Fear, Loathing, and Horror.

[chaotic neutral observer]

Nope.

If it’s physically impossible, some mad bastard will find a way to AT LEAST convincingly fake it. Even if it’s just bad signal. Witness the faster than light neutrino.

That was a problem with a loose cable.  They found it, and fixed it.  This is how science works.  This is normal.

Witness the flat earth movement.

There is no convincing fakery or mad bastards there; just some poor mundanes trying to make themselves feel special.

Even the physically impossible is meaningless, nothing but a never ending source of horror.

Physically impossible things don't happen.  That's quite meaningful.  Things we think are physically impossible happen occasionally.  This cuts into the development budget.

Once you stop being surprised,

Saying that everything is possible, and you can't be surprised anymore is the same as saying that the universe now makes sense to you.  And since it makes sense, and everything is horror, you're now ready for anything, right?  Feels good?

But it doesn't work that way.  Your brain is a pattern-matching engine made of meat, and although you can train it to laugh at horror, there will always be some combination of inputs that will fucking freak you out, and there's nothing you can do to prevent that.

you’ve either decided that physics is STAYING THIS WAY FUCK YOU

Physics is staying the way it is.  Our understanding of it isn't.

or you just start to admit that yes, technically speaking a grown cat can just materialize from nowhere in a locked safe, and no matter how improbable that is, there is no reason to believe that any particularly unlikely event is more unlikely in our lifespans than in someone else’s.

My third-year materials-science professor, while lecturing on quantum tunneling, claimed that it was possible for a car to spontaneously tunnel through a wall.  Then he went to the blackboard to compute how likely that was to happen, and sweet goddess that was a large negative exponent.

We know nothing for certain and will in fact never know anything for certain, that’s the truth of things.

Holy Nonsense, pg. 145, "There is a Moon".  Don't rely on your memory of what it says; go and read it.  When you come back, I'll be waiting.  With the Moon.

[altered]

The point of flat earth is to show that monkeys are bad at understanding physical reality in an intuitive sense. The point of the neutrino thing is to show that we will be given surprises that make us go “HEY WAIT A SECOND THERE” even if we lock this shit down somehow.

Combine the two, and the result is that if someone pulls off a convincing enough magic trick and then dies, we end up only guessing.

Also, “physically impossible” can only ever mean “to the limits of our understanding of physics”. This makes the distinction between “physically impossible” and “we think is physically impossible” functionally meaningless. It just keeps being horror.

Different kind of “stop being surprised”. Jump scares work on almost everybody, even when they see them coming. There are lions and wolves from hundreds of thousands of years ago in our brains. We find some things innately terrible.

But there is all of that, and then there is the “time to reflect on everything I know” kind of horror, which is what I believe was meant here. You can definitely avoid the longer-lasting horror by simply accepting that yes, these things happen. It’s supposed to be really weird but you know, fuck it.

Speaking of that, you also misunderstood my meaning of the cat materialization thing. Unless you claim that we have a privileged place in the universe, nothing favors any given time more than any other given time for really strange shit to happen. So unless someone’s going to lose money over it, fuck it. Let’s just believe this weird shit.

Finally, There is a Moon is compatible with my worldview. Important notes here: I am not rejecting apparent reality, I am accepting apparent reality even when that apparent reality is impossible by normal operating standards. And I am not trying to argue brain-in-a-jar shit: if the cat is in the safe, it must be in the safe for EVERYONE.

As a result: there is a moon, and it exists for everyone.

I admit that my worldview offers the option for the moon to stop existing for everyone rather spontaneously, but that’s the only difference here. Once you realize how hard it is to find things in space, it becomes pretty clear that if something unexpectedly pulled the moon away from Earth it’s very possible we would miss it happening.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Saying that everything is possible, and you can't be surprised anymore is the same as saying that the universe now makes sense to you.  And since it makes sense, and everything is horror, you're now ready for anything, right?  Feels good?

But it doesn't work that way.  Your brain is a pattern-matching engine made of meat, and although you can train it to laugh at horror, there will always be some combination of inputs that will fucking freak you out, and there's nothing you can do to prevent that.

Yoink?

[altered]

Yeah, that was definitely a good bit.

I think the issue CNO and I are having here is mostly just misinterpretation. I’m not saying there are no physical impossibilities, I’m saying for all practical purposes worrying about the vast majority of them is just asking for Horror and giving up on Fun, because we don’t know what they are and some fucker will find a way to trick us if we look hard enough.

That’s why I went to the is-ought fallacy. The correct move when confronted with something wrong according to everything you know is not to say “NO! The sun OUGHT to rise in the East.” It is to say “Well this is some bullshit and we need to document it so we can horrify the solar energy engineers.”

And if/when it ends up being exposed as a fake? You have a laugh and the engineers sob in relief.

[chaotic neutral observer]

Also, “physically impossible” can only ever mean “to the limits of our understanding of physics”. This makes the distinction between “physically impossible” and “we think is physically impossible” functionally meaningless. It just keeps being horror.

At a point in history, it was considered impossible to split the atom.  There was a doomsday device lurking in the gap between the actual impossible and the apparent impossible.  I can't ignore that distinction.

