I think I should have also linked to the memory entry first. Some choice quotes (not that one should necessarily believe everything in the skeptic’s dictionary of course, you should judge its credibility as you would any other source):
Subjectivity in remembering involves at least three important factors:
1. Memories are constructions made in accordance with present needs, desires, influences, etc.
….
(to be honest I’m not precisely sure what this means – but I would definitely want to know more before drawing conclusions about the post facto accuracy of a memory of a dream.)
Another interesting fact about memory is that studies have shown that there is no significant correlation between the subjective feeling of certainty a person has about a memory and the memory being accurate.
Also, since many people probably haven’t followed my earlier links, here is a quote from the dreams entry tailored to the discussion that has emerged:
While it is admitted by most parapsychologists that some amount of coincidence is to be expected between what a person dreams and what actually happens, it is argued that there are too many cases of seemingly prophetic dreams to reasonably explain them all away as due to coincidence. It is true that not all prophetic dreams can be explained away as being due to coincidence. Most of them probably should be so understood, but many of them may be explained away as due to filling in memories of dreams after the facts and many others should be explained away as cases of lying. But the vast majority of prophetic dreams are probably coincidences. Such dreams are impressive to those who lack understanding of The Law of Truly Large Numbers, confirmation bias, and how memory works. If the odds are a million to one that any given dream is truly prophetic, then, given the number of people on earth and the average number of dreams people have during each sleep period (250 dream themes a night, according to Hines, p. 50), we should expect that every single day of our lives there will be more than 1.5 million dreams that seem clairvoyant.
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