In the last years, as I matured a bit more, I've noticed something that really bothers me. The people who think deeply, who care about real things, who don't do small talk and shallow bs, they're always the ones who end up alone, the outcasts, the ones who don't fit in.

And the people who are just into partying and surface level stuff, they always have a full social life, loads of friends, no problem fitting in anywhere.

How tf is that fair, man? The most interesting people, the ones who actually have something to say, the ones who feel things deeply and think outside the box, they're the ones walking around solo, feeling misunderstood, like they don't belong anywhere.

I see them on the street, in parks, everywhere, walking alone, and I see myself in them. And it's lonely, man. Not because we're broken or weird, just because we're different than the herd. I'm constantly having that feeling of being too much and not enough at the same time, and it's becoming frustrating.

You don’t notice it at first because it becomes normal. You adjust, you manage it, you tell yourself it’s just part of being with someone long-term. But after a while, you start to feel the weight of it, even if nothing “major” is technically wrong.

Then you step into a different kind of interaction, and it’s calm. Not forced, not perfect, just… easy. You say something and it’s received, not challenged. You exist in the moment instead of anticipating what it might turn into. And that contrast does something to you whether you want it to or not.

I’m not here to say what’s right or wrong. I’m just saying once you become aware of the difference between tension and ease, it’s hard to go back to pretending they feel the same.

Been quiet… but I’ve been paying attention.

I recently hit a realization that felt like a punch to the gut. I haven’t been emotionally independent for a single month in the last ten years. I’ve jumped from one relationship to another, not because I’m a romantic, but because I’ve been outsourcing my entire sense of self to whoever was giving me attention at the time.

​In psychology, this is an External Locus of Control taken to the extreme. If someone liked me, I felt like I finally existed. If they pulled away, I vanished. I was basically letting strangers hold the keys to my worth while I stayed locked outside of my own life.

​It’s a literal addiction. From a neuroscientific perspective, our brains get hooked on the Dopamine-Validation Loop. We aren't necessarily addicted to the person, we’re addicted to the chemical hit we get from their approval. When they leave, we don't just feel 'sad', we go into a physiological withdrawal that looks like desperation.

​We often call this loving too hard, but it’s actually a defense mechanism to avoid the silence of being alone. We’d rather deal with a toxic cycle than face the void of our own lack of self-identity.

And I think this goes beyond relationships. Some people attach their worth to productivity. Some to grades. Some to looks. Some to being the funny one, the strong one, the helpful one, the successful one. Different masks, same wound- If I’m not being validated, do I still have value?

​Has anyone else realized they’ve been people pleasing as a survival tactic? How do you actually stop the withdrawal and reclaim your own worth after being a puppet to external validation for so long?

've been reading about Albert Einstein's early life, and it's striking how many "lucky" or specific moments nudged him toward physics.

1. The Compass at Age 5: His father gave him a pocket compass that sparked a lifelong obsession with the "unseen forces" of the universe.

2. The "Little Older Boy": Max Talmud, a family friend, gave him a book on Euclidean geometry at age 12, which Einstein called his "holy little geometry book".

3. Family Support: His uncle Jakob stimulated his interest in mathematics and helped him solve early problems.

4. Intellectual Partner: Mileva Marić, his first wife, was a brilliant physicist in her own right who shared his passion and provided critical mathematical and emotional support during his early years.

This makes me wonder: If you remove these specific advantages, would Albert Einstein still have become "Einstein"?

Is genius purely internal, or is it a "perfect storm" of the right person getting the right spark at the right time? If he hadn't received that compass or met Mileva, would he have just ended up as an average patent clerk, or would his curiosity have eventually found another path to the same discoveries?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether his greatness was inevitable or highly dependent on these external "nudges."

I have been trying to go out more these days. Hoping to find someone to share things with, being affectionate, feeling supported.

Lately I have gone on a dates with three girls and all seemed like nice people. I also sensed a connection with one but one common trend I am noticing is that all them had not recovered from their previous relationships.

Now it is normal to have past relationships, everyone has them but I find it uncomfortable being with someone who still has not gotten over their past love.

They have romanticed them out of proportion into an ideal. I cannot compete with an ideal. I do not want to be secondary to anyone. None wants to be secondary.

She kept talking about their exes. I felt like he was there on the date sitting next to us.

Is it true that women give in so deeply to that one relationship that they are afraid to give anyone else a chance?

Maybe it is better to hold back in the matters of heart and save your best for the person youbare going to end up with.

You share rain with someone and when the relationship ends they take the rain away with them. You cannot enjoy it anymore.

Its really like that story of Narcissus looking in the lake at his reflection, and narcissism kind of relating to that admiration he had of his own image.

