World Dream Bank topic: MATH AND LOGIC

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Numbers, Math and Logic

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Numbers, math and logic in dreams. Euro-American culture, from well before Freud right up to current dream research, has held that dreams aren't just illogical, they can't add any better than a toddler. Is that true?

Could we be mistaking signal for noise? Numbers do act strangely in dreams, but is that ineptness... or a deliberate choice? I think these discrepancies can be highly symbolic; sometimes satiric, mocking the illogicalities of your waking life, the way "Alice in Wonderland" satirized adult illogic from a child's viewpoint. Sometimes dream illogic can be deliberately teasing you--prompting you to realize you're dreaming, pushing you toward lucid dreams.

Think I'm ascribing too much intent to dreams? Well, why is this culture so sure that dreams lack intent, are some mechanical process? Think of all the other entities in the last century that proved to be smarter than science thought: non-Europeans, women, kids, dolphins, primates, ravens and parrots... Your dreams have access to a brain three times the size of Koko the gorilla's. The size, to be exact, of YOUR brain. If that thing can't handle math and logic, humor, subtlety, teaching... how the hell do YOU?

This list is short not because I've found few dreams of math or logic, but just because they're usually idea-dreams and not terribly interesting as stories. But if you're interested, such dreams can be incubated. If you have a hard math/physics problem to solve, ask your dreams each night to come up with a solution. You may be surprised. Kekulé's dream of the structure of benzene wasn't some fluke.

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	ANNABEL ROSE: by Emily Joy; 2006/12/14, a ghostbusting dream on... love? sex? what? Edgar Allen Poe confronts his dead girlfriend, who wants to drag him into the grave with her... CAUTION: HUNGRY GHOST, SEX TALK
	ARISTOTLE'S WIVES: by Wayan, 1984/5/20, a dueling-philosopher dream. Aristotle keeps marrying my friends and fucking them up. So I challenge Mr. Logic to a shamanic duel... CAUTION: THE F-WORD. OOPS, TOO LATE! LESBIAN FISH, TOO.
	BELL CURVE IN THE DARK: by Wayan; 1982/8/17, a dream on... the gifted? A human pinball game played in the dark, with bells for stoppers, sorting people into a Gaussian bell-curve...
	BELT-SNAKE MYOPIA: by Wayan; 1983/12/25, a dream of innocent sabotage. A shy woman's belt slowly comes alive, but like most snakes, it has weak eyes. Would glasses help?...
	BIKE OVER THE BELL CURVE: by Wayan; 2018/9/25; a surreal advisory dream I'm biking in a construction zone behind a car with a rounded top like a VW Beetle but with a flared skirt like a bell. It stops. I brake but go right up that fringe over the roof...
	BOGNOR MARRIAGE: by Thomas Hood; 1825; a newlywed nightmare I found a honeymoon cottage by the sea, and the old landlady gave me a very reasonable rate. Everything was fine...
	BOGUS: by Ed Pell; 1990/11?; a financial forensic dream DAY: I'm preparing a report on our industry; but the numbers seem a bit odd. DREAM: Someone points out a big inventory generated no sales or income. NEXT DAY: Awake, I hunt for evidence the inventory's real. And find...
	CLOWN POINTS: by Wayan; 2013/3/17, a nightmare about... philosophy? Clowns have a point system like chess masters, & abuse their apprentices to get ahead, just like capitalism--but I think this dream's about the suppression of magic... CAUTION: CHILD-CLOWN ABUSE
	CRANE CRASH: by Anonymous #33; pre-1961, a predictive dream with a crucial hole The crane toppled and fell onto the riverbank. I saw the number, but not if the operator got free...
