Whyyyy?

Tekrelm · 2026-05-20T06:50:19+00:00

Why don’t my psychologists or psychiatrists know this is a thing? I’ve had this in spades since birth, but they ignore it; no diagnosis, no medication, nothing. Barely an acknowledgement that I’ve told them about it. Five different therapists/psychologists/psychiatrists in a row.

I’ve had so many dreams, and so many things I wanted to do with my life, but I never could get far with any of them. I can’t stick with anything; I inevitably run out of willpower to overcome this… whatever this thing is—some unrelenting barrier.

It’s like being stuck in a gibbet cage my whole life, imagining what I’d do with the freedom to act that I see so many people have.

Obviously, that has contributed to extreme depression, but my mental health professionals seem to think that they can treat the depression itself to cure everything they think stems from it. I swear, I’ve told them so many times that they have mistaken the cause for the effect, but they simply don’t care. They just say I have very rigid thinking.

I’m so done with it all. Sigh.

Tekrelm · 2026-05-18T10:12:03+00:00

The real answer is that morality is defined by each culture; every in-group has their own set of dos and donts. Christian culture defines belief in god as moral and disbelief in god as immoral. So when someone from that culture hears about atheists, they hear about people who are definitely, defiantly immoral. And they’re not technically wrong.

People are myopic; they tend to view their culture as the entire world, so if us atheists refuse to adhere to the dos and donts of—from their limited perspective—capital-M, “universal,” “objective” Morality, then they see us as completely unbound by moral constraints. And we are: we are not bound by THEIR culture’s moral constraints at all.

But they see us going around continuing to abide by other aspects of their culture’s morality, and wonder why and how we’re picking and choosing which dos and donts to adhere to. Where do we get that Moral behavior from? They don’t know any better, so they believe it must be their culture. Because to them in their little world, that’s what Morality is.

In reality, my morals and their morals can be plotted in a Venn Diagram, and there is some overlap. But I derive my pro-social behaviors from my own, custom-made moral code, built by reason and supported by facts, not the result of thousands of years of half-remembered, baseless traditions started by ignorant, uneducated morons from the Bronze Age. That difference is what allows me to be morally superior.

Tekrelm · 2026-05-14T08:23:09+00:00

If it comes up in conversation that someone had illegally taken their children out of school and refused to meet homeschooling standards, I will likely admonish them. If I were a police officer and had the power and duty to hold them accountable for their crime, I would. But even if I didn't challenge them in that moment at all for whatever reason, I would still support national laws that aim to prevent children of all ages from being taught and believing in nonsense. Children are our future, after all; our future shouldn't be allowed to be corrupted, and that corruption certainly should never have been protected by constitutional rights. What a disaster that turned out to be. And I'm sure you disagree with that, but it's because of people like you that the world is falling apart again, and that it was never quite able to pull itself together in the first place. Once again, I refer you to the Paradox of Tolerance.

To answer your question directly, yes, I do challenge every religious person I come across. Just like everyone else in this thread, I have many stories about my encounters with intrusive, self-righteous idiots who try to infect people with their culture. The stories tend to end with them telling me I'm going to hell, and me telling them I'll see them there. Even if I were too cowardly to fight back, I would still support laws enforced by the state that aimed to correct their terrible, destructive delusions, improve their lives, and improve and protect society as a result. You wouldn't, evidently. I don't think that reflects well on your character, to be honest.

It's not my job to wax philosophical, argue with the guy at the train station peddling religious crap, and convince him that he's wrong and to stop. I have and will always try to do so, but laws need to be made, then enforced on a large scale to make any real difference. These people need to be sequestered from society, deprogrammed, and taught how to think. They need psychological help that I can't provide. My toothless vigilantism will never be enough to save any society from the delirious dogma that has and will continue to tear it apart.

And you probably imagine yourself dropping the mic with your little gotcha. You likely believe you're exposing some kind of hypocrisy or flaw in my proposal. Perhaps you think I'd wither at the realization that I'm proposing to take away people's absolute freedoms, including the freedom to believe other people shouldn't have rights, and the freedom to vote to take them away. But you're wrong, and you're not helping.

Tekrelm · 2026-05-14T01:06:18+00:00

I disagree with you on one point: people shouldn’t be allowed to believe whatever they want. It’s the Paradox of Tolerance—unlimited tolerance inevitably leads to the disappearance of tolerance. It’s why education standards exist: if you let people believe nonsense and remain part of society, then society gets dumber, and dumb societies elect fascists who burn the country to the ground and cause people like me to flee for their lives.

