r/DeepThoughts 16h ago

Nobody is exactly as you perceive them.

147 Upvotes

Nobody is exactly as you perceive them.

They are more flawed than you think, more cruel than you think, and more beautiful than you think.

You just don't get to see everything.

What you see is based on the nature of your connection to them. Much of them is invisible to you.


r/DeepThoughts 7h ago

The person you are trying to become will eventually become another comfort zone

12 Upvotes

I’ve been thinking about something strange that happens with self-improvement.

At first, doing something difficult feels like proof that you’re changing. You start doing things your old self would never have done. You work when you don’t feel like working, train when you’d rather stay home, take risks, build things, become more disciplined.

And for a while, it feels like you’re constantly leaving your comfort zone.But then something changes.The things that once felt extreme slowly become normal. What would have impressed the person you were a year ago might barely feel like an achievement to you now.

And that creates a weird problem. If my rule is always “do what the old version of me wouldn’t do,” which old version am I comparing myself to? Because eventually discipline itself can become comfortable. Being productive can become familiar. Even constantly pushing yourself can become part of your identity.

So maybe growth isn’t really about permanently living outside your comfort zone. Maybe it’s about noticing when the life you once fought to reach has quietly become your new baseline.And then asking yourself a harder question: What would growth look like from here?

I think that’s one reason improvement can feel endless. You rarely arrive somewhere and permanently feel stronger. You adapt. Yesterday’s challenge becomes today’s normal, and your definition of “hard” moves with you. Maybe that isn’t a failure to appreciate progress.

Maybe that is what progress actually feels like from the inside.


r/DeepThoughts 4h ago

Intention without action means nothing.

2 Upvotes

Basically me and my friend had a conversation about the possibility a certain really powerful group of people being in control of a majority of the population. This led to my friend having the idea that a revolution would need to be enacted in order to overthrow said group. I was more on the fence about it which led to us be a little at odds since you know the whole thing about “if you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem”. I then said “well if a revolution is needed, then start one”, to which he said “I won’t start it but when it happens I will be there”. This led me to say “well then we are really are just as much at fault since neither of us are doing anything” I also said “intention without action means nothing”. To which he said “intention can mean everything”. I thought of it from the perspective of “well if I intend to lose weight but never go to the gym, what is the point of intention”. Whereas he brought up an example of a person who intended to be a pro athlete but could not due to injury. I just wanted to see what other people would think of the statement and if it is more circumstantial rather than universal.


r/DeepThoughts 17h ago

The normalization and the double standards of handing over our private life, our private information to people that use it against us but protecting it against people we know is what confuses me about human behavior.

16 Upvotes

I read someone reply to a post with this common phrase; "I've got nothing to hide", and I had to write something about it somewhere...

The "nothing to hide" crowd misses the asymmetry entirely. They hand over everything to institutions that share nothing in return; corporations that track every click while hiding behind NDAs, agencies that demand transparency from citizens while classifying their own operations for decades.

Here is only a tiny example out of hundreds of others...Let’s talk about our Phones;

Everyone uses a passcode, and we don't do it because we’re plotting something. We do it because the phone contains our finances, conversations, family photos, medical searches, private thoughts. It’s a universal instinct.

If someone, even a partner or a friend snoops behind our back, we get angry. We accuse them of breaking the trust, right? Then why is it that we don’t extend that same instinct to the digital prison being built around all of us? Why does this change when it applies to power-players? Why do we hand them our information and shrug like it’s the natural way of being and living?

If privacy doesn't matter, read me your last three text conversations now.

This isn't just about the present time. This handing over our power as if it's nothing is the reason why the powerful stayed powerful. We don't trust one stranger with our information, and yet, we trust strangers that rule over us. This mindset is so puzzling to me.


r/DeepThoughts 23h ago

Corruption of the soul is the price for understanding the world.

39 Upvotes

Each of us is born as an innocent toddler, oblivious to the world that surrounds us. Yet year after year, interaction after interaction slowly that innocence fades. We gain knowledge and understanding of the world and see it's not as pleasant as we thought.

