We've all had those thoughts when our mind is in an altered state, that just seem deep or important, or simply just plain fascinating. So what I'm thinking (forewarning I haven't slept well for 4 days now, and am currently trying to get into a state where I can sleep so my mind is rather altered) is that it would be interesting to post those thoughts here, open them up for discussion by "non-altered" people and see what happens. Oh and I don't think you have to be altered when you pose your thought, perhaps you just recall something from a time when say you had a few too many beers or something...anyway.

Tonight's thought for me, which has already made it to my journal is...

Do you think mentally handicapped people know that they are mentally handicapped? If they don't know that they are mentally handicapped do you think that that may mean that you could possibly be mentally handicapped and just not know it?

I don't think they do know, only that they have difficulties in expressing themselves. I think a lot of the time frustration would be the main issue in understanding and being understood, but no, I don't think they do know. I think they see themselves as non-handicapped. I think... the more I think about it the more I can't decide. It's been a long day...

Sorry just need to do this. Hi poppa moo!

*shrug* not sure what "mentally handicapped" actually means but it sounds like it could be applied to lots of different people. I mean dyslexia is a "mental handicap" right? And its certainly possible for dyslexics to know they have dyslexia. Also that word is hard to spell

Even if we restrict it to people who act very strangely I think I'm still going to go with "sometimes".

I don't have any altered thoughts of my own to share I'm afraid, as my thought process is as usual completely 100% rational. Hmm, my username doesn't give me much credibility here does it...

*also hasn't been sleeping very well*

I've thought about this too, in the past, so I understand where you are coming from. I know it all comes down to the level of disability the individual has, but I suppose what you are questioning is how self-aware a person is when they have a certain level of brain inactivity? If a person requires round-the-clock care, with their every basic requirement attended to, and with very little physical ability or capability in expressing themselves, are they actually aware of this themselves? Although they can't perform certain functions, is the brain still working its best, and the person realises their disabilities? And what would be worse, to have a "mental disability" that means you aren't that self-aware at all, or to be quite aware of your limitations, but trying to cope with being unable to communicate or perform certain actions?

I'm not sure if these fit your criteria as altered thoughts, but I'll give it a go.

In Star Wars Mafia, I'm Emperor Palpatine and last night decided to let Darth Vader kill me, with no one from our team saving me. If I survive, then I'm pretty much a confirmed goodie (haha), but otherwise it's suicide.

In X-Men Mafia, instead of lynching some randomly chosen person Day 1 (which *always* happens, and someone from my team *always* dies), I decided we should all lynch the host.

Also, is it appropriate to argue with someone who is wrong, but doesn't realize they're wrong, when they may get offended, if it's all in an effort to get them to realize that they're wrong so they can see that being right is a better stance? Why are some opinions debatable when others aren't? Do you think brainwashed people ever accept that they've been brainwashed?

Sure, just don't be surprised if they have the opinion that you are wrong and you don't realise you're wrong... etc...

You can't debate an opinion that isn't based on evidence.

I think brainwashed people can be braindirtied again. here is a wikipedia article I found.

One of my altered thoughts is not really a question more of an OMG help!!! If the world was to end tomorrow Iwould want to be with my fiancee. But I would also want to be with my mum and dad. ut Matt would want to be with his family. SO who would we go to? Could we all get together. But then his family would want to have other member s of their close family and so on and so on. I can get into a complete curled in a ball funk over this one.

Silly one. Why do we eat chillis. Trchnically they are poisonous. No other animal on earth eats them (so I've been told) so why do we?

Oh, and why do we drink milk? We're the only animals after infancy that do.

I haven't yet altered my mind yet, but I can have a stab at the chillies question.

When we eat chillies, our brain interprets the heat it as pain, probably why other animals wouldn't eat them, but there is also a rush of some endorphin like chemicals [citation needed]. We can even become addicted to curries, trying hotter varieties to satisfy our adventurous flirtation with pain.

Hm, it's not so much an altered thought question, more of a most likely incorrect, conlusion-jump due excessive tiredness and cold (and a leeettle bit of rum). Anyway, yesterday, in my head, I realised that infinity cannot exist...

BECAUSE
If you take a time, e.g. 1 o' clock, you can constantly narrow this down to become an even shorter specified point. And if infinity were to exist, then you would constantly be able to narrow it down, smaller and smaller. So, 1 o' clock wouldn't be a point, but a period of time, which it's not. So if infinity were to exist then nothing could exist, but things do exist, so infinity doesn't exist. And exactly the same can be applied to things like points in space.

