A few days ago I had a very interesting moment. I have done a fair amount of reading about how the brain works and how memories work recently, and I am not sure if this is what inspired the moment or just allowed me to understand it more so. This has actually happened a couple times recently, no more than three times within the past two weeks. The first time this happened within this time frame has been the most memorable and at the moment it is all I can recall.
Before I explain it, I would just like to note how I find it odd that I can recall having the thought, but cannot remember what it was. I remember an event however only the fact it happened, few details about it, and what is was similar to. One way to look at recollection may be as a file on a computer. Before I continue with this, I'm going to note this idea is all theoretical and not original. When you first experience something you save it as a memory. Then when you think of this memory, when you recall it you are not experiencing the experience again. You are only opening the file. Every time you open a file it changes slightly (lets say the file is a .jpeg, because that type of file degrades a little every time you open it), and then when it changes it the changes are automatically saved. That means the next time you recall this memory you are recalling the memory and the slight change of it, along with another slight change. This could be why it seems every time a story is told it changes slightly. Of course this theory could be wrong and every time you remember something you could be directly recalling the original experience. Maybe if you are recalling the original experience, the more time that has past since the experience the less accurate the recollection is.
This interesting moment I had occurred when watching a video. In the video the young boy was missing his two front teeth, and for a moment I remembered what it was like to be missing my front teeth. I could imagine how it felt to have the oddly large feeling gap in my mouth, the texture of my gums even. I'm not sure how long this lasted, but soon as I was curious enough to feel where the space would be my tounge encountered my front teath and the moment was over. It was interesting none the least.
This seemed like more than just a regular memory, it was almost like an illusion? It's hard to describe. For a moment it was not as if I was remembering the moment, but experiencing it slightly.
At this point I almost wish I could have a three dimensional entry, the flow of the reading could be split right here to my next three points because I feel they could all fit in here equally. I'm sure after putting them into words there will be a better way to present them, but for now that is my opinion. Anyone else ever thought of this? I think it would be an interesting way to present an essay of sorts. To put it into Macromedia Flash (8, for that is the version I am familiar with) and have it scrolling. As you scrolled to this point you could not just scroll up and down, but forward and back between the layers of points.
What inspired me to put this together (I had plans on writing a different entry today but won't have time to do so, so I will put it off for another day yet again) was a moment today. Recently I have taken a liking to apples, after not liking them for a long time. I had been hungry and had decided I needed to try to put my fruit and vegetables in my diet (again, my previous attempts at this never stuck) and found an apple in my fridge. It made sense to try it to see if I would like the way it tasted this time. In fact I did. The next day my girlfriend was over and mentioned she was hungry, so I cut up an apple and some cheese for a tasty snack. The days past that I continued to eat apples when I saw them, and soon found myself seeking them out. I still have been doing so.
Upon getting home I grabbed an apple and my Rubik's cube, and began to consume one with my left hand and scramble with the right. I'm sure you can figure out what was in each hand. Doing both took longer than normal, and solving after scrambling was slower than most of my already slow one handed solves. Eventually I got a slight rhythm regarding when I would bite and when I would spin. As I continued to eat I got to the point where there was little flesh left on the apple, but still enough to continue picking at it. Eating around the regions where I would apply my fingers to hold it in place, and biting into the core more and more to see how close I could get to the seeds without actually consuming them. I dislike it when I get a seed in my mouth, they don't taste as good as I wish they would. For the longest time as a child I wouldn't eat apples to their fullest. I thought the core was hard and not to be eaten, and it would take me a very long time to eat what I considered to be the edible region. I'm not sure what inspired this, but I never questioned it at the time.
Upon looking at the skeleton of the fruit; with the stem sticking up and a slight green skirting around it's base, with the odd knobby piece at the bottom with similar skin still intact, and the more vibrant green veins of the middle of it leaving spaces for hollows where seeds resign I had a vivid memory. It was of my father holding an apple he had been eating, with the core of it exposed. I didn't picture his face or any other features, just the core of it. The image of the apple must of resembled the image within my memory closely enough to trigger it involuntarily.