So if corruption of the soul is the price for understanding the world, what if that's why faith is the healer of the soul since there is no understanding it. You cannot prove or disprove the presence of a higher calling for your life, but having belief is what gives you peace of mind and that teaches you that you don't need to understand everything in order to appreciate it.


r/DeepThoughts 20h ago

We Don’t Miss People as Much as We Miss Who We Were Around Them

20 Upvotes

Sometimes we think we miss a person.

But maybe we miss the version of ourselves that existed when they were around.

The conversations.

The routines.

The feeling of being understood without having to explain everything.

And when that connection ends, we don’t just lose them.

We lose a small part of our everyday life with them.

Maybe that’s why moving on can feel so strange.

You’re not only adjusting to their absence.

You’re also getting used to yourself without them.

And sometimes, that’s the part nobody talks about.


r/DeepThoughts 1d ago

We are the universe interacting with itself and observing it

74 Upvotes

Through the years i have developed this thought and reflected upon it a lot, it seems convincing to think that we are technically the universe, since the universe is technically everything that is, which means we are not separated from it, but we are it, in a different form, and after we die we turn into a different form, something like a cycle, always evolving into something, we are the other thing and thr other thing is us, your cat is you, your wall is you, your tv is you, everything is you and you are because both are the universe, we can't be outside everything when we are inside, but why do we feel different as humans? Why is there like something within looking at everything as we are apart from it? Is it intelligence? Is it ego? And are we attached from the universe in someway? Or i am experiencing psychosis 😂


r/DeepThoughts 5h ago

Hearing a lesson will rarely teach you as much as living the mistake

0 Upvotes

We all hear the same timeless advice: take care of your health, save your money, don't expect too much from others, and focus on your own happiness. We listen and agree that it makes complete sense, but we still make the exact same mistakes anyway.

We ignore our health until our body gives out. We spend thoughtlessly until our bank account is empty. We put high expectations on people until we get let down.

Hearing advice only reaches our heads, but living through the regret is what makes it stick. Words simply never teach us as deeply as a painful mistake does.

Why do we have to get hurt before we finally listen?


r/DeepThoughts 12h ago

Power may weaken when dependence stops being the only option.

4 Upvotes

We often think power declines when the powerful become weaker.

But there is another possibility: power can decline because those who depend on it acquire alternatives.

Dependence creates leverage because it limits choices. The moment a credible second option appears, the original relationship may remain exactly where it was, yet something fundamental has changed: Its price.

This applies far beyond geopolitics. Employers and employees, companies and customers, institutions and individuals can all hold power partly because someone else has nowhere else to go.

Perhaps power isn't only about what you possess or control.

Sometimes it is simply the absence of alternatives available to someone else.


r/DeepThoughts 1d ago

Time is flying by really fast

54 Upvotes

I recently noticed that time is flying by really fast. For example, I talk about something that was two weeks ago, only to realize that it wasn't two weeks but two months ago. Or I always have to postpone plans to tomorrow, because a day just feels too short to do anything. And I know this is because of aging and because of routines etc. But that's not what I want to ask. I want to know, does anyone else have the same feeling? And if yes, how does it influence you?


r/DeepThoughts 1d ago

We cannot escape the modern distraction machine until we invent precise abstractions to name the psychological loops controlling us.

23 Upvotes

Think about why humanity is capable of coordinating global supply chains, building modern aerospace systems, or managing complex software architectures: abstractions. We isolate a chaotic, repeating pattern, give it a precise name, and convert it into indexed knowledge. Once an operational pattern is indexed, we can map its mechanics, debug its failure points, communicate it instantly, and engineer real-world systems around it.

​Yet when it comes to the information ecosystem and media environment directing our collective attention, we lack a shared, standardized vocabulary for the operational traps we encounter every single day.

​For over a decade, public attention has been bounced like a ping-pong ball between rolling existential panics—resource collapse, shadow conflicts, technological paranoia, and manufactured outrage—only for focus to reset the moment the next cycle begins. Each strike degrades internal order. Without clear abstractions to categorize the delivery mechanism, people generally default to two extremes:

​The passive default: Resigning to the consensus narrative because sorting through the noise carries too high a cognitive friction cost.

​The analytical trap: Dissecting thousands of disconnected data points, falling into rabbit holes, and burning out from emotional fatigue without ever taking practical, constructive action.

​To turn scattered noise into structured, operable data, we need functional abstractions to map both the system and our response.

