[thesz]

I tried to learn some tai chi long ago and found that it is not possible to perform tai chi correctly if you are thinking about anything, including thinking about performing tai chi correctly.

And "not thinking about anything" is exceptionally hard.

[cassianoleal]

Yes, that's the meditative part of it. It's very hard to impossible to perform if you don't calm your mind and focus on the movement.

[krumpet]

I've noticed the exact same effect from playing the guitar.

[riku_iki]

My observation is that in both cases it is two steps process:

1. You use conscious part of your mind to slowly doing isolated drills with good control and understanding of every detail. On this step conscious part controls process and unconscious part of mind is being trained by observing the drill and outcome.

2. unconscious part of mind is now trained, and you can disable conscious part which will make result better, because unconscious part is better in contoling motor functions.

[mbivert]

Well, it's surprisingly trivial for newborns!

More seriously, I can't think of a single reason as to why it could not be at least trained; there must be ways. Not that I disagree with you, far from it.

[krisoft]

> it's surprisingly trivial for newborns!

how do you know?

[mbivert]

I was half-joking (hence the "more seriously").

Nonetheless, the serious half is to be understood with a contextually reasonable definition of "thinking": "the thoughts running through the mind of an adult [when he tries to relax]". It seems fair to argue that such thoughts require a prolonged, sophisticated interaction with human society, which newborns lack.

[krisoft]

> "the thoughts running through the mind of an adult [when he tries to relax]".

So by that definition teenagers don't do any thinking because they are not adults?

Also by that definition nobody ever thinks at work because they are working, not trying to relax.

(Not even mentioning that the definition as given only applies to males.)

I'm suspicious of this definition and doesn't match how I use the word "thinking". But I see that if you have this definition then tautologically newborns don't do it.

[mbivert]

> I'm suspicious of this definition and doesn't match how I use the word "thinking". But I see that if you have this definition then tautologically newborns don't do it.

Let me rephrase the argument then: if you've been meditating at least a little, you'll know that the thoughts running through your mind simply cannot occur in the mind of a newborn. When those thoughts go away, your mind go quiet, hence it's reasonable to assume that newborns are naturally, essentially quiet.

Besides, I'm not proposing a mathematical/exact definition here: common sense/good faith is naturally required to make sense of it. I am not redefining what "thinking" means, but locally using the word "thinking" as a loose shortcut for "the mind activities occurring when one tries to relax/meditate".

[krisoft]

> if you've been meditating at least a little, you'll know that the thoughts running through your mind simply cannot occur in the mind of a newborn

That is interesting, because i would have used the same example of meditation but to argue in the opposite direction. People intentionally need to learn how to meditate. Calming your mind takes practice and effort. The default state of being seems to be not the meditating state.

Newborns seems to have all the bits adults have, except they don’t really have a good control over them yet. I assume this is the same for their mind. Therefore i would assume they have all kind of racing thoughts. Clearly of course non-verbal ones, more like bundles of emotions and feelings. But i would assume their head is full of “proto-thoughts”. They of course are not worried if their tax returns were filled out correctly, for the simple reason that they don’t know what a tax return is. But i wouldn’t assume that their head is a calm place.

I’m not saying that I am right, and newborns have thoughts. What I am saying is that it is not obvious to me why they wouldn’t. Why would their mind be the only thing they have better control over than at adulthood?

Now maybe i just haven’t meditated enough. ;) Maybe if i just reach a higher level of consciousness it will be all clear to me. But so far you haven’t convinced me.