I read somewhere that 90% of all information on the internet is just a rehash of the 10% of truly original materiel.  It might be like a lot of things on the internet, that is, complete rubbish!  However, I realised that we are influenced so much by the stuff that is going on around us.  How much of what we think is really original thought and how much is us just thinking what someone else told us, or in the worse case scenario, told us to think!

People who know me may think that I spend far too much time thinking about statistics and odds (just to let you know I suspect Texas-Holde’m Poker is possibly the best game in the world as well as the best psychological experiment in human interaction).  I do think that thinking about, I mean truly thinking about the chances of something happening can be a worthwhile exercise in making decisions – although it is obvious that a vast majority of the population do no do this…… you WILL NOT win xlotto, stop buying tickets – it is 76,000,000 to 1, that is three times the entire population of Australia – looking at it that way, NONE of us will win!!!!

So, the percentages and odds are interesting in looking at the world and life.  I once gave a lecture which was attended my a neighbourhood group of concerned citizens about things that were happening in their area.  Before I went to the lecture I did a bit of statistical analysis.  I told them at the lecture that things were in fact very dangerous.  Statistically it became clear that they were in more danger of being KILLED in a car accident coming to, or going home from, the lecture than they were EVER (for the rest of their lives!) being involved in the ‘concerning trend and dangers’ in their neighbourhood.  I don’t think they really believed me, but, they were the facts….  I never checked to see if they all made it home?

I have to write this, although there is no basis in anything scientific I have bothered to research; but, all of us at one time or another have thought (or probably been told, we just thought we thought it) that at the exact moment you were doing something someone else in the world was doing exactly the same thing (how weird is that, in that when I was writing the above I was thinking of someone, somewhere is the world, sitting at their computer, writing their blog, about exactly the same thing that I am writing about now… and they suddenly realised that somewhere in the world, someone was sitting…… you get my drift).

Which brings me to the point of this post.

It might have a bit to do with the idea that you, and me, might already think that there is not a whole lot of ‘new’ going on in any case.  This is of course other than the ‘new’ idea we are all going to come up with one day that will make us overnight millionaires (although even nowadays you have to be a billionaire as millionaires are everywhere – or so we are led to believe…).

In writing my blog entries I am often just rebadging, rewording or recounting the thoughts, ideas, and/or theories of others.  So… I was just sitting here thinking could I actually write a truly original blog entry.  It is pretty hard to imagine writing anything that is not influenced by things you have read, seen or been told.

As I keep thinking, is being a better man being a different man.  Will I be a new original man, obviously better, or will I just be the same man, but doing things differently.

This reminded me of a story I once read about paradoxes.  If you are restoring a boat and have to replace a few planks in the hull, how many planks do you have to actually replace before you are not actually restoring the boat but building a new one…?

Maybe the magic 10% is the answer; but that seems far to small amount to be considered changing something so far from the original that it is not the original anymore. Although I suspect just about everyone at one stage or another will say if you replace 50% of something then it isn’t the original something anymore… or is it?  I also heard that in using someone else’s material if you change 10% of it then it is considered new material. Just for information I have no basis for what I just wrote other than the vague recollection that I might have read it somewhere, or heard it, or been told it.  There is a great example of this in a movie called ‘Flash of Genius’.  I can’t give you the punch line which relates this movie to this post, but it is in the final couple of scenes when he describes what is truly inventing something and what is really original thought.  It is based on a true story which always helps stretch our gullibility that it is good for us to watch and believe, and that it may really, actually be true.

So here I am, in my ‘better man project’ writing about original thought and I have spent most of the post writing about what others have said, or written, or even made into a movie.  Maybe original thought can only exist in the realms of the mind that we haven’t begun to understand yet, or, maybe original thought is for the geniuses that are discovering the universe with mathematics (I can never quite get my head around that – just like I can’t ever quite get my head around a mathematical problem that they have been trying to solve for years – isn’t 1 + 1 always going to be 2 – so just work it out; we have calculators to help – stop using the blackboards and squiggly lines!!!)

Maybe original thought is not about new ideas at all. Perhaps it is about understanding.

I don’t know if this post has contributed to making me a better man, but it made me think about the odds of something happening, if you do it long enough, they usually improve…. Unless you’re insane (click here to see Einstein’s insanity quote).

I refuse to believe that there is nothing new to be discovered, my religion does not allow this!! I also believe that perhaps discovery and understanding are the same thing but we perceive them so differently and find that sometime neither are enough. But, then when is enough, enough in a world where enough is never enough!

10% may not be very much! but at least someone, somewhere is being new and probably writing about it right now, sitting at a computer on the other side of the world…

Also, remind me to write another post about six-percenters, that is one of my favourite statistical anomalies.