Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!ucsd!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!sdcrdcf!trwrb!aero!venera.isi.edu!smoliar From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: control of one's thoughts Message-ID: <5488@venera.isi.edu> Date: 10 May 88 15:29:35 GMT References: <8805092354.AA05852@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Sender: news@venera.isi.edu Reply-To: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar) Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute Lines: 20 In article <8805092354.AA05852@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> eyal@COYOTE.STANFORD.EDU (Eyal Mozes) writes: >In article <796@hydra.riacs.edu>, nienart@turing.arc.nasa.gov (john nienart) >writes: > >>Maybe its just me, but I find rather frequently that I'm thinking about >>something that I'm _sure_ I'd rather not think about (or humming a trashy >>pop song I hate, etc.). It certainly feels at these times that I don't have >>complete control over that upon which my consciousness is focussed. > >Are you saying that, at those times, you are making a deliberate, >conscious effort to turn your thoughts to something else, and this >effort fails? If so then, yes, it is just you; all the evidence I'm >familiar with points to the fact that it's always possible for a human >being to control his thoughts by a conscious effort. > There is an old joke that may serve as a valuable counterexample here: Try consciously NOT to think of an elephant for exactly the next five minutes and then think of a baby elephant as soon as those five minutes have elapsed.