It was a very vivid memory, but very short lived. It occurred as a thought, and I continued to think about it after it occurred. I will touch more on thoughts later on to this, and you may realize more about this. In this recollection of my father holding the apple I did not picture anything more than the appearance of the apple, in specific the core of it. I did not have any visualisation of anything more than the apple, though somehow still related it to my father. I'm not sure how this is entirely but I may have an idea. This memory was caused due to an external stimulus (the apple's appearance) and I think it may of been so vivid due to the similarity to the remembered image. All that was seen was the apple, nothing more. With this there was nothing more for me to remember so clearly, however there was something I could relate to what I was seeing. My brain searched though the library that we all have called our memory for a similar image, and quickly landed on a moment where there was an apple of very similar resemblance.
This searching happens at great speed. A search on Google for the word why took 0.09 seconds to find its results, that may seem fairly quick though to put it in perspective it means that search can be done eleven times in just under one second. The speed your brain processes is much greater than that. To put it into a how many searches a second, theoretically there is no limit. This is another point that will make sense further into this. Also 6,410,000,000 results were found. This may not be as much as it seems, for your brain my have much more information to search though.
Back to the memory. This image of the apple reminded my brain of a memory and then I remembered this memory that I was just reminded of. This remembering may of been so vivid because it may have relation to 'deja vu.' This could be a long shot, although that book I've referenced so many times (Is There Life After Death by Anthony Peake) does a fairly good job at explaining a few different ideas regarding what deja vu may be. One concept is a memory is triggered by something being so exact to a memory, the memory that you remember is played over what you are viewing at the moment. This may seem odd, but it is more possible than it sounds. Essentially, I may of had a moment of deja vu.
Now to go back to the first moment, featuring remembering what it felt like to be missing my two front teath. This, along with the apple incident, may of been closely related to apathy. Apathy is the concept of feeling what you observe other people feeling. If someone is sad, you are likely to slip into a less positive emotional state. You may also do the same if you are around someone who is happy. If someone hurts themselves, you can image how the pain would feel. If someone even describes a painful moment you may wince at it. I think this may be why people often want to turn away when they know something terrible is going to happen, they don't want to 'experience' themselves. By experience, I mean just that. The concept of apathy goes deeper than just emotions or feeling pain.
When someone does something it will cause part of their brain to activate. If you observe them doing this the same parts of your brain will light up. This was discovered by German (I think) scientists who were monitoring what parts of the brain lit up as a monkey tried to open a nut. The monkey failed to do so. At the same time, a scientist walked into the room, picked up a nut, opened it and ate it. The monkey's brain lit up just as it would if it had opened the nut itself. This happy accident, serendipity I beleive it's called, was the first clue into how apathy works on more than the observable level.
By the way, the monkey story I became familiar with from a RSA Animate video about apathy. Look up RSA, they explain some really interesting things and draw out what they are talking about. It's a great way to learn, the visual makes it really easy to follow along more complicated issues.
To relate this to the moment where I could feel the space in my mouth that wasn't actually there at the time; when you observe something parts of your brain are activated just as if you did that. This may be one factor into why seeing things may cause you to remember something else. As I watched the boy in the video I was both reminded of not having teath in the front of my mouth and had an apathetic moment. This caused my memory to be more than the usual memory, it was much more real. My idea around this is a bit loose and open for opinion but I think this is quite possible. Especially with combination of what a memory is.
When you remember something, what is it you are remembering? Is it a chain of words forming a sentence? Probably not. You think through a memory with much more speed than a speedy speaker would be able to describe. Do you see it? Well, you might. This is common in dreams perhaps, but when you are conscious you are not really seeing your memory. You may be able to imagine it, but you aren't seeing. Your sense of sight is still being used by the photons that are currently entering your eyes that reflect what is happening at the current moment of time. You do not smell, taste, or feel the memory either. Well... you could be doing all of this. I forgot to mention hearing. Just assume it follows the same model as the other senses.
