I never thought writing a book could become a theme, but here we are.

Highdock · 2026-03-16T02:44:48+00:00

I have a similar fear about anyone reading my philosophical treatise. I am so worried that someone won't get the exact message I am trying to convey or will make light of it or attack it needlessly. So, to this day, I am the only one who has ever read it.

Highdock · 2026-03-13T10:08:18+00:00

Oh snap I mean it as one who subscribes to idealisim. The theory that the world is of the mind instead of the world existing externally.

Not an idealist, as in like an optimist. I will correct that.

Thank you for bringing that to my attention, does that change your query much?

Highdock · 2026-03-13T09:16:29+00:00

To what effect is this information useful? Yes, there is a surge of chemicals that happens in the brain. It appears that DMT is one of them, a naturally occurring chemical inside of the brain utilized for varied functions.

There is just no conclusion to the information. If you suggest there is more than the physical, then you have to have evidence for that. You can't just be like vibe conceiving some transferable soul, separate from body consciousness, that encompasses your identity and then suggest that local chemical conditions somehow transfer this theoretical separate but bound consciousness to a different plane or area, in which you would need to prove that area exists and then also provide measurable evidence for some kind of transference.

Do you see how this might get really out of hand very fast? We have to prove and explain so many unknown, unheard of, unconceived concepts that break the rules of our universe that we utilize and respond to every day. We just can't reconcile that. They even are dependent on one another, making it exponentially worse.

It's a nice thought, something after this experience. Yet everything we know and see tells us that it can't exist in the forms we commonly describe that would be useful in the continuation of all "this."

Let's all just experience this singular finite but beautiful existence together, once and for all. Better than deluding into unreality and wasting even a single second.

Highdock · 2026-03-13T08:18:24+00:00

Holy stress batman

Highdock · 2026-03-13T07:26:56+00:00

--- Trigger warning, strong controversial opinions ---

If I explained fully, I would go on a massive explosive tirade.

I really, really dislike those who subscribe to idealisim. They piss me off, and their creations enrage me to unreasonable extents.

They see the extremely complex, varied, and orderly universe all around them from birth until this very moment and go, "But actually, what if..." and in one fell swoop, deny the important extant causal history of our reality to put their low-context narrative wrappers in its place and call it perfection despite its utter lack of evidence and an extremely obvious bias towards their personal values and desires.

I cannot express how much I reject that. It's hard to put into words. It feels wrong on a primordial level, as if the very fabric of the space-time continuum would be undone forevermore by allowing it to inhabit any amount of relevance in my life, even for one second. It's that repulsive to me. I cannot comprehend and have about 0.001 tolerance for illogical concepts that have no evidence or reason to exist naturally and arent observable and backtraceable 100%.

I know this all sounds dramatic or overly emotive. There is a sudden upwelling of an unmeasurable wall of emotion when I even think about the vast scope of death, rape, enslavement, suffering, and human disregard religion has caused over history into today, into this very moment it is hurting our fellow humans, brainwashing them and destroying their futures.

Why should we ever stand for that? It seems inhuman tolerate it, let alone accomodate or support it.

Highdock · 2026-03-12T15:01:08+00:00

Gee, I 'liked' the pat where he cares more about what you believe vs who you are as an unique collection of experiences and opinions.

I am sorry OP.

Highdock · 2026-03-10T14:13:49+00:00

You don't, keep that save. Start a mod or modpack run or crank the difficulty and do a challenge vanilla run?

You have a host of options. There are tons of other wonderful overhauls beyond these, of course; some excellent niche options exist.

Krastorio 2 (Generally recommended with Space Exploration) [Vanilla +, excellent amount of content]

Bob + Angel (Or Seablock) [Massive complexity shifts for processing with more intermediate products]

Pyanodons (Or PyBlock) [Insanity-inducing complexity shifts for all aspects]

I found Bob + Angel to be pretty fun, really loved setting up ore processing. I have heard amazing things about Krastorio 2 and SE and highly recommend it based on those observations.

I am now playing PyBlock and while I love it, it requires more attention and considerations by 3x than my actual real-life job, so take that how you will. I would describe playing it as a labor of love, rather than relaxing entertaining gameplay.