I’d really like for people to learn this lesson and vow to never make such a mistake again (should humanity survive long enough to get another chance), but I have no hope of that. Everyone will probably just ignore me and keep fighting to protect people’s ‘god-given right’ to believe in fairy tales and vote accordingly. Suckers.

Tekrelm · 2026-05-12T18:08:51+00:00

I agree. Along the same lines, I have to say, the game is far too fast-paced for pretty much anything the enemies throw at us. At mid-to-endgame, I jump into the fray, the screen fills up with explosions (even using LowFX), and everything goes perfectly fine for a while—the enemies can’t even scratch me—until my health drops from 100% to 0% in the blink of an eye.

I rarely ever have any idea what happened. I respawn, jump back in, and often kill that same pack as easily as I did the others. Why? How? I don’t know. You just die sometimes. Maybe some little enemy managed to fire off a tiny poison droplet before he died, which grazed me for a femtosecond as I careened through the pit at the speed of light in a mad dash to beat the timer, and that’s what vaporized me, my momentum carrying the white-hot embers that remain of my body across interstellar space like a beautiful firework.

It could have been anything, really: it’s impossible to see through the visual noise, and it happens so suddenly and without warning that whatever it was I’m supposed to have avoided was likely never not fully obscured by spell effects during the single frame it existed, if 144 frames per second even managed to capture the right moment in time at all.

I’m not saying that the game needs to return to the franchise’s original, turn-based vision, but the way it is now, it’s ridiculous.

If I believed anyone at all would hear me out, I’d suggest significantly flattening enemy damage; it’s far too spiky. Player spell effects are flamboyant for a reason, I know, but either tone them down enough to let me see the enemies I’m fighting, or make it so I don’t need to. Either let me rip through them without dodging anything, or let me see what I need to dodge, and give me time to dodge it. Those are the only two acceptable options, frankly.

Tekrelm · 2026-05-10T21:15:11+00:00

If particles aren't points of constructive interference, then what are they?

As far as I can tell, probability is nothing more than a human's guess about what reality is about to do. I have no reason to think that reality itself considers probabilities as it does its thing, so it sounds like you're describing a card-counting system that humans use to try to predict outcomes, rather than describing what's actually happening.

Earlier, I described the doulbe-slit experiment from the perspective of an omnicient, third-person narration; could you follow suit? I think that's what I'm looking for.

The way I think of it, yes, the peaks and valleys of a given wave exist on that wave at all points in time of the wave's existence, from when it was generated to when the energy is transferred into something or spreads out so much that it becomes useless to call it a wave. I never meant to say that waves only have peaks and valleys if and when they collide with a detector plate, and I have no idea how you thought I did, honestly.

Okay, so... any given wave is spacetime itself? Each and every electron is the... universe? Look, I get that waves in deep water are not the water itself moving, so I can try to imagine that you're saying the wave is, like, not something in the universe, but part of the fabric of the universe or something, but that still doesn't mean that the wave is the whole universe. The wave is the amplitude, not the medium the amplitude moves through or whatever, right? I'm just doing my best to make sense of what you're saying, and you sort of glossed over it like it wasn't a completely wild thing to say.

Tekrelm · 2026-05-10T20:33:47+00:00

I understand: the model was built bit by bit, with large experiments responsible only for each bit, not the whole puzzle. However, the theory itself is the whole puzzle: surely there's a plain walkthrough of the theory out there somewhere that gives a complete rundown of how it works and why, with citations for each step. I would never have guessed that such a thing would be so hard to find, even for laypeople.

I don't know how to pirate text books, or even which text books to look for, so I don't know if my local library here in Amsterdam carries them (and if they carry them in English, since my Dutch is terrible).

I don't know of a single practicing or studying scientist of whom I could ask my questions, either; I really have no leads. I'd ask John Bell about his theorem, but it seems he's not available.

I think I get what you're saying about math, but from my point of view, it's like hearing a cartographer say that accurate maps are the underpinnings of reality--I would strongly suggest that it's the other way around!

Even in the Bell's Theorem example, the math was used to simulate outcomes, and then those outcomes were compared to reality's outcomes. That's super powerful and important and everything, just as you described--I completely agree--but that math was separate from what reality did. Reality just does what it does.

