Precognitive Dreaming-A rational explanation?

[Daryl17]

I just want to clear something up, I am a skeptic, I dont believe in fortune tellers, psychics, mediums, ghosts or an afterlife and came to this forum looking for a possible scientific explanation of such dreams, I can happily dismiss dreams that I only remember as the events occur as my brain filling in the blanks, anyway after a bit of research I came up with some quite interesting stuff:

"Immediately after the Titanic sank in the Atlantic Ocean, there were at least two dozen reports of people who canceled their trip because of precognitive dreams they had about the sinking. No one knows how many had the same warning and ignored it, going to a death they could have avoided. There is one businessman that had the same precognitive dream three times and chose to ignore the warning. He still intended to make the trip until a sudden turn in business forced him to cancel."

and...

"Two weeks before his assassination, Abraham Lincoln had a dream that there was a funeral at the White House. In the dream he asked a soldier who was in the casket and the reply was, "the president of United States". Later when he told his wife about the dream, she remarked that he would die in office."

I guess you could put it down to coinsidence, but interesting none the less.

 

[davidsmith73]

Hi Daryl. The various explanations offered here are all possible. But the best way to tell if you are probably having precognitive dreams is to devise a test for yourself. A dream journal is not bad, but it would be very difficult to measure the correspondences against chance.

If you can train yourself to have lucid dreams then that would make things more exciting. See this link about experiments that have been done with lucid dreamers:

http://www.lfr.org/LFR/csl/practical/labexamples.html

 

[Elaedith]

People tend to dream about things that are relevant to their current anxieties and experiences, so a number of these things are likely to actually occur.

Cancelling a trip on the Titanic is meaningless without knowing whether a similar number of people would cancel for similar reasons on similar voyages that don't sink.

In some cases a factor in the environment that could predict later events might be perceived without conscious awareness, and later influence the content of a dream.

 

[Nucular]

"Immediately after the Titanic sank in the Atlantic Ocean, there were at least two dozen reports of people who canceled their trip because of precognitive dreams they had about the sinking. No one knows how many had the same warning and ignored it, going to a death they could have avoided. There is one businessman that had the same precognitive dream three times and chose to ignore the warning. He still intended to make the trip until a sudden turn in business forced him to cancel."

As Elaedith mentioned, people do cancel trips all the time. I personally (through extended network) know four people, none of whom know each other, who 'should have been' in the WTC on 9/11, but for various reasons were unable to make it, or were called away. Obviously, they consider themselves very lucky, but it only takes one to interpret that as psychic to have people cite and exaggerate it. The thing with Titanic predictions is, it was so long ago, and most of the books and articles written about it themselves use secondary sources as evidence; we'd need proper documented evidence to be able to even consider the possibility that any of these claims are true.

"Two weeks before his assassination, Abraham Lincoln had a dream that there was a funeral at the White House. In the dream he asked a soldier who was in the casket and the reply was, "the president of United States". Later when he told his wife about the dream, she remarked that he would die in office."

Again, we'd need proper documented evidence for Lincoln's alleged dream, which is unlikely to exist. Lincoln's wife is for umpteen reasons not the best source to rely on to report someone else's dream. Were any of these events reported prior to the assassination, for example? I wonder how many other presidents have been told they'll die in office, and haven't?

My great grandfather was a soldier in the trenches in WWI. One morning, he woke up and descibed to his bunkmate a dream which sounded very similar to Lincoln's, in which he attended his own funeral, and saw his wife weeping at his graveside. After he'd finished, his bunkmate said "My God! I had the exact same dream, that I was attending your funeral!" Convinced, as he put it, that his "number was up", he resigned himself to his fate. He died in his eighties. I suspect the only reason this 'miss' was reported was that it contains another interesting element, namely a 'shared dream' (which itself has various possible explanations).

 

[GregC]

Sometimes I remember them as they are happening, but the recent one I remembered beforehand and it happened later that day.

Those dreams that you remember as it is happening is called deja vu. There are several thoughts within the scientific and medical fields about what causes this. Many people experience this feeling, including myself. I don't know what causes it, it could be different reasons at different times, but I do know that it is not precognitive.

Those dreams that you remember, think about what they really are. Are you molding similar events in your day to something that is really only remembered vaguely? Are they solutions to your problems you work out in your dreams and apply to those during your day? I've been working on a database problem at work. I dreamed last night about the problem and and the solution. The solution is apparent to me now where it wasn't yesterday. If I go in the office and apply this solution to my problem is it precognitive? No. My mind has worked overtime to solve the problem, even with 10mg of Ambian last night. I think if you really look at your dreams you will see there is is a much better explanation than ESP.

Well, then there is only one rational explanation. The one that is running through the minds of skeptics as they read this thread.

That you are lying.

I don't believe that though, since I myself have had similar dream experiences.

You do Daryl17 a disservice with your answer. There are many rational explanations to these events and the people on this forum can help to spell them out. Yes, lying is one. It is not, in my opinion, the most likely. I have also had similar experiences. I prefer not to look at 'woo' to explain that which can have more rational explanations.

 

[Soapy Sam]

"Lying " means knowing one thing is untrue and deliberately stating that it is true.

There is much evidence that we can generate false memories, so that we genuinelybelieve something which is actually experienced now was experienced before. This is one explanation of the deja vue effect, though not the only one.
If the reporter believes his statement, he is not lying in the strict sense.
Hard for third parties to tell on a board like this though.

I support the dream diary idea. If you can train yourself to keep a written log of dreams immediately on waking, the coincidences will probably diminish in apparent significance. If not, there is $1 million awaiting an accurate and notarised set of predictions.

 

[RemieV]

I don't understand why dreams are credited with so much. They are dreams. They are nonsense. They are vaguely remembered and often parts are left out in the retelling because they don't actually make any sense. A dream isn't a real perceived event. The dreamworld doesn't exist. It's not a place that you go. It's just the brain unwinding.

 

[GregC]

Remie, I agree with you that dreams are credited with too much. I will agree that most are nonsense, not all. The dream I mentioned earlier was during a very light and restless sleep. I do not recall any imagery, only thoughts about the problem I was having. I think almost all of us have had those kind of restless nights when we can't get a problem out of our heads. It's annoying, but every once in a while we have a eureka moment as a result. Yes, the solution worked. I just think my mind took the opportunity to think out a problem with no outside interferences. Last night I took 2 Ambians. The last thing I remembered before waking this morning was hearing myself snore.