The Minciu Sodas laboratory devoted to caring about thinking.  The material below is in the public domain.  Organized by Andrius Kulikauskas.  Last updated 2000.06.21

Thoughtful Wishing

A wishlist for the love of thinking. We are asking you for your answers to the questions above.  Please send your answers to our director Andrius Kulikauskas at ms@ms.lt
Thank you to: William Wagner, Andrius Kulikauskas

Dimensions Underlying Our Wishes

One way to analyze our wishes is to consider them in terms of dimensions, such as: With respect to these dimensions, we wish to reexperience our thoughts in the following ways:
 
Imagining thinking: Immerse in thought: 
no divisible thought.		 Immerse in movement: 
no overlapping thought.		 Reflect on movement: 
no missing thought.		 Reflect on thought: 
no unitable thought.
What to think? Focus on essence.  Record system. Safeguard ideas. Open myself.
How to think? Heighten essence. Refine system. Elicit ideas. Organize myself.
Why to think? Be shaped by essence. Share system. Manage ideas. See outside myself. 
Thinking = Act, think, exist. One, all, many. Object, process, subject. Possible, actual, necessary.

I invite your help to look for these and other dimensions amongst the wishes we have collected.  Below is a map of our wishes taken from answers to Raimundas Vaitkevicius' survey Do you organize your thoughts?  Wishes are placed along four different axes, and related wishes are placed next to each other. There is also an earlier version and an even earlier version of this map.

A new version of this map of wishes more concrete by considering the various kinds of tools for thinking that address these wishes, and how they might be interrelated by our IrDAKiss import/export standard.

Reexperience that our thoughts are not divisible

Here we are focused on a thought and immersed in our experience of it.  What is the purpose of reexperiencing our thinking in this way?  So that we know that there is no way to divide or break up this thought, our perspective - while focused on this thought - is not divisible.  It is as if we are hammering away at it, as they say, "driving our head against the wall".  This is perhaps central to the following kinds of wishes:

Focus on essence.
Harness concentration.
The key reason for thinking, I think, is to capture the essence, so that we might identify with the essence.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Hold on to that which is most essential, important.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]

Heighten essence.
Focus, refine ideas.
Rewrite to shape ideas.
Be able to draw the essence from each group. [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]

Be shaped so I focus on essence.
Be ourselves shaped by writing process.
Be able to hang around good people, so that I become a good person.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Be able to immerse myself in a culture so that it affects me.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Shape ourselves, allow others or the environment to shape us.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]

In summary: If we want to focus on the essence, then ultimately we have to be shaped so that we do focus on the essence, and we get there by formulating the essence.

Reexperience that our thoughts are not overlapping

Here we travel from thought to thought, immersed in them, as if in a labyrinth.  What is the purpose of reexperiencing our thinking in this way? We are checking to make sure that there are no unnecessary mental movements, that each movement means a truly new and fresh perspective.  This is perhaps central to the following kinds of wishes:

Record system
Develop thoughtstream.
Voice-enabled.
Author links thoughts on the fly.
Communication standard, make knowledge explicit.
Be able to have a colleague make explicit an opposing position, so that I can concentrate on my own position. [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Be able to record my complex set of newly generated ideas.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]

Refine system
Single place for idea.
Evaluate past projects.
Keep good info, reject bad.
Fix mistakes.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Be able to integrate my recorded ideas into my collection of ideas.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Be able to talk to a friend about a topic so as to better understand what I mean and reflect on it.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Be able to write up ideas for an audience to see if the ideas hang together.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Study ideas or examples, look for common or opposing factors, so as to figure out how they relate.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Maintain a hyperlinked database that easily connects information within and between all of the above.  [William Wagner, 5/00]

Share system
Understand others, their intuition, what they are going through.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Live on behalf of others, where they cannot. (Thinking makes life portable).  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Be able to accumulate examples of a certain kind with other people, so as to group them.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]

In summary: If we want to record a system, then ultimately we have to share the system, and we get there by refining the system.
 

