I had a freewheeling conversation this evening in which one of the participants did that thing some people do when they don’t know anything specific about a subject:
“It’s not really my field, but I have a friend whose cousin wrote the paper about that physics thing, where there’s a whole, you know, quantum theory about the brain, and how it’s really a simulation.”
These random thoughts ended up making the rest of us work harder. We’d have a little bit of back and forth, and then this person would jump in with the whole “cousin with the theory” thing, and we’d all listen and try to fit those ideas into the rest of the conversation.
In a way it was good, the sheer unpredictability of it. It got the rest of us thinking more creatively, this requirement that we fit this random energy into our discussion.
Maybe every serious conversation should involve a person who has a cousin with a theory. Especially if that theory involves, like, the whole physics thing with the brain, because it’s, you know, really a simulation.