What is a memory? As you are conscious you are constantly recording everything. You are recording everything that your senses can perceive. Everything you notice, and even what you don't is put away into your brain to be stored until it could be needed. That is a lot of information. I'm not able to find a constant answer to how much information your brain can hold, though I'm running into estimates of 10^15 to 10^20 bytes. A couple other sites have said around three terabytes (but I think that's fairly low). One or two have said 1 to 1000 terabytes (maybe a bit too broad of a scale). What ever the actual number is, it will vary from person to person. The brain most likely does not remember information in the same way as a computer so putting it into bytes may not be reasonable. However it is, I'm sure you can see how immense the sea of information that may be stored away is. With this in mind, it is quite easy to consider the idea that we record everything we ever see, smell, touch, taste, hear, maybe even think?
So what is a memory? A memory is a recollection of all of what you were experiencing at the moment that you are remembering. You can remember everything that you experienced at that moment, though you are just likely to focus on one aspect of it, how something looked or heard. You may of been more aware of one aspect at the time your brain recorded it, so when you remember that one aspect stands out more. The reason you suppress much of your memory and do not remember all of it, is so that your brain is not overloaded. Recently I read that if you activate more than two or three percent of your brain you will become unconscious. I am sceptical of this, but there could be some truth to it. I think the numbers are much higher, and like everything brain related, it will change from person to person. It's a good thing you don't remember every little aspect of your memories with this concept. Passing out every time anything reminded you of anything would be.. inconvenient. Proof that everything you ever experience is recorded can be found in multiple experiments done by.. well I forget their name but I might look it up later and put it in here.
So with all that confusion out of the way, what is a thought? Essentially, well I'm not sure. I would like to say a thought is a concept, an abstract concept . A thought 'looks like' neurons firing in your brain, sending signals to other part of the brain. A interesting thought surrounding this is does your brain cause consciousness through doing this, or is consciousness the reason this happens? Are thoughts voluntary or involuntary?
I beleive the answer is both. Just like a memory you can have something stimulate you and cause it to happen, or you can purposely think about it and remember it. A thought can be spontaneous or you can cause it to occur.
How many thoughts can you have at the same time? I think there is no limit to this. It all depends on your concentration. Try a little game I use to play when I was much younger. I wanted to see how many things I could think at once and now that I look back on it, it was incredibly useful to my ponderings I have. I would try to think about a solid hum, just an uninterrupted 'hmm' noise. On top of that I would think through the alphabet, and to make things even more complicated I would try to consider how many things I was thinking about. I'm sure it's possible to continue adding onto this. Another similar activity I tired once was to listen to music (with lyrics), say something else out loud (not related to the music), and write something else (also not related to the music or the speaking). It is amazingly difficult. I find music can be very distracting, especially with lyrics. I struggle to listen to music and read something out loud often. Even reading it silently can prove difficult at times. The same goes for writing but it is a bit easier. I think this is an activity that can be learned but I don't intend on practicing.
I'm starting a lot of these new paragraphs with a question. This is another one, likely to be the last however. How long does it take for a thought to occur? I'll give you a moment or two to think it over. How many thoughts have you had in the time it's taken you to read these few words? Just in the past few paragraphs? In the bunch of sentences? There could be a numeral answer to this, but I would like to state there is no limit to them. I cannot find where I read this (this must start to sound very illegitimate due to the lack of my ability to cite many sources) although, 'thoughts occur in the moment between moments.' This could be reworded a few ways, but to simplify it more you could also say thoughts do not take any time to be thought. There may be a moment before the thought is thought of, but individual thoughts (often chained together to appear as they take time to be thought of) are timeless. They happen between the minimal division of time. There is no limit to how many thoughts you can think of in a moment, and this is why the 0.09 second search is much slower than you may think it is. In the timeless moment it takes for you to search your entire muli-terabyte libary, you can recall one individual moment that may of happened millions of seconds ago. The only limiter on this that I can think of would be the speed the electrons (I beleive it is electrons, if not lets just call them the signals) can travel through your brain. This is just under the speed of light, and traveling at that quickly the tiny particles are going to experience a fair amount of time dialation, just to add one more level of complexity. If a photon (one particle of light) can travel 3.0x10^8 meters in one second, think of how quickly it can travel across your 0.2m (ish) brain!
