My journal

First one 🙃

It’s nighttime, 12:25. I just posted the original post and for some reason it’s all black? I really don’t know what’s up with that

From the browser it looks normal though, and I don’t see any way to edit it, so I guess it’ll be stuck like that for app users. Not a great start but what are you gonna do?

Today was pretty chill; I worked on my paper and did some coding. I learned that some of the microcontrollers (tiny computers) I ordered a couple days ago were defective but I think I can still return them.

All day I’ve been thinking about the idea of inherent purpose- the idea that the universe, humanity, and I exist for a reason. It’s just such an interesting idea because there must exist some purpose for the universe- the fact that it exists is proof of that.

I think the chance of humanity being purposeful is much smaller. There are a lot of reasons for the universe to be simulated (watching the effects of specific phenomena like special relativity or maybe to see what happens with specific initial conditions) but there are few of those that involve humanity.

I think it’d be interesting if we were never the purpose of the universe; instead, humanity appeared as an artifact of the deterministic nature of the universe. Maybe it was another species being observed, or another galaxy, or just thy r formation of solar systems in general. There are so many possibilities.

It is also possible that we are the focus of such a simulation; maybe we are being studied by aliens or something, which would be kind of exciting. I wonder how humanity would respond to that- learning that life is a simulation created by an alien race to learn about love or something. Sounds like a good movie idea

I’ve also been thinking about quantum indeterminacy. In short, there are some fundamental properties of fundamental particles that can’t be known with complete certainty and are decided through probability. This refutes the idea of classical determinism.

I still think that life is deterministic; whether or not the universe really can be modeled as a numerical simulation (which it couldn’t if there were truly random events like the ones mentioned earlier), the fact that biology exists says to me that my body is really a machine; one that thinks and acts but only based on its architecture and training.

The universe could still be fundamentally deterministic anyway. There are some interpretations of indeterminacy that still allow the universe to be modeled as a simulation. The many-worlds interpretation is one- it proposes that instead of a specific outcome being decided through probability, all outcomes are realized in another universe (another branch or timeline kind of) and the probabilities just decided which we land in.

I think that the many worlds interpretation is probably correct; otherwise, the universe just doesn’t make sense. Why would things happen in genuinely random ways? That just doesn’t make sense- where do these random decisions come from? There are too many questions.

I wish I could paste the paper here but the formatting wouldn’t really work out (it’s written in markdown). It basically just discusses the nature of the universe and the implications of determinism. The working title was “On the Deterministic Nature of the Universe” but I might switch to “The nature and implications of the universe as a numerical simulation”.

I enjoy writing and it feels good to formalize all these concepts floating around in my head.

Anyway, my hands are tired so I’ll stop for the night. This was fun though, so I’ll be back tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

6/24/25

I'm now confused about why I created this. I'm not really going through anything right now, except some kind of not-feeling thing, but there's not much to talk about with that. I don't think I can delete posts though so I'm not really sure what to do

I realize that the not feeling sounds corny/not real. I'm not completely sure that it's real myself. What I mean is that I see my emotions more in my actions or thoughts as opposed to feeling them inside me, you know what I mean? Maybe that's just what emotions are like, I don't know, but I don't think it was this way before...

I really hate how corny this is. I know this journal thing could be helpful for later if I'm feeling bad but for right now I just feel stupid. Which is weird because I just said that I'm not feeling anything.

This is what I mean; I see the emotions in my actions but I don't know what it should feel like inside. And I guess that is a problem. So maybe I should keep doing these?

I just feel like reading through all of this isn't worth it for anyone so why am I doing it? I could just write in a notebook or something. Part of me wants to meet people interested in the same stuff I am or just meet people in general, but these posts really are not that interesting. To think so feels like narcissism.

I'm not harming anyone by doing these, so there's no reason to stop I guess. But I feel like it would be worse to have been doing this for weeks without any replies or anything. I don't know; this is confusing. I suppose typing through my thoughts is a good thing right? So whether or not this gets read it's good anyway, even if its not that interesting.