​The 4 Proposed Abstractions

​The Distraction Engine / The Shock-Beat (The Ping-Pong Cycle)

​The Pattern: The rapid, rhythmic delivery of rolling existential shocks engineered to fragment public bandwidth before any realization can stabilize.

​Working Term: Entropulse (Entropy + Pulse) — The continuous shock-beat resetting human focus before coherent mental order can form.

​The Planned Architecture / The Staged Horizon (The Systemic Roadmap)

​The Pattern: The systemic environment where crises and media narratives are curated and paced—whether by coordinated design, algorithmic incentive structures, or engagement optimization—producing structural predictability under the guise of random chaos.

​Working Term: Teleocraft (Teleo [goal/direction] + Craft) — The feedback mechanics guiding public trajectory toward predetermined outcomes through perpetual crisis.

​The Compliance Default / Consensus Sleep (Accepting the Script)

​The Pattern: The quiet resignation of the public accepting synthetic narratives by default simply to avoid cognitive disruption and emotional fatigue.

​Working Term: Hypnodoxia (Hypnos [sleep] + Doxa [common illusion]) — Uncritical adherence to a manufactured consensus.

​The Intellectual Paralysis / The Analysis Loop (The Smart Trap)

​The Pattern: Highly capable individuals spending thousands of hours mapping systemic flaws and theoretical data, yet remaining functionally immobilized from executing basic, practical, real-world solutions.

​Working Term: Sophonoia (Sophos [wise] + Paranoia/Blindness) — Being so overloaded with high-level theory that one misses the baseline operational loop they are operating inside.

​Practical Application: How Structural Indexing Solves the Trap

​The Fatal Flaw: Why Umbrella Words Keep Us Blind

​The biggest obstacle to breaking these loops is how we currently talk about them. We rely on tired, overly broad labels like "the system," "the matrix," "just a script," or "predictive programming."

​These terms have become intellectual dead ends. When you label everything "the system," you explain nothing. It blurs the fine lines of reality into a vague, untouchable monolith that breeds helpless paranoia rather than actionable insight.

​You cannot debug software by just calling it "the computer," and you cannot dismantle an information feedback loop by just calling it "the script." We need brand-new, distinct vocabulary to dissect the exact components of the machine. Only when the parts are specifically named can they be isolated, indexed, and rendered powerless.

​Practical Application: How Structural Indexing Solves the Trap

​Naming these patterns is not an intellectual exercise—it is a cognitive firewall and a coordination protocol.

​In cybersecurity, when a new system vulnerability is detected, engineers do not panic over individual corrupted machines. They isolate the exploit signature, log it into an open-source CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) ledger, and publish its mechanics. Once indexed by delivery signature rather than subjective opinion, thousands of independent developers can deploy patches simultaneously.

​Applying that same framework to societal information systems provides a clear, non-violent path forward:

​Triage & Cognitive Bandwidth Preservation: When an unverified crisis spikes, identifying the delivery mechanics ("This matches an active Entropulse cadence") allows individuals to immediately filter out emotional panic, preserving mental energy for tangible priorities.

​Mechanics-First Open-Source Ledgers: Decentralized research communities can document narrative patterns based strictly on structural indicators (velocity, timing, amplification patterns, and emotional escalation markers) rather than arguing over ideological content.

​Unlocking Real-World Execution: Clearing away manufactured panic frees the bandwidth required to build resilient, parallel systems—local food networks, robust offline communications, community mutual aid, and transparent collaboration.

​Questions for Discussion:

  1. ​Does creating a standardized, structural taxonomy give decentralized groups better leverage to identify information loops and coordinate effectively?

  2. ​Which terms—whether Latin/Greek roots or intuitive compound metaphors (e.g., Shock-Beat, Consensus-Sleep)—are most effective for indexing these mechanics?

  3. ​What is the most practical way to bridge these abstractions into open-source tools, knowledge bases, and everyday discourse? abstractions into open-source tools, knowledge bases, and everyday discourse?


r/DeepThoughts 1d ago

Music does something Quantum to our brains, producing a shared emotional, or spiritual waveform that syncs large groups of humans into one waveform.