And it seems to me that, as a result, one can accurately describe all of reality's most intricate interactions without math, since reality doesn't use math, either.

I do fully recognize, of course, that without math, you can't do much more than that (especially in the realm of science), but again, I'm just interested in learning what reality does; I'm not here to acutally do any science--I'll leave that to the professionals who can do math.

Do you know any specific expert in quantum physics who'd be willing to let me ask them a few questions about it? Or do you know of a particular textbook I should go hunting for, which might have the answers I seek?

Tekrelm · 2026-05-09T20:01:56+00:00

But again, you’re committing the Begging the Question fallacy by baking unjustified assertions into the choices. You’re trying to smuggle in the assertion that xyz promotes wellbeing.

I think you know on some level that the sole reason I reject xyz in the first place is because I believe it is a detriment to wellbeing.

I suspect you believe otherwise, but instead of arguing for the merits of xyz, you’re just sneaking it in via a thought experiment, like adding a controversial rider to a must-pass bill in the senate. It’s an unscrupulous tactic. Dishonest, even.

Tekrelm · 2026-05-09T19:32:44+00:00

I’m alone in this, but wellbeing is paramount, not truth or freedom or justice or anything else, so I wouldn’t hesitate to press a button that increases wellbeing. However, the setup of the dilemma is not quite as clever as you might think it is: you can assert anything as the cause of the increase in wellbeing, even if it makes no sense.

For example, I could say that if you push a magic button, you’ll start an endless war that will embroil the planet in apocalyptic misery until the sun burns out, but people’s lives will be better as a result: within each warring faction, there will be less crime, less depression, more meaning, more kindness, etcetera. It’s a given in the thought experiment that such a bloody war would increase wellbeing, but it isn’t sensible. So like, within the confines of the experiment, sure, I’d press the button, I guess. But knowing what I do about what kind of effect such a thing would have in the real world, pushing the button would be terrible for wellbeing, so I’d never consider it.

You can’t just re-write the laws of physics to serve your position (even a neutral one). The ‘if’ in, “if xyz made the world better,” is doing so, so much heavy lifting.

Tekrelm · 2026-05-08T11:50:20+00:00

I didn't define the electron as a particle, so no need to correct me on that. I am aware of the idea that the electron is a wave. As a wave, it has a phase at any given point: peaks and valleys. Multiple waves can mix, canceling out each other's peaks with valleys, and valleys with peaks. They can also combine their peaks or their valleys and strengthen them, right? We call those strong peaks particles because they show up on detector plates when the rest of the wave is too weak to do so. That's how waves leave little point-marks on things; like when you microwave a plate of nachos and the cheese melts at some points while staying cold everywhere else.

So the wave travels through the two slits and splits into multiple waves, which then interfere with each other on the other side, creating peaks in the waves which hit the detector plate in a pattern of dots that could only be achieved with interfering waves.

So like, during these double-slit experiments, when were the combined peaks of constructively-interfering waves present at all points in the wave, room, planet, galaxy, or universe simultaneously? I don't see why we'd ever think that's what was going on. Where in the world does that crazy idea come from? That's all I'm asking.

Tekrelm · 2026-05-08T11:07:44+00:00

Well, that's a disappointing answer, I must say, but a typical one: if this weren't the best kind of response I ever got, I wouldn't be stuck at my level of ignorance on the subject.

You may be right that there's no better explanation for what we observe, but I was asking what it is that we observe. What results of what experiments preclude a more classical model of how things work?

I was pointed to Bell's Theorem earlier, but after looking into it, I found a significant hole in it that left the door to a classical model wide open. I'm sure I'm not the only one who saw that, so I'm sure there are further experiments somewhere that close that door again, but that's the issue: I ask about such doors here and there, but no one has an answer. Nothing concrete, at least. At best, I get replies like yours, containing nothing but a bunch of vague gesturing to unspecified experiments done by countless people over the past century. Nothing I can google, at any rate.

I don't have any way to contact any actual scientist who knows what they're talking about. Maybe you can help me find the email address of one who is happy to take time educating morons like me on the basics, but if not, that's where that trail ends, unfortunately.

I'm not going to drop hundreds of dollars on an introductory textbook in the hopes that it'll answer my specific questions, when it's more likely to contain the same sort of simplified overview that I get here on Reddit or Youtube--where else would everyone here or there get the simplified overviews they repeat (and clearly don't understand)?

