Asklemmy

43760 readers

1215 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

If you were asked to think of something you never thought of before, what would be the most reliable way to do it? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

32 comments fedilink hide all child comments

When I read about how most of our thoughts are repetitive, I wondered if it would be possible for us to have a thought that is completely new or original by will. Is there some way we can have unique thoughts whenever we wish to?

Please note that this question does not focus on our brain's mental capacity or free will to be able to think of something original. You could think of it something like asking you to paint something original; I am not asking if you are even able to paint in the first place, but instead how you would paint it if you could.

Also you should ideally be able to think of something new completely by your own in your consciously aware and normal self, without relying on external factors like taking inspiration from your surroundings or words from a recent/ongoing conversations, looking at the content open in your device, using any drugs or consumables, being affected by strong emotions etc.

Edit: Elaboration in last paragraph

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem, I think, is that all thoughts seem to be a product of previous thoughts. Totally new thoughts are driven by external stimuli. We can, however, mutate an existing thought into a new one.

This is an amazing interpretation of what I had in mind. Obviously you cannot easily think of something that would not exist in this universe, however you could create combinations or alterations of existing objects to form a particular scenario that you would not get to experience in real life, similar to how much scenarios are created in our dreams.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

That's my interpretation of the creative process behind fiction and invention also. You take a familiar concept in your mind and mutate it with the goal of either making something more efficient or effective (invention) or of creating engaging narrative (fiction).