Because of evolution.

Why did our distant ancestors develop ears? Perhaps as a way to warn of approaching danger.

It's not that our distant ancestors wanted to grow ears. That's not how it works.

Some random mutation led to some organ that could detect pressure waves in air, and the brain learned to interpret that as "sound". That was a huge evolutionary advantage, so that trait survived.

Later, our ancestors developed the ability to discern between different animal sounds.

And even later than that, our ancestors developed the ability to communicate via speech.

Again, none of this was "planned". But random genetic mutations led to abilities that were advantageous to humans winning out, and that included the ability to hear.

One of the ways the genetics worked out is for certain sounds to be more pleasurable / enjoyable.

Why?

Maybe it was so we'd enjoy the sound of other humans. Maybe it was so that we'd march together with other humans because we like the sound of marching.

We don't know for sure why. But the end result is that our brains are wired to enjoy certain sounds and patterns of sounds, because it was an evolutionary advantage for us to do so.

Music is just exploiting those patterns. Coming up with new sounds and patterns that tickle the human brain.

I don't think this is accurate. To see the light from the past, you'd have to travel faster than light to get ahead of the current wave front. No traveler starting on the Earth's surface could ever see it at any time previous to the date they left unless I'm very much mistaken.

I have a theory that there are different loci of cognition in the brain with competing inputs, but a particular one of them generally gets its way almost all of the time. The overruled loci are in something of a power struggle with the preferred one, each seeing an incomplete portion of all sensory input and having an incomplete cognitive toolkit for decision-making.

In this framework, intrusive thoughts are the demands of one or more subject loci, clamoring for power inside their grey milieu.

Also, we like intoxication and substance abuse because it temporarily upsets this detente and shunts more decision-making power towards cognitive loci that are generally denied it.

Anything you see right now is a past event. It is just that for most human day to day activity, light travels so fast that this "past" is a very very small bit of time.

If someone stands 10 meters away from you and throws a ball, you would only see (from your perspective) the ball leaving their hand 1/30000000 of a second after they (from the thrower's perspective) throw the ball.

The further the distance, the longer the time difference between when you see it and when the event happens.

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Maybe?? No one has mentioned it to me before so…other than like a song getting stuck in someone’s head? Idk man.

I’ll be back with a link, (I know this isn’t truly ELI5, but it is actually research) but I read a study this week that connects ruminating thoughts with dysfunctional messaging from the enteric nervous system. TBH it was really difficult for this non-scientist to understand so maybe someone can interpret it? Brb

Highly ruminative individuals with depression exhibit abnormalities in the neural processing of gastric interoception

Potentially you have OCD or PTSD, these could initiate them to occur. But they could also be triggered by stress or anxiety.

Spaghetti sauce

.... other people don't experience thoughts in the form of loops?

Imagine how crazy it would be to be traveling at light speed towards earth and see everything happening super quickly

The best ELI5 I saw is that we are constantly told "murder is bad" and accept it. When you get one of these feelings, it's basically your brain going "hey you sure? Yea? Ok cool just curious"

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Out of thousands of people I've asked over the years, I've met like 3 people that don't listen to music. Super creepy people. They're dead inside. They have doll's eyes. There's nothing going on behind them.

Music is math. Math is existence. Music is existence. We're hard-coded for music. The top answer is probably to respond to it as an emotional release or way to observe an idea or concept from a new/unique perspective you wouldn't ascertain on your own.

Also, music is.....so many different things. Heart. Soul. Love. Joy. Sadness. Hatred. Empathy. Melancholy. It's a release, and a guiding light to how your mind is operating subconsciously. If you hear a depressing song and it makes you sad...you're probably sad, dude. If you hear a depressing song and you smile or aren't super into it, you're probably not depressed. Music is a compass for the soul.

I don't wanna really go further than that, but yeah, it really bothers me when someone says something to the effect of "I don't really listen to music." I'm already at 200 songs today, not counting repeats. Not to gloat about how many songs I've listened to lol, but they serve a very necessary purpose. But so do psychopaths in war. It is what it is.

I’m curious about thought looping. I’ve been in therapy and medicated for a while now so the worst intrusive thoughts are gone but I still get thoughts that just loop and loop and loop and some days it feels like it won’t ever stop. I have to have constant noise like a podcast or music in the background most of the time. I’d love to be able to just enjoy silence with out the looping

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If you could travel some distance from the earth, say one light year (the distance light travels in a vacuum in one earth year), and you had a powerful enough telescope, you could look at the earth and see the light that was just now arriving. The light would be one year old and thus you'd be looking one year in the past. The further you travel, the longer the light took to reach you, and the further you can look into the past.

It already works this way from the opposite perspective. When we look at stars, exoplanets, galaxies, etc. we are seeing them as they were hundreds/thousands/millions or more years ago, depending on how far away they are. They might be totally different now, but we won't know until new light arrives.

Shorter distances work too. At closest approach, Mars is 182 lightseconds from Earth. Standing on Mars and looking through a telescope at the Earth, you'd see Earth as it was about 3 minutes ago.

If you were 30 light-years from earth looking at earth it would look like 1990s. Light year is how far light travels in a year. Since everything we see is lightwaves being interpreted by our brain, light hits earth in 1992, reflects an image off, travels for 30 years and you see it today, if you were there to receive the image.

Or a mirror 15 light years away we could see the earth 30 years ago

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I recently had nasal electro cautery for recurring epistaxis and was left with severe sinusitis, took a month to get under control and now I'm left with mixed rhinitis.

Eating ANY food causes my nose to run.

Kierkegaard explains this feeling in his book, The Concept of Anxiety. As an example, he asks us to consider a man standing on a cliff or tall building. If this man looks over the edge, he experiences two different kinds of fear: the fear of falling, and fear brought on by the impulse to throw himself off the edge. This second type of fear, or anxiety, arises from the realization that he has absolute freedom to choose whether to jump or not, and this fear is as dizzying as his vertigo. Kierkegaard suggests that we experience the same anxiety in all our moral choices, when we realize that we have the freedom to make even the most terrifying decisions. He describes this anxiety as “the dizziness of freedom”, and goes on to explain that although it induces despair, it can also shake us from our unthinking responses by making us more aware of the available choices. In this way it increases our self-awareness and sense of personal responsibility. ”

https://educationmuseum.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/kierkegaard-anxiety-is-the-dizziness-of-freedom/

Just wanted to share that I listened to an intrusive thought when I was a teenager hahaha. I was on the back deck cleaning my hamster cage, talking to my step dad. And my brain went, “What would happen if you threw hamster poo at him?”

…he was very surprised and not happy hahaha.

Psychologist here:

On cognitive therapy we call them automatic thoughts, they are intimately related to our feelings and behavior and they come as a symptom of our core beliefs, that were developed with time and experiences we had (and guess what? Are intimately linked to our feelings and behavior as well!).

It is NORMAL to have automatic thoughts, everyone has them, problem is, as you said, when they are a reflection of a view about yourself/the world that doesn't match, so your core beliefs start getting a bit off with the reality. Basically, the way you learned to react/deal with certain situations stopped being appropriate for the present time of your life.

On cognitive therapy, we will address these thoughts very briefly, bc they are only A SYMPTOM of a problem, so our focus will be on solving cognitive dissonances you have and work on adaptative responses to the situations where you have these thoughts. I won't extend myself more, but if you want to know more about it, I recommend you to read Aaron Beck and his daughter, Judith Beck. They are the biggest references on this area!

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