#cognitive thinking

[jeanwashere71]

Is this a delusional perception? What’s gotten into me, perplexed reception. Not sure what to do with this emotional complexion. Was doing so good, now I’m drowning in a sea of conception. Gotta turn this around, get back to destination. Find the track back, I need that intervention. I want to do it on my own, I can’t I need a connection. Sit back, take break, leave it behind interception. Wanna…

[zomb13s]

Walking on the Left: Navigating Socioeconomic Behavior Through a Traffic Lens - Alfons Scholing - CEO, alfons.design; Creator, ikziezombies.com

Introduction The adage that traffic rules and road systems mirror societal order and human behavior has been a subject of both practical and philosophical inquiry. From the simplest instructions given during driver’s education to the most complex global dynamics, the interplay of individual choices and structured systems can often be illustrated through traffic analogies. As a person raised by a…

[blueblurbbaskets]

honestly i think a lot of nuance to Mr. Collin's character is lost in most P&P adaptations when they cast him as a guy multiple decades older than his book age. this man is twenty-five years old and fresh out of seminary. he does things like apologize for fifteen minutes straight and start conversations in socially inappropriate ways he's not a Creepy Older Relative he's the guy who went to college and now thinks he knows shit but also somehow learned almost nothing there and is probably actually a lot more anxious than he lets on. casting him as an older guy gives a vastly different impression of what he's like

[kittyit]

the four agreements

[rawrsatthetree]

Tired: Tav that’s good for Astarion cause they play therapist and give him support and space to heal

Wired: Tav that’s good for Astarion cause they’re such a disaster he has to get his shit together cause gods above one of them needs to be a functional adult

[essektheylyss]

coming out as a cliffhanger apologist. I feel like cliffhangers are a thing that have gotten a bad rep, and I won't stand for it any longer. in fact I think cliffhangers are good for you and they should happen more often. all the time even. I think the most foundational use of storytelling is for learning to cope with uncertainty and cliffhangers are an absolutely crucial element of that. a well-executed cliffhanger is worth its weight in fucking gold. we lost sight of this because cliffhangers started becoming cheap fodder without soul, but that's because so much mass media has lacked soul lately. the soul of the cliffhanger is the combination of genuine heartwrenching emotion and panache.

[stuffieautism]

one thing i’ve noticed is that people are very quick to claim you’re not really autistic and just “acting” when you look more autistic than they think is acceptable. this constant rocking back and forth verbal impairment holding a plushie and actually playing with it glancing around moving weird autistic person is too strange for them. they feel the need to distance from and shame me because the presence of a higher support needs autistic person makes them feel like they could be seen as like me in some way and that disgusts them. so this too-weird autistic person is actually nothing like them and actually i’m not autistic at all

[pillarsalt]

Currently trying to crawl my way through Cat Bohannon's Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution. It sucks because I've enjoyed a lot of it, the actual evolutionary and developmental biology discussion is super interesting and informative, and the illustrations are so gorgeous. But then every twenty pages she'll follow up a brilliant paragraph with the dumbest trans-pandering shit you've ever read, with zero of the evidence normally provided to justify every other subject in the book. It's like she's constantly grovelling on hands and knees not to get cancelled for the mortal sin of daring to write about the female sex. Severely irritating and really brought down the experience of reading it.

[afterthelambs]

I'm not sure if I believe the "Wakaba Isshiki did unethical experiments" theory in the fandom, but I do think this is the biggest proof of it in-game:

Because how the hell would she know that?

The first explanation is that she did experiments by sending people into palaces and then testing what happens to them if the palace collapses. Which is messed up for obvious reasons.

The second explanation is that she did NOT test it, meaning she was just making shit up. Which is funny but also would make her a terrible scientist. This explanation is less believable because everything else about her research is too accurate.

There's also a theory that Wakaba did unethical experiments on Akechi specifically. I'm not sure I believe that, since the evidence for it is pretty shallow (like the featherman game scientist experimenting on grey pigeon). But this scene is once again the biggest argument you could make for that theory. The researcher in the image above refers to palaces by their correct term 'palaces', which they say was based on Wakaba's research. But that's only something you would know with firsthand experience of the metaverse. And the only person they know who could access the metaverse was Akechi (that we know of, but i dont think Shido would rely only on Akechi if there were other options).