And yes, I did take the nearest ruler and hold it infront of my head for a moment. The measurement won't be very accurate to the size of my brain, it should be smaller actualy. Also, a signal traveling through your brain may not have to go all the way across. It may only need to go to the next lobe, only 0.01m away. A final note on this, keep in mind you are firing several thousand, maybe million? No, I don't think quite million but I could be wrong, signals at a time. A thought may require a few of those to go the full distance across and a group is only as slow as its slowest members.
One a much lighter note I had a couple interesting experiences today relating to the fog. Another to some birds. I know I've seen it before, maybe the lighting was just perfect where I was, but I really enjoyed watching the fog roll in and overtake my school as I was waiting for the bus. It had been foggy on and off all day. Just a few minutes before it was sunny then another fog cloud rolled into the area. I just thought it was amazing how the movment of it all was so apparent. I could see the individual water drops in the air, along with the cloud look (well an actual cloud I guess) a bit further away. Fog as always ammused me a bit, the concept that just a few water drops close to you don't obscure your vission much but if you have just a few dropplets spread out over a large area you quickly run out of spaces between the drops and they pile up making it impossible to see even down the block.
When I was in my room doing homework after school a fog horn sounded, it was fairly loud considering the distance away it was (or I can only assume) and lasted a few seconds longer than I expected it would. The echo lasted a while, and continued to echo for much longer than expected also. I imagined the sound I was hearing was from such a distance away. An echo that reached me a second after the innital sound must of been over three hundred meters away, the echo that was a second later over six hundred fifty meters away maybe. It echoed many times, more than I've ever heard anything echo. I immagine the last few faint sounds I detected were from the other side of town, most likely only cut off there because of the forest. When I was on a walk later tonight, I heard another boat warn all around that it was there and I relized that the echos may of lasted for so long because there could of also been the sound of a boat replying that I missed. This would cause more echos.
Moments after this I was not focusing on much more than what I was listening to (when I think about it, all I really remember was the sound until I was interupted. An example of my memory being recorded at the time was focused on the sound only) a bunch of birds who had been singing out my window all flew away at the same time. The simutanious flutter of their wings made a noise that confused me at first and was the distraction that caused me to focus on what I saw also. I turned to my window quickly and through the slatted blinds I have closed almost always (and have recently put a poster up over one side of the window becuase I enjoy the way the light hightlights the highlights and some midtones in the picture) I saw the birds flying away. Just a slight glimps of them as the individuals who trailed behind slightly were leaving. This was mostly noticed in my less focused periferals, and I suppose I infered that the noise and black flash was caused by birds.
Well this turned out much better, and slightly longer, than I was expecing it to. I wish all of my posts were this easy to write. As I mentioned before I had something else I was planning on putting here today, but I will do this some other time. I'm glad I addressed this set of ideas soon as I was inspired to share them with the Internet. The walk I mentioned occured about half way through all of this. I was phoned and invited to join a few people, I told them I had recently started putting something on my Blog and wanted to finish some more before leaving it. I really dislike staring something and then leaving it only to pick up where I was. I would rather just start something and finish it in the same sitting. It worked out though, I put down notes of what else I wanted to add and borrowed a cell phone to message myself more thoughts I had to add to this to my Facebook's Inbox as I relized I forgot to add them when I had a chance before leaving.
I'm kind of proud, when I went to use the spell check that is on the Google toolbar, it told me that I had too many characters to check over all of it. I'm going to have to take a look to see how many characters there is, I'm sure it's not too long to copy and paste into Microsoft Word Processor. I'm sure it is notacable where my spell check dropped off, I don't feel like going out of my way to check the rest.
