Ask Lemmy

“Hrmm. I think ‘toiletflushshowerscream’ is a great Lemmy Username” is probably an original one.

Is it possible to know whether you have without knowing all other preceding thoughts?

In the nineties, I read a book by Tim Allen. I believe it was titled I'm Not Really Here. In it, from what I can recall, he tells stories (I think the opening one is about dropping his wife off at the airport), recites facts (the one I remember is about how much a shaving nick can heal per hour of sleep), and explores philosophical concepts.

The last one is the relevant one here. At one point, he pontificates upon the existence of free will. He posits that free will can be demonstrated by thinking of an object that is not inspired by your current perceptions or other external influence. For example, if you thought of an orange when there was no orange you could see or smell; and no one was whispering "orange" to you; and you hadn't eaten an orange recently; and whatever else, then you had free will, as you had a thought that was not externally controlled. I have problems with this theory, but will put them aside from the moment.

Ever since I read that, I think of it any time I try to be creative or ponder free will. I have wondered whether, going along with the concept as described, that means that I lack free will - because attempting to verify it will always be externally inspired by the passage.

If that's the case, does that make Tim Allen my deity?

Before posting this comment, I looked up the book, so in case you're curious: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1058798.I_m_Not_Really_Here

Apologies if I have poisoned anyone else's free will based thought experiments.

edit: Little bit of an improvement in grammatical consistency.

Nope, it's all Simpsons-based up in here.

I don't know because I can't know what every person who ever existed already thought about. Unlikely given the total human population.

How would you know the thought is original if you don't know all thoughts?

I would ask: is it possible for two thoughts to be completely distinct from each other (according to however you're defining original). If no, then by definition only your first thought is original because after that all thoughts can be thought of as a variations on that thought (and you said variations weren't allowed)

I think your definition of 100% original is so restrictive that it kinda loses all meaning.

To actually answer, I think emotional reactions are some of the most original thoughts that I have. Like the experience of pain is original even if you've heard words describing it before. And if it's not original, then it's not original only to your own previous experience. In fact, the experience of having all thoughts/sensations is original, even if some sense of the meaning of that thought is not.

If we replaced the Oceans with orange juice that would probably be bad. But if we all work together we can do it.

I just did it by thinking up this UUID: 4d6b3a08-e1b5-407c-bb6c-cbac830ff4bd

"the annual risk of a given person being hit by a meteorite is estimated to be one chance in 17 billion, which means the probability is about 0.00000000006 (6 × 10−11), equivalent to the odds of creating a few tens of trillions of UUIDs in a year and having one duplicate. In other words, only after generating 1 billion UUIDs every second for the next 100 years, the probability of creating just one duplicate would be about 50%."

I can force an all original thought, but then I wouldn't understand it because I thought of it in an all original language. 🤷🏻‍♂️

From your responses to others' comments, you're looking for a "thought" that has absolutely zero relationship with any existing concepts or ideas. If there is overlap with anything that anyone has ever written about or expressed in any way before, then it's not "100% original," and so either it's impossible or it's useless.

I would argue it's impossible because the very way human cognition is structured is based on prediction, pattern recognition, and error correction. The various layers of processing in the brain are built around modeling the world around us in a way to generate a prediction, and then higher layers compare the predictions with the actual sensory input to identify mismatches, and then the layers above that reconcile the mismatches and adjust the prediction layers. That's a long winded way to say our thoughts are inspired by the world around us, and so are a reflection of the world around us. We all share our part of this world with at least one other person, so we're all going to share commonalities in our thoughts with others.

But for the sake of argument, assume that's all wrong, and someone out there does have a truly original, 100% no overlap with anything that has come before, thought. How could they possibly express that thought to someone else? Communication between people relies on some kind of shared context, but any shared context for this thought means it's dependent on another idea, or "prior art," so it couldn't be 100% original. If you can't share the thought with anyone, nor express it in any way to record it (because that again is communication), it dies with you. And you can't even prove it without communicating, so how would someone with such an original thought convince you they've had it?

I'm a figment of my own imagination.

Every moment of your life, you have been traveling through space and time. Even in the time it takes you to read this comment, you have passed through vast distances on the rock we call Earth.

An inside-out fish regurgitating an upside-down top hat

Not possible. Every aspect of us is born from the material around us.

You ever give a rimjob to someone who can fart the ABCs? They can butt fuck your tongue, while you're tongue fucking their butt.

My name is [redacted] and I approve this message.

Hear me out Play Station..... SIX!!!

I have fun creating comics. I'm pretty sure sometimes I'm the only one who thinks about that stuff

Yes. But I can't write it down or use any words to even attempt to describe it because then it wouldn't be "100% original" 🙄

"ilutfrt K.O. hands"

Would sodium make a good bath bomb, or would a liquid sodium-potassium alloy be better? What about cesium, if price is no concern? How effective would such a bomb be against someone taking a bath? What's the best delivery method; maybe something that dissolves in water like dishwasher pods?

I'm reasonably sure nobody has thought that before.