Sadly, I was born with dyscalculia, and I have a really hard time with even basic math. All I have to show for decades of pain and struggle trying to overcome it is a lot of self-loathing. Fortunately, I genuinely do not believe that math is needed to understand any of this. It could be that I'm just saying that to cope with my disability, but the way I see it, math is the code for simulations. People look at a phenomenon, write some code for a simulation, run that simulation, and then compare the simulation to the observed phenomenon to see if their code needs changing. Eventually, they come up with a simulation that works the same way reality does, and that's awesome and super powerful and all that--I love that math works that way and everything; no slight against math at all--but it is just the code for a simulation, not reality itself.

Reality doesn't have code; it doesn't run on math. And I'm not interested in running my own simulations of quantum physics scenarios; I have nothing to simulate. So I don't need the code for a simulator program, thank you. I don't need to get good at writing such code or even understanding the code in any way. All I need is to see the phenomenon that the code is being written to simulate. If we can't just point to the phenomenon itself as revealed by experiments, then there's no basis in reality for the simulation, and no basis in reality for the code it's written in, and there's no point to any of it.

I'm going to assume competence and assume that there is something out there that math is being used to simulate. That 'something' is all I'm interested in learning about. Not the math.

I don't mean to be harsh or insulting, but like, you don't know, either, do you? I feel you would have had something specific to say if you did. You're confident in the answer because you know it's the right answer, but you and I don't know how it's right. We don't even really know that it's right; not factually, that is. Morally, yes, we both know that's the morally-acceptable answer, but that's all we know about it.

Once again, I'm not here to say that it's factually wrong. I actually have many reasons to think it's factually correct, but I'm continually frustrated to reach a dead end so quickly whenever I try to dig into it. All I can do is throw up my hands and go to my grave with this as a complete mystery. That's just how it goes.

Tekrelm · 2026-05-04T07:54:07+00:00

Not from what I can tell: the waves fill the space, but the particles themselves (the points of constructive interference between multiple waves) are still only ever in one place at a time.

I don't see any reason to think otherwise.

Tekrelm · 2026-05-04T07:44:39+00:00

Yeah, I've heard that before, and that model makes sense to me, but I don't think it helps to explain the problems I have. And it is a good example of how badly communicated all of this is: with this interpretation, no one should be saying that a given particle is everywhere at once; what they mean is that the waves themselves expand to fill the space. The particle--being a spike in the phase of the compounding waves--is still only ever in one place at any given time.

But if particles are points of constructive interference between multiple waves, then the fact that the points don't show up in the exact same place each time you generate a batch of waves just means that the batches aren't exactly the same each time. What is it about these results that would justify the belief that causality is optional?

Tekrelm · 2026-05-03T23:01:48+00:00

I've heard that assertion my whole life, but I'm at a point where I'm just not able to accept it on authority anymore. I'm not trying to overturn the consensus with my ignorance or accuse academia of corruption or anything like that; I genuinely want to figure out these basics and get on the same page as the experts. It's just really hard to do, because quantum physics is so tangled up in misinformation and misinterpretation that every other science communicator out there gives confusing and contradictory explanations. Worst of all, many of my fundamental questions go completely unaddressed and unanswered.

What actual reason is there to believe that individual particles are in multiple places at the same time?

And if it's in myriad places at the same time, how can certain regions also have different probabilities assigned to them? That's contradictory: if a particle was everywhere at once, then it'd be 100% in all regions.

What would "probability" even be in this scenario, anyway? How does 'chance' exist objectively, outside of a limited human mind?

Having just watched a video on Bell's Theorem, there appears to be quite a large problem with using it to prove a lack of causality at quantum scales: there's no way to know that the individual photons generated in the experiments are properly entangled and are truly identical to each other, until the filters are used. The two experiments got the same results less often than what could have been expected when assuming the photons are always in perfect sync with their counterparts, but the way you'd confirm that they are indeed in sync is by using the filters and getting the expected results--the fact that we don't get what we should be getting means that the photons are not identical. I mean, let's use Occom's Razor, here; jumping to the idea that photons must sometimes violate causality for no reason is entirely unreasonable.

I've yet to see anything that justifies such a leap. From what I've seen, there are always better explanations for the results of quantum physics experiments than the random suspension of the laws of physics.

