[chromoblob]

> The things you can think are limited by the language delivered to you by society.

To even begin to decide whether this claim is scientific (testable), thoughts and their content need to be defined physically here.

And why care about pre-given thoughts? I care about my emotions more. Thinking is just an utility guided by them. "What you think is good" is certainly more about emotion than ideas. One can walk back from their emotion, starting from a clean sheet, gradually reconstructing the desired idea by bit - most languages have the necessary primitives available.

> The idea of purely independent thought is an illusion.

There's no need for one's thinking to be dependent on anything more or less than reality relevant to one. No culture other than one's private own needs to be included as dependency. No need to copy or almost copy another culture as well.

> It follows that independent action is also an illusion (your idea of what to do next, as well, tends to be borrowed!)

My idea of what to do next comes from my rationality. Rationality can be rebuilt independently, at least in part that covers a big part of everyday life, when a minimal amount of education consisting of self-evident truths is given. So my behavior is only dependent on me having acquired a number of ideas useful to me individually that I have also sanitized.

> 1. All thought is fantasy

"All even integers are divisible by 2." What are you trying to imply? Fantasy can be made to conform to rules and to be useful directly as functional data.

> 3. Most thought is borrowed

"Most" by what metric?

> 5. Society is the manager of thought, not the individual

I think that an individual can become the "manager" of their own thinking as well by degree such as allowed by their cultural environment plus that of their capability.

> 6. Thought advances as a whole

What?

> 7. Without collective thought as a substrate, the individual won't function

Please explain in more detail why and what is 'collective thought'.

[atomicnature]

> To even begin to decide whether this claim is scientific (testable), thoughts and their content need to be defined physically here.

Where did you get the idea of "scientific"? Where did you get the idea of "begin"? Where did you get the idea of "definition"? Where did you get the idea of "physical"? Etc. You didn't create any of those ideas. Are you seeing how many ideas you are borrowing from society in a single sentence? I see society dancing through your mind!

And if I keep going through your entire answer, "most" of the ideas are borrowed. Your "value-addition" is re-arrangement. In this case, the way you've arranged the ideas is full of holes (and eventually not enough to 'pass the test of reality') :)

[chromoblob]

When I tried to refute you, I remembered about basic concept of computing, the way the technological progress is generally made and technologies of security in general. These things are totally both essential and hardly rebuildable from scratch, and latter two may also need to be continuously developed. So there is a vital dependency on these.

But outside of security concerns, if you have developed in a culture that contains the concepts of abstraction, general encoding and a basic set of abstract thinking primitives, have enough of abstract thinking skill and an inclination to think autonomously, you can rebuild any concept that you should care about practically. I posit that only the more "basic", primitive ideas are vital for effective thinking. If you lack them, you are screwed, but if you just lack higher-level ones, you can work around that easily if you care. And I think that the abstract thinking skills needed to build ideas are in large part not acquired directly from culture; they consist of some elementary abstract thinking ideas together with higher-level methods and other private mental tools which are rarely shown to you and which you typically develop on your own.

I can see that one can be (un)privileged to develop in rich/poor enough culture. But one can audit their understanding of a culture - at least always in a most basic way, and again by a degree dependent on the amount of "hints" from cultural environment and personal capability.

"The idea of audit" consists of 3 concepts available virtually to all, so if it isn't available, which it almost always is, it can be rebuilt if you care enough.

Culture feeds you, but it can control you only by omission of essential general ideas of various levels. There aren't many of them, and they are self-evident, useful strictly for the user and can be used to rebuild any ideas missing from your environment that are needed to conduct a lot of stuff.

> Are you seeing how many ideas you are borrowing from society in a single sentence?

At least, when I borrow stuff, I analyse it, sometimes modify and then subscribe under the result. If I am sure that it is good for me, it can become mine.

I have emotionally audited all of my thoughts.

> Your "value-addition" is re-arrangement.

