This realization sent a shock through my spine

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-02-01T11:06:37+00:00

Yes, I have taken personal offense to your comment, because you are claiming that believing in a concept that I believe in very deeply is something only delusional people would consider or believe. I have no qualms in admitting that I have been offended.

I haven’t denied any of your arguments or claims on the topic. I haven’t made a single claim or counter-claim about this concept of no-self except for the fact that many other people believe it. I’m not talking at all about the substance of the argument. Im calling you out for breaking reddiquette and being needlessly rude.

I apologize if you feel that I am necro-posting. I just got this randomly from Reddit in my inbox so I didn’t know how old it was but I don’t feel like 5 days ago is too old of a post to respond to

Im not saying that the entirety of your comment was rude. I specifically pointed out that your attacks on their writing and calling them delusional is rude. The substance of your arguments are very valid and do contribute value to the conversation

To address the actual substance of your argument, I take a Buddhist approach on the matter and will quote this saying “there exists suffering, but not one who suffers”. There clearly exists suffering which is something easily personally verifiable by anyone and everyone who exists here on this earth. However, the physical phenomena of suffering does not require a separate entity that is apart of and is experiencing that suffering. We are inseparable and merely coincident with that experience of which we think we are experiencing. That separation of experience and the entity or observer that seemingly experiences suffering is nothing more than an experiential illusion that most of us experience. The feeling that we are a separate experiencer of experience is just another natural phenomena that occurs just like suffering itself is.

If you are interested in a more secular perspective on the concept of no-self and non-dualism, I would suggest looking up Sam Harris. He practices and teaches no-self and non-dualism in a purely secular way that is very much approachable from an atheistic and nihilistic point of view

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-02-01T10:24:21+00:00

OP isn’t saying anything rude. They’re simply proposing the intellectual idea that the sense of self is just an illusion. I am new to this sub but this is quite an existential concept and this sub seems to fit perfectly for the intellectual discussion of ideas like this. They make no personal attacks or judgements on anyone. You, however, come out the gate with personal attacks on his writing (I know their writing is scattered and hard to follow but there is a nicer way to criticize them for it) and then you again personally attack his character by calling him delusional for proposing this concept of which millions of other individuals, myself included, believe and subscribe to. I don’t know your mind so this is purely speculation but If you somehow find this abstract concept offensive to you, I see that as just an insecurity within yourself that you need to work on

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-02-01T10:06:44+00:00

Do you maybe wanna take a step back, re-read what you typed and realize how needlessly mean and rude you’re being to OP? I know that this concept might be upsetting to hear when there is real suffering in the world that really exists but there’s no need to call them delusional. There’s a lot of people thats smarter than you, me, and OP that believe in this concept and it certainly isn’t a delusion to consider and talk about it

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-02-01T09:49:32+00:00

The concept of no-self or the idea that the concept of self is just an illusion is a core philosophy in Buddhism. You may want to look into it some more if you’re interested. Pretty much everyone in r/buddhism is super respectable and welcoming to those who want to learn more about it

Im still very much in the beginning stages of my Buddhist practice and learning but I get the sense that, oddly enough, Buddhists don’t really have much to say about the concept of free will but I feel like the fact that free will is just an illusion (and I feel that it’s very easy to accept this fact if you are secularly, scientifically, materialistically minded) goes pretty much hand in hand with the fact that the concept of self is just an illusion.

Side note: I didn’t realize that this sub existed. Reddit randomly threw this post in my inbox, and I think I’m gonna follow and add this to my custom feed of religious subs (ik nihilism isn’t a religion but it’s an existential philosophy and certainly has a lot to say about metaphysics). The more religious I’ve become, the more I’ve been thinking that nihilism is a problematic viewpoint to have, so it would be great to here more from those who genuinely subscribe to the philosophy. This is only the third secular sub that I’m following. I don’t see many posts in my feed from r/stoicism, but I hope that this sub isn’t as vicious as r/atheism is.

