Why can't i read digital displays in dreams?

andyandy

anthropomorphic ape
andyandy
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Very strange - it happened to me for the first time, i dreamt that i had woken up - and looked over to see my alarm clock was a jumble of red digital lines. Now, everything else was perfect enough for me to think that i was really awake, yet obviously a digital display was beyond my brain....

why?
 
I can never read anything when I dream. Any text is, as you say, a jumble of lines. I guess I simply don't dream in enough detail.
 
I have read a digital clock in a dream, or really I dreamt that I read a digital clock. I don't think it's any deeper than "neurons are firing, which your forebrain interprets as a digital clock with a scrambled display"
 
I once watched an episode of batman the animated series, and the central plot point was that batman found out he was in a dream ( created by the riddler i believe) because he could not read anything.

Personally i have found if i know what something is going to say ( let's say an open sign, or a mcdonalds sign. Or a note that i know what is likely to be said in.) i can read it fine, but if i do not then it usually is non distinct. I think the non reading comes from simultaneously having to read and create what is being read. If you have an inkling of what your going to see , your mind probably has a bit more of a buffer to create the text.
 
For me, it's not easy reading in dreams. In a casual dream, it jumbles. In a lucid dream, I can hold it together to read it, but it takes some effort.
 
andyandy said:
Very strange - it happened to me for the first time, i dreamt that i had woken up - and looked over to see my alarm clock was a jumble of red digital lines. Now, everything else was perfect enough for me to think that i was really awake, yet obviously a digital display was beyond my brain....

why?
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Probably a brain tumor.

Kidding.

Trying to read anything in a dream only happens to me when I'm having a realistic/lucid dream and I actually think I just woke up. I don't think I ever have. I had a poster on my wall once said "Evolve." In my dream I knew this, so I don't think I had to read it, but it felt like I did. But I wondered of I was really awake and tested it.Looked away from the poster and then back to see if it changed. Yep. Poster-shaped hole in the wall with metal gears and cogs grinding in a dark space. Scared the **** out of me and I woke up.

Dreams can be really interesting.
 
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KingMerv00 said:
I'm pretty sure I can read in dreams so I don't think the problem is universal.
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googling - it appears i'm not the only one at least :) :

Things like checking the clock, reading text, turning on light switches, or (my favorite) looking in a mirror.

During dreams these things will almost ALWAYS be odd and obscure. Digital clocks will display a different time every time you look back at it. "1:15" one second and the next it'll say something like "9:30". Very weird to experience, BIG tip off that you're dreaming.

Same goes with text, sometimes its not even legible along with changing every time its looked at.
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http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100531125024AAOWmeA
 
Reading displays or text in dreams and then rereading them and recognizing a "shift" is the key to training yourself to lucid dream. With practice, once you recognize the shift you can realize you are dreaming and then take control of your dreams. Text, electronics, and light switches are notoriously faulty in the dreamscape, although I can't offhand recall the "why" of why that is. It's just universal; the brain struggles to hold the image/ maintain gadget functioning on the second go around. Take it as a sign that it's time to expand your dream life.
 
Hmm... I have definitely had the "shift" before, but I can only remember digital clocks from anxiety dreams where I am late for something, so it tends to make "sense" narratively.
 
Clocks are one of my favourite reality checks. Look at it, cover it up, look at it again - Behold, the time changes.

I USUALLY can't read in dreams, but it has happened.

Mirrors are a riot, indeed. It's usually some entirely jumbled/fuzzy image of what you'd expect to see.
 
The mirror check doesn't work for me. I maintain an image of myself.

But reading always works. Frustrating, too, before I realize I'm dreaming, to go back to review an earlier sentence and find that it's been rewritten.
 
I can read to some degree in my dreams. I have often had the dream having to be on time for something and looking a clock showing I was already late. The time on such a clock is always crystal clear, but of course I already have a prior idea of what it might show. I also once had a dream that was entirely spoken in French (despite the fact that my French is atrocious. It was no doubt gibberish), but luckily there were subtitles, which I could read clear as day. Which of course brings us to how television influences the way we dream. Perhaps in earlier times when people got most of their passive entertainment from reading books, people could more easily read in their dreams. And perhaps the Chinese who use a writing system consisting of highly stylised pictures with lots of associations might have less of a problem with it.