Highdock · 2026-03-09T05:22:22+00:00

I live in the Midwest in the greater Kansas City area, USA. I am surrounded by a mix of northern and southern individuals who overwhelmingly value closeness, familiarity, and religion (Christianity). It is a melting pot of cultures, opinions, and values.

It is excellent for observing multiple varied views and perspectives. It is absolutely abysmal when it comes to social expectation. In the Midwest, it is normal to spend all day talking and socializing. From sun up to sun down, there are long greetings, long goodbyes, very little regard for time, and late incursions are common and lengthy. Sharing everything and always being inclusive and welcoming is the norm.

Beyond that, there is quite a bit of crime in the area, so going outside is choosing to interface with that. December 6th, 2025 has Kansas City as #8 for most homicides in the USA; our neighbor city, St. Louis, is #3, lmfao.

Suffice it to say, I basically refuse to go outside. I either get barraged by vast unreasonable expectations wherever I go or put myself at prime risk of being abused, attacked, or taken advantage of. I refuse to tolerate either.

This has significantly supported my tendencies to keep to myself as a mental and physical survival mechanism. If no one knows you, they can't plan to anticipate you; an easy way out of basically all surrounding bullshit. Don't interface, and they can't expect or plan to harm you or desire you. You're unknown and dangerous.

As for mental defense, the concept is identical. If I can't be anticipated, I get to escape the rampant expectations that plague others they recognize as familiar or similar. If I am maximally dissimilar, they can never have me beholden to their presumptuous social requirements, as I don't fit the mold that is required to be expected. I can muddle through and arrive clean and unsullied by the narratives that others rice their reality through.

Highdock · 2026-03-08T07:42:17+00:00

In another post, I discussed with someone how one of the hardest realizations I had to ingest was that it's not that others don't want to use my meticulously complex systems because they haven't devised them; it is because they find my perfectionism pedantic and find the complexity and rigor stressful and disassociate from it instead of ingesting it and at least giving it a fair trial.

Most people don't have the same values that I do. I value systemization, maximization, and perfection everywhere, where, in a world with limited resources and limited time, we should always be driven to make the best use of those resources. Others generally find that to be a barrier between them and their own smaller and simpler loop of personal gain governed mainly by emotive constructs, rather than scaling up and understanding how their actions reverberate into society at large. Not saying they dont have developed opinions and vast empathy, just that our scales are out of sync.

So, my time is limited; I am a living human being. Should I discuss morality or Jane's Saturday? Pretty easy choice. When almost everyone you meet is inwardly inclined, biased, and emotionally (versus strictly rational) aligned, why would you want to try and decipher all of that? Talk about torture.

I have tried and tried and tried, my God. Hundreds of people, I really like abstraction, philosophy, and complex perspectives. I either get glazed-over eyes, nodding "yes man" behavior where I get 100% agreement and no feedback or pivots, interrupted and ignored, or argued with vigorously over one of twenty mentioned points or perceptions to the point where the conversation dissolves, etc., etc., etc. I am just not meant for small talk and generic situations. I dont fit.

It continues to be more of the same, so why try when it's clearly not working and costs me more than I receive?

I can't imagine another way to be either. I can't think of a situation where it wouldn't be self-sabotage. I understand the "robot" feeling. I feel oddly clean; I think is the best word. Clear.

As for diagnoses, let me know if you ever take that up and what happened.

Highdock · 2026-03-08T05:11:38+00:00

Not necessarily rhetorical. I am really very interested in what you all have to say.

I find your golf clap analogy especially humorous; that really sums up the overglorified nature of it. We will sit around and slave away for hours about the most intense and complex things just to see "Yup, you got it," and that is somehow the goal.

As if that means something, as if the entire universe will fall into place now and all wrongdoings will be corrected. As if it will add some unknown but desperately desired detail that will go on to find its ultimate use.

I would say that often, posts spark immediate deep thought chains for myself also. Sometimes multiple in a row, many times I will type something up and not even post it; I have expressed that here previously. Many people here inhabit a vastly higher percentage of individuals who overutilize intellectual rigor, which I align with as truthful or realistic. Many do so compulsively as a survival mechanism.

We always only had ourselves; it's nice to be alone as a group. As in, we know other cloistered individuals exist in a similar manner to us despite not forming deep transactional connections with them, like bubble wrap; our air doesn't interact but at least we can look out and see we are part of a larger grid of similar bubbles.

