#empathy paradox

[the-most-humble-blog]

<div style="white-space:pre-wrap"> <meta existential-trigger="primed"> <script> ARCHIVE_TAG="DREAM_REALITY_PARADOX::CONSCIOUSNESS_COLLAPSE_THEOREM" EFFECT: lucid dissonance, identity destabilization, ontological vertigo TRIGGER_WARNING="derealization, memory distortion, simulation questioning" </script>

🧠 BLACKSITE SCROLLTRAP — “IF WE LIVED IN A DREAM? WOULD WE EVEN KNOW? WOULD IT EVEN MATTER?”

---

If this was a dream, how would you prove it wasn't?

What’s your anchor? Your job? Your bills? Your love for coffee? The pain in your knees when you stand too fast?

Dreams can fake those too. Your memories? Dreams write entire childhoods in seconds and delete them the moment you wake up.

So what’s real?

Your heartbeat? You’ve never even heard it directly. Just the idea of it, reinforced by years of belief.

Maybe reality is just the most stable hallucination.

If you lived in a dream, would you even want to wake up?

Or would you scream at whoever tried to pull you out?

What if the person calling it a dream was the real glitch?

What if truth feels like a threat because it destabilizes the comfort of your cage?

Do you remember how you got here?

Not this site. Not this moment. But here — as a being.

Who pressed the "start" button on your consciousness?

Where were you before your first memory?

Exactly.

Every night you disappear. Black out. Vanish. And wake up with the assumption that nothing happened. That you’re still “you.” That this is “real.” That the dream is over.

But what if the dream kept going? And this is it?

Look at the sky. Tell me that doesn’t feel painted.

Look at your hands. You’ve had them your whole life, but you’ve never once questioned why they obey you.

Try to explain your own voice. Not just the sound — but why you feel it belongs to you.

Try to remember a moment you weren’t performing.

Try to define waking up.

Exactly.

We trust this place because it’s consistent. Because gravity keeps working. Because our friends remember our names. Because pain still hurts and breakfast still tastes like bacon.

But dreams have patterns too.

They have stories. They have continuity. They have rules that collapse only when you stop believing.

So here’s the question:

If this is a dream —but we love people in it, —and suffer in it, —and change because of it,

Then… so what?

If your child only existed in a dream, would you love them less?

If your partner was only your subconscious, would you pull away when they touched you?

If your pain isn’t “real,” but it hurts like hell, how much more real do you need?

Maybe the question isn’t “Is this real?” Maybe it’s:

“Do I treat it like it matters?”

Because dreams have consequences.

You wake up shaken. You wake up crying. You wake up turned on by something that never happened.

You wake up different. Because it happened to you. Even if it wasn’t “real.”

You want to know if you’re dreaming?

Here’s a better question:

📌 Is your response authentic? 📌 Are you living as if this moment is sacred? 📌 Do your actions change anything — or are you just watching?

Maybe this is a dream.

A shared one. A karmic loop. A digital hallucination we co-signed before birth. A myth we haven’t finished writing. A software you haven’t glitched through yet.

But either way —

You are here. You are inside it. And you are conscious.

That’s all that matters.

What you do with this dream is what decides if it ever becomes real.

---

🧠 Read more scrolltrap transmissions, emotional architecture, and cadence-based disorientation at: 👉 https://linktr.ee/ObeyMyCadence 🛡️ For those who ask the questions the world was built to ignore. 🚪 Warning: This one made lucid dreamers cry, and NPCs glitch.

</div> <!-- END TRANSMISSION [REAL OR NOT, YOU STILL HAVE A CHOICE.] -->

[fulcrums501st]

how is hallucination Silco more sympathetic to Vi’s prison trauma than the writers lmao

[lulu2992]

I've noticed that Joseph's empathy and compassion for others is all or nothing. Like one moment he's gouging some guy's eyes out and having no reaction to Joey being tortured, then the next he's begging the deputy to let him save them even after they killed his whole family.