	CUTE-STUPIDS: by Wayan; 1974/1/15, nightmare-poem about a Tragedy of the Commons Happy beer drinkers from the Now invade the Tower of the Future. Eggheads find idiots as lovable as kittens, and just can't eject them... CAUTION: ELITIST; DISSES TRUMPISM
	DREAM-DENIERS: by Wayan, 2014/5/31, a dream contemplating the meaning of dreams In a museum I talk to a stained-glass artist who's a dreamworker like me. But a meme seems to be spreading that says dreams mean absolutely nothing... CAUTION: ADVANCED DREAMWORK
	THE ENTWINED CHILD AND MADAM PURR-SAY: by PurplePurplePurple; 2013/7/5, twin poem-dreams I dream my autistic son, miraculously high-functioning, recites a math-poem to a crowd... Then I become cartoon cat Madam Purr-Say and chant my own defiant poem at the dream gods... CAUTION: FIRST POEM AUTISTIC, SECOND PISSY
	THE EQUATORIAL BET: by Wayan, 2017/7/24, a dream of a climatological game that politics intrudes on I'm playing 'Drop Me Anywhere' with a friend: I pick the latitude, he picks the longitude. Can I survive naked one day? I pick the equator as my best bet...
	ETHICAL INVESTING: by Wayan; 2012/8/11, a financial-advice dream I go to an investment counselor who asks ME for advice! I lay out a plan, then wonder it'd work in nonfinancial affairs too...
	THE ETHICS OF LUCIDITY: by Wayan; 1994/2/19, a thoughtful dream on time and cause. I'm at a symposium on how our beliefs alter not just the future, but the PAST... CAUTION: CONTAINS IDEAS
	THE EVEREST MARATHON: by Wayan; 1986/4/12, a wild dream epic, part 3 of Unicorn Tag. In the great race up Everest, I become an e-snake, cross 3 eco-bubbles, beg a wary deer-taur to splice my spine, help Ariane my childhood crush, and solve the Dream Equations. Climbing Everest takes not strength but... trust?
	EXPLORATION OF TAROT IMAGES IN A DREAM: by Roswila, 1998; an analytical numerate dream Tarot cards fuse and meanings layer, to warn me I've similarly (con)fused> real and trance-induced memories during therapy... CAUTION: ABUSE ISSUES
	FALL AT THE RIGHT SIZE: by Wayan; 2018/7/14, a dream shape-poem on a lifesaving indecision. I fall off a tower, but I can change size. Tiny things fall slower, but they also tempt the local falcons! Be big & hit hard, or tiny & be eaten? There's a third choice, but I sorta fell into it...
	FIBONACCI: by Wayan; 2011/4/18, a dream-poem with answers My friends are all computer programs. But then, so am I. But it's not so bad, because... CAUTION: DREAM-PUNS
	THE FOUNT OF CANADIAN WISDOM: by Wayan; 1982/11/17; a dream-poem on miracles. Stupid miracles. A Jungian figure dispenses Wisdom. Overwhelmed, annoyed, I try to shut him up by manifesting money out of nowhere. But nothing shuts up the Fount of...
	FREEZE!: by Wayan; 1984/5/29, a surreal dream of asymptotic political advice Demons of fire invade the house, and the Voice of Truth says they can't be killed. What would you do?
	GENNADIUS: by Gennadius, ca. 415 CE, apparently the first recorded lucid dream Gennadius re-dreams a previous dream, helping him see he's dreaming. His guide points out spiritual implications...
	THE GRIFFINS' LESSON: by Wayan, 2018/6/1, a pair of predictive dreamlets I live through two teens' nightmares, then "wake" with them to find they were drugged by a third party! Why? Then I'm with a cheery wagon-crew of flirting griffins & talking horses, pulling a cart made of grammar or logic. Six days later... detailed images from both dreams appear on TV! CAUTION: CREEPY, THEN SAPPY, THEN FREAKY
	HALF PAST FOUR: by J.W. Dunne; 1899, a dream of clocks and time I say it's 4:30 PM; the waiter says 4:30 AM! I wake in the night to find my watch says 4:30, but it's stopped! I wind it, and next morning...
	HANDMADE DIMENSIONS: by Wayan; 2009/3/2, a how-to dream. I meet an interdimensional traveler. Her navigational technique is unbelievably rough! Yet it works. Am I so sure that math and science always need to be precise?
