> On Mon, 9 Dec 1996, Schneider John wrote:
>
> > It nonetheless remains your choice to interpret such phenomena as
> > 'choices made by the subconscious', and, in particular, to say
> > that the unconscious mind has some 'direction' that it might want
> > to go in. As for myself, I do not think the subconscious has a
> > direction. I would suggest that it is more like the operating
> > system in a computer, and consciousness is some program. When we
> > sleep, or don't do anything for a while, the OS runs a screen-saver
> > (we dream).... if we turn off the computer (i.e. die), the OS
> > doesn't really care, even though some artificially intelligent
> > program (consciousness) could 'care'.
>
> Well, that view is much in agreement with the author of one of my books on
> dreams: Christopher Evans, _Landscapes of the Night_. Only he compares
> dreams to a kind of self-check or cleanup system, not a screen saver. I
> don't personally find his arguments compelling, but I have kept the book.
> You might be interested in it.
Originally, the point of a screen-saver was to prevent the monitor from
being permanently damaged by a constant image. This is analogous to the
"cleanup" metaphor.
Incidentally, electronic neural network computers designed to learn
continually [i.e., electronics that completely mimic the brain structure]
require dreaming in order to function. They can also have fairly
convincing analogs of the replay-life version of a near-death experience.
[some snippet in a 1995/1996 Scientific American]
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/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
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/ Kenneth Boyd
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