Do you believe actions are all there is?

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I tend to spend quite some amount of time thinking about things. Just thinking without acting. But if those thoughts don't result in more and/or better actions or a better mood which would result in more action, the thoughts are basically worthless.

Because all there is, is the physical world, right? Thoughts don't contribute to anything unless they somehow ensure more and/or better actions.

I can sometimes think I have experienced a lot during a day if I have had many thoughts. But in reality I haven't, because thoughts are just my own world, not the real world. The real world is all there is. So seen from the outside I spend a lot of time doing nothing.


Do you believe thoughts are in themselves "something" or are they only something if they amount to more/better actions?

Do you recognize what I describe yourself?

I also am much more prone to thought than action and can empathize with feeling that a day has been "busy" if there was a lot of thought going on.

On the most literal level, thoughts are electrical impulses within the brain; thus, they do exist in the physical realm.

There are may theories that claim that thoughts themselves can shape our reality; at the very least, thoughts shape our perception of the world, which then may indirectly shape our actions. While thought alone will not save somebody from a burning building, thoughts can make one more inclined to run into the burning building (or perhaps to call the proper authorities).

Here are some inspiring articles on thought:

http://www.abundance-and-happiness.com/the-power-of-thoughts.html

http://about-power-of-thought.blogspot.com/

While I do agree that action is a very important step, thoughts are "something" in and of themselves.

WerewolfPoet, thanks for your reply.

I agree that actions should have proper thought behind them.

But at the end of the day, you cannot see the things you have thought. When people ask you: what have you spent your last 5 years doing? It would be weird to say that you spent about 2 years just thinking. This is what I mean when I say thoughts are nothing. You cannot say you have done something just because you have been thinking. Only if this thinking was in relation to an education or the similar.

It seems to me actions are the only real thing in this world. The only "reasonable" purpose of thinking is to better actions. Seems like thinking in itself is nothing at the end of the day. Quite annoying when I like to just think about things. I need to put the thinking into action. I guess this is related to the Executive Dysfunction of Aspergers Syndrome.

Information is just as real as matter, and thoughts drive our actions. To ignore thoughts is like ignoring the gasoline in a car or the electricity in a light bulb. We pass on information from person to person, and information makes up our culture, our science and art, and our personalities. Information density is what makes the human brain so special. So, yes, thoughts matter.

Thoughts matter.

Action works.

I'd rather put one man to work than hire a dozen men who are just going to think about it.

But the work won't do any good if the dozen men haven't thought up an efficient strategy for doing it.

They go hand in hand; they're both useless without the other.

It's the thought that counts... or maybe not.

Thoughts have their place, but actions speak louder. Thoughts aid direction, but without action as momentum you're just stuck.

It is good to think and act, not only think and not only act.

Acting without thinking is good sometimes, and thinking without acting is good sometimes, but mosttimes, it is good to think and act.

Ah yes ... the socialist model ... dozens of bureaucrats deciding how one little chicken farmer is going to raise milk productivity without cattle.

There's a time and place for thinking, and a time and place for action.

LOL, I didn't mean it politically. I meant more like--Once you've developed a good system for doing something, the actual doing of it becomes much more effective. It's more like dozens of agriculture and livestock experts developing new ways to raise, feed, and house cattle, so that the farmer can use the information to produce more milk. Many professions nowadays are engaged in producing not a tangible thing, but information itself. Writing a book, inventing a machine, and organizing a crew of workers are all jobs that involve producing information.

Once a system has been developed and put into production, all that are needed are operators to run it and technicians to keep it running.

Engineers may step in from time to time with upgrades to the system, but what is already working no longer needs to be designed.

Ideas are great, especially when put on paper, but the only way that I'm going to be convinced that the idea has any practical value is to see it in action.

Do you agree that we should only think about things that might affect our actions somehow?

I mean, if we think about things not in some way related to actions, those thoughts are pointless/useless, right?


For instance, you shouldn't spend time thinking about how trains get into movement if you are never going to use that information as a part of your actions. Those thoughts are better spent on more relevant information, right?

I do not agree.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162- ... ydreaming/





They are not pointless or useless. They are what makes creativity possible, as well as allowing cognitive leaps that can lead to paradigm shifts.




Einstein was able to make a paradigm shift by thinking about moving trains in a way completely unrelated to his actual travel plans. Confining your thoughts to the obviously pragmatic will limit you greatly.

Here is where a great deal of political turmoil comes from.

On the one hand, once a system is in place and working, it should need only tweaks and upgrades. When conditions change and it isn't working as well, tweak and upgrade. On the other hand, sometimes the fundamental flaws can only be seen once a system is in place and in action for a long time. Or maybe what were once virtues become flaws when conditions change and mere tweaks and upgrades are no longer sufficient.

When people look at a system that isn't really working too well, there seem to be two main camps of thought about what should be done. There is the tweak and upgrade camp versus the scrap-it-and-start-over camp. It's the reformers versus the revolutionaries.

Like you say, an idea may look great on paper but in action there may be flaws revealed by those who came up with the plan but could not foresee all the ramifications of actually using the plan. Example: communism.

When I look at the example you and Callista are talking about, I can't help but think of Temple Grandin and PETA. Temple Grandin is comparative to an engineer who comes into an existing system (of livestock management) with tweaks and upgrades to make it less cruel. PETA looks at the same system and thinks it should be dismantled because it is built on the premise that we have the right to use animals for our own ends, a premise they disagree with. Both camps use a combination of thought and action (in fact PETA is contemptuous of those who use thought without action- caring about animal cruelty but changing nothing in their own lives to counter it).

But in both cases, there must also be a period of thought without action- just plain old musing without planning- in order to come up with what premises to accept in the first place. Just musing without literally planning an action is how people clarify their own values and what premises to accept or not and even to see that a premise exists in the first place. Humans had to spend a fair bit of time just ruminating (>10k years ago) to even come up with the concept of domesticating animals rather than hunting them. And other humans had to spend a fair bit of time ruminating in order to reject the broadly accepted premise that animals are to be used by humans for their own ends. (I eat meat, in case it seems like I agree with PETA.) In order to figure oput what system you want to create in the first place (or when to dismantkle system A and replace it with different system B) you have to spend a lot of time in thought. Figuring out "how should we eat?) is goal oriented thought but the larger philosophical frameworks around such questions require a lot of random rumination.