Please see my comment under your post "Generating Ideas".

I do not understand much of what you wrote in this post, particularly the last sentence.

The last line is the point of the post. In other words, the thinking process normally assumed to be characteristic of the human brain has characteristics common to other venues.

Where would new ideas come from based on this concept?

I did not post this as a fecund source of new ideas, merely what seems to me a novel viewpoint as to the processes in thinking. In other words, the concept of thinking is usually relegated to the discrete processes within the human brain with, perhaps, a nod to some of the primates. This concept engulfs both human thinking and the absolutely simple processes involved in sense-reaction gadgets in some elementary machines. In fact, it might go even further to permit "thinking" to describe some organic creatures totally bereft of a nervous system but still sensitive to and reactive to their environment.

Maybe we're talking about different things. The pattern of action/reaction is common to many things, including thinking, animal behavior and mechanical devices. But thinking has other traits not shared by anything else, organic or inorganic. The creation of new ideas is such a trait. It's an action created from no known pattern.

As someone whose professional and non-professional life is continually concerned with the investigation of novel innovation, I am always interested in the source of new ideas. My experience is that what is considered new is usually a matter of linking accepted viewpoints in unexpected ways. My idea is that the creative mind deals in quotidian templates of reaction wherein action-reaction formats take place in linkages not normally performed. And the basis for this capability is not outside normal mental operation. Innovation of ideas deals with a substantial library of these templates which lies within basically human capabilities but it is an advantage of volume rather than something alien to simpler mechanical reaction systems.Genetic innovation is frequently due to accidental distortion of a normal system as in mutation. Ideational mutation is frequently due to mental template interaction from the realization of similarities of processes not previously seen as similar.

It sounds like we pretty much agree on the source of new ideas. It also sounds like your job must be a lot more interesting than mine if it lets you spend a lot of time investigating novel ideas. I'm waiting for a MacArthur Fellowship to land on my doorstep so I can do likewise.

Professionally I worked as an industrial designer. I am now retired and living on a minimum income so I have lots of time to think about things. But I do not overblow my capabilities nor expect funds to drop out of the sky.

As an industrial designer here's a copy of an idea I posted on another website for an innovation that you might find worth contemplating.

"In the US there are 39 states that now require utilities to allow net-metering, meaning they have to let companies put electricity back into the grid and pay them for it. Not long ago I was taking a tour through one of the our company's factories and got into a discussion with one of the supervisors about the huge amount of noise out on the plant floor. We looked into possible ways to take advantage of it and thought some system based on a dynamic microphone might work (dynamic microphones convert sound into electrical energy when the sound waves push against a diaphragm, moving a coil back and forth over a magnet.) Passive amplifiers could have even been added to boost the decibel level and resulting power. Unfortunately the plant was shut down before we could do any tests.

There are other places where this line of thinking might turn out to be profitable though. Planes for instance. 747's have a big auxilliary power unit (APU) in the rear that produces electricity for various purposes. If the engine noise was converted into electricity it might be possible to have a smaller that could handle the load, thereby decreasing the overall weight of the plane and giving it better fuel mileage. The volume could even be increased using passive amplifiers to convert more sound into electricity.

Another place would be windmill parks. Having never been to one I had to do a little research, but it turns out that the windmills make a lot of noise. Modifying them so they converted the noise into electricity would make them even more of a bargain.

Here's an addendum on the possible implentation methods.

1. The following link describes the auxilliary power units that are currently being used on 747's (down near the bottom).

http://members.shaw.ca/translink/ac-7474.htm

2. The following link describes a study that was done to see how much money people would be willing to pay to get rid of windmill farms. It turned out that the closer they lived to them the more they were willing to pay. The reason for this was the amount of noise produced by the windmills. I'm including the link just to verify that the windmills do indeed produce noise as a byproduct and that being the case, the efficiency of the windmills could be increased by adding a device capable of converting that noise into electricity (again based on the way dynamic microphones work).

http://www.akf.dk/eng/wind0.htm

3. As far as implementing it in a factory setting goes, personal experience has shown me that some of them can be quite noisy. I don't have a link showing how loud the ones I've been in were but here's a chart of average noise levels from different sources. It was taken from the link below it. (According to the chart it looks like elevated trains might make another candidate for one of these energy-producing devices.)