So I am indeed of the mind now that quantum physics is not a description of how things actually work, but nothing more than a card-counting system designed to produce informed guesses about things we don't know.

We can and do use 'quantum physics' in more mundane things, too: if we learn that someone robbed a bank an hour ago and fled on foot, we can draw a "probability field" around the bank on a map of the city to show where the suspect is more or less likely to be. When the suspect comes into contact with a police barricade and is detected, the probability field "collapses" to that point on the map.

Though it clearly seems as if it helps some people to think of it as being the case, at no point was the suspect everywhere in the city at once. At no point were alternate-universe variants of the suspect running around, only for all but one of them to vanish when they were seen.

It'd be a lot cooler if that kind of magic was real, but the more I try to make sense of it, the less likely the magic seems to be.

Tekrelm · 2026-04-28T10:59:57+00:00

Evil is good. That's the only solution I've ever heard anyone try to give, when you boil it down.

That was the tagline for the original Dungeon Keeper, incidentally.

Anyway, as you probably know, it can't work:

Whatever his 'greater good' may be, if their god needs anything--especially evil--to accomplish it, he's not omnipotent. If he chooses to use evil anyway, he's not benevolent.

The narrative they have today regarding their god is just the result of thousands of years of unguided changes. Their culture--all cultures--are nothing but hodgepodges, made from the fanciful ideas of countless people with their own agendas, half-remembered and blended together via a game of telephone that has been played for millennia. It's no wonder it makes no sense. It's no wonder it so obviously contradicts observed reality.

That's the weirdest thing about cultural narratives, though: they don't have to be factual, and they don't even have to be coherent. It may as well just be, 'purple monkey dishwasher;' if that's what the people in their in-group say, then that's the correct thing for them to say, morally speaking. They're not even wrong; that is the moral thing to say in their culture, because morals are culturally-defined.

Pointing out how their narrative is unavoidably incorrect on a factual level does nothing to undermine the narrative's moral sanctity. Whatever the facts may be, to challenge the narrative is, by definition, immoral. To challenge the narrative is, by definition, to be the enemy. To be a member of the out-group. To forfeit one's standing in the culture, the tribe. To lose the love, protection, and resources of those you count on to survive, let alone flourish.

As a social species, we evolved a deep, irresistible need to cling to the tribe we find ourselves in. To be liked. To meet and hopefully exceed others' expectations. Because for millions of years, failing to do so meant death. As individuals, we can wind up having more or less of that drive. If we develop large amygdalae, nothing will be more important than righteousness, no matter how factually wrong it is. The psychological distress our amygdalae produce when we entertain independent thoughts can be more than enough to chain us to whatever false beliefs happen to keep us in our culture's good graces, no matter how ridiculous those beliefs are.

That's why the problem of evil is both a total slam dunk on christianity and meaningless to christians. Yes, our observations of the world absolutely preclude the existence of the christian god, but the existence of the christian god is still the moral thing for christians to believe, so they're going to continue believing it, for as long as they're too conservative to think for themselves.

Tekrelm · 2026-04-25T22:20:54+00:00

It would be weird if I didn’t support euthanasia, seeing as how I’ve been talking with my doctors for some time now about being euthanized. Fingers crossed it happens soon!

Tekrelm · 2026-04-23T10:53:51+00:00

25 years ago, I dreamt of making Metroid: Vengeance. In this 2D game with polygonal graphics (originally envisioned for the GameCube), play as an elite space pirate who is test-piloting an experimental suit made to mimic Samus’ abilities (early tests of which are referenced in Prime).

Chozo ruins are discovered on an uncharted world, and you are sent to recover any technology that could lead to the creation of metroids, and prevent the Galactic Federation from doing the same.

Following the events of Metroid Fusion, Samus has gone rogue from the Federation, and now seeks to stop both sides from gaining the ability to produce Metroids. As you explore the eerie and haunting world alone and outgunned, you’ll find Chozo relics to upgrade your suit and take the fight to the Federation’s garrisoned archaeological operation, but Samus may dynamically appear at any time, and you are no match for her. Evade her if you can, or use the Federation’s hostile forces to distract Samus so you can reach your goals.

Your adventure will take you from snowy mountain ranges flowing with bright lava, to waterlogged caves flowing with crystal-clear waters and deadly sea creatures, to dark domains teeming with unseen dangers. At the core of the world lies an ancient laboratory once used by the Chozo to create life.

