Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 15:07:25
From: marc robinson
Subject: Re: I need more thoughts

At 09:44 03/11/98, Maurizio Mariotti wrote:

>I read somewhere that we think 50,000 thoughts a day.
>It is now 9:37 AM and I believe I have had so far about 30 to 35
>thoughts.
> I suppose I still have a way to go, before the end of the day.
> I mean, I need more thoughts.
>
> Will you lend me some of yours, to meet my daily quota? I shall
> return them, I promise. Slightly used, but just once, practically as
> good as new and I will not corrupt them. Maybe just a little, but not
> beyond redemption.

50,000 is an odd sort of number - roughly one thought per second of a longish day's wakefulness. Most of these must be duplicates, or dumb reflex stuff that hardly qualify as Proper Thotz all by themselves; that would be like counting individual ascii characters, or individual IP packets, as "posts" - which may be technically true, but not a really measurement in human terms.

How many thotz in an idea? And how many ideas do we need to make a day's consciousness worthwhile?

Some people manage a whole lifetime on one idea, after all.

Nicolson Baker goes into this idea at some length (as he is wont to do) in his essay "The Size of Thoughts", in a collection of the same name...

How many thotz does that make, Maurizio?

=-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 15:05:16
From: Maurizio Mariotti

Architext wrote:

> this should spark quite a bunch... why don't you consider exactly _what_
> constitutes a single, discrete 'thought' and wether subconscious
> 'thoughts' count as well...

Ok, I'll make them count and I'll throw dreams in, for good measure. I am still *way* off the 50,000 mark. Any thoughts?

Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 07:56:29
From: Owner

Dreams "occur" instantaneously. You can pack an entire "day's" worth of interesting thoughts into a few minutes, why should it be suprising that during a day we have a large number of thoughts?

A thought need not be significant to count "my leg hurts because I hit it on the table - oh".

If we were only to count "significant thoughts" then we'd only have one every year or so, and then only for significant people.

=-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 16:24:48
From: marc robinson

Quoth Owner:

>Dreams "occur" instantaneously.  You can pack an entire "day's" worth of
>interesting thoughts into a few minutes, why should it be suprising that
>during a day we have a large number of thoughts?

not surprising at all, of course, if we choose to define a thought in certain particular ways -- but as with so many other phenomena, the closer we look at them, the harder they become to quantify. I've raised the distinction between thoughts and ideas to exegetize that, er, thought. Or idea.

>If we were only to count "significant thoughts" then we'd only have one every
>year or so, and then only for significant people.

Significance is a highly subjective and contingent business, assigning value to one spurt of electrochemical static over another. Weighing the significance of a thought will only drown it in more and more thought. It might be more useful to think of thoughts in terms of threading -- or perhaps we've found a use for memetics (heh - finally!).

=-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 10:36:49
From: "Robert A. Kezelis"

On Tue, 3 Nov 1998, marc robinson wrote:

> Weighing the
> significance of a thought will only drown it in more and more thought. It
> might be more useful to think of thoughts in terms of threading - or
> perhaps we've found a use for memetics (heh - finally!).

Marc raises an interesting thought. which brings up mine. It is possible to 'raise' a thought, but is it possible to drop it? Recent experiments where the subject is asked to do free association, then asked to repeat the process, but NOT to mention and not to think about elephants have shown that it is exceedingly difficult to "drop" a thought.

Are we capable of thinking of more than one thing at a time? probably. Our internal connections may not raise every issue mulling around in our skulls to our 'conscious" level, but they continually lurk and are processed down there somewhere. A great example is an effort to calculate or make sense of a difficult problem. math, science, law are great examples of that. If, during your concentration, you have not solved the problem, but then become distracted, part of your mind continues to seek out a solution. When the solution nears completion, your brain signals itself to interrupt the topic (or conversation, TV program, radio, whatever) and advise your conscious brain that this new signal should overide the present activity. That implies that there are many levels of activity, sometimes fighting each other for control or the most imediate attention.

what a thought.