Aircraft: Near the Plane 140 dbA Aircraft: Residence Near Airport 80 to 90 dbA Elevated Train 120 dbA Industrial Plant 100 dbA Auto Horn at 25 ft. 100 dbA Jazz Band 85 to 100 dbA Loud Stereo 90 dbA Person Shouting 80 dbA Noisy Household 75 dbA and up Truck at 25 ft. 75 dbA Busy Street at Curb 70 dbA Dense Traffic at 200 ft. 65 dbA Office Conversation 60 dbA Average Conversation 50 dbA Quiet Household 40 dbA Quiet Conversation 25 dbA

http://www.usg.com/Design_Solutions/2_3_12A_planning.asp

Couldn't get that last comment to go through the edit process. Didn't mean to imply that I'm an industrial designer because obviously I'm not.

The concept of converting sound energy to useable power is interesting, but not exactly relevant to my original post. The concept strikes me as somewhat impractical in that I doubt there is all that much energy to use as a resource. Any microphone removes some sound energy to use as a source of information to be amplified for processing, but I doubt that a plethora of microphones would decrease ambient sound to any noticeable degree. I could be wrong in this.

Insofar as windmills are concerned, to attempt to make them quieter should be more a problem of solving turbulence of the blades than fooling around with suppressing sound with microphones. If the blades create such problems, perhaps another tack entirely might prove more rewarding. Moving air contains energy that might be captured in other ways than windmills such as using evaporation from a leaky grid to cause temperature changes which can be used to generate electricity without mechanical moving parts. Moving air can also generate static electricity directly with no moving parts. I doubt that either of these techniques are currently as efficient as windmills but perhaps they have a potential for development.

I'm quite sure that toasters don't actually think, and that no matter how many microphones you use, it won't decrease the noise level in a noisy factory

It's comforting to assume we are superior to electric toasters but in the end, as toasters become mobile and more sensitive to their surroundings, we may be surprised, at end, to find our civilization overtaken by developments out of electric toasters. The reaction of the US federal government to the recent crisis in New Orleans seems to indicate those in control are not all that mentally superior to electric toasters.

Explaining a tiny component of thought:
Take an analog spring windup type clock and set it to ticking. It is sensitive to ambient temperature, the air currents within the house create their own vibrations and distribute heat upon the clock, our body heat as we near the clock, humidity of surrounding the clock, the moisture from our bodies and hands was we come near the clock or move away, the tension of the spring, static electricity from the clock movements, static as influenced by humidity, vibrations from the trucks outside, vibrations from the sounds of your voice, ..., all of these things are inputs to the cycling of the clock. Undesturbed the clock keeps perfect time.

When the clock tics and someone might hear the tic and it might get someones attention, so they come over to see what time it is, the air currents, the local temperatures, and the humidity around the clock all change to various degrees. The humidity for instance increases within the clock movement a short time after the person arrives. There is more resistance to the moving parts and the clock slows slightly. The precieved time has changed somewhat and now the clock runs a little slower.

The clock has many output as well as many inputs as cited earlier. The sound from the capstan, the changing light patterns as the hands rotate, some internal heat from the friction of the parts, vibrations from each and every moving gear, and other outputs influencing the local environment in sometimes not so minor ways.

Now imagine a stadium full of clocks. Each of them with their own inputs and outputs. Each of them keeping perfect time when left isolated and alone. But in a stadium full of clocks where resonance becomes a factor, some clocks will run consistently slower and others consistently faster, except for sometimes there will be exceptions. Certain characteristics will build until a collapse occurs. Certain resonance properties will develop. The clocks have created a unique output based upon thousands of interactive inputs and outputs clashing together in a symphony of variables.

Thus derives the basis of neural networks. The timing of pulses will deviate in amplitude, duration, and profile as the many thousands of local variables for a neuron are influenced. And those effects will correspondingly be felt by the thousands of neurons influenced by that neuron.

Because of all the billions of iterations of neurons and their local chemical environment, the current state of firing is dependent upon the previous states of all neurons in a local system of neurons. Thus memory emerges.

Let's say all the local neurons are dominantly sensing external perceptions like touch, taste, and smell. Now create another layer of neurons that only come in contact with touch, but also comes in contact with many of the other neurons already interacting with touch, taste, and smell. That new layer of neurons will respond more strongly to a change in touch than to any of the other stimuli of taste or smell; except sometimes! Sometimes the patterns will coincide in such a way as to periodically, or almost randomly, create an excited or depleted pulse state.

Add to the complexity millions of layers of neurons that have little to do with any of the outwardly perceptions and you are describing a basic intelligence, perhaps an bird; or an ant. This is only a simplification.

See articles written by Prof Hugo de Garis regarding the building of an artificial brain
http://www.kurzweilai.net/bios/frame.html?main=/bios/bio0003.html?