Your thoughts and ideas are not your own, nor are they original, page 4

Originally posted by In nothing we trust

Originally posted by Infernalis

I suspect that until intellectual property is abolished, true human progress will continue to be stifled by the chains of perceived individual profit.

We're done advancing as a species then.

Not necessarily in any absolute way, there are continuously observable advancements in various fields. I find progress, however, extremely slowed by the hoarding of ideas and the machinations of profit. When all knowledge, ideas, technology, science, art, become uninhibited by the concept of personal profit and turned over to the common good (profit) of all mankind, we may see things advance exponentially faster.

For example, technology is only advanced incrementally according to profit marketing. Companies such as Apple takes something to a point, then only release key features as slowly as possible to milk maximum profits. They are also consistently entrenched in legal battles with other companies such as Motorola, or refusing to utilize the work of other companies such as Adobe, so instead of these entities working together to create the best possible product they are only driven to out do each other enough to capitalize marketshare. Another advent of this example is that of processor speeds and memory capacity, which are also only released in increments in order to maximize profits, instead of the focus being on pushing the boundaries of what we are capable of.

Perhaps this meager example is not the best, but you get the idea. You can see it all around you if you look, it impacts almost every aspect of your life. Similarly these same effects severely damage our potential for scientific advancement, and taint what achievements we do arrive at, in that the grant money for research is awarded to those willing to succumb to biased results according to interests of the investors or corporations. Likewise knowledge is hoarded to protect those interests instead of collaborated and expanded on with pure results.

You are correct in that none of these thoughts are original or my own, they are ideas i picked up along the way. Thus is the way most of our advancements are cultivated, by people carrying forward others ideas, expanding upon, perfecting them and taking them to places the "originators" had not thought possible.

Our models of consciousness, and conceptions of the dynamics of thought remain in the beginning stages and the science of how our minds actually function is relatively unknown.

Personally I see our brains as receptors, and thoughts and ideas a sort of infinite sea of possibility that we are capable of tuning into. In one sense I would agree that all thought and ideas are in some sense manifest on some level of "reality", and cannot therefore be original, in another I think an individual can certainly be the first one to pick up on an idea, though there seems to be a sort of gravity to the process, and I don't find it far fetched to think that two people can simultaneously have the same idea.

I come with "original" ideas all the time, things I think up that are completely unknown to me, yet I look them up to see if they exist and they usually do.

It is always about the money!

The operating system we have been running on is the idea that people need a profit incentive to achieve anything, and it carried us forward to a point, as did the technological advancements associated with the machinations of war, but as the system unravels it is becoming obvious we are due for an upgrade, hopefully one centered on progress instead of profit.