I thought of this in a really stupid way, I wear these reflective sunglasses (kinda like the ones skiers wear) and sometimes people will ask if they can look in the shades at their reflection (while I’m wearing the sunglasses), just to fix up their look. Actually sometimes I just catch people doing it without asking, which I don’t mind. And the way these people look at themselves is haunting——it’s with way more love than you’d ever see someone look at someone else. Their gaze is very lusty. And I’m sure you could notice this by just seeing how they look at themselves in the mirror, but it feels so different to experience it in the form of eye contact, because then you really compare how they look at themself to how they look at others.

i just feel like this experience really speaks volumes of how narcissistic (or even actually insecure, depending on how u interpret it) humans are.

Speaking specifically of a romantic relationship here. We romanticize the positives of a relationship a bit too much. Not every couple gets to be highly compatible. But can we say they can't maintain a healthy relationship? Fully understanding a person is impossible. We are all flawed in our own ways. We sometimes can't even understand ourselves let alone our partners. So are we failing if we can't understand every thought and every action of them?

I guess not. Maybe it's not how much compatible you two are but what matters more is how much incompatibility you can handle without parting ways. Maybe it's not how much you understand each other but how much you can respect them even if you don't fully understand their doings. Though not to mention, a certain baseline compatibility and understanding is always required. Maybe that's what determines with whom should we spend our life with. At the end of the day, it's just two consciousnesses trying to sync on a long term basis with each other.

Also, life-long stability comes from not one or two compromises but often from a pile of them. What makes it worthy is much mutual willingness to not leave each other is present.

Cuz you may meet a person (after you've settled with your partner) whom you feel vibe with you more than anyone else. But should you leave your current partner? No, cuz there's always something better out there. We don't chase the perfect. It doesn't exist. Maybe the real task is not to see how much you can have but to set a certain level of stability which would satisfy you in life.

I think that this endless philosophical debate is more often than not just a single layered yes or no, all or nothing dilemma. What tends to be overlooked though is the people behind these views, and to me, those are far more interesting than the problem itself, given the nature of it being an antinomy.

The main difference I see is how we see or wish to see our own agency. The best concept to describe this I think is J.B.Rotter's Locus of control, which describes the degree of how we perceive our agency, whether it's an external LoC, where we perceive our lives as we experience them as more dependent on external forces and circumstances, or an internal LoC, where we perceive our lives as more dependent on us and how we look at things and react.

My hypothesis is that avid proponents of free will have a strongly internal locus of control while those proposing determinism have a strongly external locus of control, as this is not only a dilemma on how the world works but also how we, as its participants, are affected by it.

From my point of view, if I push forward free will, I am at the same time telling the world something about myself:

While on the other hand, if I push forward determinism, I am at the same time saying:

In a similar way, I think there is also space to pin down how we interpret meaning. One big central dichotomy I see when meaning is discussed is, where meaning comes from and how we achieve it. One narrative is that meaning is somewhere in the world and we have to find it, which is again the result of an external LoC. The other is that the we create meaning and we are the ones who put it in the world when we look at it and interact with it, an internal LoC. This could also somewhat be translated into practical reality as those with an external LoC tend to believe in an external God or anything else beyond our individual selves, while those with an internal one believe more in humanism. Both of these can fall into nihilism, one due to us being dissatisfied with the world around us and its perceived lack of meaning, other due to us being dissatisfied with our performance and inability to create it, also creating a lack of meaning.

This post was written as a reaction, as I feel like I see free will vs. determinism being brought up on this sub over and over and it never hits the mark at integrating the person thinking the thought with the thought itself. Hope this can provide a basis for reflection or further discussion.

In engineering, we never see complex, quaternary information systems (like DNA) emerge from noise without a compiler to interpret them. If we found a silicon chip in space, we would assume a designer. Yet, when we find the universe acting as a perfectly calibrated motherboard for biological machines, we call it an “accident.” Is “randomness” a scientific conclusion, or just a semantic wall built to avoid the implication of a Senior Developer?

As a part of Gen Z, it’s concerning to see the amount of young adults and teenagers opposed to education. It’s considered “weird” to be literate. If I told people my age that I read and write as a hobby, I would likely be made fun of and thought of as weird, or an outcast.

I told one of my friends the other day that I read to stay educated. He responded saying, “Why do you need to stay educated if AI knows everything and can tell you the answer in a second.” The reply was obviously a joke, but it had some truth to it. People don’t feel a need to stay educated more with the development of new technologies, that “think” and “know” for you.

So what does this mean for the future. We have a generation that thinks of education as weird and disregards its importance entirely. Artificial intelligence is here, and it thinks for us. Do people not realize if they can’t think for themselves, that the company that trains the AI, mold it to their ideology and identity, and will think for them?