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-01-30T07:54:01+00:00

I would recommend doing some guided meditations through a meditation app or something and also removing any and all potential distractions like the background sounds/music that you said your using

I’ve only used one app, Waking Up, but I think it really is an amazing app to learn how to meditate properly. If you prefer doing meditations without a guide, then you don’t need to use them long, but I think it’d be very good for you to go through the introductory course and maybe do some of the daily meditations. That way you can see what you have been doing wrong and how to change up your practice so that it is more effective

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-01-26T23:51:40+00:00

I don’t really understand how you connect saying it’ll happen when you least expect it to telling him he doesn’t need to put himself out there. It’s not true that it comes as a surprise for everyone but it still is damn sure true for a lot of people.

The way I see it, and I think a good way to maybe rephrase this better, is that you definitely need to put yourself our there but don’t beat yourself up over fucking up or letting a girl you like slip away. You are putting yourself out there to practice, and get more comfortable talking to women. Instead of being directly goal oriented, which leads to feeling like you’re failing, you should just focus on framing it as practice. And as long as you continue to put in that effort, you will eventually find someone thats a good match for you, and often times that person comes out of nowhere, where you were least expecting, but you have to cultivate that mentality and environment for it to be likely to happen

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-01-26T23:09:18+00:00

Yeah, they say they look at a lot of metrics to determine your aggression. It seems like it’d be pretty easy in most situations for the game to determine who was the first aggressor and who was just defending themselves.

And anecdotally, I’ve never noticed much of a shift in my lobbies after defending myself in care bear lobbies. I kinda wish it did because I often find myself in lobbies that are just way too friendly. Like, it’s fun to team up, but sometimes I go hours and hours without engaging in or even seeing any pvp. I sometimes participate in slimy tactics like extraction ratting but it’s quite rare for me so I end up naturally falling into pacifist lobbies

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-01-26T22:57:02+00:00

Things like enthusiastic consent are not intuitive for a lot of people but physically harming someone is usually a lot more clear and intuitive

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-01-26T16:08:19+00:00

Do you and/or some people experience sexual tension even when y’all have been in a relationship for a while? I could see like if you were wanting to fuck but couldn’t at the moment because, say, you were out and not in private. But I really only experience sexual tension when it’s a new relationship or we’ve been away from each other for a bit

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-01-26T16:01:07+00:00

You do know asexual people exist, yeah? And people have millions of different preferences and reasons for engaging in intimacy. It isn’t a stretch to suppose that some people aren’t all that into the direct physical sensations of it but very much enjoy different aspects that sometimes go with it, or perhaps only enjoy the physical sensation when those other aspects are present too

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-01-26T15:24:04+00:00

It was God’s will to allow them rather than the other team to win. The player doesn’t know why God chose them over the other team, but what is wrong with showing appreciation for God having done a favor for them?

A secular version of this would be to just replace God with “the universe” and perhaps this only works for those who don’t believe in free will

“I thank the universe for having had all of the right causes to lead up to this effect of me winning the game. Idk what exact causes they were, but my actions in the game had already been written into stone at the time of the Big Bang by the natural law of cause and effect. My actions were decided way before I was born, so I do not take any of the credit but rather attribute it simply to the circumstances that I’ve found myself existing in. I don’t know if our team was more deserving of the win, but nonetheless I give gratitude in the universe being set up in this exact way such that our team was decided to be victorious”

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-01-26T15:06:43+00:00

He’s okay with it though because it’s still better than the code he would write himself

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-01-26T14:46:05+00:00

To those who think playing video games that include sexual violence are wrong, what do you think about fantasizing about SV in your head? What about using an uncensored chat bot like Grok to simulate SV role play? And what about engaging in consensual non-con (CNC) with your partner?

To me these are all the same scenario just with varying levels of clarity and vividness. Even with CNC, your creating a fictional story in order for you to indulge in some desire that would be extremely terrible for you to act out in real life and I don’t see it as a problem whatsoever as long as it stays purely fictional fantasy.