20 Upvotes

Its a thought that I can barely hold in my head, a bit like quantum mechanics really! I'd appreciate your indulging me, and if you have any experience or info to add, I'm.so keem to hear it..

Music really fires off all the human systems at once. There's been moments on a large dancefloor, where I just space out, and extend my consciousness outside my personal boundary, almost like observing my own body. I've watched myself move, and all the other faces and bodies move. It feels like there's something there, a sort of synchronicity force that rarely exists elsewhere in other human endeavours at this scale. (No I'm not on drugs 🤣)

Music is defined by the exact same boundary mathematics as quantum mechanics. Notes are pitch quantized. Are our brains are quantum water engines? Its as almost as if we sense a waveform, and it becomes part of us, or more we tune to the energy and frequency of the pattern.

I know there's SOMETHING there, a presence, but I feel like a confused dog just staring at the Moon. It's like I'm not meant to know what it is, I'm not capable of understanding it, but there it is, the Moom hanging in the sky for all of us to see.


r/DeepThoughts 1d ago

I think curiosity is the closest thing I have to a religion

10 Upvotes

I have a strange need to ask questions.
Not because I always want an answer, but because accepting something without questioning it feels almost unnatural to me.
Why is this the way it is?
Why do I see it this way?
Would it still be true if I had been taught the opposite?
Sometimes I think I’m not really searching for truth. I’m searching for the limits of my own understanding.
Every answer seems to close one door and quietly open another.
Maybe ignorance isn’t the absence of knowledge. Maybe it’s the moment we stop asking.
And perhaps the most dangerous thing isn’t being wrong.
It’s becoming so certain that we no longer feel the need to ask why.


r/DeepThoughts 1d ago

We haven't created a society where meaning is maximized. We have created a society where throughput has been maximized, and we're shocked that we've become mere inputs.

3 Upvotes

I wrote down this sentence the other day and it’s been stuck with me: "We are tuning the system to be more efficient at making money rather than personal fulfillment." It feels almost too simple to even jot down. Of course the system optimizes for money – that's just what systems do.

But sit with it for a second, and it’s actually a surprisingly accurate diagnosis of why much of modern life feels tuned wrong, like a radio a few clicks off-station.

Nobody sat down and consciously said, "Fulfillment loses." It’s just that fulfillment doesn't appear on a quarterly earnings call. Revenue does. Engagement does.

Retention does.

So every incentive structure - corporate, algorithmic, and even personal (resumes, career "optimization") - quietly routs around whatever doesn’t compress into a metric. The scary thing isn’t a cartoon villain somewhere deciding money over meaning. It's that meaning wasn’t even a variable in the optimization function in the first place.

You can't overfit to something that's not in the equation. And this isn’t just a "capitalism bad" post - plenty of non-market systems do the exact same thing (bureaucracies optimize for not-getting-blamed; academia optimizes for count-of-publications; social media optimizes for time-on-app). Any system with a legible metric and an illegible goal will drift toward the legible one.

Money is just the most legible human metric we’ve invented.

Which makes me wonder if the more interesting question isn’t, "how do we get the system to value fulfillment?" but "how would we even measure fulfillment in a way that would allow a system to optimize for it" - because right now, for the most part, we don't, and systems can't optimize for targets they don't even see. Interested if others have observed this phenomenon in their own work - where the "efficient" version of something silently devoured the "meaningful" one.


r/DeepThoughts 1d ago

The concept of my own death doesnt make any sense to me and kinda feel unreal

15 Upvotes

So i have been going through ig what buddists go through i feel that i am not a real person i am just a consious being and there is no such thing as a individual and personalities are like temporary waves and arent real and when u die you just become a new person , but it also makes me sad as since i was a kid i was intorgued by the idea of afterlife and how its the ultimate mystery and where do all these people who passed go and no i think they were just temporary constructs like a computer whose memory card u wipe but its still that computer when you switch it on.


r/DeepThoughts 2d ago

The real world is incredibly boring...

144 Upvotes

Since I was young I have always been a dreamer, I used to consume so many fantasy books, that I genuinely thought one day, I would wake up and my life will be about some great purpose or adventure. Right now, I am at that point in my life where a single decison will either haunt me or be the best thing .

I wonder if this is all life is about , being secure and stable.