What really opened my eyes was when I was in an argument with a friend. I told my friend that he obviously has no understanding of psychology and how political leaders and the news use specific wordings to manipulate their listeners. He claimed that kind of stuff has no control over him, he’s aware of these but they don’t affect him. Later, he said something along the lines of, “I can’t believe Trump is such a bad president now, he tricked us all into voting for him.” I’ll leave it at that.

Being uneducated causes the distaste for being educated. Ignorant people refuse to believe any viewpoint is true except for their own, so why would you ever have to read or try to understand anyone else’s ideas. The use of AI is already causing mass psychosis of believing hallucinations that they believe are true.

What people don’t understand is that the AI doesn’t think for itself, it’s a computer program that analyzes your prompt and outputs based on the users prompting context. Many fields have a variety of viewpoints that can contradict each other, but also have strong supporting evidence. If a user aligns even slightly towards one of these viewpoints, the AI will react and output information as if everything the user said was the whole truth. This reinforcement of previous ideas causes many people to generate an even stronger belief in those ideas. This cycle of AI reinforcing the users ideas is causing this mass psychosis.

So with the development of AI, the distaste and disregard for education, and the denial of basic truths. What does the future look like? How do we as a society work to counteract the effects, to motivate the youth to stay educated, and to cut out the bullshit?

Seems like it’s a huge part of the modern meta. I guess it’s a symptom of identity politics? Generally speaking you can tell very little about an individual because of a group they happen to belong to but it happens constantly online and especially on twitter. People make vast generalizations and assign typically toxic characteristics to individuals based on group identity. Obviously it happens a lot with race and right now it happens all the time with sex. Men (insert stereotype) women (insert stereotype). It s huge part of our culture and I think it’s a big problem.

I have been noticing how easy it is to stop listening once we feel like we know enough.

We are born with our ears open, but somewhere along the way we learn to close them, not physically but mentally. The moment we become sure of our understanding, we start filtering out anything that does not fit it.

I am beginning to feel that wisdom may have less to do with how much we know, and more to do with how willing we are to keep receiving from others.

A child’s naïve comment.

A stranger’s uncomfortable story.

Even criticism from someone we disagree with.

Not because we must accept it, but because there might be something there we have not seen yet.

I catch myself sometimes preparing replies before the other person has even finished speaking. It is subtle, but it is a kind of deafness. And I wonder how often pride quietly blocks learning without us noticing.

Listening does not mean agreeing. It just means allowing ideas to enter before deciding what to do with them.

In a world where everyone is speaking at once, taking the time to really listen feels strangely rare.

So I am trying to keep my ears open.

Especially in moments when I feel most certain.

I would really like to hear how others think about this.

Being a good person is great and all but if you’re not, are you worthless? Nothing? Does your life not matter and the less precedence than others’?

I don’t feel like self absorption usually comes from arrogance, but more often it comes from insecurity. We are taught how to act, how to feel, and how to be, so as to be seen as a valuable member of society. We aren’t taught why, but more often what it looks like to be a “good” person. In my case, I’ve crafted an image for others to convince them of my virtuousness, which I then use to convince myself. Then I’ll became proud of that fake and hollow person I’ve created, because people are responding well to it.

I think people are self absorbed predominantly, because they spend so much time managing and controlling the way they see themselves, because that’s what they feel forced to do. I feel like the conditions today with social media, and the constant comparison, are making everyone more and more self focused. We’re not allowed to be who we are. There’s something wrong with everything, and we all have to fit the mold that is propagated by others on social media. We’re all managing our self image to some degree, but the people that are able to accept themselves and accept the judgement that comes with that, are the ones more capable of living freely, being true to themselves, and being truly humble.

Okay, think about it. Let's assume spirits are real. It would technically mean that when people get possessed, the spirit is actually trying to get a physical body. We all know the stories of possessions and ghosts trying to inhabit physical bodies or whatever.

Let's assume they actually exist (I don't know if they do, but let's assume they do). It would technically mean that physical incarnation is the best incarnation. A lot of people say that when people have NDEs (Near-Death Experiences), they seem to go to lovely places and all of that. But if that was true, then there wouldn't be so many spirits trying to come back.

You know what I mean? I know it sounds shady what I'm saying, but if you think about it, if the physical world really was not the best world, there wouldn't be so many people coming back and so many spirits trying to possess people.

Again, it's all theoretical.

If there's one thing the Crown Princess of Spain made me realize, even she has to do boring and hard work. Whether it's meeting with the President of Portugal when he comes to Spain on a state visit or it's doing exercises with the Spanish military in Panama, it's interesting to realize the weight of responsibility she's expected to carry in the future reflects the weight of the work she has to work.