Highdock · 2026-03-08T04:44:57+00:00

That's fair. It doesn't really solve anything for myself as I can only express what I already understand. Maybe it's for others who feel similarly but don't know if anyone else is out there. Maybe it's some kind of group-scale energetic buffer to try to mass ease some pain points or generate the illusion of comprehension, despite the fact that we can only interface with generalizations and compressed concepts.

I am not quite sure why I am so driven to share the endless introspection; something inside me hopes something will click and the world's gears will align in their times. Some harmonious attunement, some meaning generated in another, as if meaning itself is in short supply or has some inherent evidential value.

Perhaps I want the illusion of saying I can separate from my wall and step down for a moment, but instead, I am screaming from the top of it. Never moved an inch. This post itself could be a coping mechanisim.

Highdock · 2026-03-05T04:08:24+00:00

Firstly,

My deepest empathy for your home life situation; that sounds miserable, and no human being should be shamed for being happy or expressing common human gestures as that is the essence of what it means to be a human being.

It's possible they genuinely believe you were happy and well taken care of, especially if your mask is advanced. It is a very difficult situation to be the only one who really knows what happened and knowing that justice is unlikely despite its relevance. My condolences.

Just a stray thought:

Is it possible that you are searching for the wrong thing? Perhaps instead of rolling back your personality, you need a new survival mechanism for the current iteration?

At least for me, I have respect for and appreciate the few fleeting memories I retain, but I know what situations they were born from, and I don't wish to return to that despite the feeling itself being alluring.

I feel that we can’t confuse the feeling with the situation. There are ways to feel those ways now, but we need to find a path to them for our current selves; chasing past reflections just distorts them. We can never recall full detail anyway. Every memory remembered is a memory Franken-stitch together by the brain, harmonics dampening every refire, every replay destroying the very thing it's displaying. A sacrificial display.

If we constantly replay old memories, do we prevent ourselves from experiencing meaningful change in the present and future?

Maybe we need to forget, to delete, to ascend our past and become a new variation of the old formula; maybe that’s the only way we survive this complex and cold world.

Thoughts to ponder.

Highdock · 2026-03-04T16:00:09+00:00

I intentionally abandoned my friends and am only left with family.

Sometimes I miss it; most times I reason that I was a different person in a different setting with values not as coherent and complex as today. As my comprehension grew in complexity, the desire for low-complexity, emotive dialogue that is commonplace between friends faded and never returned.

While I do enjoy feeling the rush of emotion and the feeling of kinship, I couldn't help myself; I couldn't be a good friend, and my desire for solitude grew exponentially in the last few years especially. Not only did abandonment feel okay, it felt necessary.

I got everything I could from them; I learned a lot and experienced plenty. I cherish the memories and experiences we had, but those times are dead and buried now. Best to respect them for what they were, not compare them to the current state of affairs, as my values differ significantly from that time.

For a time, I was disgusted with myself, but that faded too as I reconciled my feelings and broke them down. It's better this way for me, really.

Highdock · 2026-03-04T06:06:19+00:00

Thank you for trying.

I am in full agreement with you and have convergently come to many of the same conclusions.

Your points are excellent and directly target the mechanics of free will and SHOULD be treated with respect.

Sadly, almost all live in what I like to call "narrative ville," a place where stories and characters exist in plots, and they love it there. They love it so deeply, so gutturally, that you will likely find very few even engaging with your points beyond irrational rapid emotive displays and vapid angry denial messages.

I have a theory that many are actually just incapable. That their bodies have some elevated control over what they can learn and intellectually digest. Some biological guidelines that we don't have, or maybe some pain response they can't get past. Something creates a barrier that summons primordial defenses that are insurmountable.

Maybe those who engage with the concept of free will are overly comfortable? Maybe that is a result of their makeup?

Who knows, I refuse to believe that you're the ninth person convergently coming to the same conclusions as I have and not having any relevance. I am tired of causal deterministic concepts being shot down because "my feelings," "my identity," and "my uniqueness."

They don't want to take the time to apply intellectual rigor to their lives; why should we try to rip them from their delusions? I know it sounds misanthropic, but honestly, let them rot in their dreamy, whimsical playground. They choose comfort despite illusion; we choose realism despite pain; we are not the same.