Reading texts that are completely unknown is no doubt difficult, because not only do you have to read it, you'll have to actually write it first; everything is constructed in your head. I sometimes dream that someone is about to tell me the answer to a question that I don't know the answer to myself, either because it is a profound philosophical question or because it is something that requires information that this dream person appears to have but not me. I then invariably wake up, disappointed that I didn't get the answer. It's no wonder because I would have had to come up with an answer myself.
 
I think it was in Waking Life that one of the characters suggested trying to turn the lights off to see if you are dreaming. But I never made it to the end of the movie because of the pretentious ********.

A lot of mine now are incredibly vivid (but not "graphic") which I attribute to some medication. Or beer.
 
I must be weird. I can read pretty much anything in my dreams (meaning, if in the dream I'm supposed to be able to read it--English, French, and obscure weird signs intelligent dinosaurs use to communicate when I'm dreaming I'm an intelligent dinosaur). I can read clocks, analog and digital. I can even feel in my dreams, which leads to some really, really weird thought processes. I once dreamed that I stabbed a guy with a rapier (we were in a war, he was an enemie and had a flintlock), and the first time I cut into raw meat after that shook me a bit.

The weirdest for me was the time I dreamed that I fell down, and I tried to stand up. The bizzar part was that I felt my pillow, and my beard getting stuck in the zipper (not painfully, just a slight tug of a hair straightening then being released). For a few seconds I had control over my dream body and my waking body. That's not supposed to happen, far as I know. And it gives you a bit of a headache.

I think the fact that my sister and I spent a lot of time developing our imaginations plays into my dreams. I don't mean playing Let's Pretend--any kid can do that. I mean if I said that I had a sword, she'd ask what kind of sword. And if I said something a week later that contradicted it (assuming it was the same story) she'd call me on it. And I'd do it to her. It got to the point where we could both spin internally consistent worlds at the drop of a hat. To the point where we'd come up with the SAME story at the drop of a hat (Mom HATED that one, because interegating us separately didn't do any good after that point). Once you start exercising your mind like that, little things like consistent words in a dream are easy. :)
 
Earthborn said:
Reading texts that are completely unknown is no doubt difficult, because not only do you have to read it, you'll have to actually write it first; everything is constructed in your head. I sometimes dream that someone is about to tell me the answer to a question that I don't know the answer to myself, either because it is a profound philosophical question or because it is something that requires information that this dream person appears to have but not me. I then invariably wake up, disappointed that I didn't get the answer. It's no wonder because I would have had to come up with an answer myself.
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I think that nails it. When awake I certainly can't write at reading speed (not even the most dry unartful prose, like this post) and I doubt any part of my brain can generate instant coherent informative text on demand. So reading in dreams will always be either slowed (struggling to make out a few words at a time), incoherent, abstracted (e.g. a "reading montage" in which I learn something by reading without actually experiencing the process of reading the words), or otherwise uninformative (such as reviewing a passage already memorized in real life).

Respectfully,
Myriad
 
Reading in a dream. For me it's a very interesting situation.

I clearly recall a dream where I was taking an exam at university. I was at a desk and sort of looking around and the exam on the desk in front of me wasn't a point of focus of the dream.

However, since I always have an awareness of the fact that I am dreaming I realized that I had an interesting opportunity. I decided that I would read the 1st question on the exam, and see if it made sense when I woke up! Would my dream add in a sensible question?

So I turned to look at the test and focus on the 1st question, and my vision blurred. Hmm.. I looked away and my vision was clear again. So I turned to the test again and quickly tried to read the 1st question but my vision blurred again.

It was as if the part of my brain that was generating the details of the dream said "Oh crap, how am I supposed to come up with a question that makes sense!?!"

So it didn't, and instead prevented me from reading the question.

Since then I've noticed that any time there is a piece of paper in my dreams, I cannot read it. My brain just won't allow it.
 
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