I'm not even sure if i should post this reply because I'm scared that it could move this thread up in new or popular and since there's nothing of value here it's kind of embarrassing. I'm gonna do it, its not gonna harm anyone

Thanks for reading

I’m really not sure if I should continue these. Not harming anyone

Today (6/26) was a better day. I made a lot of progress on my paper and I talked with a friend and his friends for a bit.

It’s not much, but recently I kind of pushed away a lot of my friends while I was in the middle of whatever came over me a couple weeks back. So that friend who I called today is one of the few, basically only people I’ve talked to in a while.

I really don’t feel ready to go back to everyone else. I feel to… raw to go back to all of that. But the alternative, isolation, isn’t much better. It’s aggravating.

I spent a lot of time today doing research on the human mind, specifically the idea of “I” or the self. I found a lot of interesting things; specifically, a book called “I Am a Strange Loop”, which basically mirrored my exact thoughts over the last couple weeks.

It was interesting to see so many philosophers and scholars writing about the same things, but it also made me feel kind of inadequate. I thought what I was doing was different, at least a little bit. But all of it had been done before.

That actually lead me to another concept I’ll explore tomorrow; the idea of intrinsic narcissism. In some sense, I knew this was work that had been done already. But for some reason I had this feeling that I was doing work that was “important”.

Similarly, I felt that my writing was of a high quality, at least higher than most high school papers. However, I realized I had no basis to think this, which again confused me.

Why did I believe, at some level, that I was unique? That my work mattered and was different?

This is something I think you see a lot in youth; some kind of inbuilt sense that you are different than others.

I don’t mean different like the way I am; it’s better explained through examples. This is just me thinking aloud, so it may not make as much sense as I thought originally.

In middle school, I used to see a lot of people trying to be streamers. I actually wanted to do it too- I just didn’t have the stuff. But all these kids, friends of mine, created these with dreams of being big, blowing up, etc..

Similarly, I also had a friend who started a YouTube channel which was somewhat successful by our standards. I always wanted to start a podcast. Another friend of mine wanted to write a book.

All these things weren’t bad; they were just somewhat unrealistic. For some reason, we all believed that we had something that would make us successful. I thought that I would be a good podcast host, and people would watch because of it. Some thought they were really entertaining. But we all thought we were different.

For some of us, it was probably true. But most of the time, these things didn’t work out. We grew up and realized we had been wrong. But what made us try in the first place? What I call intrinsic narcissism: the built-in belief that one is unique.

Obviously it’s not a bad thing to think you’re unique. Uniqueness, and being aware of it, is a pretty good thing. It leads us to try, and that’s a good thing. Narcissism just has a bad connotation, so I might need to change the term I use.

But basically, I think we have a sense that we are important built in, and that affects us a lot. Now considering it it makes less sense. It’s late at night I don’t know

Either way I think it’s interesting that children specifically do these things; now thinking about it, I’d just attribute it to role models and influences. A kid who listens to a lot of music is gonna want to start a band, it makes sense.

Yeah no this made a lot more sense to me earlier today. I guess it’s good I talked through it? I still think there has to be something too it. Why did I believe I was different?

It’s one thing to want to be like your favorite artist and another to consider yourself on their level. Why did I think I was there? On some level I must have known that I wasn’t, so why did I believe it for so long?

I thought I wrote something down about this earlier, I guess not. Either way, I’ll revisit this tomorrow because it’s an interesting concept.

I think that’s it, still no feeling, although I was so close to or was feeling yesterday which is great because I’m tired of this.

Why did I write that? It’s not like I felt tired in my head or something. This is what I mean when I say I see emotions more in action than in thought; it’s like I only find out after.

This is getting long so I will stop here. Thanks for reading

(6/28)

I don’t have much to write today. I didn’t really do much and I still don’t really feel anything.