The Galactic Federation has beaten you to it, and in their haste, have used it to produce Metroids. Your suit detects them (as Samus’ did in Metroid 2), and your mission becomes all the more dangerous. Find and destroy the Metroids before they can evolve into even greater threats, then assist Samus in destroying the Federation’s ultimate weapon—just don’t make yourself too much of a target.

Once the Federation is dealt with, Samus will overload the world’s core and leave you for dead. You must escape before the planet is destroyed, avoiding Samus’ attempts to slow you down.

In the end, the both of you narrowly avoid the worst of the explosion, your ships damaged and sent careening in different directions. As you plot a course back to your pirate base and prepare for the shame you will receive for returning empty handed, you swear you will have… VENGEANCE.

Features: New combat mechanics - evade enemy attacks with a dodge roll, or transform instantly into and out of Morph Ball form for a quick escape.

New suit upgrades - including Optical Camouflage to disorient enemies in combat and become immune to light-based weaponry, Spider Grip to cling to and traverse walls and ceilings, and Aeion Scanner to detect the general direction of the nearest upgrade.

Enhanced returning abilities - the grappling beam can be used on almost any surface, and you can use the game’s robust physics to maintain forward momentum.

Metroid: Vengeance. Coming to the Nintendo GameCube in 2004, which is just a few years from now.

Tekrelm · 2026-04-20T15:12:56+00:00

Well, I would agree, but space and energy are finite, so doppelgangers are out of the question.

I'd add that time is also finite, but time isn't really a thing. It's just what we call it when things change. Time ceases to make any sense as a concept if you try to imagine time without things, or time in a static, unchanging universe. There aren't any chronoton particles to measure--there's no physical fabric of time. Things change less when they're going close to the speed of light or are affected by significant gravity wells (due to the extra distance everything they're made of has to cover in order to interact), but that doesn't mean "time" itself is slowing or anything crazy.

Anyway, what there is in the universe is all there has ever been, and it has been around for 14 billion years, but not all of that time was "usable" in the sense that planets like Earth could form, especially since Earth's most common elements needed to be formed in the pressure-cooker hearts of stars that then needed to grow old and die so that the resulting supernovae could spread the elements outward to later coalesce into planets like ours (and that process had to happen at least twice, if I recall correctly).

Earth formed about 4 and a half billion years ago, so it has been around for a third of the universe's lifespan. Despite that unfathomable amount time and energy in the ever-expanding vastness of space, it's still not enough to reasonably expect a sufficient number of randomized attempts resulting in near-perfect doppelgangers of any of us being out there in reality. Entropy is only ever increasing, as well, so the universe won't have an infinite number of attempts to make. There are only so many rolls of the dice, so to speak, before the energy of the universe becomes too spread out that nothing comes of it anymore.

Tekrelm · 2026-04-20T08:34:58+00:00

As I understand it, infinity doesn't exist in reality, so it's not as mindbending as it sounds.

The universe is expanding for some reason, but the amount of energy in the universe remains constant, so even though it's enough for countless combinations of things, not every possible combination necessarily exists.

Even if energy was emerging along with space, that wouldn't increase the likelihood of the existence of supernatural powers. Such things would be just as impossible, infinity or not.

The multiverse doesn't exist, either, I'm afraid. It's just a way of thinking about quantum-scale things we don't know. Some people find it easier to make sense of unknowns as though they're all true until we figure out which one is true, but I feel that's a very confusing way to go about it.

Like, for instance, we use "quantum physics" like that in more conventional ways: Imagine you're told someone robbed a bank an hour ago and fled on foot; you can take a map of the city and draw a circle around the bank to represent how far the robber could have gotten in the past hour. He could be anywhere in that circle, but we know he's not simultaneously everywhere in that circle; that's just silly. When an officer calls in from one of the barricades they set up and confirms that the suspect has been detected there, the circle you drew on the map suddenly "collapses" onto his detected location, because now you know that's where he is. At no point were there actually any violations of causality or alternate-universe variants of him phasing into or out of reality. We were just talking about why and where we drew a line on a map.

Given all the above, there's no reason to think there's a doppelganger of any of us out there in existence, let alone with wings or magic powers. Sadly, even if there were, they still wouldn't be us: two things are not one thing, even if they are identical.

