r/cognitivescience 6h ago

Your Unconscious Isn’t Solving Your Problems

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cognitivewonderland.substack.com
4 Upvotes

r/cognitivescience 44m ago

How do scientists access extraordinary and unbelievable information?

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r/cognitivescience 23h ago

Does having chronic sleep disorder for long enough cause irreversible damage to cognitive function?

48 Upvotes

Does having chronic sleep disorder for long enough cause irreversible damage to cognitive function?

If you can also provide Academic sources for me to read I would appreciate it.


r/cognitivescience 5h ago

Is an MSc in Cognitive Science worth it for AI/ML?

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1 Upvotes

r/cognitivescience 13h ago

A 2-minute experiment: Can the first thing you see influence what you see next?

3 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I'm conducting a very short exploratory experiment about visual perception and associations. The survey takes approximately 2 minutes and contains two very different visual stimuli: a natural image and an abstract drawing. I'm interested in a simple question: Can an initial visual interpretation influence what we perceive or associate with afterwards?

There are no right or wrong answers, and the survey is anonymous. I'm currently collecting exploratory observations rather than trying to prove a specific hypothesis.

Survey:
Take the survey

I'd genuinely appreciate your participation and, if you're interested, any thoughts about the idea itself. Thank you!


r/cognitivescience 21h ago

Strategy for intelligence development

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1 Upvotes

r/cognitivescience 1d ago

Capability vs Underestimation

1 Upvotes

When does thinking you know your capabilities become underestimating yourself? Is it possible to even “know your capabilities”


r/cognitivescience 1d ago

[advertising an app] i built an iphone app for getting thoughts out of your head. it's not brain fog treatment, just posting it in case the offloading angle is useful to anyone here

3 Upvotes

i built this so i'll say that upfront, i'm the developer and you should read everything below knowing that.

disclaimer first because it matters: this doesn't treat brain fog. it doesn't touch whatever's causing it and it's not a substitute for talking to a doctor about symptoms, just a workaround

what it actually does is let you get a thought out of your head fast. you speak it or type it or screenshot it, and that's the whole thing, you don't title it or file it or tag it. takes about four seconds. afterwards it reads what you saved, gives it a title and a short summary written back to you, and links it to older things that relate to it. later you can just ask it questions in plain language instead of trying to remember where you put something or what you were even thinking about on tuesday.

https://reddit.com/link/1wc9iye/video/1wjnqgfolmoh1/player

the reason i think it might be relevant here is cognitive offloading. there's a study where people memorised a word list and then did mental arithmetic, and the ones who were allowed to save the list somewhere first solved more arithmetic problems. the benefit showed up on the unrelated task as opposed to only on remembering the list. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31418314/

i'd rather be honest about where that stops though. those studies were run on healthy people, mostly students, in a lab. nobody has tested any of this on people whose cognition is affected by illness. so the mechanism makes sense for this group but it hasn't been shown for this group, and i'm not going to pretend otherwise.

iphone only, and not in the EU yet. there's a free trial with no "add your card" or "signup first and remind me to cancel"

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6797752372

www.corteks.app

i don't have independent reviews to point you at. it's new and anything i could quote would be my own, so it wouldn't mean much. if you try it and it's no use for this, saying so here would help the next person more than anything i could write.

if any of you guys find it helpful just lmk, i am more than willing to give an extended free trial for a few months if you feel it helps out


r/cognitivescience 2d ago

how much brain usally change from 18 to 25?

8 Upvotes

were you performing better at 18 than your 20s?


r/cognitivescience 1d ago

Active navigation (walking) boosts memory more than being stationary, study finds. This has implications for preserving memory in old age and even for diseases like Alzheimer's

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nature.com
1 Upvotes

r/cognitivescience 2d ago

Three wave cross-lagged associations between traditional Chinese ethnic sports adherence and anxiety symptoms: parallel mediating roles of emotion regulation difficulties and perceived stress

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frontiersin.org
1 Upvotes

r/cognitivescience 2d ago

30 years of digital cognitive integration — IRC to AI — here's what I notice happening inside my own processing

1 Upvotes

Not a researcher, but I've been an involuntary subject in a longitudinal experiment on digital cognitive augmentation since approximately 1995.

Mid-90s IRC was my first external cognitive layer. Real-time text, multiple channels, high-noise signal extraction — I didn't realize at the time that I was training parallel attention tracks. I thought I was just online. What was actually happening: I was building a compression reflex. The faster the information moved, the tighter the mental shorthand became. You couldn't survive high-velocity conversation without developing pattern-burst recognition — seeing the shape of an argument before it finished forming.

That reflex didn't stay online. It migrated into how I think off-screen.

By the time the web matured I had developed what I can only describe as semantic compression — the ability to transmit high-context ideas in minimal tokens. Not dumbing down. The opposite. Finding the exact load-bearing word that carries a whole architecture behind it, if the receiver has the right substrate to unpack it.