Please ignore the odd spacing between paragraphs, Blogger is not being friendly to me and not posting as I am telling it to do so do. I think I have it worked out now. I hope I do. I'm ready to give up on it and leave it at it's difficult to read state. For a moment I even thought I lost all of this.
- Bugworlds
Before I explain it, I would just like to note how I find it odd that I can recall having the thought, but cannot remember what it was. I remember an event however only the fact it happened, few details about it, and what is was similar to. One way to look at recollection may be as a file on a computer. Before I continue with this, I'm going to note this idea is all theoretical and not original. When you first experience something you save it as a memory. Then when you think of this memory, when you recall it you are not experiencing the experience again. You are only opening the file. Every time you open a file it changes slightly (lets say the file is a .jpeg, because that type of file degrades a little every time you open it), and then when it changes it the changes are automatically saved. That means the next time you recall this memory you are recalling the memory and the slight change of it, along with another slight change. This could be why it seems every time a story is told it changes slightly. Of course this theory could be wrong and every time you remember something you could be directly recalling the original experience. Maybe if you are recalling the original experience, the more time that has past since the experience the less accurate the recollection is.
This interesting moment I had occurred when watching a video. In the video the young boy was missing his two front teeth, and for a moment I remembered what it was like to be missing my front teeth. I could imagine how it felt to have the oddly large feeling gap in my mouth, the texture of my gums even. I'm not sure how long this lasted, but soon as I was curious enough to feel where the space would be my tounge encountered my front teath and the moment was over. It was interesting none the least.
This seemed like more than just a regular memory, it was almost like an illusion? It's hard to describe. For a moment it was not as if I was remembering the moment, but experiencing it slightly.
At this point I almost wish I could have a three dimensional entry, the flow of the reading could be split right here to my next three points because I feel they could all fit in here equally. I'm sure after putting them into words there will be a better way to present them, but for now that is my opinion. Anyone else ever thought of this? I think it would be an interesting way to present an essay of sorts. To put it into Macromedia Flash (8, for that is the version I am familiar with) and have it scrolling. As you scrolled to this point you could not just scroll up and down, but forward and back between the layers of points.
What inspired me to put this together (I had plans on writing a different entry today but won't have time to do so, so I will put it off for another day yet again) was a moment today. Recently I have taken a liking to apples, after not liking them for a long time. I had been hungry and had decided I needed to try to put my fruit and vegetables in my diet (again, my previous attempts at this never stuck) and found an apple in my fridge. It made sense to try it to see if I would like the way it tasted this time. In fact I did. The next day my girlfriend was over and mentioned she was hungry, so I cut up an apple and some cheese for a tasty snack. The days past that I continued to eat apples when I saw them, and soon found myself seeking them out. I still have been doing so.
Upon getting home I grabbed an apple and my Rubik's cube, and began to consume one with my left hand and scramble with the right. I'm sure you can figure out what was in each hand. Doing both took longer than normal, and solving after scrambling was slower than most of my already slow one handed solves. Eventually I got a slight rhythm regarding when I would bite and when I would spin. As I continued to eat I got to the point where there was little flesh left on the apple, but still enough to continue picking at it. Eating around the regions where I would apply my fingers to hold it in place, and biting into the core more and more to see how close I could get to the seeds without actually consuming them. I dislike it when I get a seed in my mouth, they don't taste as good as I wish they would. For the longest time as a child I wouldn't eat apples to their fullest. I thought the core was hard and not to be eaten, and it would take me a very long time to eat what I considered to be the edible region. I'm not sure what inspired this, but I never questioned it at the time.
Upon looking at the skeleton of the fruit; with the stem sticking up and a slight green skirting around it's base, with the odd knobby piece at the bottom with similar skin still intact, and the more vibrant green veins of the middle of it leaving spaces for hollows where seeds resign I had a vivid memory. It was of my father holding an apple he had been eating, with the core of it exposed. I didn't picture his face or any other features, just the core of it. The image of the apple must of resembled the image within my memory closely enough to trigger it involuntarily.