So yeah this scene is very sus. It's most likely the writers didn't think too deep about the implications. There's no way they wanted Futaba's mom to be sketchy, right? But even if it's not intentional, the scenes and their implications still exist. So in conclusion those theories make sense, I get it, and I don't blame anyone for headcanoning them and having fun. And tbh anyone involved with cognitive psience was portrayed as some degree of unethical (maruki for example), maybe this is just on-brand

[glacierberries]

everybody give it up for JAMES POTTER!! SUCH a good guy, isn't he? 🥳🥳🥳🥳

what the Fuck is this bullshit????

GET OUT- 🗣🗣🗣🗣

[zenshigarakilover]

Apperently Hori said that AFO was unable to form emotions and only viewed the world through a logical lense. His final words to Yoichi were an attempt to manipulate him.

[foldingfittedsheets]

I’m a creature of simple pleasures. One of those pleasures is my towel warmer. Getting out of the shower to a cozy warm towel is a lovely little luxury.

Today I found out my towel warmer is busted :(

[sunnyemiii]

Teehee more spidermax au

[direquail]

My specific read on John is not that he's a nice guy, either. It's that, like any good character (specifically a tragic character, which, TM has said that he is modeled on a mythical tragic hero, so) he has a flaw that dooms him. And what that means is, when he has the choice to change what he's doing, that flaw either prevents him from taking the option he's aware of, or prevents him from being aware that there is another option altogether.

And so as a writer, what I look for are moments where either:

something good about a character becomes an excess that harms themselves or others

we receive information that shows a persistent blind spot a character has

we look for times when a character gives their view of the world/a situation and it Does Not Match Up with reality, or is hinted that it doesn't

we look for evidence of something simmering under the surface that clashes with their outward, agreeable presentation

What fills that role for John?

Yep.

When this first pops up, it's pretty easily dismissed as yet another layer on the falsehood he's propped up. Admittedly, he's been doing it for ten thousand years, so it's probably got a few layers to it.

However:

This one, to me, gives us a hint about what John is blind to: That his friends see his vindictiveness and his failings and that they could still love him. This is where it crosses into tragedy, for me; where his own inability to forgive blinds him to the capacity that other people have for generosity--and so, to a world where "justice" means more than "vengeance for the dead".

And this illuminates the whole chain of events that leads him to that climactic scene in Harrow the Ninth, telling Mercy that she never would have forgiven him anyways:

John is, at heart, deeply angry--like most characters in the series, and like a lot of people who grew up in poverty, especially if they managed to escape it. He also has some deep sense of justice, and deep sense of judgment.

So we have this cycle of related emotions and ideas: Justice, judgment, outrage. And a human measure of selfishness, amorality, double standards, etc.

In one situation, this allows him to throw himself completely into the cryo project, something that (if it hadn't been sabotaged politically) could have made a difference to humanity. He brings in people who work to make it even better, who demonstrably want to make the outcome as just and humane as possible. It's also implied that this is part of why he received those powers; "I chose you to change."

(And, I'll be honest, one of the other things that I see that chafes me is the implication that there was nothing about John to recommend him to the Earth. I'm actually of the opinion that there was; she chose him, and I don't think she just rolled a d100 or drew a card off a tarot deck and called him up. John is also still a human, flawed person.)

Then, the situation changes. It's no longer an issue of dedicating expertise to solve a problem; this is a political issue, and specifically of rich people using their resources to shift outcomes towards the one they think will benefit them the most, that will secure their survival, explicitly at the expense of everyone else.

And their strategy is, profoundly: short-sighted and unnecessary (pooling resources would help create a better outcome for everyone, including the rich, by reducing global trauma and preserving more of the systems that already structure their world); bigoted and uninformed (many rich people think that the world has to be a certain way, generally that the world is violent, competitive, dog-eat-dog, etc., and someone has to be "on top", and there will always have to be a loser, or lots of losers); and utterly cruel, unjust, and pointless.

