I was having an interesting conversation with a friend of mine today about the idea of original thought. He was positing that it's almost impossible to have a truly original thought and I took it a step further by saying it was impossible, period. He responded with, how about Einstein's Theory of Relativity? To which I replied, he spent his entire life dwelling upon quantum physics and the like, reading, discussing, etc., and his Theory of Relatively must have been the zenith of a lifetime of thoughts, most of which began as not his own (or something along those lines). [My argument centered around the fact that everything we think was 'picked up' or, to various degrees, shaped by the people and experiences we've had in our life. He should have counter-argued with the fact that it all depends on your definition of "original thought," which is what I would have done... man, I must be annoying sometimes.] At this point we both kinda started losing interest in the conversation, and we parted ways with him concluding he could probably come up with an original thought if he really tried.
Later on that day, via text:
Me: How's the original thought coming along?
Professor [<-- what I like to call him when he's wearing his reading glasses]: I figure there's no way of definitively proving to yourself a thought is original so you may as well just claim them all. I invented jam sandwiches, for instance.
Now that was pretty original.
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