Reexperience that our thoughts are not incomplete

Here we are wandering from thought to thought, but removed, reflecting on the entire system.  We are noticing where our movement gets stuck, where our mind would like to move, but cannot, because there is no pathway for it, we're stuck inside, and there's no way to get to the empty space that we'd like to.  What is the purpose of reexperiencing our thinking in this way?  We are noticing where there are thoughts missing, and mapping out our thinking, so that it is complete, with no
empty spaces.  This is perhaps central to the following kinds of wishes:

Safeguard ideas
Capture thoughts
Be able to record isolated sporadic ideas as they come up throughout the day.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Safekeeping
Intelligent filing
Pick out patterns.
Maintain a complete chronological thought journal  [William Wagner, 5/00]

Elicit ideas
Create ideas using templates.
Be aware of the complete set of perspectives within which my current one exists.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Be able to get away, think free, long, and deep, to arrive at ideas that help make sense of everything.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Be able to read around in various books and otherwise stimulate new thinking.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Solve problems.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Be able to reorganize my collection of ideas, reflect on them, take a new direction, metathink.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Be able to accumulate examples of a certain kind with other people, so as to group them.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Intelligent prompts.
Super search engine.
Be able to pray to God and ask him for the answer to a question, and receive an answer from him.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Have access to all my data through either a desktop or a palmtop interface.  [William Wagner, 5/00]

Manage ideas
Deal with information overload
Watch our thinking.
Help with thinking process.
Organize thinking process.
Integrate various tools.
See personal growth over time.

In summary: If we want to safeguard ideas, then we have to manage ideas, and we get there by eliciting ideas.

Reexperience that our thoughts are not unitable

Here we want to understand the relationship of the thought with our whole system of thoughts.  Although we are focused on our thought, we stand back from it as far away as we can.  We are aware of how all of the other thoughts relate to our thought, they help us focus on it.  What is the purpose of reexperiencing our thinking in this way?  So that we know that there is no way of uniting our thought with another thought, which is to say, each thought is so independent of the others, that any perspective to encompass them must neglect the essence of each of them.  This is perhaps central to the following kinds of wishes:

Open myself
Free brain space
Large workspace
Heighten our exercise of free will, by having us be more informed.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Prepare ourselves, prime ourselves, so that we would be more sensitive, alive.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Be able to go through a "could-do-list", concrete examples of the sorts of things I should do (like develop discipline, serve others, be with God, etc.).  I think of concrete examples just to prime my mind, so that when similar things come up during the day, I am ready to do them naturally, rather than try to fit them into a schedule.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]

Organize myself
Reorganize
Multiple visualizations
Organize thoughts into categories
Be able to select key ideas, and isolate them, for example, print them out, so as to focus on them.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Be able to cultivate a private language of concepts.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Be able to create a structural language for recording conceptual ideas.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Maintain specialized topic categories with chronological journal entries   [William Wagner, 5/00]
Maintain the same specialized topic categories organized in hierarchical outline form  [William Wagner, 5/00]

See outside myself
Thinking-tool for allowing structure to evolve
Be able to lay down the educational foundations so that I would have an infrastructure for thinking within the context of our civilization.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Go beyond ourselves, see how it could be otherwise.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Know everything - at least about that which is most important - life (?), apply this knowledge usefully.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]
Be with God, understand God.  [Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]

In summary: If I want to open myself, then ultimately I have to see outside myself, and I get there by organizing myself.

Sources

My wish is to maintain the following: [William Wagner, 5/00]

Notes

- Be able to pray to God and ask him for the answer to a question, and receive an answer from him.
- Be able to recombine my thoughts.
 

Why think?

The key reason for thinking, I think, is to capture the essence, so that
we might identify with the essence.  This seems almost the opposite of responding, which is going beyond yourself.
- Hold on to that which is most essential, important.
- Know everything - at least about that which is most important - life
(?), apply this knowledge usefully.
- Solve problems.
- Understand others, their intuition, what they are going through.
- Be with God, understand God.
- Live on behalf of others, where they can not. (Thinking makes life
portable).
- Fix mistakes.
- Go beyond ourselves, see how it could be otherwise.
- Shape ourselves, allow others or the environment to shape us.
- Heighten our exercise of free will, by having us be more informed.
- Prepare ourselves, prime ourselves, so that we would be more
sensitive, alive.
Additional:
- Save energy.
- Make us aware of the good things, to value them, and the bad things, to deal with them.
- Deal with things unbounded by time and place.

I think that our laboratory's system of ten objectives has, or will
have, many insights into this.
[Andrius Kulikauskas, 5/00]

We are drawing from our system of twelve ongoing projects to collect examples of caring about thinking.