It was a very vivid memory, but very short lived. It occurred as a thought, and I continued to think about it after it occurred. I will touch more on thoughts later on to this, and you may realize more about this. In this recollection of my father holding the apple I did not picture anything more than the appearance of the apple, in specific the core of it. I did not have any visualisation of anything more than the apple, though somehow still related it to my father. I'm not sure how this is entirely but I may have an idea. This memory was caused due to an external stimulus (the apple's appearance) and I think it may of been so vivid due to the similarity to the remembered image. All that was seen was the apple, nothing more. With this there was nothing more for me to remember so clearly, however there was something I could relate to what I was seeing. My brain searched though the library that we all have called our memory for a similar image, and quickly landed on a moment where there was an apple of very similar resemblance.
This searching happens at great speed. A search on Google for the word why took 0.09 seconds to find its results, that may seem fairly quick though to put it in perspective it means that search can be done eleven times in just under one second. The speed your brain processes is much greater than that. To put it into a how many searches a second, theoretically there is no limit. This is another point that will make sense further into this. Also 6,410,000,000 results were found. This may not be as much as it seems, for your brain my have much more information to search though.
Back to the memory. This image of the apple reminded my brain of a memory and then I remembered this memory that I was just reminded of. This remembering may of been so vivid because it may have relation to 'deja vu.' This could be a long shot, although that book I've referenced so many times (Is There Life After Death by Anthony Peake) does a fairly good job at explaining a few different ideas regarding what deja vu may be. One concept is a memory is triggered by something being so exact to a memory, the memory that you remember is played over what you are viewing at the moment. This may seem odd, but it is more possible than it sounds. Essentially, I may of had a moment of deja vu.
Now to go back to the first moment, featuring remembering what it felt like to be missing my two front teath. This, along with the apple incident, may of been closely related to apathy. Apathy is the concept of feeling what you observe other people feeling. If someone is sad, you are likely to slip into a less positive emotional state. You may also do the same if you are around someone who is happy. If someone hurts themselves, you can image how the pain would feel. If someone even describes a painful moment you may wince at it. I think this may be why people often want to turn away when they know something terrible is going to happen, they don't want to 'experience' themselves. By experience, I mean just that. The concept of apathy goes deeper than just emotions or feeling pain.
When someone does something it will cause part of their brain to activate. If you observe them doing this the same parts of your brain will light up. This was discovered by German (I think) scientists who were monitoring what parts of the brain lit up as a monkey tried to open a nut. The monkey failed to do so. At the same time, a scientist walked into the room, picked up a nut, opened it and ate it. The monkey's brain lit up just as it would if it had opened the nut itself. This happy accident, serendipity I beleive it's called, was the first clue into how apathy works on more than the observable level.
By the way, the monkey story I became familiar with from a RSA Animate video about apathy. Look up RSA, they explain some really interesting things and draw out what they are talking about. It's a great way to learn, the visual makes it really easy to follow along more complicated issues.
To relate this to the moment where I could feel the space in my mouth that wasn't actually there at the time; when you observe something parts of your brain are activated just as if you did that. This may be one factor into why seeing things may cause you to remember something else. As I watched the boy in the video I was both reminded of not having teath in the front of my mouth and had an apathetic moment. This caused my memory to be more than the usual memory, it was much more real. My idea around this is a bit loose and open for opinion but I think this is quite possible. Especially with combination of what a memory is.
When you remember something, what is it you are remembering? Is it a chain of words forming a sentence? Probably not. You think through a memory with much more speed than a speedy speaker would be able to describe. Do you see it? Well, you might. This is common in dreams perhaps, but when you are conscious you are not really seeing your memory. You may be able to imagine it, but you aren't seeing. Your sense of sight is still being used by the photons that are currently entering your eyes that reflect what is happening at the current moment of time. You do not smell, taste, or feel the memory either. Well... you could be doing all of this. I forgot to mention hearing. Just assume it follows the same model as the other senses.