Yesterday I took a look at the time leading up to my “breakdown” around my birthday (6/17), so I guess I’ll write about that.

For months, I’ve been using a sort of digital notebook, obsidian, to record my thoughts. Ideas, journals, everything - I wrote it there. I went back and looked through my stuff from a couple months back and I found that this had actually been building up for a while.

I started it by working on what I called at the time the grey proposal, which was a design for a society that allowed people to grow up free from external influences, sorcery could truly be free. It was a cross between a dream of a “better” world and a study into the source of personality.

After that, I spent some time refining it along with some other physics related projects I was working on at the time. This all took place from the beginning of April to around mid-May. At some point, I started thinking about life more philosophically; I asked myself, “what makes life different from other matter? And what is death?”

I write through these questions over a couple pages:

• The Nature of Death

• Life in Motion

• Life at Rest

• Illusion of Separation

And a few others which I’ve removed due to sensitive topics. I think, subconsciously, this was the time I started to see the world from a different perspective; I tried to distract myself, and was successful from mid may until early June.

My “breakdown” stretched from 6/7 to 6/12, then briefly came back around 6/18. I was in a really bad place and I just wanted out.

Why did I write this? I swear it was more complicated when I was looking back on it, weird

Maybe it really was simple. Either way I’m here now

Thanks for reading

Today I wrote a lot about modern society and homophobia. I’m not sure why; I think it came to me while talking to my brother yesterday and he called something “gay”. I just find it somewhat interesting how this generation says stuff like that then immediately pivots to “not being homophobic”. So I wrote about it a little, and it sort of morphed into a bigger idea.

What I realized (which was sort of obvious) was that many revolutions of thought in history like the civil or women’s rights struggle were people trying to free themselves from the chains of birth. These were people who realized how much of their lives they didn’t get a say in. The original colonists from Britain to America were trying to unchain themselves from their birthplace. Slaves freed themselves from the color assigned at birth. Women freed themselves from their gender.

I think the civil war started a new era of revolutions though; an era in which anyone could help these revolutions. White and black fought together to achieve peace. Likewise, men and women both worked to secure women’s rights.

The modern LGBTQ revolution in thought does the same I think. Instead of just trying to free themselves from birth, they work to unchain themselves from biology itself and their own childhoods. What they realized is that much of their personality was not authored by them.

I would not be surprised to see another revolution like this in religion sometime soon. I think these revolutions in thought are both a blessing and a curse. Obviously they allow everyone to have rights which is good I suppose but it risks a lot. Depending on what this next era of thought brings, we could see the collapse of many parts of society we never considered before. Even worse, people may begin to realize that none of their lives was really decided by them, and that free will may/does not exist.

Thinking about this also made me consider why I was straight. In some sense, most of my generation is inherently somewhat homophobic, along with my parents and the church (again somewhat is the key word). It’s not specifically that anyone is a bad person, more so that some things are just embedded in us and the system that are pretty terrible.

I’m “straight” because I was raised to be; and I honestly can’t imagine being gay. But had I been raised differently, maybe I could be. Who knows?

It really doesn’t matter though. Good, bad, who are we to judge? We’re very bad at judging. It really does not matter though. None of it does to me anymore so that brings me some peace.

Lately I’ve really wanted to go insane which sounds weird to say, I should have phrased that better

What I mean- did I talk about this already? No, I didn’t journal that day I guess. Anyway a while back I was talking with a Franciscan brother because I was helping them with their garden and he told me about how he used to help schizophrenia patients. It was kind of oddly timed because I have kept thinking that I want to be delusional the nights leading up to that.

I don’t want to d**. But I also don’t want to live in this universe. This one makes me sad because it’s nothing like the one I was promised as a child. So I wish k could imagine, but it was real.

I sound like a crazy person don’t I? I just think life would be so much more bearable if I didn’t have to switch between dreams and reality, if they were merged instead. Then I’d stay alive, and be happy in a way I never could be here.

