as if they come from nowhere, as if they hover in our heads. If your schematic representation of your body were to leave out your arms, the motion of your hands would seem ethereal too."

Susan Blackmore
Psychologist, Author

"When the quantum coherence in the microtubules is lost, as in cardiac arrest, or death, the Planck scale quantum information in our heads dissipates, or leaks out, to the Planck scale in the universe as a whole. The quantum information which had comprised our conscious and subconscious minds during life doesn't completely dissipate, but hangs together because of quantum entanglement. Because it stays in quantum superposition and doesn't undergo quantum state reduction or collapse, it's more like our subconscious mind, like our dreams. And because the universe at the Planck scale is non-local, it exists holographically, indefinitely. Is this the soul? Why not."