On which level, though? You probably know how big is the myriad of electronic circuits that can be made from simple elements such as wires, resistors, capacitors, inductors, transistors and diodes and seldom other. And more complex circuits are made from simpler ones with ease (I don't mean effort, I mean viability of a decent result) using composition and interfacing, given decent skill. About "rearrangement", same applies, skill here being abstract thinking - although thinking is far more complicated than circuit design, I believe thought is compositional. Of course, there is no way around the dictionary of basic primitives, but it is available almost everywhere where there is relevance.

Creation of data is "rearrangement" of a tiny set of digits.

> the way you've arranged the ideas is full of holes (and eventually not enough to 'pass the test of reality')

Either substantiate or don't write this. This is not helpful without an explanation.

I would be interested to hear you address my point about construction of ideas.

[atomicnature]

I apologize for not addressing your concerns point by point, but here are some general thoughts:

The kind of reasoning you are engaging in now was done by Descartes long ago, during Newton's time. It involves building up knowledge from the bottom up, starting with first principles. Descartes had some genuinely interesting ideas about how perfect concepts could be constructed. You can read his book on methods; they are remarkable, but they do not tell the whole story. Descartes himself made many scientific errors, despite his "perfect" and "rational" system for arriving at "true and sound conclusions." Popper's falsifiability is not the end-all-be-all of scientific thought either. Both Descartes and Popper do not represent the final word on what science is or should be.

Unlike Descartes, we observe real scientists supplementing rational ideas with empiricism—how actual people learn and think in their daily lives. How they go about life matters. Especially with Large Language Models, we see how essential a large knowledge corpus is for generating new variations. Marvin Minsky referred to it as "common sense," etc. It's important to remember that the concepts of "Expert systems" and "heuristics" did not work on their own back in the day (though they are not without utility in enhancing new methods).

Progress typically requires a societal-level effort in any field. It involves communication, challenges, numerous guesses, trial and error, and so forth. Therefore, the development of new ideas and the exploration of new frontiers are deeply interdependent at the civilization level.

In summary, I believe that "individualism" is incompatible with reality; the true nature of reality is "interdependence." Dependency is a fact of life. However, due to certain surface-level cultural ideas and the significance people attach to their self-importance, the unrealistic concept of "individualism" often prevails at the linguistic level over the more realistic idea of "interdependence."

[chromoblob]

> Especially with Large Language Models, we see how essential a large knowledge corpus is for generating new variations.

I don't see it, sufficiency doesn't entail necessity.

> It's important to remember that the concepts of "Expert systems" and "heuristics" did not work on their own back in the day

Expert systems are about automation of decision. I talk not about automation, but just a minimal, basic dependency on culture as opposed to complete dependency and no hope of novel thinking outside of it.

> Progress typically requires a societal-level effort in any field.

I want to know how this requirement would be quantified. Which society do you need for a given amount of progress?

> "individualism" is incompatible with reality

Why can't one, in principle, recreate some design on their own that they lack, of less complexity than rocket science or AGI?

[atomicnature]

> complete dependency and no hope of novel thinking outside of it.

Where have I said "there is no hope of novel thinking out of it"? (Re: Most thought is borrowed) I am simply saying not a single thought is entirely yours. There's always something external mixed in, stuff from society. Thought is always dependent. That means, you can be the co-author of an idea, but not the sole author. Having sole author is merely a simplification device, not a realistic description of the situation.

By the way, I still have not made the ultimate challenge here (since this is HN, filled with no-nonsense, individualistic hackers): what is referred to as "I", is also an idea delivered by society. Therefore, this whole conversation is thought talking to thought, and not chromoblob vs atomicnature.

[chromoblob]

Okay, since to develop the thinking skill, one needs to exercise a lot in a man-made environment, I agree that thinking is dependent on it and the basic vocabulary.

However, the dependency ends here. If you just want, you can analyze, deconstruct, modify or synthesize any memes at any level beyond the level of your primitives (given enough time).

About the definition of boundary of mind, I agree that it should be arbitrary and minds are compositional in space.