What is a memory? As you are conscious you are constantly recording everything. You are recording everything that your senses can perceive. Everything you notice, and even what you don't is put away into your brain to be stored until it could be needed. That is a lot of information. I'm not able to find a constant answer to how much information your brain can hold, though I'm running into estimates of 10^15 to 10^20 bytes. A couple other sites have said around three terabytes (but I think that's fairly low). One or two have said 1 to 1000 terabytes (maybe a bit too broad of a scale). What ever the actual number is, it will vary from person to person. The brain most likely does not remember information in the same way as a computer so putting it into bytes may not be reasonable. However it is, I'm sure you can see how immense the sea of information that may be stored away is. With this in mind, it is quite easy to consider the idea that we record everything we ever see, smell, touch, taste, hear, maybe even think?
So what is a memory? A memory is a recollection of all of what you were experiencing at the moment that you are remembering. You can remember everything that you experienced at that moment, though you are just likely to focus on one aspect of it, how something looked or heard. You may of been more aware of one aspect at the time your brain recorded it, so when you remember that one aspect stands out more. The reason you suppress much of your memory and do not remember all of it, is so that your brain is not overloaded. Recently I read that if you activate more than two or three percent of your brain you will become unconscious. I am sceptical of this, but there could be some truth to it. I think the numbers are much higher, and like everything brain related, it will change from person to person. It's a good thing you don't remember every little aspect of your memories with this concept. Passing out every time anything reminded you of anything would be.. inconvenient. Proof that everything you ever experience is recorded can be found in multiple experiments done by.. well I forget their name but I might look it up later and put it in here.
So with all that confusion out of the way, what is a thought? Essentially, well I'm not sure. I would like to say a thought is a concept, an abstract concept . A thought 'looks like' neurons firing in your brain, sending signals to other part of the brain. A interesting thought surrounding this is does your brain cause consciousness through doing this, or is consciousness the reason this happens? Are thoughts voluntary or involuntary?
I beleive the answer is both. Just like a memory you can have something stimulate you and cause it to happen, or you can purposely think about it and remember it. A thought can be spontaneous or you can cause it to occur.
How many thoughts can you have at the same time? I think there is no limit to this. It all depends on your concentration. Try a little game I use to play when I was much younger. I wanted to see how many things I could think at once and now that I look back on it, it was incredibly useful to my ponderings I have. I would try to think about a solid hum, just an uninterrupted 'hmm' noise. On top of that I would think through the alphabet, and to make things even more complicated I would try to consider how many things I was thinking about. I'm sure it's possible to continue adding onto this. Another similar activity I tired once was to listen to music (with lyrics), say something else out loud (not related to the music), and write something else (also not related to the music or the speaking). It is amazingly difficult. I find music can be very distracting, especially with lyrics. I struggle to listen to music and read something out loud often. Even reading it silently can prove difficult at times. The same goes for writing but it is a bit easier. I think this is an activity that can be learned but I don't intend on practicing.
I'm starting a lot of these new paragraphs with a question. This is another one, likely to be the last however. How long does it take for a thought to occur? I'll give you a moment or two to think it over. How many thoughts have you had in the time it's taken you to read these few words? Just in the past few paragraphs? In the bunch of sentences? There could be a numeral answer to this, but I would like to state there is no limit to them. I cannot find where I read this (this must start to sound very illegitimate due to the lack of my ability to cite many sources) although, 'thoughts occur in the moment between moments.' This could be reworded a few ways, but to simplify it more you could also say thoughts do not take any time to be thought. There may be a moment before the thought is thought of, but individual thoughts (often chained together to appear as they take time to be thought of) are timeless. They happen between the minimal division of time. There is no limit to how many thoughts you can think of in a moment, and this is why the 0.09 second search is much slower than you may think it is. In the timeless moment it takes for you to search your entire muli-terabyte libary, you can recall one individual moment that may of happened millions of seconds ago. The only limiter on this that I can think of would be the speed the electrons (I beleive it is electrons, if not lets just call them the signals) can travel through your brain. This is just under the speed of light, and traveling at that quickly the tiny particles are going to experience a fair amount of time dialation, just to add one more level of complexity. If a photon (one particle of light) can travel 3.0x10^8 meters in one second, think of how quickly it can travel across your 0.2m (ish) brain!