	HOBBIT SNIPER: by Wayan; 1998/10/13, a dream on strategy. I'm a sniper in a desert battle of men against hobbits. Guilty for not fighting openly, but that'd be suicidal... CAUTION: MATH AND WAR
	IS THE DREAMWORLD ROUND?: by Wayan; 2006/7/5; a dream about dreamwork Dreamworlders, exploring our waking world, tell me of their home. Their known dreamworld is just a one little patch on a huge unknown globe...
	IT DOESN'T ADD UP: by Wayan; 1995/6/26, an arithmetical dream. Dream math often seems bad, but I think the discrepancies are a signal, not noise...
	A LIFE IN PERCENTAGES: by Wayan; 2013/5/19, a dream about dreams--and timesharing A man I meet leads half a dozen consistent dreamlives--an experience so splintered that it's hard to figure out which life is his waking one...
	MOUNTING PROBLEMS: by Wayan, 2021/5/22; an anti-Freudian punning math dream. I'm a giant wolf with a human girlfriend. A formula says I must shrink until my paws are 128 times the volume of her feet. But I'll still be way too big for sex! Eight seems more like the right volume... CAUTION: HORNY WOLF, MATH, CLIMACTIC PUN
	THE NIGHT MY NUMBER CAME UP: by Sir Victor Goddard, Jan. 1946, a predictive dream At a party in Shanghai, I overheard a fellow RAF officer say he dreamt that my flight to Tokyo would crash. I didn't worry much, since he'd seen seven passengers, and my flight next morning did not... until three last-minute passengers came on board! The plane iced up, and crashed...
	THE NIGHTMARE EFFECT: by Emily Joy; 2006/12/14, an anti-nightmare. My own fear creates a field of time/speed distortion; can I use it against my attackers?
	OPELS, OPALS: by Wayan; 1990/6/10; two dreamlets that turn out to be predictive I'm car-buying. My friend has an Opel, but it's sluggish AND a gas hog. How can a car be both? Then... I notice a jar of opals that my grandpa gave me has grown dull with algae! Sheesh, more opals gone bad... I wake and head to work. But at a bottleneck, I'm blocked by this loud group talking on and on about...
	PELÉE: by J.W. Dunne, April/May 1902; a predictive nightmare with a scientifically important error I was on an island about to explode like Krakatoa. I warned the French colonial authorities "4,000 people will die if we don't get them out!" but no one listened. I woke. The paper came. "Mont Pelée erupts, kills 40,000". I had missed a zero! But 40,000 turned out to be wrong too, implying...
	PERSONAL CHAOS THEORY: by Wayan; 1994/12/4, a spiritual math dream. My life is a mess, so I take a class on the four flavors of chaos, and find my Strange Attractors are shifting...
	PLANETOCOPIA: by Wayan; 2002- (ongoing Sisyphean project) 19 nondream imaginary worlds rendered in text, art, & sculpture. Most teem with intelligent life--alien Edens! CAUTION: ANARCHISM, NUDITY, MATH, SOCIALISM, EVOLUTION
	POIROT AND THE DICKHEADS: by Wayan; 2010/3/11, a comic antilucid dream I'm detective Hercule Poirot, but I'm losing my case and my brain-- because my story isn't by Agatha Christie, it's a knockoff... CAUTION: PINK DILDO HATS
	SCATTERED TROVE: by Wayan; 2008/5/15; an esthetic-advisory dreamlet I find little cards all over town, each with a check for $512. A fragmented treasure! I wake and see the 512 implies a digital treasure-trove, and search my computer...
	SECRET SCREEN: by Wayan; 2018/4/19 and 2018/5/16, three linked dreamlets of escape A friend nags me to be lookout as he steals a cult's papers. I know it'll end in murder, but foresight paralyzes me! In a videogame that keeps freezing unplayably, I find a button calling up a secret screen of second chances... I'm lost in a grim basement, but two kids show me a cobwebbed glass door you can walk through like air...
	SHELL AND STONE: by William Wordsworth; late 1840s, a dream of a new Great Flood An Arab shows me a stone he calls a book, and a prophetic shell that warns of a flood rushing toward us...
