What I thought about today

Did I already mention how addicted I am to this webpage ?

The ongoing (never-ending, eternal, pointless?) debate over doing what you enjoy/like versus what is needed. I still can't place myself on either side, I dislike society too much to do what I should as a citizen of the "common good" and I'm scared of not being good enough at what I want to do. I do however dislike the odd, Leviathanesque convo going on in UCD forum on boards.ie.

Descartes' dream argument and the clear and distinct perception. It's pretty clear that one can't logically prove that we are not dreaming (ie. Matrix-like situation). But what if reality is dimensional and what we call dreams and reality are just different levels of existence? Maybe there're other ones too which are as "real" as "reality" but we're currently unable to see/acknowledge them. Even if we're deceived all the time, and say, unable to ever wake up, doesn't that make "reality" as we know it just that? Maybe (and I don't mean destiny as such here, nothing's designed or assigned by any supernatural thing IMO) we are not "meant" to experience this real reality.

Business plans - I sometimes entertain myself (too much bus stop waiting time) with imaginary business plans. How much of the successful profit-making is down to market research? If one had a supernatural ability to know everything about every customer, would it be possible to persuade them to purchase shit all the time, within their budget of course?

Brain manipulation - say we have a hypothetical situation in which we have test subjects (people) and endless resources of experimenting with their brains with no moral dilemmas attached, how far could we (obviously after many failures etc) manipulate and "open" new sorts of abilities. I sometimes think it's a shame all these obviously horrendous people (Hitler etc) who conducted experiments, did not use these opportunities to look into things like these rather than the much more pointless (in scientific terms) ones. It's the possibly hidden "brain power" I'm interested in in a purely scientific way, I do not believe in any of this New Age shit.