You can KNOW things without THINKING about them

Most of the folks on this forum value thinking, logic, reason etc.
I say it is not that important. yes, it has value, but thoughts are overvalued.
Example: You are sitting on the couch and you call your dog Skippy, "come here, Skippy!" Skippy looks like he's considering jumping up but instead he goes to his little doggy bed and lies there. WHY? Because he KNEW without any thinking that he had no interest in being on the couch.
Human beings add onto that knowledge by creating thoughts around it. "Why would i want to jump onto that couch? Does he think he's my boss? etc etc" would be a typical human way of responding in that situation.
My point is, thoughts are not always necessary or better than using basic primal responses. Just like a dog or a cat might do.
We add logical processes ontop of things but that doesnt make it more efficient.
In many ways we are LESS efficient than the common chipmunk.

g

[J. Stew]

[ QUOTE ]
Most of the folks on this forum value thinking, logic, reason etc.
I say it is not that important. yes, it has value, but thoughts are overvalued.
Example: You are sitting on the couch and you call your dog Skippy, "come here, Skippy!" Skippy looks like he's considering jumping up but instead he goes to his little doggy bed and lies there. WHY? Because he KNEW without any thinking that he had no interest in being on the couch.
Human beings add onto that knowledge by creating thoughts around it. "Why would i want to jump onto that couch? Does he think he's my boss? etc etc" would be a typical human way of responding in that situation.
My point is, thoughts are not always necessary or better than using basic primal responses. Just like a dog or a cat might do.
We add logical processes ontop of things but that doesnt make it more efficient.
In many ways we are LESS efficient than the common chipmunk.

g

[/ QUOTE ]

It's the attachment to the belief in concepts/thoughts as truth that is a mindscrew. If you believe your own thoughts to be true then your mind is limited to what you believe and your perception of reality will be biased by these same beliefs. If you don't try to control reality then you just see what is already there or, reality, which is truth IMO.

You seem to have put alot of thought and reasoning into this idea but i just think your wrong.

[ QUOTE ]
In many ways we are LESS efficient than the common chipmunk.

[/ QUOTE ]

Irrelevant, as long as total efficiency is greater (which it is), that doesn't matter.

[imported_luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
My point is, thoughts are not always necessary or better than using basic primal responses. Just like a dog or a cat might do.
We add logical processes ontop of things but that doesnt make it more efficient.
In many ways we are LESS efficient than the common chipmunk.

[/ QUOTE ]

I’d buy in if the claim was, "You can Act or React with out without Thinking about it" otherwise we’re at the level of "the water knows it wants to run down hill". Douglas Hofstadter’s sphinx moth example does it for me.

The moth drags it’s victim to the mouth of it’s nest. Drops and goes inside to check that the nest is in a proper state to be used. If you move the victim back slightly while the moth is inside, it’ll come out and repeat the ritual again, dragging the victim up to the nest opening, and again and again. In what sense can the moth be said to ‘know’ it wants to check out the nest?

Overcoming our primal urges about probability and coincidences and runs of luck are some of the things that make winners. Sure the guy across from me is more efficient because he wears his lucky shirt, plays extra hands when he’s ‘in luck’, folds too early because he’s ‘not hitting’ and in that sense you are right … he’s much closer to the efficiency of a chipmunk than I am, but I like the chances of my nest being full of acorns this winter, not his.

Excuse me if I’m simply missing it, I must be misinterpreting what you’re getting at … what is the reward for this efficiency?

luckyme,
if I thought I was wrong, I’d change my mind

Thinking is required, or seems to be, for complex situations. However, my contention is that much of our thinking is extraneous. There are a lot of primary situations where we KNOW what we want to do without needing to spend a great deal of time thinking about it.
Even this forum is a great example. Most of the topics here are a result of overractive minds with nothing to attach to but silly topics.
Thats why I am here anyway.

-g