(This has nothing to do with the post, but the title is so similar that I had to include it. Written a few days after seeing "Inception".
Inception Rejection
(Why the dreams-within-dreams in the movie "Inception" could never happen as shown even if the technology worked as described.)
((Though this would have been a lot easier to do as an essay, the poeming was challenging and fun.))
The basis of "Inception",
although it may leave you confused,
is that in the brain while waking
only five percent is used.
To process things in daily life
this certainly has been plenty.
That mental surplus means our dreams
go faster by a factor of twenty.
The magic device that drives the film
(the idea's at least sixty years old)
allows dreams not only to be observed
but changed as they they unfold.
When this device is dreamt of,
unlikely as it seems,
if used like in the real world,
the result is dreams within dreams.
Inception's filled with dreams in dreams,
each twenty times faster than before.
Unfortunately, here's the problem
this movie does ignore:
Level one's dream factor is twenty;
four hundred at level two.
Level three's factor's eight thousand -
two hours there is less than a second for you.
In the first dream at twenty times
the brain goes at full speed;
there's no excess capacity
that the next dream down would need.
A dream in a dream can only be dreamt
by the real brain at the top.
The faster brain that's in the dream
is no more than a prop.
To go faster by four hundred,
the dream at level two
would need a brain twenty times as fast
as the one you carry with you.
So the speed of the dreams that are further down
could be no faster than the dream that's first.
A quite ingenious plot device
here has its bubble burst.