It’s not really an option though, how would I even “contract” schizophrenia? Or something like that

Anyway that was my day today. I also went to mass because I’m too scared to tell my family I don’t believe in god. I got a haircut. That’s it I think. Thanks for reading

Today was mostly unproductive except for just now. I got a ton of new games and just played them all day. I was planning on doing some work tonight but instead ended up talking to my brother, who I share a room with.

He is just starting out programming and I am pretty experienced, so I was helping him understand some concepts. He’s 13, and I’m 15 by the way. After a little bit, I asked him what he planned to do with code. He said he just wanted the skill, but after a little more pressing he admitted that he wanted to make a game.

This was something I wanted to do at his age for a time too. The game development landscape is very strange for small developers though. I told him about the different options he had, their drawbacks, their advantages, and we came to the conclusion that there really wasn’t a great option.

He asked why, so I began to talk about it. I really shouldn’t have answered because my only rule with all of this has been not to include anyone else, but I didn’t realize it would go so deep.

Pretty much, what ends up happening is that the good options, they’re created by big companies, which makes sense- that’s why they’re good. But big companies do not profit much from small developers. They would much rather other companies use their product.

And so, these good options make it difficult for small developers, forging a strange landscape for the little guy. Pretty much, they attempt to steer you towards joining or starting a company because that’s better for them.

Because of this, smaller companies who can stay afloat with individual clients create other options for the little guy. Not as good though, because they don’t have the resources of a big corporation, and if they did they’d be either bought up or “corrupted”.

After that, stuff just came spilling out of me. We (really I) talked about how this landscape benefits those at the top of the corporations. Then I talked about the options a game developer actually has in real life.

Most people really have two options: settle or shoot for the moon. A lot of society is built on this idea. There are so many things to talk about im not even sure I could write it all.

But these game developers, they enter college in game design or computer science, and they come out on one of three paths. They might make it- they’ve made the game of their dreams, and people loved it, and they are now on top. They make create the game but it’s not good enough, or they just didn’t get lucky, which leads to either our next option or a generally terrible life. They might just choose to settle- head to a big company, possibly never create what they dreamed of, but stay stable.

This is basically how it plays out for most innovation or creativity. Either you shoot for the moon or you settle. But what’s interesting is how society is really just built around keeping the rich, rich.

You see, what’s happening here is a really interesting reward and punishment system. People who have ideas that are good beyond a certain threshold (and are somewhat lucky) are generally rewarded. The creator of the car probably became rich at some point due to its success. They were rewarded for their contribution to society.

People who have ideas that aren’t good enough are punished. They fall and settle if they’re lucky or end up even worse off. Some people just choose not to shoot for it.

People who end up settling directly benefit the rich. They work for these businesses which keeps those who own them on top. So why do they settle?

We are all aware of this reward and punishment system in some level. It is embedded in us since our childhood. But what’s actually kind of amazing to me is the idea of family.

See, when we teach our children about love and marriage and family, what we’re really doing is embedding the idea that a successful or happy person has a family. We actually sometimes directly say that “being rich will not make you happy”.

But we are raised to believe in the value of life. And so, knowing that we should have a family, we think, “well, I can’t drag them down with me” and we settle, benefiting the rich. But people who see through this, they are the people that have the highest chance of actually making it.

The value of life may also be related. It’s possible this was embedded in society so we actually couldn’t punish the rich terribly if things went bad.

Anyway, this probably sounds like a bad system to you. But I don’t think it is. Humanity is not good at judging things. In my eyes, no judgement made by humanity actually has any weight.

Think of the idea of sin for example. We all in some sense believe in it. You would think it’s a bad thing if I went and killed someone right? That would be a sin.

However sin really does not make sense. Why should I go to *** for killing osama bin Laden? Is it still a sin to kill there? Likewise, why shouldn’t I go to *** for driving a car? I am basically killing tons of people in the future, or at least attempting too.