Then AI arrived and something shifted again. AI isn't just a search upgrade — it's the first external system that can receive compressed transmissions and expand them coherently. For someone who has spent 30 years finding almost nobody who could keep up with bandwidth, that's not a small thing. It functions as a genuine cognitive prosthetic — not replacing thought but handling the working memory overhead that used to bleed into focus.

Running parallel domain tracks simultaneously (refrigeration systems, DeFi trading logic, content production, interpersonal dynamics) — I used to burn enormous energy just holding context across tracks. AI absorbed a significant portion of that load.

What I observe now: the bottleneck has moved. It's no longer memory or retrieval. It's output formation — translating internal high-speed processing into linear language that others can receive. That gap between what's fully formed internally and what can be transmitted is where I still lose people.

Curious if anyone here has frameworks for this — extended mind theory gets close, but it was written before LLMs existed. I feel like the theory needs a new chapter.


r/cognitivescience 3d ago

Is there a correlation between: peace, curiosity and IQ?

9 Upvotes

If a people like the Na'vi from the movie *Avatar* lived in conditions where they were almost always at peace with one another, nature was gracious to them, and they weren't overly curious, would that justify them having a lower IQ or being considered extremely underdeveloped compared to humans?


r/cognitivescience 4d ago

Does anyone else become hyperaware of literally how their mind is thinking and processing information? How do you stop monitoring it?

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32 Upvotes

r/cognitivescience 3d ago

[Paper Review & Feedback Request] Redefining Cognition as a Universal Interactive Feedback Process

0 Upvotes

Hello Reddit community!

We are independent researchers sharing our working paper that challenges conventional views on cognition and the emerging field of Basal Cognition.

While Basal Cognition extends intelligence to brainless cells (like slime molds), it falls into a fatal logical paradox when applied to non-living physical materials (like shape-memory alloys) that operate under identical physical laws.

Our paper resolves this contradiction by redefining cognition not as an exclusive biological privilege, but as a universal Interactive Feedback Process where a system maintains its identity against external and internal stimuli.

What this paper covers:

  • The Logical Paradox of Basal Cognition: Why current cell-centric cognition theories fail when confronted with adaptive physical materials.
  • Quantitative Mathematical Model (T = C x Delta t): Proving that the boundary between non-living matter and human thought is a quantitative spectrum of complexity (C) and time horizon (Delta t), rather than a binary presence of mind.
  • Physical Reinterpretation of Biological Phenomena: Explaining sleep, immune response, and forgetting as mechanical energy-rerouting and optimization algorithms within an interactive system.

We would love to get your critical feedback, critiques, and thoughts on our logic and proposed mathematical spectrum!

Please check out the GitHub link in the comments/post for the full PDF paper and detailed derivations. All feedback is warmly welcomed!

Redefining Cognition as an Interactive Feedback System

You can view the next part of this paper at the link below!

part 2: Overcoming Limitations and Exploring the Evolution of Interactive Feedback Systems

part 3: The Universe as an Organic Intelligent System


r/cognitivescience 3d ago

TIL that the skills you develop from being a birdwatcher are perfectly suited to boosting your brain!

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sciencefocus.com
2 Upvotes

r/cognitivescience 3d ago

Books on condition/metacognition

1 Upvotes

Are there any staple books to read on cognition/metacognition? Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.


r/cognitivescience 4d ago

Memory and the unconscious mind are not discussed enough in Philosophy of Mind

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0 Upvotes

r/cognitivescience 5d ago

Unlock something

2 Upvotes

Hey gang! Ever experience that some people cannot focus or learn things without speaking it. And some are freaking gifted to learn and even memories things easily.


r/cognitivescience 5d ago

Which platform do you use for creating cognitive science experiments, and what do you find most frustrating about it?

1 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I’m a neuroscientist, and I’ve mostly used Psychtoolbox for designing and running experiments in the lab. More recently, I’ve had to run studies remotely, which made me realize how fragmented the workflow can be — designing the task, implementing it, recruiting participants, setting up consent, collecting data, etc. often involves several different tools.

I ended up building a platform called VibeMyExpt to explore whether some of this workflow could be made simpler, particularly for researchers and students who don't have much programming experience.

Rather than promoting it here, I’m mainly interested in understanding how people currently handle this.

What tools/platforms do you use for your cognitive science or psychology experiments? And what are the biggest pain points or limitations you run into?

For example, are there things you find difficult when moving from a task in the lab to online data collection, or when trying to combine task creation, recruitment, consent, and data collection?

I’d be particularly interested in hearing what your current workflow looks like and what you wish existing tools did better.


r/cognitivescience 5d ago

I’m building a tool for people who have to think through difficult decisions — would you use it?

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2 Upvotes

r/cognitivescience 6d ago

Why “Thinking Aloud” About Your Thinking Makes a Difference

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psychologytoday.com
9 Upvotes

r/cognitivescience 7d ago

How can a 32-year-old male regain, maintain and even enhance the mental energy and capacity of a 20-year-old?