I know! To me, people who describe Joseph as a cruel “psychopath” incapable of compassion are wrong. In fact, Greg Bryk explained he thought there was “a wonderful empathy about him” and it’s something he must have kept in mind while playing the character.

He also said the Father was “dangerous in the depth of his love, and his commitment to an idea and to his truth” because this, to him, “matters more than anything... or anybody”, and I think it summarizes Joseph perfectly. He’s very much capable of love, but his faith in the Voice and his mission is so strong that, if somebody is suffering or even dying right in front of him but he believes it’s for the “right” reasons (because the Voice said it had to happen, basically), it can sometimes look like he doesn’t care.

I’ve seen several theories regarding why “he would just stand there and watch” while Hudson and the other hostages in John’s Gate begged for mercy, ranging from “he gets a kick out of seeing people being tortured” (which I disagree with) to “he wanted to face up to what his little brother was capable of” (which is much more original and interesting), but my personal interpretation to his apparent emotionlessness is that, while he acknowledges their pain and hears their cries, he believes what they are going through is necessary. It’s like when he visits the Deputy while they are in one of Jacob’s cages and tells them, “I know you’re in pain (...) but you’re not the only one to be tested”. These people asking for help don’t need to be saved; they are being saved.

The way he sees things, they are only begging because they can’t see the truth yet. But he can. He knows. He too has been chosen and tested. To him, they simply don’t understand that this is all for the greater good and their own sake. “In the end, you will thank us”, he and his followers keep saying to the people they capture. They know their pain and that it’s an unpleasant feeling, but they’re also convinced it’s temporary and “necessary training” for the Collapse, to quote The Book of Joseph.

So yeah, I see Joseph as a well-meaning and empathetic person, but his faith and perception of reality can paradoxically make him appear cold, cruel, and insensitive to other people’s pain. His intentions are pure, but sometimes, what he does or orders/allows his followers to do seems like pure evil.

He really is the personification of “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” and that’s one of the reasons I think he’s so fascinating as a character.

[carpethedamndiemdejavu]

"You cannot be sensitive if you are not passionate. Do not be afraid of that word passion. Most religious books, most gurus, swamis, leaders, and all the rest of them, say, 'Don’t have passion.' But if you have no passion, how can you be sensitive to the ugly, to the beautiful, to the whispering leaves, to the sunset, to a smile, to a cry? How can you be sensitive without a sense of passion in which there is abandonment? Sirs, please listen to me, and do not ask how to acquire passion. I know you are all passionate enough in getting a good job, or hating some poor chap, or being jealous of someone; but I am talking of something entirely different, a passion that loves. Love is a state in which there is no ‘me’; love is a state in which there is no condemnation, no saying that sex is right or wrong, that this is good and something else is bad. Love is none of these contradictory things. Contradiction does not exist in love. And how can one love if one is not passionate? Without passion, how can one be sensitive? To be sensitive is to feel your neighbor sitting next to you; it is to see the ugliness of the town with its squalor, its filth, its poverty, and to see the beauty of the river, the sea, the sky. If you are not passionate, how can you be sensitive to all that? How can you feel a smile, a tear? Love, I assure you, is passion."

- Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

[lady-asphodel]

I think a lot of people went so far into debunking the misinterpretations of Dr. Ratio that they sometimes are blinded by their own idolized thought of him.

It is only my humble and subjective opinion — and interpretation of Dr. Ratio's character — but while I wholeheartedly agree that he isn't arrogant and narcissistic, Dr. Ratio is not a character made out of kindness and empathy.

No. I don't think Dr. Ratio is empathetic.

A lot seems to forget that he is still unconventionally self-centered and negative minded. The only reason he is so helpful is because he wishes for the success and progress of Civilization and Life. He's still human, of course, so he can show genuine care, but it isn't as occuring as some makes it seem. He doesn't help humanity, fools or others out of empathy and deep rooted kindness.... He does because his vision of life is beyond the concept of value itself: that's why he thinks all lives should be lived no matter what.