Different kind of “stop being surprised”. Jump scares work on almost everybody, even when they see them coming.

No, I was talking about the same kind of surprise you were.  It's about thinking you're prepared for Trump's third elected term in office, not the jaguar lurking in the bushes.

Important notes here: I am not rejecting apparent reality, I am accepting apparent reality even when that apparent reality is impossible by normal operating standards.

I think that's our disconnect.  I don't think it's possible to accept an apparent impossibility without at least a twinge of horror.  I can't, anyway.  I have a very deterministic worldview, and when my brain-meat encounters something that doesn't obey The Rules, it's not happy.  I push through anyway, and rewrite The Rules, and even though Learning is Fun, it's still a mess, whether you call it horror, or enlightenment.

[chaotic neutral observer]

Saying that everything is possible, and you can't be surprised anymore is the same as saying that the universe now makes sense to you.  And since it makes sense, and everything is horror, you're now ready for anything, right?  Feels good?

But it doesn't work that way.  Your brain is a pattern-matching engine made of meat, and although you can train it to laugh at horror, there will always be some combination of inputs that will fucking freak you out, and there's nothing you can do to prevent that.

Yoink?

Do as you will.

[altered]

I think that is the disconnect, yeah.

I have actually gotten to the point where my reaction no longer really feels like it counts as horror.

Example: I witnessed a man screaming like he was dying in an alley today. His friend is standing next to him like ... slightly concerned.

“Something wrong?”

“It’s just, you know, the worms, man? It gets this way sometimes.”

And I nodded and wished them a good day, hope it gets better, all that.

Yeah, no, really. This happened. LMNO has probably seen that kind of thing before, maybe Cram too.

I don’t think they were psychotic or delusional, I think they were probably talking about something I don’t know anything about because it’s not my business. I wasn’t frightened, just natural human concern and then apparently unnatural acceptance of an apparently unnatural situation.

It’s not that I can’t be shocked, it’s that my reaction to it is “well, what now?” I don’t shut down or get existential or say “how”.

Now, I used to! And it’s perfectly fine to do so. But it’s gotten to be so mentally exhausting to put any investment into things working “how they should” that I’ve rejected that phrase as being meaningful. Not even consciously. Just, as one thing leading to another, every day filled to the brim with “why” and “how”. I don’t have it in me anymore.

[Doktor Howl]

All that means is that your threshold for horror has shifted somewhere way the fuck over there.

[Frontside Back]

I did an experiment and spent hours mocking myself from my other facebook account. Like internet age self mutilation. While doing that, I realized: There actually is a part of me inside that hates me relentlessly, and that fucker is pissed, because I don't let it talk very often. It hates everybody else too, but self censoring prevents it from informing anyone about it. So it does what it can, having only partial control of my body, mind and soul: self sabotage, anxiety attacks, insomnia, to lead me into the hell it things I deserve.

It wills me to suffer because I'm not good enough.

It wills me to die because it's tied in a chair watching shitty film about my miserable life in first person perspective.

I hate it back since that's what the murderous bastard deserves, but since it's still attached to me and I end up hating myself, basically giving it what it wants.

[LMNO]

Fucking hell.  Make friends with that little fucker.  It only wants recognition and a hug.

[Frontside Back]

Oh, maybe I can convince it to hate the others.

Fuck that no, I just found it, and I'm already hateful towards people I've thought of as friends JUST BECAUSE they've done some mean things to me.

That thing starts wars, and I'm already way too attuned to another, infamous of just that.
Eye for an I.
I'm gonna hunt that critter down. rip it out through my ear and store it in a jar.
There's no space for hatred in me right now.

That would totally ruin my revenge.

[Doktor Howl]

Fucking hell.  Make friends with that little fucker.  It only wants recognition and a hug.

Pliers help with this part.

[Fujikoma]

The part of me that hates me has had its say, and it was not an easy time, nor was it short. Suffice to say it eventually ran out of steam and gave up. I can understand not knowing it's there, despite all the evidence, but it's important to make peace with it and have a "now what" conversation.

[Doktor Howl]

The part of me that hates me has had its say, and it was not an easy time, nor was it short. Suffice to say it eventually ran out of steam and gave up. I can understand not knowing it's there, despite all the evidence, but it's important to make peace with it and have a "now what" conversation.

That other you needs to wake up tied to a chair, with a bag over his head, smelling lighter fluid.

Seriously.  Fuck that Jiminey Cricket bullshit.  There ain't room in this skull for anyone but me.  That's something I had to learn.  I didn't really fix it, of course.  Bastard's still back there, saying shit like "If you'd taken things more seriously, your whole life would have been different," and "Did you really have to take things that far?

He can suck my ass.  I like me the way I am.  And yeah, I had to go there.  If I didn't, I wouldn't be me.  I'd be a damn door mat.

[Fujikoma]

Sorry, Jiminey already did the waterboarding and execution, which I guess brings his lawful-good alignment into question, but he's sick of this shit and is prepared to admit that frequent masturbation is healthy, just not when your sister is watching.