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Why You’ve Never Had an Original Thought

Aperture | August 28, 2025



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Picture this. You’re in a work meeting attempting to troubleshoot a problem that your team has been struggling to figure out. You suggest something, a solution equal parts ingenious and elegant. Your coworkers are impressed and shower you with praise, all except for one person who for some reason looks upset. Afterwards this person confronts you, claiming they had mentioned this same solution to you during a private call last week, accusing you of intellectual theft.

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#aperture #cryptomnesia #philosophy #psychology #thoughts #humanity

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Comments

This post currently has 50 comments.

  4. @AgentQQ8

    August 28, 2025 at 6:33 am

    Right, because Isaac Newton didn’t really independently invent calculus, he inadvertently plagiarized Gottfried Leibniz, someone of whose work he’d never encountered until he published.

    “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

    – Ecclesiastes 1:9

  8. @zamira9642

    August 28, 2025 at 6:33 am

    I remember making up a storyline for my fantasy world and then I realized I had already made that storyline and just forgot. And the first time I made it I said to myself don't use it and I forgot the part too and remember it again. I also asked my AI assistant to make a story with a prompt and months later a gave them the same prompt and I think they made the same story twice

  9. @ashes2ashes20

    August 28, 2025 at 6:33 am

    the thought that someone owns a melody is rediculous. there are only 14 notes in the western register. if there were only 14 words do you think no one would have used the same words in the same order before you. People want to be original but its nearly impossible.

  11. @donwolff6463

    August 28, 2025 at 6:33 am

    Hvd ^3gd h 5#<f 43 jrw ^^<= gsi5 … there ya go. Though such was original, it still was a driven within parameters, determined product…but honestly, I agree with most of what folks say below. We are poor parrots and even worse artists.

  12. @some1orAnother

    August 28, 2025 at 6:33 am

    a while back in chemistry class the teacher asked us a question and i gave a wrong answer. a while later the teacher asked the same question again and another student in my class repeated my incorrect answer.

  17. @scotttomlinson5516

    August 28, 2025 at 6:33 am

    I really hope there will be more philosophy and psychological videos in the future. I just found this channel and it is one of my favourites. A lot of discomfort,realization and freedom. Thanks:)

  23. @avriel6903

    August 28, 2025 at 6:33 am

    It's funny, because just around a year ago I was trying to convince people of exactly this! I had come to this drastic conclusion that there was no such thing as originality at all, or that there is "nothing new under the sun" as Ecclesiastes puts it, and my friends all looked at me as if I was a weirdo. Maybe I took it a little further than simply speech and thought, but I find it hilarious that not only have I said this before, but I look at this video saying the same thing much later, and all the comments saying the exact same thing. I think this video proved itself simply by being posted and letting the comments run off on their own.

  26. @elbart16

    August 28, 2025 at 6:33 am

    To talk about in a more metaphysical way, we're not the owner of our thoughts anyway.. Thoughts arises and pass away in consciousness and we can be aware of them but there's no "one" actually producing/owning them! Sounds really paradoxical but it becomes pretty obvious after practicing regularly meditation for a while

  27. @toni6194

    August 28, 2025 at 6:33 am

    This is very interessting. Very well made video, id love to see more like this. I definitely learnt something about myself and other here.

    I once experienced that effect when i was on a little bit of valium taking a walk and i "came up with the idea" that there could be universes in black holes and that the singularity in the center of spinning black holes must be a ring instead of a point. By now ive realized that i got that from a kurzgesagt video, but in that moment i thought i was a genius

  31. @mr.randomly2799

    August 28, 2025 at 6:33 am

    Man what the hell, I just thought about that idea. I'm not joking either. I've been thinking of this concept for years because I was tired of my ideas getting stolen all the time.

  36. @liamlol1539

    August 28, 2025 at 6:33 am

    I watched a streamer once (called a6d), during the stream he was making a song with a keyboard that a fan sent him. Anyway by the end of it he had made a full fledged song until someone in chat said that it sounded like Logic – 1800. He searched it and it sounded EXACTLY like the song he made, even if he didnt recognize the name of the other song

  37. @Shimamon27

    August 28, 2025 at 6:33 am

    We are influenced by the world around us – that is why it's better to never fully rely on "the power of our own minds", because our minds is a culmination of all our experiences, especially recent ones.
    Better to actively have references in mind, and know why you are doing something rather than just "flowing with it", in order to both avoid repeating something someone else did, as well as be aware of what are you trying to portray with your ideas.
    When you use active references, you also actively twist and mash them with other content in order to differentiate it from the source material, forming a unique variation.

    We live in a world and our minds feeds on what the world gives it.
    The simple way to prove it – Try and imagine a type of smell your senses can't get, or imagine in a color your brain has no option of getting, or a type of sound that is beyond what your senses can have… Or, even just try and sense in a snese you don't have.
    You'll discover that you can't.
    We are based on what there is, not what there isn't.

    Best ways to stay "original", is to go out where people usually don't go, experience those places, and form content out of those rather uncommon sensations.
    Like, if someone been outside of earth, they usually have a vastly different array of references, because their bodies experiences a whole different gravity and ways of interacting with the world around them… Totally different limitations and options.
    When you are in a unique situation, you gain unique inspiration.

    Of course, being unique, also means being unrelatable.
    Have that in mind.

  39. @Just_Another_Gravemind

    August 28, 2025 at 6:33 am

    I do a lot of worldbuilding and personal writing, I have been shocked when describing it to a friend and they'll mention how similar it is to such and such or so and so from something else. A couple minutes later I'll be flabbergasted at how I could ever have made something so similar without that clicking beforehand!

    This explains so much thank you!!!

  40. @drewthepoet1

    August 28, 2025 at 6:33 am

    I'm considering being a YouTuber and copyright infringement is definitely one of the things I'm worried about. This video on cryptomnesia definitely helps, what's a good source to do research instead of randomly making searches on YouTube, Google or other platforms? Plz and ty love your video's!

  42. @Wordoflife946

    August 28, 2025 at 6:33 am

    All of your videos can be understood. How money isn’t real or doesn’t manner, if your thoughts are yours, death. If you want to read the Word of God. You do not have too if you do not want. Jesus death was the payment of OUR sins so if sin happens after, believing isn’t sin because sin died with Jesus. So after believing you should (not must) try to stop sinning.

  44. @NM14825

    August 28, 2025 at 6:33 am

    Yes no one has ever had a original thought we have took notions and ideas subconsciously and connected them with other things later on. One example is a bird, humans have always dreamt of flying, and its quite funny that a bird looks like a plane its got wings and a main body like a plane.

    Same could be applied with horse and car. Thoughts and ideas have always grown from past ones and connected to make one seemingly new, but just two separate things and connected them.

    This dawned on me when i tried to think of something completly new instead of what i already knew. I could not do it i could only think of stuff ive seen in reality.

  45. @kodyhenry7

    August 28, 2025 at 6:33 am

    That is only the case if you have walked the same path every one else has. Absolutely a hundred percent certain if you are living a curious life you will have original thoughts because you will be tying two things together that have never before had the same mind focus on them.

  47. @person4119

    August 28, 2025 at 6:33 am

    As a musician I’ve learned this the hard way way too many times. Whenever I “write” something I play it for someone and they immediately say “isn’t that just (insert hit song here)” and it’s such an annoying problem

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