	SHOUT IN A CROWD, or, How to Survey Galactic Civilization: by Wayan; dreamed 2014/4/15, a dream exposing what my brain's up to when I forget my dreams! I wander the galaxy in my dreams, finding and testing crowds to see if anyone reacts to the sound of shouted English or Chinese. One in a thousand does! This implies... CAUTION: SCIENCE AND SHAMANISM DON'T MIX (or do they?)
	SHROPSHIRE: by Wayan; 1985/1/6, a predictive warning dream DREAM: chased by a sniper, I trick him into blowing himself up. Then, in the Watchtower, I know every name & address in Shropshire, but must hide them till all the snipers are caught... NEXT DAY: at work I run across a book with every name and address in 17th-century Shropshire... CAUTION: FATAL EXPLOSION
	SLEDDING NEAR C: by Albert Einstein; around 1890-95; a transcendent career-advice dream Sledding at night, I approached the speed of light, and the stars turned colors I'd never seen...
	SPOON CHALLENGE: by Emily Joy; 2006/8/30, a mathemagical dreamlet. I want to drink the elixir, but negative 20 spoons block me! Can I remove them? With warped teacup logic & reciprocals�
	SWALLOWING NUMBERS: by Jim Shaw; between 1987 & Jan. 1995; a surreal eating dreamlet I was late for something, so I opened my pocket watch and swallowed a bunch of numbers...
	THE THING ABOUT DREAMS: by Julia Wertz, a dream autobiography, 1980-2010 As a kid, my nightmares were of Sesame Street characters. In my teens I graduated to slasher nightmares and recurring lucid dreams. Alcohol trashed my dreams for years, but now they're not nightmares--just surreal. Hitler wrecks my sex life! What a spoilsport... CAUTION: (MOSTLY FRUSTRATED) SEX
	33 EGGS: by "Anonymous #12"; pre-1963, a short, pointless, precise predictive dream I dreamt a farmer gave me 33 eggs in a bucket. On the stair, he handed me 3 more. I woke, told my family...
	TIMER: by Robert Brust; July 1990; a clockish dream. Subliminal, circadian or psychic? In my dream I worry I'm going to wake up late, so I ask what time it is. Immediately, white digits form in the air saying 10:00. I wake, but can't read my clock until I put on my glasses. It says...
	TOO MUCH TO BEAR: by Wayan; 1997/4/28, an alt-world 10p. dream comic or text w/pics I dreamed that huge nouveau-riche polar bears invaded San Francisco, evicting us locals... CAUTION: CORRUPTION, URSACIDE, MATH!
	TRINARY: by Wayan; 2012/3/17, a base-3 dream. I meet a woman named "2-0-1-0", realize that pronunciation means it's not base ten, but mistake it for binary. Not with a 2 in it! It's trinary, and hides a diagnostic message...
	VAMPIRE TESTS: by Wayan; 2015/8/22, a lurid dream-response to a quiet day Captain Kirk is testing vampire myths on a world where they don't bleed you dry. At the moment, three vamps are sitting in a tent in a sunny meadow, queasy but alive... CAUTION: FINANCIAL VAMPIRES?
	WERTZ!: by Wayan; 2023/10/14, a night of cartoonist-inspired dreams After seeing Julia Wertz's cartoon history of her entire dreamlife (on one big page!) I dream Wertz style all night! I don't mind the nightmares--what gets me down is comics' black & white... CAUTION: NIGHTMARES, SEX
	WHAT A CONCEPT: by Anonymous #39, 1996? A logical dreamlet I visit a tribe into simplicity, proud of the fact they limit themselves to 99 concepts. I point out their limit is a concept, so they really have 100. They are not amused...
	WITCH AT THE IRON CORE: by Wayan; 1998/10/16, an engineering-proposal dream. A witch in the future invents a new way to terraform small dense moons--and it'd work!...
	ZERO SUM: by Wayan; 1996/5/29, a game-theory dream. I'm lecturing to a crowd: "Love's a win-win game, and abuse, lose-lose. But blame is zero-sum..."