Thread: No Such Thing As An Original Thought?

I have no issue with you, LDyogi. I just wanted to clarify how I see things as far as I can reasonably tell. When I think about making love to my wife under my roof, with my body at my particular address somewhere on the globe, nobody on the planet is having that thought and never did before and never will a posteriori. Even after I have mentioned having such thought to people, others may try envisioning what it is like to be me acting in such a way and having that particular thought about it, but nobody will replicate such thought with every itty-bitty detail.

Originally Posted by LDyogi

What quote is that from?

I wasn't aware I was quoting anyone - that's my perception. Do you know the limits of telepathy? I don't. Especially after experiencing telekinesis through remote viewing. Scary stuff. How would you go about controlling your thoughts if every single thought was actionable?
I tried enforcing the rules of "Simon Says" with that. It doesn't work. Not for long anyway.

As for which came first - the chicken or the egg?

It was the egg which was created - usually explained as "by God" which makes perfect sense IF you understand "God". MOST people don't. And that also explains why other than realizing that you've never had an original thought, how difficult it is to experience an original thought.

My observation is that a lot of people confuse cognitive ability as being original thoughts

Now, there are a number of things I do agree with you. The egg does indeed come before the chicken because their gallinaceous ancestors—not to mention unrelated mammals that came before it—were already producing eggs long before a creature that could be called a chicken emerged in the course of evolution by natural selection. At least this is my reason for agreeing with you on this point.

I also do not think any sentient being in the universe possesses free will, but they may think they do. I'm very much a hard determinist! Living things do have a will, but it is predetermined by natural forces they do not control. Having said this, I do believe that the biblical usage of 'free will' as it was meaningfully intended from the outset, is appropriate because determinism is not fatalism—from our vantage point, we may still make decisions as influenced by the past and because we don't know what the future holds for the most part. Determinism does not rob us of the illusion of control in any way, shape or form.

I don't know if Jesus Christ ever existed, but I recognise that at least he can symbolically represent a paragon of virtue that may influence human beings on how to conduct themselves; and logic here dictates that no free will is required if an individual is to impact the behaviour of another by example. In a similar vein, God may represent an ideal that no mortal creature can ever reach or emulate, but He may inspire us all to at least attempt to be the best version of ourselves with the little time that we have left here on Earth.

And this is coming from an atheist (in relation to how most people purport to conceptualise God).

P.S. Determinism and free will may seem off-topic at first but thoughts are pertinent because they influence action which in turn influence thoughts. Theology here may also have been somewhat pertinent because each individual conceptualises, and therefore thinks about God, in different ways—differences in thought about the same deity are also found between members of the same religion. Even atheists think about God in different ways which lead them to reject the concept outright for a number of reasons which can make the difference between being de facto, militant, or sympathetic about it as a useful meme.

Original thoughts happen all the time; it's just that most of them are stupid.

Seriously, we are all hard-wired for original thinking -- for solving problems on the fly, and often problems that never happened before. That hardware seems, these days, to be focused on creating things like apps, games, and new ways to look like an idiot on Youtube. Original thoughts that drive revolutionary new inventions, a la fire, light bulbs, quantum mechanics, internal combustion, seem much rarer these days... but I wonder if that's only because original thoughts are now just albeit important cogs in the vast machinery of modern innovation: thanks to things like the internet, and the ever growing ocean of information 7 billion humans swim in, it seems that original thoughts -invention-wise, are very rare. But collective original thoughts, like the ones that create those apps, seem to be far more common than they were, say 100 years ago.

But that's thoughts that create things that didn't exist before, or perhaps add to things that already exist in an original way (i.e., smart phones). Pure, original thoughts in areas like philosophy/metaphysics, the arts, even mathematics or astrophysics might be a bit harder to come by these days. I think that's because we might be at a bit of a plateau, intellectually. We might need to have a moment of collective transcendence or perhaps that always-coming (I think it's 2028 now) Singularity that Ray Kurzweil preaches about before individuals can have the wherewithal to think in truly original terms. I've always thought that LD'ing might just be a tool to help lift us from that plateau, BTW.

As usual, this all sounded way better in my head...

I'm with you Sageous, that LD'ing is a tool to lift us higher - that's why I'm here!

Originally Posted by LDyogi

What quote is that from?


It was the egg which was created - usually explained as "by God" which makes perfect sense IF you understand "God". MOST people don't. And that also explains why other than realizing that you've never had an original thought, how difficult it is to experience an original thought.

My observation is that a lot of people confuse cognitive ability as being original thoughts

How do you know that people most people don't know about god? What made you come up with that conclusion?

By the way, If you want to talk about religion, you probably want to keep it in that Religion/Spirituality forum. Here: https://www.dreamviews.com/philosoph...forum-now.html
Here: https://www.dreamviews.com/extended-...keep-mind.html

Since that this is a separate forum from Religion/Spirituality forum.