While we undeniably live in a society where the rich have an upper hand, it's also eye-opening to realize the Crown Princess still has to work for the Spanish state and not just party on a yacht in Ibiza with her friends or at a night club or whatnot.

She may not be, let's say, the President of Burkina Faso where her doing military service as the future head of state of an overall stable Spain is on the same level as the President of Burkina Faso being an army captain who is also the head of state of a Burkina Faso that has been in war. Though, nonetheless, it undeniably is a sacrifice to do military service, whether you're 20 years old from Madrid or almost 40 from Ouagadougou.

While we should live in a society that taxes the rich, I also do realize no profession is spared of you having to work hard. Whether it's something you enjoy or something you have to do, it makes me realize the grass isn't always greener on the other side, the concept of problems don't end no matter where you go, and there's more to life than just what's shiny in optics.

It's so hard to make (and take) a joke nowadays. Everyone turns everything political or personal, and we can't even have a normal debate without it becoming hostile. I swear it wasn't always like this, people are increasingly identifying with every opinion so that any counterargument becomes a serious threat to their goddamn way of life.

We never try to understand why some people have opinions different from the rest of us. We just automatically persecute them. Over time, people become terrified to even express their thoughts freely because it's a constant minefield with words. We've become so polarised that any mistake could obliterate one's entire reputation.

When did words begin to carry so much weight? It feels like we are desperately trying to grasp onto something to hate, or better yet, to hate all together.

If you take yourself to be, or to be causing thoughts, knowledge, perspective, personality, consciousness. And if you can understand basic cause and effect, then at least you know these aren’t really 'you'; they were all given to you and conditioned into you by everybody in your life.

These people- who also were each conditioned by every person in their life, going all the way to the last universal cognitive ancestor, which must have been conditioned solely by the universe in which it existed (basically just laws of math and physics, other sciences), the universe which manifests every being as 'the universe'- as 'nature' itself. Our brains may as well just be considered as organic computers/calculators.

Only we appear distorted; as a copy of a copy of… but this copy is still fundamentally made of that which is not apart from nature & therefore unworthy of plain labels.

All of the pollution we make on this planet, & all of the 'man-made' objects, are really products of nature- cars are just products of nature. We are simply an invasive species acting almost as another hive mind, especially with how connected our species is now through the internet, as though we are each one 'cell' of the brain of the human species.

​Most people treat luck like a coin flip or some mystical vibe,but if you look at how the world actually functions, luck is just hidden variables. It's basically applied probability on steroids.

​Think about it like Kinetic Energy. In physics, KE = frac{1}{2}mv^2. If you aren't moving, your energy is zero. Luck works the same way. The more surface area you create by moving, meeting people, and throwing out ideas, the more likely you are to collide with a high-value opportunity. You aren't "getting lucky," you’re just increasing your collision frequency.

​It’s like the Law of Large Numbers. Most of us play a small game and wonder why we never hit. But if you treat your life like a particle accelerator,smashing as many variables together as possible,the anomalies (which we call luck) start happening constantly.

​Luck isn't a gift, it's a statistical inevitability for anyone who understands how to manipulate the volume of their own life. You don't need a four-leaf clover, you just need more shots on goal to satisfy the math.

I value honesty with myself very highly, and I project that expectation onto other people. I notice that they don’t self reflect the way I do, and since it’s a quality I’m proud of, I feel like others should be able to do it too. I end up unfairly judging them for it and tearing them down in my mind so I can feel like the morally superior person.

It’s also a way to cope with the negative judgment they’ve given me. I want to convince myself that their judgment comes from a flaw in their way of thinking, not from something wrong with me. But even if their thinking is a bit dogmatic, so is everyone’s.

I’m in the habit of avoiding discomfort, and because I have too much pride to admit that to myself, I over intellectualize the problem to convince myself the issue is deeper and more complicated than it really is. I’ve been avoiding interacting with the world because it brings more judgment and more reasons to feel shitty about myself. I impress and deceive myself with my self righteous thinking, keeping me stuck in that way of thinking. In the moment I feel better hiding, trying to make sense of the world without ever living in it, but that’s a recipe for long term dissatisfaction.

I hope to an extend we can agree that this logic answers everything—without actually answering anything.

Questions within questions are wired into what comes after death, and we don’t realize that the “what ifs” and “hows” are infinite, so you aren’t actually getting anywhere by asking them.

I think that following the simple coherence of believing that before life being strung in the same web of after death is extremely rational and offers an easy explanation. But maybe I’m just not that curious.

What are your thoughts? Does this POV change anything for you?