Thinking about thinking

Stop for a moment and focus on breathing normally, in and out.  Can you continue to breathe normally while consciously thinking about it?  How about blinking?

The science is that these are both things our bodies do with no conscious effort on our part, when our conscious minds try to take over they can - but not as effectively as our subconscious.  There are many bodily functions that happen like this, including swallowing and shivering.  There are also functions can't be taken over by our conscious though no matter how much we try including sneezing, yawning and the beating of our heart.

I was recently caught up in an argument about whether thinking falls into the former or latter group (because apparently my friends are even more ridiculous than I am) and this led me to a startling discovery:  Thinking about thinking hurts my brain.

Before I explain the arguments, I feel I should point out that the question of how much the observer changes the observed looms large over this discussion.  When you (as observer) try and understand the way you (the observed) thinks, you can't help but be aware that you are observing yourself thinking thus negating the value of the observation in the first place because you can't be sure that the knowledge of the observation isn't having an effect on how you're thinking.

It's generally about this point that this happens:

Source

If, however, you've managed to understand everything so far then you're a) doing better than me and b) probably some sort of genius philosopher.

So the first side of this debate claims that the very fact that you can turn your thinking on itself and try to understand the way you think is proof that you can consciously control your thinking.  Fair point.

The other side of this debate claims that the process of thinking is still happening without you being aware of it and what you are thinking about is the progression of thoughts rather than the thinking itself.  Also fair point.

The response to this is that the awareness of the difference between thinking and thought demonstrates that thinking is what is being thought about, but this is rebutted by the fact that this difference is a thought itself.

From this point the argument gets into circular logic with both arguments supporting each other and there aren't enough gifs in the world to illustrate my confusion whenever this happens.

If you know the answer, or can explain this back to me in simpler terms, then please put me out of my misery!

I'll be back soon

So its been almost 20 days since I last posted, sorry about that.

I really want to blame the computer having issues but as I've had it back for over a week and it has taken me until now to actually post anything, instead I'm going to blame it on being in another country for the first time ever and packing my schedule so full that I haven't had time to put a post together until now.

I have decided too, that rather than try to post all my activities for the trip before I get home, or try and start now and catch up later, I will hold off blogging about my trip until I get home and can get them to a standard which I am happy with while still keeping them in the right order.  The only problem this leaves me with is what to write about now.

This problem is compounded by the very fact that I haven't blogged in almost 20 days which has put me out of the swing of blogging again, so soon after starting.  I never realised until I started blogging that it is more than simply sitting down at the computer and writing stream of consciousness until you've had enough.  At least it isn't for me.

Although I do write most of these posts in a stream of consciousness way, because I decided that was how I wanted to handle this early on, I go back and make sure that I feel everything makes sense before I post it. This is because it is a public medium and I would really rather have at least semi-polished work on here to be read, although I have the sneaking suspicion that I'm not doing terrifically well with that.

Well this post has gone in rather a different direction to where I thought it was headed when I started typing.  I was originally intending to post a little about the places I've been, without giving too much away for the more detailed posts later, but I guess that's what happens when you write in a stream of consciousness style.

I might post again before I get back to Australia, but I wouldn't really count on it.  Thanks for sticking with me despite this.

Writing about writing

So I've been trying to post at least every other day to get in the habit of posting regularly.  It's mostly been working.

Today, though, I don't really have any ideas about what to write, so I'm going to go meta again and write about not having anything to write about.  The problem is, about al there is to say about not having anything to write is "I don't really have anything to write today" and I've said that now.

Wow, already I've written more about this than I really expected.  Trying to hold off this post's inevitable descent into randomly shouting words into the wilderness that is the unread corners of the blogosphere has been easier than I expected.  Much easier.

I have heard that the way to overcome writer's block is to just start writing and keep going, don't worry about what you're writing just make sure your pen (or keyboard) doesn't stop.  I always thought it was an interesting theory, switching off the censor and letting the creative side just play in the vast expanse of the mind.  The problem with this is that you need a starting point, like a sentence to finish or a topic that you need to try and start from and I keep not managing to have time to put a list of these starting points together.  I don't know how I'm going to go about it but I figure at some point (probably after America) I will make an effort to add something to a list every day, possibly I'll do it on this blog - one of those blog every day things.  If I do that it probably won't be for a while because I'm still getting used to blogging.

Well I figure that's a pretty good effort, about 300 words written about writer's block because of writer's block without resorting to LOUD NOISES or something.  I'm pleased with that effort, I hope anyone out there who actually reads this is too.

Joining a Community

True to my word I have done more investigating of 20 Something Bloggers and I have already found many more blogs which I'm interested in following.  I want to give them shout outs but as I've now added a blogroll gadget thing on the left it seems redundant, so instead I'll just show off my internet knowledge stuff (or lackthereof if I get this wrong) and say I love their faces.