I sometimes don't think I can fit into this compact world of routine. My brain is constantly running and making so many different scenarios of me in parallel universes. ( And suprisingly all of the scenarios are me surviving a dystopian universe). I don't know if that says anything about me as a person.

I want to run away from this need of always making the right decisions, making the people around me proud, being the smartest person, looking happy . This has built up so much that sometimes I wonder if I genuinely feel happy for others or I just pretend.

I am just disappointed of life in general I guess.


r/DeepThoughts 2d ago

Are we confusing signals with substance!

31 Upvotes

Is it just me, or are we increasingly overrating signals and underrating substance?

Lately, I've been feeling that a lot of things we place enormous value on are actually just indicators or signals—not the thing itself.

For example:

- Qualifications are often valued more than actual skills.

- Confidence is mistaken for competence.

- Being busy is confused with being productive.

- Popularity is confused with quality.

- Having an opinion is confused with understanding.

- Emotions are sometimes treated as if they automatically establish facts.

- Looking successful is confused with actually being successful.

Take qualifications. A degree or professional qualification definitely has value. It can establish a minimum standard, provide credibility, and in many professions it is absolutely necessary.

But somewhere along the way, we seem to have started treating the qualification itself as proof of competence.

Someone can have multiple degrees and still be terrible at solving real problems. At the same time, saying "degrees don't matter, only skills matter" is equally simplistic.

The qualification and the skill are not the same thing.

Similarly, feelings are real—but that doesn't mean they are always an accurate representation of reality.

"I feel like I'm failing" doesn't necessarily mean I'm failing.

"I feel like this person is against me" doesn't prove that they are.

The feeling is real. The conclusion may not be.

I think the bigger problem is that modern society increasingly rewards what is visible and easy to signal rather than what actually produces results.

A certificate is visible. Years of genuine learning often aren't.

Followers are visible. Actual expertise may not be.

Confidence is visible. Competence can take years to discover.

A strong emotional reaction is visible. Careful reasoning usually isn't.

Maybe the problem isn't that qualifications, emotions, confidence, or popularity are inherently overrated.

Maybe we're simply confusing the indicator with the underlying reality.

A qualification is not competence.

Confidence is not capability.

Popularity is not quality.

Emotion is not evidence.

Activity is not progress.

And looking successful is not the same as actually being successful.

Curious what others think: What is something society currently overrates, while undervaluing the thing that actually matters underneath it?


r/DeepThoughts 2d ago

We have lost us in between capitalism

162 Upvotes

Did you ever notice how badly the world revolves around capitalism? Either people want to prove their superiority through their work, education, or whatever they possess, or they spend their time trolling and mimicking someone else's appearance, financial position, or life. But beneath it all, the main motive often seems to be the same: “I am superior.” Everyone wants to become better day by day, or at least better than the people around them. Some people are narcissistic enough to assume that they are already the best. And those who actually reach the top live under the constant pressure of staying there and having to prove themselves again and again. Somewhere in the middle of all this nonsense, we have forgotten how beautiful life can feel when we sit quietly in nature and simply feel the cold breeze against our skin. We have forgotten the simple joy of singing, dancing, or drawing just for the sake of it, without feeling the need to turn every passion into a source of income, fame, or validation. We ignore the overwhelming wonder of realising how massive the universe is, that an entire lifetime is insufficient to understand even a fraction of it, and how incredibly small we are in comparison. We have forgotten how tremendous a slow, cozy life in a little cottage could be. Instead, we keep running through an endless race, one that was never natural and perhaps never will be.


r/DeepThoughts 1d ago

My body is my interface with the world. My mind is the coherence of that connection.

5 Upvotes

r/DeepThoughts 2d ago

We need to create deep consequences for how we behave online

45 Upvotes

As every year passes by, more and more people are becoming toxic on the internet. Think about it. How am I going to bring up my potential future son or daughter in a deeply interconnected world mostly interconnected due to the internet if it is toxic, racist and sexist?

I'm 28, I'm too young to be thinking about all of this but damn, the anonymity of the internet has let people say horrendous stuff, even threatening SA on people when they dont get their way or just to one up on people.

I think using the internet should carry real life consequences for how you behave.

I dont know how to rightly implement it but the more insufferable a person is, online, the more they should suffer the wrath of their consequences, so much so that they will think, not twice or thrice, but ten times before being rude again.

