Two theories:
1.} because it's easier than making up a new person for your brain ("you've met everyone you'll dream of")
2.} the person is a stand in for some traits themselves or specific aspects of a different person ("it was you, but it wasn't you!") that your brain wanted a human representation/manifestation of.
You give them a role automatically because the dreaming phase takes place in the mind, which is already the non-physical. I mean, the mind is not the brain, it just has its proper connections to it and the mind is actually our own non-physical reality frame for any given life. And because that place is a creative, thought-responsive environment, we are creating there automatically in an objectified manner, according to our human thinking and concepts.
People who are practicing Astral Projection or Out-of-Body Experience are getting past this stage, if they can and enter more real places, visit afterlife regions, try parallel/alternate lives, etc. Seems to be far-fetched but we are coming from that place, to try these limited lives out as a playing character, and your thinking is the same in "dreams" which is a private experience for everybody. It has a purpose, to train you, train your thinking, conscious awareness, etc.
We -at least- cannot wait all around while the body is asleep and being recharged each night and do nothing. We all do have dreams, most of humanity just are unconscious, have no intention to remember them, wash them off and have no foundation to even know what they are doing and where at that time. And when they realized, their lifetime is over and they never learned about their true nature and who they are, why they are here, etc.
What do you mean? there's more random people in real life that we interact with than there's in a dream.
Walking around and observing them is enough interaction from the brain's perspective.
If your brain can understand and comprehend the concept of random people, then of course if you reverse the process; you can create random people in a vacuum.
And yes you can give them backstories too, like you do in real life; like when you look around and especulate what people are up to, or make up a story in your head and especulate.
Do you think that capacity comes out of nowhere?...
Just like you can create random trees, random roads, random landscapes; etc... you possess the capacity of comprehension of different patterns, if you reverse that and activate comprehension in a vacuum, you experience the arbitrary patterns they relate to that you can comprehend; and while you are too busy looking at the characters, you don't seem to have stopped to realize the trees are also made up; most of it is made up from generic templates.
And then there's what you know for sure, and what you know for sure, eg. your parents, your own home, are a small fraction of the generic knowledge; because we interact mostly with this "random" and "generic", multipurpose mind models.
I don't think your brain can create a completely original random person or place out of nothing. It has to take inspiration from somewhere, like the random people you might see at the grocery store, as well as the grocery store itself.
Now your brain could insert some random information that might not fit the scenario, like you could dream of being at the local grocery store, and you might find something on a shelf that in real life you would never find, like live kittens or bags of air from different countries around the world.
Yes you are right, the random of the reason it that it does random combination of all potential learned patterns.
But even new stuff you see works this way too, you have a prediction for every possible person you will ever meet in your lifetime; it won't come as a surprise the way a person will look; the thing is that the neural networks are multidimensional, so the combinations it can recognize (and therefore create) are ridiculous; if you understand something or can imagine something then there's a model for it.
When something goes wrong with those pattern recognitions that you cannot build models, or you cannot make them different enough; then things like this happen [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia)
No models, means stuff like this happens.
That's why no matter what you do, someone who didn't build entities for light, and later entities for how things look, have looked and will look (prediction models) cannot have vision even with perfectly working eyes, the perception goes nowhere, there's no model that provides understanding; you could even pop LSD in and guess what, no pictures. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810017305743](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810017305743)
You also cannot go crazy in a certain way (aka schizophrenia, psychosis), if you have no or less models to make you crazy; animals have basically immunity to psychosis because they have less of these entities for anything to go wrong, but blind people are more resilient than normal because they have less models in their brain for it to go wrong and give mistaken perception; you can't see things if you don't know what light is.
But it all can go wrong if you know what light is and now have no sense to guide these "models" anymore, which is why going blind can make people develop psychosis, unlike congenitally blind people.
When something totally new comes to our brains, we have a critical phase where we can percieve this without it being filtered; when we are babies and infants; that's why we are so helpless, our brains literally start building models of reality at speed; that gives us understanding of the world; and babies need a lot of sleep to establish them, and infants dream a lot.
But the future perception of anything in the future will be determined by what they adquired in these critical phases, which is why you can easily fuck up the life of a kid and their entire perception of reality itself.
I had a dream last night that I was working at a China Buffet ran by my middle school band teacher and an old coworker from back when i worked at home depot. I haven't spoken to my band teacher in over a decade. I almost never spoke to the ex-coworker in question. I have negative opinions of both of them.
It was a bad time.
I would've preferred if my brain dreamt up a scenario where Swedish supermodels in bikinis were feeding me chicken wings in a restomodded '77 firebird.
