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  • 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" 🙄

    • Expressing it wouldn't make it unoriginal... it's when you share it with others and they become influenced by it that it's no longer original on their part if they repeat it in some form or other.

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

    • Just thinking about comics is already unoriginal, something originally created by someone else and that many people have thought about probably countless times by now.

      • I meant the somewhat "original" thought are what I draw and what I make the character talk about. I mean I don't know whether they're really unique but surely haven't seen/read anything similar to that. (also not implying my artwork is worth of praise in any way)

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

  • 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.

    • Very interesting, I can see how that could become like a thorn in the brain. But I can also imagine how an original thought might require an unusual and/or surprising set of circumstances that might cause you to forget Tim Allen's theory just long enough for the thought to occur to you independently... like one of those aha or eureka moments. Also, I'm not sure about the connection you make here to a deity... there are plenty of things firmly planted in our memories, doesn't mean everyone and everything that planted them are gods.

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

    • Sorry, not sure I know what you mean...?

      • Unless you know every thought that has ever been thought, there's no way to know if your thought is original or not.

    • I believe that in this context, original does not mean you are the only person who ever had this thought. I mean, it's a thought that you generated yourself without somebody else having given you the information needed to generate that thought in the first place.

      • Yes, that would count as an original thought... whether someone else had already thought it or not doesn't matter, as long as you yourself thought it entirely on your own.

  • 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.

    • Consider that every thought had to have been thought for a first time by someone. And thoughts and emotions are entirely different things, so that doesn't work. Interesting though, what you said about our first thoughts being original... that hadn't occurred to me, need to think about that one.

      • Are there any two thoughts that are distinct from each other. Or is there only 1 unique thought (Choose any and then all others are a variation of it).

        Also I disagree that thoughts and emotions are entirely distinct. Or does 'thoughts' refer just to language? Are visual thoughts thoughts? And if so, why not remembering the experience of pain?

        Are memories thoughts? Or do I have to be commenting on the memory with language for it to be a thought? I feel like memories are 100% original too, since they're a re-experience of something that happened to you, not based on anything that someone else has previously thought.

  • 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?

    • You've got it. I don't think I was clear enough asking the question. Might have done better asking if anyone's ever imagined anything that's never been imagined by anyone else before in any shape or form... I don't know. Funny, not even sure how to pose the question so it's clear. I tried reasoning along similar lines as you, and ended with the conclusion that every thought must have been thought for a first time by someone... we just got here after the fact. And those thoughts, once original, have all followed us into the present... which tells us it's indeed possible to communicate entirely original thoughts. So, what do you think?

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

    • I'm not sure about the relationship between thought and the materials around us, but I do know that every single thought had to have been thought a first time by someone.

  • 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.

    • Space and time aren't original thoughts... they've already been thought of and about by many others before us.

  • Lots of them.

    My most common pastime is just sitting around thinking about things, and I'm sure quite a handful. I am the only person who's ever thought that particular thought.

    Like thinking about dimensions, the first dimension is a point, the second dimension is a plane, the third dimension is a cube, right?

    Then you cross another fourth dimension and that's time, but that fourth dimension could be thought of as a dot in time, that dot being the present moment.

    That would mean that the fifth dimension is a plane of time, containing all of the possible past moments and all of the possible future moments for that dot as observed by the observer.

    The sixth dimension is a cube of time, containing all of the possible paths and all of the possible futures for every observer within that closed time-like curve universe thing.

    So then what's the seventh dimension? Well, that seventh dimension would be a dot, and that dot contains all of the potential cubes of time and the cubes of existence, in which the original universe is from the observer's viewpoint.

    So then the eighth dimension would be a plane of all of the potential universes that the observer could have possibly existed in, and then the ninth dimension would be a cube of all of the potential planes of universes in which the observer could observe.

    And the tenth dimension is all of that combined together into a single dot, all of the possible universes and all of the possible timelines that have anything to do with the observer who is observing them, folding like an Ouroboros's tail back into its own mouth.

    Of course, there's probably a million ways to disprove this thought, and there's probably an untold number of ways why this thought does not congru with our rational understanding of the universe.

    It is highly reliant upon there being some sort of symmetry between each of the levels of dimension in numeric order, or in some sort of observable order that can be laid out in a numerical format.

    I am aware that it is a flawed thought, but it is a thought experiment and it is fun, and it's one that I came up with just thinking about how the first through fourth dimensions are currently laid out.

    • As soon as you start thinking about dimensions, your thoughts are no longer original cause you're piggy backing off other people's ideas and theories.

      • That's like saying that because there are only 12 notes in music that you can't write an original composition.

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