Being evasive is better than being dishonest. Never force someone evasive to answer something unless you want to hear a lie.

To understand thinking is to comprehend what enables it. The neural impulses exist because of random chance, it is to say that human thought is like the ghost in the machine.

The ghost in the machine is generally considered a fluke. Random segments of code creating what could be considered a soul for a program. Mysterious happenings in the digital world, malfunctions that should never happen have intrigued science fiction writers for decades, most famously Isaac Asimov (“I, Robot” - book of short stories about robots and kids). The natural manifestation of artificial intelligence. The manifestation of single thoughts.

So perhaps thinking is not common only to ‘alive’ beings or, as some claim, humans exclusively. Because what is human thinking essentially? A flow of electrical and chemical impulses that exist due to random chance – life itself exists without a known reason. Signals in different parts of the brain cause us to have different thoughts but the cause of those signals is still a mystery. The purpose of dreams is understood on a psychological level, not a biochemical one.

If computers can ‘think’, what makes our ‘thinking’ different from theirs? Abstract thinking? Dreaming? Delusions? Difficult to pinpoint the exact reason because there really isn’t one. It’s random chance and malfunctions that create those abstract thoughts. They are not normal occurrences for the survival instinct, they are sideproducts of an extremely complicated brain trying to come to terms with everything that happens around it. They are reactions to events.

So, the end result is that thinking is a process initiated by outside stimuli. A process that may or may not carry fruit in the practical sense and oftentimes causes more discomfort than it’s worth. But for a complete waste of mental resource it does sometimes come in quite handy. And it is completely vital for being educated, for being wise enough to live life as one sees fit and for being able to teach someone the magic of the Universe. Surely that is worth something.