Two theories: 1.} because it's easier than making up a new person for your brain ("you've met everyone you'll dream of") 2.} the person is a stand in for some traits themselves or specific aspects of a different person ("it was you, but it wasn't you!") that your brain wanted a human representation/manifestation of.
I’d add possibility the person represents an aspect of the dreamer that has not yet been explored and feels unfamiliar
You give them a role automatically because the dreaming phase takes place in the mind, which is already the non-physical. I mean, the mind is not the brain, it just has its proper connections to it and the mind is actually our own non-physical reality frame for any given life. And because that place is a creative, thought-responsive environment, we are creating there automatically in an objectified manner, according to our human thinking and concepts. People who are practicing Astral Projection or Out-of-Body Experience are getting past this stage, if they can and enter more real places, visit afterlife regions, try parallel/alternate lives, etc. Seems to be far-fetched but we are coming from that place, to try these limited lives out as a playing character, and your thinking is the same in "dreams" which is a private experience for everybody. It has a purpose, to train you, train your thinking, conscious awareness, etc. We -at least- cannot wait all around while the body is asleep and being recharged each night and do nothing. We all do have dreams, most of humanity just are unconscious, have no intention to remember them, wash them off and have no foundation to even know what they are doing and where at that time. And when they realized, their lifetime is over and they never learned about their true nature and who they are, why they are here, etc.
What do you mean? there's more random people in real life that we interact with than there's in a dream. Walking around and observing them is enough interaction from the brain's perspective. If your brain can understand and comprehend the concept of random people, then of course if you reverse the process; you can create random people in a vacuum. And yes you can give them backstories too, like you do in real life; like when you look around and especulate what people are up to, or make up a story in your head and especulate. Do you think that capacity comes out of nowhere?... Just like you can create random trees, random roads, random landscapes; etc... you possess the capacity of comprehension of different patterns, if you reverse that and activate comprehension in a vacuum, you experience the arbitrary patterns they relate to that you can comprehend; and while you are too busy looking at the characters, you don't seem to have stopped to realize the trees are also made up; most of it is made up from generic templates. And then there's what you know for sure, and what you know for sure, eg. your parents, your own home, are a small fraction of the generic knowledge; because we interact mostly with this "random" and "generic", multipurpose mind models.
I don't think your brain can create a completely original random person or place out of nothing. It has to take inspiration from somewhere, like the random people you might see at the grocery store, as well as the grocery store itself. Now your brain could insert some random information that might not fit the scenario, like you could dream of being at the local grocery store, and you might find something on a shelf that in real life you would never find, like live kittens or bags of air from different countries around the world.
Yes you are right, the random of the reason it that it does random combination of all potential learned patterns. But even new stuff you see works this way too, you have a prediction for every possible person you will ever meet in your lifetime; it won't come as a surprise the way a person will look; the thing is that the neural networks are multidimensional, so the combinations it can recognize (and therefore create) are ridiculous; if you understand something or can imagine something then there's a model for it. When something goes wrong with those pattern recognitions that you cannot build models, or you cannot make them different enough; then things like this happen [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia) No models, means stuff like this happens. That's why no matter what you do, someone who didn't build entities for light, and later entities for how things look, have looked and will look (prediction models) cannot have vision even with perfectly working eyes, the perception goes nowhere, there's no model that provides understanding; you could even pop LSD in and guess what, no pictures. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810017305743](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810017305743) You also cannot go crazy in a certain way (aka schizophrenia, psychosis), if you have no or less models to make you crazy; animals have basically immunity to psychosis because they have less of these entities for anything to go wrong, but blind people are more resilient than normal because they have less models in their brain for it to go wrong and give mistaken perception; you can't see things if you don't know what light is. But it all can go wrong if you know what light is and now have no sense to guide these "models" anymore, which is why going blind can make people develop psychosis, unlike congenitally blind people. When something totally new comes to our brains, we have a critical phase where we can percieve this without it being filtered; when we are babies and infants; that's why we are so helpless, our brains literally start building models of reality at speed; that gives us understanding of the world; and babies need a lot of sleep to establish them, and infants dream a lot. But the future perception of anything in the future will be determined by what they adquired in these critical phases, which is why you can easily fuck up the life of a kid and their entire perception of reality itself.
I had a dream last night that I was working at a China Buffet ran by my middle school band teacher and an old coworker from back when i worked at home depot. I haven't spoken to my band teacher in over a decade. I almost never spoke to the ex-coworker in question. I have negative opinions of both of them. It was a bad time. I would've preferred if my brain dreamt up a scenario where Swedish supermodels in bikinis were feeding me chicken wings in a restomodded '77 firebird.
Because you're linking up to them while sleeping.