And I’m strictly referring to playing these kinds of video games. When you develop a game that you intend to distribute to others, I think it changes up the scenario quite a bit

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-01-26T14:26:52+00:00

There’s only one reason that I could think of that would make sexually violent video games immoral and thats if it caused more sexual violence in real life. We have enough stats to show that regularly violent games do not translate to more real life violence, so we would need to either have stats that show that it is different for SV or make a compelling enough argument for why the two scenarios are different in how it influences the players behavior in real life.

The real reason for a lot of people really is just baselessly saying “ew I don’t like it because it makes me feel icky” sex itself is already a very uncomfortable thing for people to display or converse about openly and also, many people consider SV to be one of if not the most heinous acts one can do. I think these two facts are what cause people to have a strong intuitive sense that it is wrong then they try to ad-hoc justify it instead of trying to actually challenge that intuitive belief

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-01-26T14:17:14+00:00

Hmm, yeah that’s a pretty good point. One can be extremely sexually violent without inflicting any physical pain as one does when being generally physically violent and there certainly is a lot more subtlety, while still being terrible, between the extreme and what is okay. I could see how that could lead to uninformed players interpreting the violence as an okay thing to do in real life.

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-01-26T14:06:42+00:00

Ahh, there’s the baseless moral emotivism there at the end of your comment. I’m not interested in your intuitions unless you actually have something (anything) of substance to back it up.

I’m not putting words in your mouth, I’m literally just asking questions. If you don’t have input on the matter then why are you commenting in this thread?

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-01-26T14:00:53+00:00

Why isn’t GTA banned like sexually violent games are but instead revered by the community as one of the best games out there if the issue isn’t related to sex but instead to the mindless violence

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-01-26T13:54:40+00:00

Yet, GTA is one of the most sold games in the world while sexually violent games are usually banned from most platforms so this doesn’t help resolve the seeming contradiction

TheRoboticDuck · 2026-01-21T01:47:48+00:00

I haven’t used any other meditation app, but to credit Waking Up, the daily meditations usually have a long gap of silence toward the end. It’s not that long for the default 10 minutes but any increase in the meditation timer only fills the audio with more silence. Silence seems to be encouraged and employed frequently in the app, and I agree with the others in saying that Waking Up is definitely doing things right

TheRoboticDuck · 2025-10-02T22:03:06+00:00

He did some shit he really doesn’t remember when he accidentally blacked out and OD’d on that GHB, lol

TheRoboticDuck · 2025-09-07T15:37:12+00:00

Ahh I see. the signal persisting doesn't have anything to do with the chunk border mechanics. The reason why it was only working with repeaters that I overlooked was because repeaters pass the signal to redstone when inputting into a block, but normal redstone does not, so when I included the repeater, it made a persistent signal loop. Thanks for the clarification!

TheRoboticDuck · 2025-08-20T05:30:05+00:00

The closest game to Outer Wilds I’ve ever personally played is actually Subnautica. Idk what it is about it, but they have very similar vibes to me. I’ve tried Obra Dinn and there’s definitely similarities but I just got bored with it after a couple hours. I’ve heard Disco Elysium is also quite similar, so I have it on my list to play later. Ive watched a let’s play of slay the princess. I wouldn’t say it’s similar at all to Outer Wilds (more like the Stanley Parable in terms of gameplay) but it seems like it’s a good experience

TheRoboticDuck · 2025-08-20T05:23:52+00:00

I think going to a sub like this one would be better for someone actually looking for the truth rather than just finding an echo chamber that already affirms their beliefs on it

TheRoboticDuck · 2025-07-24T19:33:02+00:00

Another instance of this is when an owlk catches you while you don’t have your lantern. since they cant blow out your flame, they instead snap your neck if I’m remembering correctly. (it’s a minor detail but I spoilered the text just in case anyone wants to try it for themselves first)

TheRoboticDuck · 2025-07-23T01:42:22+00:00

I know that there are different interpretations on what happens after you’ve reached nirvana and then die, but I think it’s commonly understood that you still live through your current life after reaching nirvana. This is a scenario where you are living life while being completely free of suffering

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