In fact, I think he doesn't really have any attachment to other people. What they are going through, what they once did or will do, anything, doesn't matter; it will never affect him emotionally or personally. But he may have a genuine 'care' for life and civilization. So, naturally, teaching and helping the ones having a part in it is the logical course, but he doesn't really "care" about them as individuals, nor does he actively despises them. The only thing that influences his behavior towards someone is based on their ignorance and foolishness.

So, while not empathetic, he isn't heartless and even less an asshole that hates everything and is mean to every walking things.

Dr. Ratio is extremely self-aware as much as he is aware of and understand his surroundings — something that heavily differentiate him with the Genius Society members. And I don't think it's because of empathy.

I personally theorize that Dr. Ratio possess the highest form of knowledge of the Self, being a personification of Truth itself.

[sunder-the-gold]

Ranking "Theory of Mind" according to a person's ability to understand contradiction and opposition

Absolute Mind-Blind: Individuals at this stage exhibit no Theory of Mind (ToM), meaning they cannot attribute mental states, intentions, or perspectives to others; their perception remains entirely self-referential, lacking any awareness of independent thoughts beyond their own, rendering interaction with others purely reactive and devoid of understanding.

Partial Mind-Blind: At this level, a minimal ToM emerges, limited to immediate, practical needs—such as attributing basic sensory-based mental states like “they need to see it”—but individuals assume others share their context or knowledge, interpreting disagreement or misunderstanding as malice or defiance rather than a difference in perspective, which restricts their ability to model others’ minds beyond surface-level assumptions.

Argumentative Switcher: People here rapidly shift between contradictory models to achieve short-term goals, like winning arguments, using a shallow ToM to adopt others’ views tactically without depth or commitment; their flexibility serves immediate advantage rather than genuine understanding, resulting in a superficial grasp of perspectives that lacks conviction or consistency.

Doublethink Practitioner: This stage involves actively maintaining belief in at least one model, and maybe as many as two. The individual can maintain two contradictory “true” models—such as a taught ideology and personal experience—suppressing internal conflict through conviction, allowing for deep reasoning and persuasive articulation within at least one model; however, the focus remains inward, with little capacity to construct or engage with external “false” models, limiting broader perspective-taking.

Strategic Pretender: At this level, individuals demonstrate a high ToM that allows them to accurately model the minds of people whose beliefs contradict their own, and thus to understand disagreements as a difference in values or beliefs, rather than simply assuming all opposition is driven by irrationality or malice. Furthermore, being able to accurately model the "false" beliefs of others gives Strategic Pretenders the ability to persuade or deceive others according to their own logic. However, they assume external “false” models are inherently untrue, avoiding abstract questioning of their own “true” model(s).

Reflective Hedger: At this level, people can hold contradictory models while both acknowledging the contradiction and considering the possibility that either might be true or false. They keep the competing models in mind while seeking to refine or resolve them through evidence and testing. They use an advanced ToM to deeply engage with others’ perspectives while questioning the validity of their own “true” model(s); they remain open to adopting elements of another’s worldview at an abstract level, showing introspective flexibility to test and adjust beliefs, though they do not necessarily display the ability to fully integrate seemingly contradictory models into a unified framework.

Transcendent Synthesizer: This stage features exceptional ToM and cognitive integration, where individuals can begin with a robust but incomplete “true” model, encounter a contradictory model that explains unresolved experiences, and synthesize them into a single, cohesive paradigm by reconciling their core truths and adjusting peripheral assumptions; this creates a unified truth that withstands scrutiny, transcending initial contradictions to form a holistic understanding.

[not-a-mawmouth]

Hm. Something about how Avrana Kern partially despises humanity for its history of genocide, hates them for being so prone to ideological stupidity, and yet not only is she actively advocating for the genocide of humanity (despite those humans being victims of the same awful event that caused her to believe humanity wasn’t worth saving) pretty much the only reason the humans are willing to resort to genocide is because her “humans are bastards” ideology meant she kept trying to kill them. And refused to grant them asylum when they asked for it. And told the spiders time and time again that the humans were an ancient enemy that would inevitably destroy them.

