"Ричард Фейнман. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!/Вы, конечно, шутите, мистер Фейнман! (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

active. Suppose they didn't have this crazy phenomenon that we have, called
sleep. So they ask you the question: 'How does it feel to go to sleep? What
happens when you go to sleep? Do your thoughts suddenly stop, or do they
move less aanndd lleeessss rraaaaapppppiidddddllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyy? How
does the mind actually turn off?"
I got interested. Now I had to answer this question: How does the
stream of consciousness end, when you go to sleep?
So every afternoon for the next four weeks I would work on my theme. I
would pull down the shades in my room, turn off the lights, and go to sleep.
And I'd watch what happened, when I went to sleep.
Then at night, I'd go to sleep again, so I had two times each day when
I could make observations - it was very good!
At first I noticed a lot of subsidiary things that had little to do
with falling asleep. I noticed, for instance, that I did a lot of thinking
by speaking to myself internally. I could also imagine things visually.
Then, when I was getting tired, I noticed that I could think of two
things at once. I discovered this when I was talking internally to myself
about something, and while I was doing this, I was idly imagining two ropes
connected to the end of my bed, going through some pulleys, and winding
around a turning cylinder, slowly lifting the bed. I wasn't aware that I was
imagining these ropes until I began to worry that one rope would catch on
the other rope, and they wouldn't wind up smoothly. But I said, internally,
"Oh, the tension will take care of that," and this interrupted the first
thought I was having, and made me aware that I was thinking of two things at
once.
I also noticed that as you go to sleep the ideas continue, but they
become less and less logically interconnected. You don't notice that they're
not logically connected until you ask yourself, "What made me think of
that?" and you try to work your way back, and often you can't remember what
the hell did make you think of that!
So you get every illusion of logical connection, but the actual fact is
that the thoughts become more and more cockeyed until they're completely
disjointed, and beyond that, you fall asleep.
After four weeks of sleeping all the time, I wrote my theme, and
explained the observations I had made. At the end of the theme I pointed out
that all of these observations were made while I was watching myself fall
asleep, and I don't really know what it's like to fall asleep when I'm not
watching myself. I concluded the theme with a little verse I made up, which
pointed out this problem of introspection:

I wonder why. I wonder why.
I wonder why I wonder.
I wonder why I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder!

We hand in our themes, and the next time our class meets, the professor
reads one of them: "Mum bum wugga mum bum..." I can't tell what the guy
wrote.
He reads another theme: "Mugga wugga mum bum wugga wugga..." I don't
know what that guy wrote either, but at the end of it, he goes: