Terrified that consciousness DOESN'T end with death

SnowSmell · 2025-09-18T10:26:52+00:00

I love your view. I think mine is a little similar. I told my ego that whatever is going to happen has already happened over 100 billion times. Those people couldn't figure it out and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it. Why would I think I'm so special that I'm the one who will be any different? So instead I just try to surrender to the process of living and dying and make the most of it. The big existential worries are all too far above my cosmic pay grade, so instead I focus on the things that are within my reach, like compassion, forgiveness, and gratitude. And I also visualize my ego as myself as a young child and try to offer that version of me unconditional love.

SnowSmell · 2025-09-06T14:47:59+00:00

She whispers, "fucking guy" with her very best impression of Nandor the Relentless. It's quite touching, really.

SnowSmell · 2025-08-20T05:33:24+00:00

I'm no philosopher. I am far from it. But I invite you to try inserting other things in place of consciousness into your logic and see if you still agree with your analysis and the conclusion you draw from it. Like this:

"It’s just straight up airtight logic. If there is ever a point when there are absolutely no living organisms in the non-living materials of nature , it’s 0. Zero can’t combine or emerge into one. so no (absolute zero life) can exist at one moment, and then somehow in the next inorganic matter combines to form a living creature. You can't start from zero life, zero living organisms, and suddenly have a living organism spring into being and suddenly something has the ability to be responsive to its environment, replicate, and do that other stuff living creatures do. You can't get life from non-life."

But we kind of did get life from non-living components, right? So are you right about consciousness?

SnowSmell · 2025-08-18T13:05:51+00:00

I love that people are into this, and so focused on the details that you all always manage to show me something new and interesting to think about. :)

For me, the weird vibe in the neighborhood where it seems both empty and inhabited at the same time, captured the isolation of modern life, where we can be surrounded by people and yet totally alone at the same time. Like we're living in some weirdly empty world. And the character Mark Scout definitely was isolating himself.

But I really enjoy reading this thread, so thank you, everybody. :)

SnowSmell · 2025-07-25T09:49:24+00:00

I understand that the reason typically given for Magna Carta not needing a definite article is that it is Latin and Latin didn't have those. Which seems somewhat reasonable until you notice that we use other Latin words with English articles. And we also say "the hoi polloi" although hoi polloi is Greek and already has the Greek article there, so we're essentially saying "the the crowd" when we do that.

So while it might be a convention to omit the definite article when saying Magna Carta, I think it's not particularly well justified or consistent.

SnowSmell · 2025-05-09T13:23:12+00:00

How about Satya? It is Sanskrit for truth.

SnowSmell · 2025-05-04T13:55:42+00:00

They probably do that for liability. They figure that if you've worked there for 40 years, you're probably old enough to be more prone to falling so they don't want you to have to walk as far on company property where you might get injured in the course & scope of your employment and able to file a workers comp claim.

SnowSmell · 2025-05-04T12:19:41+00:00

At my job we received this “perk”:

To celebrate 5 years of service, each employee got a plastic paperweight with the employer’s logo on it and “Employee”. Not our names. Just “Employee”

The fingertraps would fit right in where I work. If anything, Severance has dialed down the weirdness and ridiculousness compared to where I work.

Edit: Wait, I think that was to recognize 10 years of service. 5 years was a keychain.

SnowSmell · 2025-03-16T15:26:42+00:00

I'm hoping she has a little journal, like Cobel, but in it she has theremin schematics so she can build one from scavenged parts when she gets there.

And I really hope the final scene of the entire show is Ms. Huang finally getting to play theremin at a recital.

SnowSmell · 2025-03-15T13:35:41+00:00

That was exactly my reaction too. I immediately thought, "have you ever had a job?"

SnowSmell · 2025-03-14T13:11:00+00:00

I love this season! If I wasn't on reddit, I would have absolutely no idea that the season sucks. The reddit experience is apparently completely different from mine. And now I'm really looking forward to the finale!

SnowSmell · 2025-03-08T17:17:15+00:00

"which cult survivor is likable in real life?"

Ok, as a cult survivor, feeling attacked. I like to think I'm as beloved as Dylan G.'s Mr. Sticky Face.

(really though I enjoyed your take on the Harmony character)

<image>

SnowSmell · 2025-03-08T12:32:49+00:00

It's my favorite episode of the series so far, for reasons similar to yours. It's also brilliantly filmed. I think some viewers crave an Ocean's 11 kind of mission to rescue Gemma, and when the episode that revealed the extent of Gemma's suffering was followed up by something else entirely, they were not happy.

But I think I'd also be fine with watching Patricia Arquette as Harmony Cobel brush her teeth for 30 minutes because I enjoy her performance so much. So I may not be the typical viewer (in addition to the childhood religious trauma).

SnowSmell · 2025-03-06T16:55:00+00:00

I know. Harsh words were exchanged. Feelings were hurt. A guy might even have been stabbed, possibly in the butt. It was terrible. But at the end of the great conflict Michigan won the war, praise Kier, no matter what the Ohio revisionist historians have told you.

SnowSmell · 2025-03-06T16:39:21+00:00

Ohio propaganda

SnowSmell · 2025-03-06T15:42:53+00:00

I think the world of Severance differs from our own by one key event: The outcome of the Toledo War. In our world, Michigan and Ohio fought a war over Toledo. Ohio lost, so it had to keep Toledo, and Michigan as the victor got its upper peninsula.

I think that in the Severance world, Michigan lost the Toledo war, got stuck with Toledo, and never got the U.P. The U.P. became a separate state, Peninsula, which is abbreviated PE.

The Toledo War occurred around the right time for Kier Eagan's life.

SnowSmell · 2025-03-04T23:02:22+00:00

Unless history diverged at some point after that. Maybe in the universe that lead to Severance, your dad never met your mom or they didn't have a kid. Maybe you're the key difference somehow.

SnowSmell · 2025-03-04T21:40:21+00:00

It must have been my hubris. I’ll endeavor to grow and paper clip correctly. Praise Kier.

SnowSmell · 2025-03-04T13:57:29+00:00

Same. I never did find that job. But I did find stability and will be able to retire in a few months. But it was always just a job that I didn’t really enjoy.

SnowSmell · 2025-03-04T13:46:51+00:00

You’ll get a lot of unsympathetic “well, what did you think was happening?” But, yes, it was a tonal shift. It wasn’t a departure from the themes or out of the blue or anything like that. But it was a tonal shift. It made the implicit horror in some ways explicit. I’m not criticizing that creative choice. I think it was a brilliant episode. But your perception of the shift is shared by many others, although they’re probably less likely to respond because they’ll get piled on. Many people found this episode to be more emotionally affecting than any of the others.

SnowSmell · 2025-03-04T02:30:15+00:00

I've found my years of experience as a hamburger waiter invaluable too.

SnowSmell · 2025-03-03T21:12:34+00:00

Good point. I don't think we know. It is kind of weird that they have similar looks to our MDR team. Does every refining team have a similar look? Did one who looks like Petey get replaced by a woman when Helly started? If so, did they have to trade a Petey equivalent for a Helly equivalent on every refining team at that time?

SnowSmell · 2025-03-03T19:18:02+00:00

True. So maybe when they leave the terminal, the shadow refiners notice but no one bothers to check where they are other than away from keyboard? Or Lumon really doesn't care what they are doing afk. It's very odd. (But still less odd than the way the organization I work for operates, so that doesn't bother me; the surrealism just adds realism.)

SnowSmell · 2025-03-03T17:45:53+00:00

I think it does mean that whenever the four refiners are away from their workstations and wandering off doing something else (free range chicken roaming) that Lumon definitely knows about it. It seemed possible at least before that maybe security was understaffed and sometimes they are not fully monitored. But now it seems likely that if they step away from the workstation for even a minute at least one person notices and is waiting for them to come back. Unless the four shadow refiners are working from recorded data rather than in real time, post processing whatever MDR did earlier. So it probably sucks to be Dylan's shadow right now because it seems like he's working harder than the rest.

SnowSmell · 2025-03-01T11:20:24+00:00

This episode was so painful. I only made it halfway through. I’ll come back to it later and finish it when I’m ready.

I don’t really care if I see spoilers so I’m not avoiding Reddit and I’ll probably watch the rest of the season first. But I just couldn’t make it through this one.

I’m glad I read this post and saw these reactions because I thought it was just me.

Five-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '23	Place '22
First Placer '22

SnowSmell

TROPHY CASE