There are two problems with this, however.  The first is that I now feel like creepy stalker guy because I'm new to this and don't want to make an absolute fool of myself by saying something stupid.  This is more of a problem because the original problem contains a paradox (and now I'll just say the word problem again for the general confusion.  Problem).  This most ingenous paradox is the longer I leave it before posting, the more profound and witty I feel it needs to be to actually be worth posting thus I am less likely to post.  This vicious cycle is not in itself paradoxical, I know, but it makes sense when you consider that a) my fear of not writing anything worthwhile is keeping me from writing anything worthwhile and b) I prefer to word paradox to contradiction.

The second problem is that it appears there is a huge history associated with this site and I'm getting information overload just looking at the forums and stuff.  I can already tell it is going to be a long process to properly come to grips with what 20SB has on offer by way of interaction, culture and general awesomeness.

Still these are both relatively minor problems for me, and I'm sure that in the fullness of time I will be a productive member of the 20SB community and contributing regularly to what happens there.


PS.  Yes I realise the paradox inherent in the content of this post, that I feel comfortable enough word vomiting my fears about word vomiting all over 20SB, but this is getting far too meta already so I'll let that one slide.

Not Perfect

Although I like to think I have tremendous amounts of patience with others, I'm not so good at the whole patience with myself thing.

Usually this isn't a problem and in fact it is often quite a good thing because it helps me to motivate myself to work on necessary but unpleasant tasks when I'd rather be doing something else.  At the moment, though, it is definitely a problem and this is because I see all these other blogs from people who have been blogging for a very long time and my first reaction tends to be "ooh, so good, why can't I make interesting and easily readable posts like them?"

The answer being, of course, that they have been blogging for a very long time, usually several years, while I have been blogging for a little over a week now.  That doesn't stop it from being extremely frustrating.

I don't particularly like showing work to anyone until it is perfect and because of that I often don't end up doing anything with it at all, this is one of the reasons I started blogging, so that I can get used to putting stuff out there that maybe isn't as polished as I'd like because it doesn't need to be perfect for this forum.

However, I'm not doing particularly well at this, I don't find it easy to actually post entries.  The writing is fine, but the posting is not as easy.  This post I'm writing now is on its third fourth draft, and I have spent far longer than I intended to.  Somehow, even though I am inflicting a fairly labourious editing process on myself the posts still feel pretty stream of consciousness which feels good because I haven't done much stream of consciousness writing and its good to know I can do it, or at least kinda fake it.

So yeah, I'll keep blogging, and try not to spend as much time editing as I do writing it all in future.  Mainly because while I'm not so good at patience with myself, I'm even worse at quitting things before I'm done - even when I probably should.

Also, bonus points if you knew the title was a Tim Minchin reference, because that song rather sums up how I feel about the blog so far, "Its not perfect, but its mine."

Hello World!

Okay, so while I'm not actually a computer program, this seemed like a suitable title for my very first post evar. This is by way of explaining that various references are likely to occur more frequently here than in Sunnydale so those of you who have something against obscure homages (but, you know, pronounced alliteratively) should, um, probably stick around anyway because, er, coz i says so, yeah!

Now that that is out of the way I should probably spend the rest of this post telling my reader(s) - I'm optimistic - all about me and why I'm blogging. Instead of this and possibly in an attempt to maintain the supposed weirdness suggested by the title I shall rant about how all the good URLs for blogs seem to be gone.


So here's how it all went down. I decided I should give in to peer pressure and maybe start a blog, now fast forward something like two and a half years, so I started a blog - tadaa. I signed up and everything was going really well until I got to the part where I was trying to work out what a good name for this would be. I figured putting loquacious, verbose or sesquipedalian in there somewhere was probably a sensible warning, but predictably these were all taken - as were many different variations on this theme. My next thoughts were along the lines of verbalism, which means to say very little in very many words. This still caused me trouble because the only URL along these lines that wasn't already taken was ihavenothinginterestingorusefultosay which was far too long for me to remember, let alone try and get other people interested in .


Given that I was having so much trouble I decided to have a think and come back to it. This brought with it the realisation that although I want to be as brilliant a wordsmith as Shakespeare, or at least Dr Seuss, that this is unlikely and I shouldn't worry so much about what it is called. This lasted about as long as it took me to return to trying to come up with a title. I should probably point out that the title itself was a problem in and of itself, but in order to remember the URL I wanted it to actually have some sort of connection with it so I played around with a wide range of themes including ramblings, confusions and randomness, none of which gave me any love. It was about this time that I started thinking about what I'm actually going to put in here and realised I have no idea, probably something about films I watch and books I read, almost certainly stuff about a trip to America I'm going on in January. Generally I figured it was just somewhere that all the stuff that gets me called weird if I say it to actual real people (as opposed to my, in all probability, imaginary readership) could call home.

Thus the Home of Weird was born. If you're wondering how I can possibly say that all the good URLs are gone when I have managed to snag this nifty one, I will point out that I'm pretty sure I got the last one. Some sort of smug victory gif would seem appropriate here but as I don't have any smug victory gifs I shall instead just write "Ha Ha!" and leave you to provide the Nelson Muntz image associated with it using your imagination.


And that is the story of my blog so far, post one and already I'm getting all meta by blogging the story of my blogging, this either bodes very well or very poorly for the blog as a whole. If anyone knows which then be sure to let me know.