Am I being too unrealistic? I want to know your thoughts.


r/DeepThoughts 1d ago

There is nothing like Consciousness. We humans are just animals which have developed pride and yearn to be worshipped.

1 Upvotes

How does one begin to describe consciousness?

is it being able to actively participate in individualism?

if yes then even a dog hides his/her food when he gets it. he hides it from even his pack.

is consciousness the ability to differentiate between yourself and another human?

if yes, then please consider that a dog might not be able to recognize his own reflection but it can distinguish his own smell from other dogs unlike humans.

so in a sense of smell isnt a human inferior in terms of consciousness?

i believe that we animals have developed pride.

we WANT to be able to stand up and say that we r better than other animals or humans. so we developed this dogma of consciousness. whereas consciousness is just thoughts in a manner of words.

Animals produce thoughts too. but just not in words.

So consciousness is just our higher order thinking skill. Meaning more or less, we are just smarter. We are nothing special. Sounds so obvious, but i wish this obviousness was recognized.


r/DeepThoughts 2d ago

Unconscious Split: When Your Identity & Self Worth Won’t Listen to Facts

6 Upvotes

Do you ever wonder why you can achieve so much and still not feel better about yourself, you can feel the sense achievement pass right through you. With nowhere to land.

And yet you still highly value other people for achieving much less?

This isn't something that everyone will necessarily relate to. But if you do, this might help put in words a very specific and very painful experience: 

That of a self concept that never updates. A sense of self worth that never rises.

It is the experience of a mind that has never known another perspective, and never seen the space that exists between their negative self concept and their objectively high value in reality.

This is usually the result of the brain misinterpreting and then mislabeling chaotic signals* that were never given a name, and that were most likely admonished by a more neurotypically oriented world.

 

An uneditable non-negotiable self concept happens when the brain only gives you:

This is who you are - a subjective felt sense generated by their Default Mode Network*

at a much louder volume, and with substantially more weight than

This is what you are- a logical conclusion based on facts supplied by their Prefrontal Cortex.*

 

These people are usually the high achievers you meet, with a surprisingly severe anxious attachment style. Or they can have an expected opposite reaction, and show narcissistic traits.

Both presentations show an equally rigid self concept built on the foundation of a subconscious telling them they're worthless. That is why you see them both react with equal disproportionate sensitivity to criticism, or perceived abandonment.

 

Here's my interpretation of one of the many facets that culminate into that experience.*

Objective achievements can only update a person self-worth if this person has an editable internal representation of the self. This requires the presence of a mechanism that allows their prefrontal cortex to play a part in the unconscious task of self reference.

When that's not the case,

a person can have a rigidly imposed identity. This identity would be mostly supplied by a default mode network drowning in chronic high activation, from an over active amygdala. The activation is so loud, it drowns any input from the prefrontal cortex. So the only reliable source of information during self reference isn’t given a voice.

 

It’s like trying to hear a lecture while alarms are blaring in the room. Forever.

I assume this is the case of most ADHD-ers (myself included).

When on the right medication, their prefrontal cortex comes online in a way they never experienced before, and they can experience that as a newly found capacity to control a perspective that had up until now only been enforced by a chaotic sensory and affective system.

The brain finally can access and strengthens the circuitry that allow objective achievements to register and update the image of self.

However it is important to note that many factors are at play here, sometimes medication can strengthen prefrontal cortex circuitry, but it does not dampen the high activation caused by the amygdala, and that would require a separate approach/treatment.

And lastly, and very sadly, late diagnosed ADHD and AuDHD will also need to address the almost permanent change that living with a chronically activated amygdala can cause to the entire nervous system.

I would be remiss if I don’t address the unseen debilitation of a nervous system that had modeled itself to function for decades with the blaring alarm. And that now, that it finally turned off, has a paradoxical and destabilizing consequence:

A newly regulated and aware conscious mind supplied by a system that allows prefrontal cortex to speak, be heard, and be believed, that has to simultaneously communicate with an unregulated nervous system that never learned safety in the simplicity of the middle ground, and cannot undo decades of salient alarm.

(I have specific disdain at the current use of term C-PTSD. I worry the way it's thrown around in pop psychology is taking away from the very real experience at the other end of it.

