h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"Pickover's scale could conceivably be used to measure how strange your dreams are" - I don't think so. My dreams vary from about 60dR to well beyond the end of the scale as outlined in this entry. I dream about things like triangular planes of light slicing up space and a different universe being enacted in each slice, while I think about them all, or other more complex things which can't really be described in English at all.

It isn't an objective scale though is it?

It is rather and impractical - how can events be compared and 'unreality' measured consistently? It is all very well comparing events and ordering them by how surprising they are, but it seems meaningless to apply values that make it seem as though an event's surprisingness can be measured objectively, like wind speed or noise level.

It would be more acceptable if it were portrayed as a simple subjective aesthetic scale eg how attractive is that person, on a scale of 1 to 10?
Putting in exponential scales appears to be adding scientific sounding detail to add verisimilitude to what is actually garbage - it irritates me in the same way as explanations of astrology, rationalising that it *is* meaningful if you only go into enough detail about when and where someone is born.

Pimms

-- scoring a large spitoon on the Hawking scale --

if a gerbil were to knock on my door on hawkings scale it would be both very close to 0dr and 140dr because i had a gerbil and when he was in his ball he knocked on my door from the hallway and if he spoke i would be in a mental institute because people would think that i think that gerbils talk, even though i think gerbils can understand you.

i know the smiley is a mouse closest i could find

That's nothing. I once had a dream where me and George Bush played tennis at a specially built course at my university which was also my house, and when I went upstairs to put on my shoes to play, the second story was a hospital.

I mean, George Bush in a University.

I had a dream once where my 5D house with apparently one wall going all around and having distinct classical edges which was not my house except it was got taken over by my family. I then had to help the Simpsons get it back. There was alos a lot of other stuff Which I can't remeber, but was even weirder. Bikinis and paddling pools may have come into it at some point. This would be what, 100dR? Most of my dreams are even weirder, which is probably why we forget them - if we could remember all of them, we'd go insane.

I defenitely agree with that last comment...if we could really understand our dreams we would go mad.

i think that dreams tell us what will or could happen in our future life the ones which are really similar to real life(deja vu). the ones i think is just our brain playing around with concepts which could occur in an alternate realty.

like the entry

what does a 5D house look like?

did you beat george bush at tennis?

would a high dR really cause mental damage? i dnt understand how.
whats the name of the objective earthquake scale that is rated by how strong a person thinks the earthquake was, presumably there could be a unimaginably high dR and we'd never know because everybody who experienced it would have their brain turned to mush, is there a limit to the level of dR.

SuperSam

Um, I think the reality scale would have to be recalibrated relative to its era. If Julius Caesar, for instance, took a time machine to the year 2004, he would be exposed to a dR level of at least 140, because all the assumptions of his society would have gone comp-letely out the window. Electricity, DVDs, gay marriage, space stations orbiting the planet, a space telescope, alien languages everywhere he went. Even Christianity would be alien to him. Representative government, no slavery, flush toilets, office buildings more than 100 stories tall, women with the right to vote.... The only things that he would find familiar would be holly at the winter solstice, and government corruption.

But you don't have to go all the way back to someone from Julius Caesar's time. Try telling someone five years ago that the following scenario belonged at the 0 dR level: A scumbug hiding in a cave in Afghanistan coordinates a cluster of simultaneous airplane hijackings that results in the toppling of two of New York's tallest buildings, and severe damage to the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

Now, as for the dR rating of my dreams, I take great pride in their very high dR levels. Last night, I dreamed about a blond-haired Japanese man who swam up a street in New York, and went from apartment to apartment trying to find someone who could help him rediscover his real identity (he was apparently an amnesiac).

My favorite dream of all time was the one in which I am showing the Queen of England around the Boston (Massachusetts) subway system. I leave her for a minute to fetch something, and when I try to get back to her, I can't find her. Unlikely but possible, right?

nice entry on interesting topic dreams are as real as mirages only we do not know if it is water or a mirage mind has three aspects conscious,
sub-con
un-con
so the things we see are stored in all these aspects they tell us later or in advance what is the reality we can not interpret them for instance heading north if one is sitting facing the south he is seeing things already passed by

Julius Caeser would have recognized gay relationships, as they were very important in the Roman World. Also flush toilets...

Is that normal?

<>

No I didn't. When I came back down after getting my shoes he was gone, but there was a crane above the tennis court with a bomb on it, and Bush was driving up to the tennis court in a four-door sedan. So I quickly pulled out a pistol and shot the bomb, it exploded before the car got there, George Bushs life was saved, and I woke up.

So the concept of me saving George Bush has to be above 120dR at least.

why were you dreaming about bush anyway?

I wish I knew.

I try to avoid coverage of political figures, so I won't dream about any of them.

maybe it was a freak.

Maybe it was really, really unreal.

Maybe I'm a freak.