I guess it’s about intention? But even then it’s still sketchy. I had a really good example but I can’t say it here because you would all hate me for it.

Anyway off of that topic, so the system seems bad but really it’s not. It’s not good or bad, it just is. It is good at what it was made for though, amazingly good. There are so many layers to it I wish I could type them all out but that would make this very long. Thanks for reading

Again I did basically nothing today. Well actually that’s not true.

I worked a bit on my programming project, which is good because I did something productive today.

I went for a walk and listened to a podcast (security now), which I enjoyed although it was pretty hot out today.

I texted two of my friends today, which isn’t much but is actually the first contact I’ve made with anyone since this started. One of them I felt went well, the other made me remember why I considered myself a nerd. Not that they made me feel bad- I’m just a sort of awkward.

This is actually an interesting topic so let’s talk about that.

In society, we generally believe in free will. Thus, everyone is mostly accountable for their actions. So when we see people acting bad or acting out, we consider it to be their fault- they took it out on others or they’re a bad person. But the truth is, it was never really their fault- because they never had free will to begin with. Remember to talk about free will later

So when we judge people for being awkward, which we all do mainly just because it isn’t fun to hang out with someone like that, which isn’t really a bad reason, but when we judge people for that we are basically judging them for things out of their control. Of course, your judgement was also out of your control too so…

Anyway, free will is kind of a weird concept. Here’s some free will definitions:

“[Free will is] defined as the power to make decisions or perform actions independently of any prior event or state of the universe.”

“[Free will is] the ability to do otherwise under the exact same conditions.”

I don’t know how you think of free will, but what I used to think was that all my choices were happening because I made them happen. That is true- but I was never the source of the actions. My thoughts were, which in a sense means I was, but “I” was a direct result of these thoughts which were created explicitly due to the state of the universe.

Libertarians are people who believe in free will. They say that not everything is deterministic and some indeterminacy must be involved. This makes no sense. Intelligence is deterministic by design- the idea of learning, thinking, remembering, all of it is deterministic. Cause and effect. Results of physical interactions. But more importantly- they are logical interactions. These logical interactions create decisions, which we think of as free will. But it is not free will.

So they say that, at some point, something not deterministic caused these choices. But that means that whatever caused the choices is not logical. And I don’t mean the “man running into a burning building” illogical. I mean “2+2=8” illogical. Things that do not make sense.

Think about it. If you make a decision free of the state of the universe, and you make it indeterminately, you do know what is happening. There is no context, no processing, nothing- it is just a random choice. That is what indeterminacy is.

But random choice is not free will. So something is off here.

I might talk more about compatibilism tomorrow but I’m tired tonight so thanks for reading

TW?

It’s been a while.

I had another breakdown a couple nights back and afterwards I realized why I had stopped doing these. A lot of my thought process is pretty amoral and at times seemingly suicidal. So when I journal here, I find myself censoring my thoughts a lot and that doesn’t feel great.

And honestly, I never felt entirely welcome on Cups. I don’t think it’s the fault of the platform, or anyone specific or things like that- it’s just that there was always something I was doing wrong. As a listener, I really wasn’t that great. I got a one star review and was suggested empathy training. I also made a post from that account which was removed because I wasn’t supposed to do that, which makes sense. Then I found out my usernames were too similar and I just deleted my listener account entirely.

And with these I don’t think anyone has actually read them. Which again is no one’s fault; it’s just the way it works. It’s hard to find new posts and these are terribly long. But that fact that “no one cares” is constantly plaguing me as I right these and that doesn’t feel good either. I am grateful for everyone who did though, that always felt nice to see.

Anyway, this will probably be my last one for a while. I might check in later though. I will still have the app so if anyone does mention me or reply I’ll see it but otherwise I doubt I’ll open cups again for at least a couple weeks.

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a great day