Nope, not me… I’m still trying.
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.
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.
Yes, I’d say our thoughts can be distinct from each other… conversely, I can’t see how all our thoughts can be mere variations of one original thought when we’re obviously capable of thinking about many unrelated things.
Yes, I’d say memories are thoughts when we actively remember, and the experiences they stem from are the origins of those thoughts… but original only to us, not original in nature… unless we’ve somehow had an entirely unique experience.
No, we don’t need to express ourselves vocally in order to be having thoughts… hence, private thoughts.
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?
By original, do you mean an idea that was independently formed or an idea which formed before anyone else could think of it?
A thought that came to you entirely independent of anyone else’s thoughts… something that no one before you has thought or imagined, so that it includes absolutely nothing that’s already familiar to you.
By that definition no human has ever had an “original” thought.
Not true… every thought had to have been thought for a first time by someone, just not by us (it seems).
it includes absolutely nothing that’s already familiar to you
I truly do not believe that any thought exists without context, if you can find any examples I would be happy to be proven wrong.
Well, every single thought had to have been thought a first time by someone, no?
Sure, but by your definition any thought containing any kind of language would not be “original” because it requires familiarity with the language.
Now you’re breaking off into something else that fascinates me… symbolism as a highly efficient method of communication. If you test yourself, you’ll find it takes less time for your brain to process symbols than spoken words… and there’s a very short amount of time in there where your brain understands what it’s looking at without the need of any other language other than symbolism.
In that case, no good ones.
Lol, in that case, I’m not gonna ask.
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.
An inside-out fish regurgitating an upside-down top hat
100% original… fish and regurgitation and upside-down and top hats have all been thought of before.
If we replaced the Oceans with orange juice that would probably be bad. But if we all work together we can do it.
100% original… oceans and oranges aren’t original.
Can I use English words? Because they aren’t original. I’m not so sure about this exercise.
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%.”
A variation of something that already exists isn’t original.
Then the last “original” discovery was “fire”, and I’m not even 100% sure about that. Everything else is a variation of something that previously existed.
An original thought doesn’t have to be the discovery of something.
Does anyone know why UUIDs are split into the chunk sizes that they are?
ls /dev/disk/by-uuid
4d6b3a08-e1b5-407c-bb6c-cbac830ff4bb
Damn. Off by one.
Nope, it’s all Simpsons-based up in here.
Lol, upvoted for honesty.
“Hrmm. I think ‘toiletflushshowerscream’ is a great Lemmy Username” is probably an original one.
Hmm, that might be one, or close… just not sure it’s 100% original.
Thought about it… Lemmy and usernames and what people think of usernames are not original thoughts. It has to be 100% original.
I don’t know because I can’t know what every person who ever existed already thought about. Unlikely given the total human population.
I’m a figment of my own imagination.
Not original, Google it.
I had that thought before google existed. Beaning a high likelihood that I came up with it without someone telling me it.
The first to explore the thought was Plato, approx 2500 years ago. Try again :)
Plato is a figment of his own imagination.
Lol, ok, forget I was here.
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.
A 100% original composition, if you could invent entirely new notes. I know it seems impossible, but it can’t be when every single thought had to have been thought for a first time by someone.
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.
The deity part was intended to be a bit of levity. If free will does not exist, some people might suggest that the brain is just a set of electric and chemical reactions, while others might suggest an external figure such as a god might shape your actions within the world. If the latter, whomever is making the decisions could be said to be planting your thoughts. Since Tim Allen did that to me, it would place him in the category of deity.
A bit of a stretch, perhaps, and obviously the joke fell flat. I’m sorry if the logic doesn’t hold up - I was and am very sleep deprived currently. Sometimes that makes me funnier, but sometimes not. I certainly don’t mean to represent him or any individual as an actual deity.
Oops, I thought you were serious, sorry :)
No worries… I get a few flashes of almost genius, interspersed with many of remarkable stupidity… at least you only need to wake up (or get some sleep).
I keep going back to the fact that every thought had to have been thought a first time by someone, so that it has to be possible to have an original thought. Could it be then that maybe we’ve just finally run out of humanly conceivable ideas?
If you confine your question to thoughts / ideas, I would imagine it’s difficult if not impossible to ever know, depending on how you define a thought / idea.
Far from every thought is expressed and, of those that are, they may often be expressed but missing nuance. As such, even if you have a 100% original thought, you might not even be aware.
Additionally, and again, depending on how you define a thought, I must imagine that there are so many possible permutations that it’s reminiscent about that “deck of cards” fact: there are more ways to shuffle a 52-card deck of cards than there are atoms in the universe (or something like that) … Though, with thoughts, the number of variables likely means it’s at a much greater scale.
However, though original thoughts might be available, any individual is not guaranteed to have one.
If the question is more about a statement or expressible opinion, it becomes easier to quantity.
I’ve had a hard enough time trying to think an original thought without redefining what a thought even is, so its dictionary definition is fine for this purpose.
I can’t fathom how we wouldn’t be aware if some thought suddenly occurred to us that was entirely foreign to everything familiar to us in this world.
Sorry, I don’t understand what you mean that it would be easier to quantity if in the form of a statement or opinion… original is original.
How would you know the thought is original if you don’t know all thoughts?
Wouldn’t matter if someone else had the same thought, as long as you thought it entirely on your own.