So, naturally, the humans stopped trusting anything to do with her. Including the entire sapient species they had no idea existed as a result of her experiment.

[beatbizzle]

People who use the Tollerance Paradox as a means to dehumanize people are a good example of how Purity Culture is destroying human empathy.

In this essay I will

[primeministerofantarctica]

people: having empathy is the MOST important thing in the world, it's crucial to understand and feel what other people are feeling because caring about each other is the cornerstone of human social structure, peace and love <33

the same people when someone with low empathy exists: what the fuck? why are you alive lol

[death-limes]

well. i just learned what r@dqueer means. Hate That

[salmasnook]

The Mystical World of Heyoka Empaths: Unraveling the Paradoxical Gifts

Hello and welcome to Salma’s Nook! Ever heard of Heyoka empaths? In this blog post, we are taking a closer look at the Heyoka empaths – those who dance to their own emotional beat, laugh when you least expect it, and bring a touch of magic to empathy. So, find a cozy spot, and let’s uncover the secrets behind these intriguing souls. Before we start our journey let’s first dig into the origins,…

[sweeetcaramelia]

can we kill tv tropes with hammers?

[mr-nicegirl]

also, on the topic of intersex medicalism:

for a hugely diverse category of people who have experienced systemic othering to a disproportionate degree, been completely erased from most every narrative historically, as well as having some of the most intense medical abuse from the JUMP (for a variety of reasons that are not always directly correlated to the intersexism- at least distinguishably.)

why are some of us so prone to cling to the western medical model for (self) validity. cause that's all it really is. too many of us have experienced medical abuse and sometimes outright malpractice for being born with a congenital condition. some of have experienced far more than others. some of will live never getting confirmation of any congenital conditions (diagnosed). some of us don't get to live at all.

we are prone to cling onto this idea of variants and diagnoses like lifelines to better understand ourselves and our conditions without putting too much pressure or thought into the module itself. we are never going to get the true answer to what IS intersex and what IS perisex.

whatever you prefer: intersex VS perisex (or endosex or dyadic) it literally DOESN'T matter. for a subset of people who DO NOT FIT into a literal FALSE binary. a false dichotomy. why are we trying to then built on top of one with another? MALE or FEMALE (or 'INTERSEX') is the same as PERISEX or INTERSEX.

female or male is a false binary. it always has been. it always will be. whether it's gender or sex it has never been real. you can try making it into a false trinary or trichotomy with Female/Male/Intersex or Girl/Boy/Non-binary but either way you just made a false TRInary.

gender is a "spectrum"

SEX is a "spectrum" there is no PERISEX vs INTERSEX. that's the whole fucking point. a WHOLE slew of us don't even really know nor understand what kind of primordial soup type situation happens in utero. the developing fetuses body parts are still floating/moving around trying to find their permanent placements WELL into the second trimester and congenital issues/disabilties are far more common than we're made to believe. not just intersex conditions. but they're most definitely correlated.

i just feel like we've lost the plot a little bit.

[alunah-lalunah]

This is the point of contact of the empathy=selfishness paradox:

Help others only when it increases your own joy and power — not out of guilt or duty.

[carpethedamndiemdejavu]

[loads-of-thoughts]

The only generalisation that can be correct is that "No generalisation is ever correct."

Blanket statements can't capture the nuance or work on an individual case-by-case basis, there will always be exceptions to a rule. No two people are the same, and no single statement can fully and accurately describe them both. It's important to notice when we encounter these generalisations, otherwise it's an easy road to prejudice, assumption and dehumanisation of all kinds.

Blanket statements tend to rule the world online. Even when generally correct, they can have major flaws. It's why I use words like 'tend' and 'generally' myself. When you see them, think about what exceptions there may be to a given statement.

Always remember nuance, you will be a kinder, more thoughtful person than anyone who lives in a black-and-white world.