And John--John, who grew up poor, who grew up aware of the despair around him and the injustice of his position and more than likely made use of that anger to achieve what he had up to this point--John is so angry.

Because they're all the same. They're all the same. It's the same song, over and over again, no matter how stupid and pointless and unnecessary. He is certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it doesn't have to be this way. He passes judgment.

But John is losing to them, because he doesn't have the resources they do. He can hate them and fight them all he wants, and it doesn't matter, because he's nowhere near in the same league as they are politically.

And then, after the cryo project is cancelled, he gains his powers.

The thing about anger and judgment is that the deeper it runs, often, the more invested the person who holds that anger in themselves is in not seeing what they hate in themselves. E.g: John has conceptualized the people he's resisting as fundamentally unjust, cruel, amoral, and bigoted. There's a very good chance--to different degrees, depending on the person--that becoming aware of similar traits in himself might wake up those feelings he has towards those other people--aimed at himself (that is, cognitive dissonance). He can't see the things he's passed judgment on in himself and function. He's not like them; he's trying to fix things, to bring about justice.

Of course, there's justice as in "living in a just society", and justice as in "justice for the dead". But that's a later realization, because right now, everyone is still alive.

So John hides those parts of himself; from himself, from other people. So thoroughly he can exclude it from his consciousness and pretend it doesn't exist. He thinks no one sees the real depth of his own rage, his own cutthroat pursuit of a solution. And then, when he can't pretend it doesn't exist, he can still pretend to be the man he thinks they need him to be. He can "fool" them. He can say--he's trying. He screwed up. He doesn't know what he's doing.

And then, Casseiopeia says, No, actually, we know you, and we know you're horribly vindictive. And we're on your side--we're on the same side--our fight is your fight--and we love you. But your drive for revenge is seriously limiting your ability to imagine and create a living, just world, and that's what we're fighting for. Remember? That's what we set out to create.

And John's brain can't quite handle this; he can't imagine that they could actually see him and still be on his side. Because he couldn't see that and still be on his side. He can't forgive; he can't imagine forgiveness.

He can't see the things he's passed judgment on in himself and function.

And, by this stage, in some ways, it's already too late to change course. But this is one of several "come to Jesus" (no pun intended) moments where John could become aware of alternatives, or could change his behavior--and doesn't.

And I think this is where we get that self-awareness from, the thing that makes him creepy and tragic but also infuriating: He is aware, but apparently that's not enough to stop him from being his worst self--so is he just pretending to be moral? Capable of making different choices but choosing not to? And the weird statements he makes later:

This is, imo, not a power-hungry dictator who genuinely doesn't care about the cost of his throne, or a gleefully predatory abuser. This is a dude who's committed to a course of action and doesn't feel great about it. This is a guy who has violated his own sense of justice and has to live with it.

This is a guy who set out to save the world, killed it, and now the only thing that's left to him is to avenge it.

And like, from a mythology standpoint, that is exactly what the Erinyes are, like the Furies and Alecto. They are not the justice of Apollo or Athena. They are screaming for blood. They are hunting their quarry to the ends of the universe. They are chthonic.

Again: This isn't what Cassieopeia or Christabel said to him. This is what John has said to himself. This came from him. This is a reflection of what he believes.

And it encapsulates, exactly, why he erased their memories. Why he took away their agency.

The difference between him and many, many people is he had the power of a god and no one to check him when he was struggling with his own worst impulses. And then, he created a world where no one could, not just because then he could do what he wanted and pretend to be kind and loving and moral, but so that he would never have to lose the love of the people he needed.

Because, unfortunately, he still needed them.

It just took ten thousand years for the lie to unravel.

[otaku553]

Procrastination doodles of sabo for the king sabo au :)

[thequeenofsastiel]

Buffy- Hanging out with Spike is not cool, Dawn! Okay? It's dangerous, and icky.

Also Buffy- Dawn could be in danger. Must go to Spike for help.