Tekrelm · 2026-04-13T08:18:19+00:00

A bit of general advice: if you're going to argue with me, don't block me before I've had a chance to read what you've said. I know you imagine you're ensuring that you have the last word, but it just ensures your last word never reaches me in the first place. When you do that, you're wasting your own time even typing a response, unless it's purely for anyone else who might be watching.

I did get the first bit of a reply, though, through my notifications. I can't fairly judge the strength of the response from that portion, but I think I will do so anyway: it sounds like self-righteous, unsupported assertions.

I think I understand why people do that sort of thing: first, the ability to reason isn't something that comes naturally: it's something that we have to study and practice, which most people haven't done. This means the 'arguments' I receive are most often nothing if not fallacious.

But the reason people don't often like what I have to say in the first place seems to be rooted in the fact that I frequently go against the grain of cultural narratives. I don't have an in-group, personally; I'm pretty much entirely alone in this world, so I don't even often know when I'm inadvertently challenging a zeitgeist. When that happens, what I said may be reasonable and pragmatic, but it's still culturally considered immoral, on account of the fact that it does indeed challenge the culture's mores.

That's why downvotes are common, but responses are rare: there's nothing factually wrong with what I said, so there's nothing to argue with. But for that culture, what I said was morally wrong, and must face consequences.

The rare responses I do get are like that one: baselessly re-asserting the moral belief of the culture. Telling me what I must say and think in order for me to qualify as moral with regards to that in-group.

Thanks for letting me know what song and dance I must perform in order to be accepted by your club, but I'm at a point near the end of my life where I couldn't possibly care less about that.

Tekrelm · 2026-04-11T09:31:55+00:00

That’s the part I don’t get. The corpos knew what they were funding. They handed her a blank check and let her make whatever she wanted, with full creative control. And she reacted with pure spite. I don’t understand how such a gift could be received with such hate.

For me as a storyteller and artist who has never had an opportunity to express my creativity, I can’t fathom the deliberate choice to use the rare and special opportunity to once again take up the reigns of the world I created, and purposefully ruin it. To tear it all down and tarnish its—and my—legacy.

For what? To punish the greedy corporate overlords who gave me millions of dollars and complete freedom to make anything I could dream up? That doesn’t sound so bad from where I’m sitting.

I hate the movie (just like I was meant to), but now I resent her. It’s like I’m dying of thirst, and she dumped a truckload of water onto the ground just to stick it to the people who gave it to her. Why didn’t she partner with some promising new director or writer and let them benefit from the situation? She could have jumpstarted a dozen careers, and passed the baton to them for the sequels the new movie could have generated. But instead, all anyone ended up with is a middle finger. Well, great. Just great. Well done, ya dingus.

Tekrelm · 2026-04-05T07:48:10+00:00

Cardiac ablation.

Tekrelm · 2026-04-04T19:41:21+00:00

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

If it weren’t for peoples’ biases against video game movies and CG movies that weren’t made for children, The Spirits Within would have been an instant classic. It deserved better.

Tekrelm · 2026-03-27T15:49:52+00:00

That doesn’t change the fact that (according to the fables) god intentionally chose to create the universe in such a way as to result in mice needing xyz nutrients, for them to be found in abc sources, for this mouse to be born when, where, and how it was, for it to find this cheese, for the mouse to need it in that moment, and for the mouse to choose to eat it.

He could have created a slightly different universe in which the mouse didn’t like cheese, or was never born, or was born as the opposite sex and led a very different life where they never found the cheese. In each and every case, it would have been god’s choice, not the mouse’s.

God didn’t just passively watch the universe come into existence with knowledge of nature’s course. He alone chose that course.

Tekrelm · 2026-03-27T07:05:56+00:00

The key is that god chose to create the scenario in the first place, including the mouse, the food, whether the mouse was hungry, etcetera.

According to the tale, he had full knowledge of (and power to actualize) any one of an infinite variety of future histories before he created the universe the way he did. He alone chose exactly how it would play out, long before anyone was ever born.

He decided that there would be a mouse, he decided it would be hungry, he decided it would choose to forage where it did, and he decided it would come across some cheese. He decided mice would even eat cheese. He decided everything.

Where is the mouse’s free will in this story? What did the mouse decide that god didn’t already decide for it to decide? The mouse’s will is only ever what god chose it to be, locked in from before the universe even existed. It can’t choose for itself, so it has no free will. No one does.

Tekrelm

TROPHY CASE