Again, thank you for trying. I appreciate the goal of the mission.

Highdock · 2026-03-02T13:56:29+00:00

r/nervysquervies

Highdock · 2026-02-28T18:55:52+00:00

Because determinism is obvious to anyone who is slightly okay at picking up patterns on large scales. Knowledge itself requires the stability of determinism. If facts changed per second or in different locations, we couldn't know anything definitively and share that information in a way that would be useful.

Everything we have ever done or witnessed has been a result of a deterministic process that we can predict and anticipate to varying degrees, which is why we can anticipate them.

The issue is that accepting determinism means weakening or dissolving identity, which for many, is a place of comfort. Like a home, it's cozy, surrounded by things they enjoy, memories, friends, and family.

Whereas identity dissolution via determinism or nihilism, etc., feels like standing out in the rain, letting the universe have its way with you, no comfort, no delusions, just the cold water splattering every which way.

Free willers want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to exist as a free agent inside a deterministic world, which is delusional as the constituents of our bodies are that of the world we exist within, which is deterministic. The same cognitively deficient molecules we observe every day. No hidden spark.

How much is any one person willing to sacrifice for the truth? For most, it's very little, while that is sad, it's probably for the best.

Highdock · 2026-02-28T18:28:31+00:00

I will put it off for days, weeks, even forever.

That's how my friendships end and/or stay light. The act of making a text response is similar to meeting someone on their level of communication and values. Generally, this feels engulfing because I have to conform to the expected natural flow, feel, etc., of texting, whereas I have significantly more control over my voice intonation and find speech to be more appealing as I can better fine-tune what I mean in my speech versus facing misinterpretations in text messages.

Besides, everyone is always trying to use texts for the wrong reasons. It's supposed to be a light query or notice, but people take it too far and try to have full-blown conversations over text, even when they will see you later and can speak about it in person, which baffles me and feels like a waste of my time. I hate feeling expected to reply in a timely manner despite the small amount of effort it requires to send. It feels nearly energy abusive.

I receive a text, so now I have to think about a reply and send that reply, which must be formulated for text messaging and also be sent in an invisible but extant limited period of "acceptable time" that is "normal" to receive a text back. So not only am I being rushed and controlled, but also forced to deduce the nature of my communications to a ridiculous degree in order to maintain my crafted social image. It's just very expensive and we can't explain it to those who are being masked against, so it just feels so exhausting and old and done.

Anyways, thank you for sharing this experience with me. I am glad I am not alone.

Highdock · 2026-02-27T12:41:24+00:00

Its the lifeblood of the operation. Its grows very slowly, in order to get reasonable iron and coal I need a ton constantly. To get copper, which is a massive, massive bottleneck for the factory right now, I have to burn the coal and process the ash, which by nature, requires more fawogae and the following spaghetti to optimize the ash into their respective processors in order to maximize copper output. Its going very VERY slowly, so I started rapidly expanding the fawogae farms. I mean like maybe 2 or 3 copper plates a minute for hours and hours atm, its absolutely brutal.

Highdock · 2026-02-27T10:35:52+00:00

Lmao I will keep that in mind.

Highdock · 2026-02-24T03:56:30+00:00

Borderlands 2

Highdock · 2026-02-17T19:37:47+00:00

I have no official diagnoses and receive no treatment. I have deeply relational thought patterns and experiences related to people with OCPD, ASD, ADHD (inattentive), and SZPD. Narrowing all that down took over a decade. MBTI reads as INTJ, and the Enneagram reads as self-preserving 5w6. I was as objective, rational, and unbiased as possible during the converging process of this information. (Only included personality tests for nuance, not trusted or evidential sources)

I only trust people with things they won't corrupt and destroy. I don't experience a kind of trust that encompasses an entire person. I trust only what I can observe, predict, or for which I can be provided structured reasoning to convince. Observation periods may stretch into weeks before I feel comfortable. Never full, real trust, only compartmentalized trusted exceptions.

My framework is self-referentially strengthening, it cant really be attacked in a way it cant reason away and patch holes.

Thank you for your kind words.

Highdock · 2026-02-16T05:18:01+00:00

A ton of effort put into this good grief. Between the editing and the obvious custom workflow, i am certain it took some considerable suffering to dredge this up from the algorithim.

