Strange Thoughts

Because if I keep all of this inside, I'll go nuts!

2007-07-24 - 18:49:12

The three speeds of thought

I've often wondered how the brain works, how intelligence works, if we can ever reproduce or recreate intelligence artificially. I'm not a neurosurgeon, nor am I a neuropsychologist. Actually, I'm not an expert in any field whatsoever. All I do it think and observe. So as you can understand, this opinion isn't even worth the electrons it's printed on.

This having been said, here is a bit of what I understand about my thought process. There seem to be three levels which I can discern. The one we are more familiar with is the way we talk to ourselves. We basically chit chat in our mind, telling ourselves stuff. Above that is an accelerated type of thought. If, for example, you look at a work of art, your brain will send you impressions which aren't necessarily phrases. They're close to emotions in that our feelings don't talk, they're felt. Well, ideas can also be processed that way. Sometimes, this can take the form of an image. If you're imagining a scene in your head, you're not telling yourself "ok, now the dog is turning the corner, so imagine that". You just imagine it. Here's another example. Say you want to pick up a piece of paper. You're typically not going to tell yourself "all right, now I want to pick up a piece of paper, so let's do it!". You just think the action without words and execute it. Or not.

Above (or below?) that lies an even faster type of thought. This is where thoughts are, in a way, born. It's your brain working at (somewhat) full speed, processing as much data as it can. At first, I thought the previous thought type was the ultimate one, but after a while I noticed that I could feel something beyond that. I still have trouble explaining it, but it's as if the second thought layer is basically there to help us understand what we just thought. As if we needed a buffer between pure thought and action. Maybe it's like a censure board for the brain, quickly analysing what thoughts and impressions are worth keeping and dropping the rest. I still don't really understand the super fast thought process. I can kind of feel it going on, when I try, but it's truly difficult to grasp what's going on at that speed, if that even makes any sense.

As you can see, this is far from being a scientific theory. It's just me trying to pay attention.

0 comments

To leave a comment, please fill this form.