That made no sense at all. It's hard to write thoughts because you don't think in words, nor in pictures, just in.. thought language. Hmm, what is thought language made up of (from a media point of view...)? That could be an altered thought question.

*strokes long white beard* All this thinking is going to my chin.

(Plain milk is nasty, you need to add some good-old chemical made preservatives for it tast good.)

I'm not sure as to why, but I'm glad the milk we drink is from cows and not actual breast milk from our moms.
Though I assume since it's a limited resource for animals, they have no choice but to move on, but since we can decide to make action we take it from cows. (It could be good and bad..people say it causes cancer, but then again, what dosn't? And then it gives a good source of calcium.)

2 margaritas at my company christmas party tonight have left me wondering...

Why won't my wind up burtterfly work? I wind it and it doesn't flutter and roll. Damn it.

The same reason my old wind-up horsey didn't work. Cheap Chinese plastic.

I've also had a thought along this line too. That, really, there is no such exact point in time as "Midnight". Time can never be exactly at 12:00am because, assuming you wait for the world's most accurate clock to tick over and show 12, it will always be a millisecond over, or a nanosecond over, or a milli-nano-teeny-weeny-barelyanythingofa-second over. The nature of infinity means there are infinite amounts of smaller time units, so it will never be EXACTLY any time at all, it can only be close. So does time even exist?!

We like milk cause we're crazy mutants. Lactose intolerance is actually pretty common.


Bah, mathematicians use stuff that "doesn't exist" all the time. Ever heard of imaginary numbers? But that doesn't stop us applying it to stuff that does exist. For example you can write a mathematical function like sin(x) as an infinite series. This is really useful because then you can approximate the function by just using the first few terms in the series. And if you want more precision, you just use more of the series.

If you think about it, more familiar concepts like "zero" or "-1" don't really exist either. Or any number really. Can we say that 12 jaffa cakes exist in a packet of jaffa cakes or would it make more sense to say that some jaffa cakes exist and the number 12 is how we describe the amount? I don't see the problem with using ideas/concepets that don't really exist in the real world to describe things which do. Otherwise, you'd have to throw out language, and then where would we be! I think this probably counts as my altered thought for today.

Also... I think words all the time! and pictures sometimes. I guess theres still some thought language going on but theres like an internal monologue accompanying it.

Ah, I think I understand what IATB was getting at now. Why isn't 1 o clock a period of time? It can be an arbitrarily small period of time but it's still technically a period of time if you're talking about an actual event that happened. All measurements have errors associated with them. I'd like to hear your explanation for clocks changing if time doesn't exist...

This is the kind of debate that really captures my imagination. It's fascinating how people try to make sense of a nonsensical situation by applying their own rules and guidelines to it. Time, numbers, language - all methods of imposing sense and order on situations beyond our control. Examine anything closely enough and you'll see our attempts to rationalise them fall apart at the seams.

Doesn't mean we should stop trying, of course. We'd probably go mad otherwise.

But why are you applying infinity to time? Or, well, time goes on infinitely, in both directions (all four because it's a 4th dimension?), but being able to pick out a point of time shouldn't stop it from being infinite. There's definitely infinite stuff out there. I was playing this game that a friend of mine created two days ago, where you write a program using certain actions, and try to destroy your opponent's program, but there isn't really any way to do damage, just ways to get the program to screw itself up by making it copy unwanted things and jump to bits of its code where it can't get "food". And I played two almost identical program against each other, and the results were that the battle would go on infinitely.

My altered thought for the day: does .99999999... really equal 1? I mean, 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = .99999.... = 3/3 = 1. So it *has* to equal one. But just 'cos there's infinite 9's and no space to round up, doesn't mean it's one. Does it?

^ Yeah, I think it does because 1-9.9 recurring = 0.0 recurring. Which is the same as 0.

Yes.

and that game sounds interesting... is it online somewhere?

Umm, in a way. You have to download something. I'll PM info.

I've mused upon that one before. Logically, there must be an infintessimally small quantity that prevents three thirds from ever becoming one. Perhaps this is why love triangles never work out.

I was thinking about that, and how you've used decimals and fractions poooossibly confuses things a tad. Obviously 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 3/3 = 1. But, .3333⠁ + .3333⠁ + .3333⠁ = .9999⠁≈ 1. Using that logic .3333⠁is only approximate to 1/3 and that's a concept that makes me go cross-eyed.

P.S. Those decimals are all recurring.

Yes 0.999... does equal 1.