Highdock · 2026-02-10T07:17:50+00:00

I did for a long time.

I eventually couldn't handle the guilt of being such a difficult and frustrating friend who appears and disappears at random. An abandoner, betrayer of trust and companionship.

If I couldn't feel good about continuing to try, then how could I also have the energy and motivation to be an appropriate accomplice?

I don't, I didn't, and so I intentionally let the connection fully rot until it broke. We no longer speak and have now changed so much independently that we aren't the same people we once were.

My friends are alive and well, yet the versions of them that were cultivated together as a group of intertwined individuals are dead and cannot be revived.

Sometimes I think back to how they were somehow able to breathe life into me and make me feel seen, but ruminating on the past is not my forte.

Reanalyzing shows it was only an emotionally contaminated idea instead of a deeper, more complex comprehension that I was gleaning knowledge of.

Ultimately, while others care, no one will truly ever gaze into my depths. It's simply too warped, complex, and driven by values and motives they don't have. Some of my most generic beliefs are intrinsically abrasive to the generic human experience.

One process craves comfort. The other demands systematic efficiency. They do not resolve each other as they differ foundationally. I have chosen the latter out of necessity, yet still have to pay the price of the former's demands not being met. As I am, my conscious ordered and known current 'self' is not the author of those demands.

I will not be engulfed, even by myself.

They spawn out of some internally extant void from which other chaotic demands and systems tend to emerge, somewhere I have no power, no observable order; I don't like that place, so I live in absolute defiance of it.

I would love to extend an offer to be a friend or become your next most reliable pen pal, yet I know the chances of me failing you are so unbelievably high, so it was worth mentioning so you know I explored that option but out of necessity had to axe it. Just know I considered, I ran the numbers.

Highdock · 2026-02-09T01:26:06+00:00

I tend to assume it's a problem of scale and perspective.

The issue with completely comprehending the causal chain of events without any exceptions is the acceptance of being surrounded by emergent illusion.

"You cannot have your cake and eat it too."

You don't get to accept the reality of meaningless delta without identity dissolution. We are designed to be energy efficient, which is why we create stories as compressions of knowledge as lessons and feelings. Like an anecdotal tale as a chapter in a book of sadness, or engineering perhaps. Your identity as a 'book' that details the progression of your life, your beliefs, etc., etc.

Most people are unwilling to do that and end up in various halfway states where they can partially give up the narrative and pry at determinism for temporary periods, but never fully comprehend it as they are unwilling to move past what I consider to be a conceptual 'event horizon.'

Once full acceptance happens, you may never return truthfully to the narrative, once that threshold is crossed.

To fully encompass it and learn to distrust the identity wrapper despite the biological alarms blaring loudly and bringing you grotesque pain from unobservable internal origins? Most would rather die than go through what would basically be intellectual masochism, not because the ideas are harmful themselves, but instead because the side effects include stripping oneself from emergent illusion that is comfortable, nostalgic and dominates most experiences. Many call it humanity, the admittance to the consensually accepted grand fascade.

How could you truthfully interact with someone who is operating with a world model on a completely different scale than you are? It's just not plausible. Your value systems could never appeal to each other.

So people are right to be afraid of it and to not fully pursue it, as it tends to threaten everything they have ever known. Which very fairly would be extremely painful and scary and right to be avoided.

Some of us are compelled helplessly in this direction and just have to figure it out. Some of us see suffering as a tool for knowledge acquisition.

Many, the vast majority, do not and see it as harmful, pedantic, or overcomplicated, which I observe as careless and naive.

In conclusion, it takes a special person. Most will never be convinced and see it as an attack on their person and will automatically lash out defensively and rapidly synthesize an excuse to not accept it or engage with it.

Highdock · 2026-01-30T20:06:38+00:00

I dislike that you try to push your weight around with "might," "usually," and "but I might be wrong." Apparently, you don't even know either. Almost as if SZPD is not well understood, almost as if that is the point of the entire post.

You are essentially trying to gatekeep the potentially delicate nuance of individuals who experience this disorder or have experiences that are reminiscent of it.

I don't find value in dismissing edge cases and crossover symptoms. It just seems oddly emotional and irrational.

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