And yes, I did take the nearest ruler and hold it infront of my head for a moment. The measurement won't be very accurate to the size of my brain, it should be smaller actualy. Also, a signal traveling through your brain may not have to go all the way across. It may only need to go to the next lobe, only 0.01m away. A final note on this, keep in mind you are firing several thousand, maybe million? No, I don't think quite million but I could be wrong, signals at a time. A thought may require a few of those to go the full distance across and a group is only as slow as its slowest members.
One a much lighter note I had a couple interesting experiences today relating to the fog. Another to some birds. I know I've seen it before, maybe the lighting was just perfect where I was, but I really enjoyed watching the fog roll in and overtake my school as I was waiting for the bus. It had been foggy on and off all day. Just a few minutes before it was sunny then another fog cloud rolled into the area. I just thought it was amazing how the movment of it all was so apparent. I could see the individual water drops in the air, along with the cloud look (well an actual cloud I guess) a bit further away. Fog as always ammused me a bit, the concept that just a few water drops close to you don't obscure your vission much but if you have just a few dropplets spread out over a large area you quickly run out of spaces between the drops and they pile up making it impossible to see even down the block.
When I was in my room doing homework after school a fog horn sounded, it was fairly loud considering the distance away it was (or I can only assume) and lasted a few seconds longer than I expected it would. The echo lasted a while, and continued to echo for much longer than expected also. I imagined the sound I was hearing was from such a distance away. An echo that reached me a second after the innital sound must of been over three hundred meters away, the echo that was a second later over six hundred fifty meters away maybe. It echoed many times, more than I've ever heard anything echo. I immagine the last few faint sounds I detected were from the other side of town, most likely only cut off there because of the forest. When I was on a walk later tonight, I heard another boat warn all around that it was there and I relized that the echos may of lasted for so long because there could of also been the sound of a boat replying that I missed. This would cause more echos.
Moments after this I was not focusing on much more than what I was listening to (when I think about it, all I really remember was the sound until I was interupted. An example of my memory being recorded at the time was focused on the sound only) a bunch of birds who had been singing out my window all flew away at the same time. The simutanious flutter of their wings made a noise that confused me at first and was the distraction that caused me to focus on what I saw also. I turned to my window quickly and through the slatted blinds I have closed almost always (and have recently put a poster up over one side of the window becuase I enjoy the way the light hightlights the highlights and some midtones in the picture) I saw the birds flying away. Just a slight glimps of them as the individuals who trailed behind slightly were leaving. This was mostly noticed in my less focused periferals, and I suppose I infered that the noise and black flash was caused by birds.
Well this turned out much better, and slightly longer, than I was expecing it to. I wish all of my posts were this easy to write. As I mentioned before I had something else I was planning on putting here today, but I will do this some other time. I'm glad I addressed this set of ideas soon as I was inspired to share them with the Internet. The walk I mentioned occured about half way through all of this. I was phoned and invited to join a few people, I told them I had recently started putting something on my Blog and wanted to finish some more before leaving it. I really dislike staring something and then leaving it only to pick up where I was. I would rather just start something and finish it in the same sitting. It worked out though, I put down notes of what else I wanted to add and borrowed a cell phone to message myself more thoughts I had to add to this to my Facebook's Inbox as I relized I forgot to add them when I had a chance before leaving.
I'm kind of proud, when I went to use the spell check that is on the Google toolbar, it told me that I had too many characters to check over all of it. I'm going to have to take a look to see how many characters there is, I'm sure it's not too long to copy and paste into Microsoft Word Processor. I'm sure it is notacable where my spell check dropped off, I don't feel like going out of my way to check the rest.
Please ignore the odd spacing between paragraphs, Blogger is not being friendly to me and not posting as I am telling it to do so do. I think I have it worked out now. I hope I do. I'm ready to give up on it and leave it at it's difficult to read state. For a moment I even thought I lost all of this.
- Bugworlds
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