I would much rather have the term ‘Chronically High Activation Treatment Resistant Dysregulated Nervous System‘ take its place, has a ring to it don’ it?)

*Important Note: Some of the biological process I describe are hyperboles made to drive a point home, and not stated as literal scientific fact. I am aware that the reality of this situation is much more complex and nuanced, but using that precision would dilute the main point the essay is trying to address. Which is the very real and very painful subjective experience of a self concept that won't update.

**his post is intended for anyone with whom it resonates, regardless of gender or diagnosis. I made a shorter version of it to post on the r/ADHD but unfortunately it was automatically removed (could be under review) but I am glad to be given the option to post it in full/as is.

Edit: Adjusted format and fixed typos.


r/DeepThoughts 3d ago

We spend our whole childhood wanting to be adults and spend our entire adulthood missing our childhood

138 Upvotes

r/DeepThoughts 2d ago

'Thinking for yourself' has requirements. Without them, you can't truly think for yourself.

6 Upvotes

What does thinking for yourself actually mean?

From my perspective, it requires a few things.

  • You have to know your biases, and biases in general. A bias can influence your thinking without you noticing. For example, confirmation bias, authority bias, social bias, and self-serving bias.
  • You also need to recognize your personal issues. If a person, community, or society has hurt you and you haven't processed that pain, you may react emotionally rather than think critically whenever they come up.
  • It's important to notice when someone is guiding you toward a particular conclusion. For example, in this post: am I guiding you, or simply presenting points for you to consider? And by raising that question, am I guiding you now?
  • You also need knowledge and life experience. Without them, you don't know what you don't know, and your thinking is limited to the depth and breadth of your experiences.

The more you meet these requirements, the more you are able to think for yourself. Independent thinking comes in degrees, and it's up to you to raise that degree.


r/DeepThoughts 2d ago

Existentialism, Death, and Its Implications

2 Upvotes

The older I get, the more I worry about what I am leaving behind. As my child grows, what waits that I won’t have time to teach him, and what waits that I won’t manage to share with him.
I am not talking about books or music here; I am talking about what kind of world I am leaving him, what actually remains behind us as a species.
How do I explain to him that we are destroying ourselves, while I just sit here, watch, and actively participate in ruining his future?
How do I tell him that the very system supposed to protect him is rigged for him to fail?
How do I explain to him that I was selfish, stupid, and unaware of the bigger picture of the world?

The bubble I can use to protect him is only as big as my arms can reach, but to equip him for what waits outside of it, what values do I need to instill in him?
What kind of value system can you even offer when being empathetic, thinking critically, being ethical or logical in today’s reality brings nothing but pain and anger?
What do we arm future generations with?
How do we protect them from our own generational traumas, from all this archetypal bullshit?
How do we shield them from this relentless bombardment of stress, misinformation, and constant threats of war or poverty?

Artificially induced crises, fanning the flames of racial, gender, religious, and every other hate and division—all just to maintain the current global system.
A system that leads straight to ruin.
Because you don’t need to be anyone special to see that we are in deep trouble and that our current trajectory is only burying us deeper.
There is no time or place for optimism anymore. Not without fundamental changes to our value system.
I honestly don’t know how your optimism survives the slap of reality.
Will we consciously choose resignation and apathy just because it’s the easier path?

But hey, how can you think about anything else, about a goal or a meaning, how can you set them when tomorrow you might not have food or a roof over your head?
When tomorrow they’ll cut your electricity and AC, when they’ll cut your water because you didn’t pay—how do you set those goals for yourself then? I understand that.
What I do not understand is consciously choosing a system that allows this to happen.
We’ve been taught not to rock the boat, to point fingers at others.
Well, look, I am one of them too. Point at me; I am guilty.
I point it at myself. Guilty. Okay.

Let’s make sure our children don’t end up just as guilty.
Let’s make sure they don’t have to fight for a piece of bread and a sip of water.
Let’s prepare a world for them where they can face tomorrow without anxiety, where they can look forward to the future coming.
Where they can feel purpose and pride, because there is no point if we haven’t set the hardest goals for ourselves.
I see no higher purpose than the continuation, preservation, and prosperity of our species and its individual members.

