I just manifested the thought that I could manifest a thought. But a thought is not a thing so probably doesn't count as an "anything"?

Definition of manifest
show (a quality or feeling) by one's acts or appearance; demonstrate.

"Lizzy manifested signs of severe depression"

Is "severe depression" a thing that could be an "anything", I am more inclined to accept this than my "thought".

@ChristopherRandles I'm stuck on the "into" part. Does it mean, to bring into reality that which was not real before?

I can have a thought that I was not having a moment ago. What caused me to think the thought? Was it my encounter with this poll?

And while our ability to innovate might clearly appear to ride on the effectiveness of certain mental or social stances, how can we trace back the manifestation of those?

In a sense, the poll's question is a lot like the common framing of "is there free will?".

"I am manifesting something into reality" makes me sound almost supernatural. Reality is altogether in a process of self-transformation. New subprocesses, objects, aggregations may arise, but they arise from others which were no less real. You might say "well, this object was not found here (or even, anywhere) in reality before"... but that still doesn't sound very "into" to me.

I don't deny emergence. But as far as this question is asked in a context-free and rather philosophical way, where I have nearly no choice but to hyperfocus on its very framing: I am inclined away from describing anything as being "manifested into reality" by me.

@MLL
In terms of physical objects, yes I would agree objects are manufactured or grown or similar rather than being manifested into reality. But the question is very widely framed, so are we limited to physical objects?

I think a doctor would say depression is a real thing. While thoughts cannot be physically observed, depression is more than this in that it has physically observable behaviours.

Causes? Sometimes it might be chemical imbalance and sometime external events or peoples reactions to the depressed subject. However I would suggest it is sometimes just some sad and depressed thoughts, while some would snap out of it in others it can linger and pretty much become a self fulfilling circular prophesy such as subject thinks people don't like him/her and act in a way that people don't find much fun to be around so tend to avoid him/her and subject takes this as confirmation that people don't like them and this makes the depressed behaviour worse.

Is this depression real? Did it exist before the start of this process? If not was it "brought into reality" by the subjects own thoughts? There may be cases where you want to blame the subjects friends reactions but just one case where this is negligible as friends have acted in pretty much best way possible, would seem to me to suggest that it is possible and just one example is all that is required for this question to decide it is possible..

@ChristopherRandles I absolutely agree that self-fulfilling prophecies, hyperstition, et cetera are important phenomena that do look like manifestation from the inside, and practically should be approached as such in the context of psychology.

However, given that the question was not framed in that particular context, I reverted to treating these phenomena in equity to all phenomena. In which case, taking an outside view, I do not see them as manifestations in any kind of (meta)physical sense.

And I think it can sometimes also be psychologically practical (and ultimately pro-agentic) to take an outside view on my self-fulfilling prophecies, and realize that my brain is a sort of dynamical system, and that my feelings of agency, or lack thereof, may be illusory.

@MLL Maybe psychology is so relevant that I ought to have insisted on interpreting the poll in that context. In other circumstances I would have. But I guess I model Manifold users as being high decouplers; that here, I try not to assume context that was not made explicit, if I can avoid it; and that I am happy, after giving a general response, to spend some time making my particular views more explicit.

"anything" is very broad. ideas? plans?