I'd tell you why but it's explained much more clearly than I could here, so go look at that instead.

I knew something like that would happen.

I can't for the life of me work out how he did it, but my old crazy maths teacher once proved that 1+1=3. It took him a whole lesson and many coverings of the whiteboard, but he did it.

Was his work flawed, or did he actually like, prove it?

Different base or something?

Was it flawed? Hmm, difficult question. We were still trying to get our head around algebra and that Pythagoras bloke so I guess he could have told us anything. The simple bits made sense but at the end of the lesson most of us still declared that 1+1 equaled 2 and anything else was lunacy.

Yes, it was flawed. Most likely he divided by zero at some point, that's the usual way to produce "proofs" that 1=2 or 1+1=3 or whatever you may want.

Ah. Well. There you have it.

1 + 1 most certainly does not equal 3.

In a discussion about whether or not negative speed is possible (no definite answer yet, but I said yes, in the sense of deceleration, but you can't really have a negative speed, so no), we got a bit off topic and started talking about whether negative things are conceivable at all. So this guy started saying stuff about negative charges, and I replied with:

Oh, forgot about those. We've not done much on magnetism in school, but when charges are said to be negative and positive, are they actually, or is it just like "This one has this type of charge, and this one has the opposite of that, so they must be positive and negative!"

Oh man, I think my brain just like, exploded. Do you know how difficult it is to comprehend that we can have negative charges? I mean, how is that measurable? It totally just stopped making sense to me. (This isn't to say I've stopped believing in it, but woah, brain ache.) Here's my attempt (mostly for myself) to make it make sense again...

Neutron = no charge (this is very easy to accept)
Proton = positive charge (taking this to mean a measurable, countable, charge. As in, "I have a positive amount of money" or "I have money that exists and can be measured)
Electron = .... Hey, probably not, but what if like, there's a 0, and there's really no such thing as negative and positive, just directions from 0? Not necessarily only two (like on a number line), but an infinite amount of directions? Negative and positive are just opposite directions, and it really has nothing to do with a number being below zero, just the absolute value from it? It makes it make sense! Sort of. To me anyway.

Someone should interject before I actually start believing what I just wrote. My head hurts.

Okay, from the top. Deceleration is not negative speed, it is a negative change in speed. I believe I read an article in some journal recently where someone had managed to make light move with what was technically a negative speed, but I didn't read it in detail, so don't quote me on that. Other than that negative speed doesn't exist in the real world as we know it, but of course that doesn't stop us using it in calculations.

Charged particles. The words "positive" and "negative" are of course just arbitrary labels, but I think you can be fairly sure there are two types of charge, and they are opposite. I'm sure you know that opposite charges attract, and like charges repel. It's called charge because there are two types, not the other way round.

Charge is a physical property of particles, like mass or spin. It is therefore measurable, and if you accept that it is measured relative to a scale that we made up, then it's perfectly reasonable that a down, strange or bottom quark has a charge of -1/3. It's not really an absence of charge, you're simply measuring its relative effect on things and applying a label that's convenient.

Of course someone who knows more about physics than me (not that hard really) is welcome to come along and say that that's all bollocks.

Wait. Then do neutrons actually have charges, but they're just measured as zero on our scale?

A neutron is made up of a top quark and two bottom quarks. These have a charge of 2/3 -1/3 -1/3 = 0. It doesn't attract or repel other charged particles, so it doesn't have charge.

Well yeah, but from how I understood what you said, whatever top quarks and bottom quarks (and charm, strange, etc.) charges' are, they have to be relevant to something, and that something has to be 0. And the neutron is right at that zero mark, because it has no charge. Which makes my absolute value thing make sense, 'cos it's not making the particles have a negative charge per se, just a charge less than the neutron's charge, or less than 0. God that must sound terrible. "Less than 0, but still not negative" That's not really how I mean it. Imagine that 0 = 100. You can have a number less than 100, but it's not really a negative number, even though that on our scale it is.

Actually no. Think of it like this. The neutron has no charge, therefore it is at the center of our scale, and is considered to be 0. There's no such thing as positive and negative charges, just charges that attract and repel each other. Depending on the characteristics of a particle, it is either measured to the left of the neutron and dubbed negative or to the right and considered positive. So it's not like we actually have negative anything, we just have stuff conceivably different than what we would regard as their positive. ...Does that make sense?

Man I do not like negatives. I'm kind of expecting to go to bed and wake up with the above ripped to shreds. Don't forget to explain why when you do so.

The second paragraph is better. The charge on an electron is not less than the charge on a proton, it's the same, but in the opposite direction. It's just convenient (and makes the adding up work out) to label those directions as positive and negative.

Ok I can add to this, but I just woke up so I may have to come back and edit this later.


Ok, firstly: you can distinguish between two types of quantities: scalar and vector. The difference is that vectors have a direction associated with them and scalars don't.

Speed is a scalar, and as far as I know negative speed doesn't have any physical meaning... however it has a vector equivalent called velocity. You may hear speed and velocity interchangeably but there is a difference. You can't just say something is moving at a velocity of 10m/s, because then you don't know which direction its moving. You need to know the speed and the direction to get its velocity. You could give the direction as an angle from an established direction, or if you have defined a coordinate system (lets say that the y direction is north of where I am and x direction is east) then through the magic of trigonometry its possible to break it down into 2 numbers: the x component of the velocity and the y component. i.e. if you have a velocity of [2,1] this is telling you that for each unit of time, you are moving 2 units in the x direction and 1 in the y direction. If you imagine a flat 2D world you can describe any direction in this way. So if you know somethings position and velocity you have everything you need to know to track how it moves with time, but if you just knew that the speed was 5 you'd have no clue because it could be moving in any old direction. Anyways what I'm getting at is that with velocity you can have a negative number, because it just means you're moving in the opposite direction.


It's completely arbitrary which one is positive and which one is negative, the important thing is that they have opposite charges, so if you force an equal amount of positive and negative charges together, like in an atom, from far away it looks like a big neutral charge.


Ok, you're mixing math-land with reality again. What does "direction" mean in your hypothetical number-plane? With a line of numbers theres a simple way of getting to the next and previous number, you either add or subtract 1. How would you get from 0 to the next number in one of the other directions?


Actually charges don't have a direction - it's the electric field of the charge which is the opposite direction.
The value of the electric field at some point in space tells you the force a positive charge at that point would feel from the electron or whatever. (Again we could switch everything positive to negative and vice versa and it wouldn't make a difference, as long as you're consistent)

The equation for the electric field for itty-bitty things like electrons is called Coulombs law, which is:
Electric field at some point = (a bunch of constants) * the charge / the square of the distance from that point to the charge * a unit vector pointing from the charge to that point.
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_field#Coulomb.27s_law)

A unit vector = vector with magnitude of 1. This gives the electric field it's direction. Now, if the charge is positive, the direction of the electric field is the same as the unit vector: away from the charge, so it will repel a positive charge. But if it's negative, the electric field is in the opposite direction, so it attracts. Eek gotta go sorry if this isconfusingbye

Well, a number line will do fine. Things with the properties of whatever we decide go to the right, while things with the opposite properties go to the left. The scale is identical for both types of charge, so it's the distance from zero that matters. I guess positive and negative is just a convenient way to label them. But from what I'm getting from this, I'm right. 0.o

Wow..I was gone for maybe not even a little over an hour and Izzy managed to make a whole other page to one question. You really are gifted.

We're still on the page. Just with lots more scrolling now.

Okay, I have another one. While discussing super powers at the playground, I realized that in a parallel universe, I've enslaved the Earth. Here's the thought process.
1. If I think of something, a parallel universe opens up where I've also thought this.
2. If I choose not to act on my thoughts, a parallel universe opens up where I have acted on my thoughts.
3. The thoughts in question being world domination, in at least one universe, I have to have been successful.

Makes me wonder how many times I've died..

How do people come up with things like, "Oh if I take this bean, roast it, then grind it up and add water to it, then take the grounds out, I'll have a tasty drink that will keep me awake when I'm sleepy?"

Since when was coffee tasty? Way too much time on their hands. Freaky no-interent civilizations.

Personally I find if it's a good quality bean and fresh coffee is quite tasty.

Eugh. You adults and your strange alcohol/coffee liking taste buds.

Now caramel frappacinos are a different story..

Eugh. Far too sweet. I've never understood why people want their coffee to taste of things other than coffee. Especially not sweet things.

Because coffee is grooosss.

Tonight, for some reason, im wondering whether the secret service have ever considered using short repeating loops as means for conditioning the human mind, The reason im thinking this is because I was watching "Camberwick green" tonight and realised how catchy "windy millers" mill sound effect sounded I was actually watching episode after episode just waiting to hear it again and thus the thought entered my mind.

Any ideas whether they have or not?

I think they have otherwise why would people actually think they like reality tv shows? Reality TV is just a test to see if they can condition us and who all they can affect.