What does it take for everyone to have a dignified life? Look, the conditions and means are right there.
What if someone wants the option to not participate at all? Fine, we will still provide a dignified life for you because that’s the kind of system we built.
What do you need? Meaning, striving? Here it is. An axiom. I didn't invent it or dream it up; it has been here since the dawn of time.

We will arm the kids with AI nannies. Every single child.
To be their development assistant, not a source of values.
But we won’t let it become a replacement for parents. Just an assistant.
A hardcoded AI assistant with Tsar Dušan’s Code 2.0 and Kant’s categorical imperative.
The development of empathy and critical thinking, because our children—even right now—are exposed to the relentless bombardment of an algorithm that is anything but ethical and focused on their well-being.
We desperately need a reform of the education system. An individual curriculum, because every child is unique.
Imagine a world where we gave every child maximum cognitive development. Taught to question everything, to feel empathy.
I don’t know, maybe it sounds like technocracy, but we definitely need a shield against our own ego.
We can learn right alongside them too.
How to be better human beings.
We will go as individuals where our skills and capacities are needed. We will all work for the same goal. Our children, above all else.
Who cares what skin color, religion, or gender you are if you can help all of us? To give your own kids a better shot in the end.

Will it be a diametrically different system? Yes, it will be logical, ethical, and mathematically sustainable.
Because the math is clear: strip away the levers of power, decentralize.
Can we just define five points, give answers to just five questions around which we can get a consensus?
That’s not asking too much, right?
If out of 8 billion people we cannot form an expert ethical council—simple, reasonable principles: don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t oppress, work for the community, not against it.
Questions like: where are we as a society, where is this trajectory taking us… where should we be going, what should our goal be. How will we get there, and finally, how will we stay there?
I see 5 simple things there. Hypothetically.

Reality.
Logic.
Ethics.
Math.
And in the end, logic again.

What does your gut instinct tell you right now? That someone wants to scam you, right? That it sounds too simple.
That someone will definitely try to hoard power for themselves again?
Because our tribal mentality and the fact that some random guy out there from the third world could care about your child for some reason—that’s just not normal to you.
It’s devastating. Understandable.
But if we work on shifting our values.
No one will lie to us; everything is transparent.
No one will accumulate power; we will rotate them through roles based on their cognitive domains.

What, are you worried about that ethical council that will set those parameters?
We will change them too. Procedural ethics.
Reviews and calibrations because we are imperfect, we will wander off, but this way at least we’ll have a brake so we don't wander off too far.
It worries you, I get it; it worries me too.
It worries me even more when I don’t see that we are ready to accept our own limitations.
When we don’t know how to control ourselves, when we have no desire or will to progress.
Do I need a pedigree to even be allowed to ask a question?
Because I don’t have one, I am an autodidact, which is why this text isn't academic because nobody taught me how.
Am I guilty for that too, just because I sat down to think?

Don’t even get me started on the development of superintelligence, that’s where I am truly terrified of where this alignment problem is taking us.
We can’t control ourselves and our own impulses, let alone superintelligence—something that is orders of magnitude smarter than us.
My logic says let’s preempt it, let’s make sure it doesn’t even have to come to its development at all.
That it cannot come to it.
Because we will raise our own cognitive capacities; we will learn how to channel our own passions.

I understand that the vast majority of you will experience this as some kind of attack, and you’ll be right. But that is not my intention or desire, just an appeal to step away from your ego for a second.

I understand you can be moral, work for the well-being of everyone, including my child, and still disagree with me on every single point.
I am not denying you that chance.
I accept it if you say, "man, this idiot is talking nonsense." Everyone feels it is their god-given right to let their ego run wild to the detriment of all our children.
We cannot neutralize the ego, but we can redirect it by giving the system different values.
I do not accept that I am not even allowed to ask the question to everyone, because it concerns our children.

Where do you see my logic failing, my ethics, where is my math bad?
We have nothing like this in past history because we never had these capabilities; I don’t know how all of this can unfold.
What implications it can bring.
That is why I stand before you humble, asking.
Can this, or some similar model, bring at least a slightly more certain future to our descendants?
I believe nobody wants the worst part of their personality to win and contribute to the collective defeat of society.
I know I don’t.

godspeed.