A more conservative, but less entertaining and less poetic model is:
You lucid dream when your "explainers" and "predictors" are operating on the random feedback and subtle noise that's present while your mind is defragging and moving data from short term to long term memory.
Random noise, with low signal, fed into something that is trained to fill in details kinda explains how Gen AI works, up to a decent approximation.
Your mind has a lot of these predictors and detail fillers. All those are trained on your experience. I think dreaming is either tweaking those predictors and you get to watch, or it's in fact a junk signal you're not supposed to be able to see, but you happen to be kinda awake enough to form memories from it.
Using words like "wake up" imply deeper and darker depths to these networks that I doubt exist.
Descriptions of psychological phenomena organized around made up nouns are not necessarily more grounded in reality than ones that make creative use of existing verbs.
You'll notice we're all in lala land here. You can have a meaningful conversation at a speculative level.
But the nouns are analogies for regular old predictors and detail fillers we know exist. For examples, point to your visual blind spot quick. Or go watch your eyes move with a mirror. Or do any of the really neat experiments in the Coursera course "Buddhism and modern psychology".
I'm extrapolating, and yeah, landing right in the middle of "who knows".
You lucid dream when your "explainers" and "predictors" are operating on the random feedback and subtle noise that's present while your mind is defragging and moving data from short term to long term memory.
Random noise, with low signal, fed into something that is trained to fill in details kinda explains how Gen AI works, up to a decent approximation.
Your mind has a lot of these predictors and detail fillers. All those are trained on your experience. I think dreaming is either tweaking those predictors and you get to watch, or it's in fact a junk signal you're not supposed to be able to see, but you happen to be kinda awake enough to form memories from it.
Using words like "wake up" imply deeper and darker depths to these networks that I doubt exist.