=-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 15:05:16
From: Maurizio Mariotti

Angela Dudfield wrote:

> Are you sure you know what you are letting yourself in for by asking to
> borrow other people's thoughts?  If some of my thoughts entered your mind
> and pervaded your being you might run, screaming..

Try me.

M, a vampire of the mind

=-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 07:22:35
From: Sebastian Mendler

Okay, here are some that I had lying around...

1. I should never have said that to her.
2. Damn, I have a lot of deliverables.
3. Cool song.
4. What the hell was *that*?
5. (The image of the girl in the convertible in the song "Boys of Summer")
6. Don't forget to drop off the storage space payment.

I have some more, but they're buried under some repressed garbage; as soon as I can achieve some catharsis, I should be able to get to them...

=-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 07:40:18
From: Sebastian Mendler

On Tue, 3 Nov 1998, Maurizio Mariotti wrote:

> I am still *way* off the 50,000 mark. Any thoughts? 

Well, what you need is a recursive thought generator -- something that will set off a cascade of thoiughts about thoughts, [(meta)^n]thoughts...

I recommend judicious use of nitrous oxide.

=-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 09:40:24
From: "Robert A. Kezelis"

On Tue, 3 Nov 1998, marc robinson wrote:

> 50,000 is an odd sort of number - roughly one thought per second of a
> longish day's wakefulness. Most of these must be duplicates, or dumb reflex
> stuff that hardly qualify as Proper Thotz all by themselves; that would be
> like counting individual ascii characters, or individual IP packets, as
> "posts" - which may be technically true, but not a really measurement  in
> human terms.

Hey marc, Maurizio, I protest your monopoly on thoughts. As we all know, the world is filled with people who are completely thoughtless. Most of them appear on televised news programs, sitting in front of the camera, wearing their TV make-up, smiling that "oh so insipid" smile, and reading text that makes no sense to them. These manequin-like thoughtless people pretend to be newsmen (or women), but for the truly brainless, they deliver weather or sports comments.

You two should drop this entire subject and return the unused thoughts to those unfortunates as soon as possible.

=-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 11:09:06
From: cyberdiva

there

you can have mine

they're yours

=-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 13:32:50
From: Maurizio Mariotti

Sebastian Mendler wrote:

> I have some more, but they're buried under some repressed garbage; as soon
> as I can achieve some catharsis, I should be able to get to them...

Thank you all for the mundane thoughts. I am ready for the gothic and the morbid, now.

=-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 12:14:23
From: Gothwalker

> Thank you all for the mundane thoughts. I am ready for the gothic
> and the morbid, now.

Gothic:

* Where's my nailpolish?
* Ahhh, there it is.
* Good ol' black.
* Mustn't let the boss see.
* Careful... careful... careful...
* Can I get away with eyeliner in work?
* Naaah.

Morbid:

* skulls * with flesh on * and maggots * big maggots * sickly-off-white ones

=-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1998 13:03:09
From: Maurizio Mariotti

Gothwalker wrote:

>   * Where's my nailpolish?

Thank you and all who gave me their thoughts, backchannel.

As an aside, Drew: wouldn't you call it "camp" rather than "gothic"?

And I am now ready for thoughts of wrath. gluttony, sloth, envy, greed, lust and the other one that I always forget, even after seeing the movie...

=-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-=- Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1998 11:25:24
From: Gothwalker

On Thu, 5 Nov 1998, Maurizio Mariotti wrote:

> As an aside, Drew: wouldn't you call it "camp" rather than "gothic"?

Take a look at a few of the gothic sites, a goth club, and a few bands.

More camp types you will not see.

Heading completely offtopic, my boss is out to scare the Marketing Dept. The group have a presentation this afternoon. He has us all wearing black, and nailpolish, and asked me to do the talking, in full goth, hair up, eyeliner on, and the gothic.net tshirt.

With the legend: "Nice Boots.... Wanna fuck?"

Mwahaha.

Notes

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