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Originally Posted by LDyogi

I'm with you Sageous, that LD'ing is a tool to lift us higher - that's why I'm here, looking for stimulation and sharing my thoughts because ignorance is very contagious and a forum is the best way of locking it down and masking it up and vaxxing against it by exposing it for what it is but peoples beliefs/hypnosis are a real obstacle and hard to overcome so I became a pro-button pusher, fence tester and trigger programmer trying to figure out how best to awaken the spiritually dead


Maybe I should just allow this global depopulation agenda underway right now to continue - are you kidding me??!!!

Btw, LDyogi. Let's stay on topic.

Originally Posted by HumbleDreamer

How do you know that people most people don't know about god? What made you come up with that conclusion?

I respectfully submit that I said nothing of the sort. I'm guessing you read the post too fast but I thank you for those links, which I am already aware of, and I apologize for going slightly off topic in my last post. It seems Summerlander has an issue with me too. I understand there is a difference between cognitive ability and original thought.

My experience is unique because there is nobody on Earth in my shoes right now—quite literally. Nobody knows what is like to be me apart from me because for anyone to know what it is like to be me they'd have to be me. And if I think about my unique experience and vantage point—from reviewing memories of my unique life to the unique physical position I'm in right now that permits me to view my colourful walls from a certain angle and the sound that my dog makes when he barks from a few feet away from me—and formulate a thought or two that sum up such experience (whether in speech or imagery format), my brain is, in every sense of the word, generating a truly original, thinking experience. Sure, thinking itself as a mental act isn't anything new, but its qualia as it phenomenally emerges is like no other.

Boom!

I think our differences regarding this topic might be due, in part, to semantics. For instance, I would say that the first Web browser and Web server, in their unique design, was originally envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee, the World Wide Web Consortium director. Berners-Lee's vision of the Internet was original in its uniqueness and brand regardless of dissimilar precursory ideas for global wireless communication such as Nikola Tesla's as Sageous or HumbleDreamer pointed out (I think). Others would say so-called original thoughts are not really so by virtue of having been inspired by precursive thought processes as we can only think based on things we already know—a wellspring of new ideas and creativity in general.

By the way, I think you might like my thread, 'The Teleological Mind' in the religion/spirituality forum.

Originally Posted by LDyogi

Oh, my! For most people, this simple post comprises an original thought!

Sorry, I'm not that shallow. Here's some more semantics to deal with...
While it is true that I have never experienced those thoughts until just before I wrote them down, not even hearing or reading these words from another source, these thoughts are nothing more than a reaction to a situation - which also reveals the cognitive ability of the reptilian portion of my brain (or what exists of it).

The only original thought I have ever experienced is when I experienced the realization that I've never had an original thought. That experience was original for me because every thought I am able to manifest is rooted in my awareness of the matrix around me. Even the ability to exercise a thought is under constant attack and manipulation by this matrix.

Writing music is an original work, not an original thought, but it can represent the experience of an original thought. Take the song "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin for example.

This is what I'm aware of. This is my perception. This is where my pursuit to awaken my consciousness has brought me. Maybe I should read a few more books.

Maybe I should go back to sleep and hope for an awesome LD, because if I try to create one, then it is not a dream.

But thanks for inviting me to the thread, 'The Teleological Mind' Summerlander! I'll get to it as soon as I can as a bunch of new stuff to deal with just came into my life. Funny how that works. Sorry, I just have a lot on my plate right now.

I understand, LDyogi! Life can be unexpected and I hope everything works out fine for you.

I think all of us can never read enough books. I just understood the reasonable distinctions you made around cognitive abilities, original work and thought processes. And you might be right about the absence of originality by the way, which is why I tend to stress from time to time that I never state things with 100% certainty—I can only speak about how things seem to me according to epistemology.

If I only take into account the history of our planet and my unique existence on it like other individuals, then we are all ostensibly original through and through. But if I extrapolate from the reality of living in an apparently infinite cosmos with only a finite number of matter configurations possible according to its physical laws and constants, then I must be prepared to accept that it is more than likely that a plethora of repetitions strewn all over the space-time fabric is to be found. If this is so, Earth's makeup and history has been mindbogglingly replicated ad nauseum to infinity and beyond and perhaps what is happening here and now has even already occurred many aeons ago elsewhere in space if Earth analogues are to be found in the past, present and future.

If such is the case, and there is a good chance that it is mathematically true, then none of what has taken place since the natural foundation of this world up until now and into the future—including actions and subjective events of sentient beings—is original.

Perhaps the only original event that ever took place was the creation of the universe itself, in which case, I would have to concede that you win the argument and pro-originality is rendered moot. As you said when you quoted the Gospel of John, 'In the beginning was the Word ...' As someone great once said,

'Maybe it is not possible to formulate a theory of the universe with a finite number of statements.'~Stephen Hawking

PS. Led Zeppelin, Sabbath, Cream, Deep Purple ... Great bands! Classic!