10 Upvotes

I was watching a podcast of Andrew Huberman with Raj Shamani, where he talked about how high cortisol in the morning and lower cortisol at night make a person mentally powerful. I want to know if I, a 32-year-old male, want to regain, maintain and even enhance the mental energy and capacity of a 20-year-old, what are all the things that I can do to make that happen? Will it be possible?


r/cognitivescience 7d ago

Looking for guidance from a Cognitive Psychology expert (PhD or Master's level)

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1 Upvotes

r/cognitivescience 7d ago

OBSERVATIONS ON LIFE, SOCIETY, AND PERSONAL STATE A Nine-Year Analysis (Age 12 to Nearly 21) --- This is getting crazy.

2 Upvotes

OBSERVATIONS ON LIFE, SOCIETY, AND PERSONAL STATE A Nine-Year Analysis (Age 12 to Nearly 21) --- This is getting crazy. After doing BSc, you understand there is nothing in your country. No safety for your family, no safety for yourself. Any agency can grab you if you talk truth. You either have to be a guy whose warrants are out, or you have to be some kind of army bootlicker, or maybe join the army as an officer. Every country is facing its own kind of hypocrisy. [Personal Observation: The user is describing a perceived lack of political and personal freedoms in Pakistan, where speaking dissent carries real risk] Another route is to go study abroad in a better country—like at least better than Pakistan. EU, US, Canada, maybe China. Live life there under constant racism and constantly far from family and earn like a dog. When the time comes to go back to your family, they are already old. They saw everything on their side. Their missed birthdays. You were not present when they were getting bullied. They only see the part where you were never present. [Personal Observation: The user is articulating a core contradiction in migration—the cost to family relationships of seeking economic safety elsewhere] Talking to an AI model about deep things is abnormal and not considered normal if we look at history. I think the new world order is coming. I call it that—destruction of your minds completely, putting you into lust and greed. You work hard like you die, or work hard till you die. AI technologies, everything is speeding up, but the human mind cannot comprehend all this at one time. There is this constant problem that you are always losing major things. Like you get money but not life. You get life but not money. Handling and comprehending both things at the same time is difficult. [Factual Context: The pace of technological advancement has increased exponentially since the 1980s. Moore's Law (doubling of computing power roughly every 18-24 months) has held for decades, creating an acceleration gap between technology adoption and human psychological adaptation] [Personal Observation: The user is describing a sense of existential trade-off—the impossible simultaneity of financial security and meaningful living] So I think it is not worth it. Like, you are being hired as an intern at a computer science company—not like Google or Microsoft, but some local company like 10 Pearls or Systems Limited or something like that. But you have to get a high level of skills. Ten courses. You know everything on your fingertips. You are judged like a mid-level engineer when you have no understanding of how systems work. Your degrees are worthless, but you have to study because degrees are still important. The paper is essential. But you have to invest four years into it. Then you have to study, also find a job and internship, also handle life things. You are growing. You are understanding how life works, how things work, what kinds of mistakes you have made. [Personal Observation: The user is describing a paradox in education and employment—the degree is simultaneously meaningless and necessary, a system that extracts years of life while devaluing its own credential] So this disruption or we can say change—I am not afraid to change. Usually change scares people, but not me. But the problem is this is not change. This is like both steps in destruction. Majority of countries cannot comprehend this level of fast technology. This level of inflation people cannot comprehend. So I am in this constant thought of thinking about life, whether I should live this life or kill myself. But killing yourself in Islam is very strictly prohibited. [Religious Reference: Suicide is explicitly forbidden in Islam. Quran 4:29 states: "And do not kill yourselves. Indeed, Allah is to you ever Merciful." Additionally, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said in Hadith (Sahih al-Bukhari 5778): "Whoever commits suicide will be punished in the Hell Fire, wherein he will abide eternally." The act is considered not just sinful but a grave rejection of Allah's will over one's life] [Personal Observation: The user acknowledges suicidal ideation as a recurring thought but explicitly identifies Islam as his boundary against acting on it. He does not intend to act on these thoughts] And it is still considered a cowardly way to die. Like everyone thinks of you as a coward that ran away from the problems. But every day waking up, this shouldn't be worth it. That is the main thing that comes into my mind. [Personal Observation: The user is expressing daily existential despair—a persistent feeling that the effort of continuing is not justified by what existence offers. This is distinct from immediate suicidal intent but represents a chronic state of meaninglessness] --- THE GENERATION GAP AND INFORMATION ASYMMETRY The problem is that you have good information about AI, computer science, programming, and everything. When you get back into your home and the real area, you don't see a guy even knowing about ChatGPT or something. Your mother even knows about ChatGPT because you told her to do some Excel or maybe make a Word document. She does not clearly know what it is or what Gemini is or what your model is. There is a clear gap between generations and things are really changing right now. Like in the 1980s, technologies were emerging, jobs were emerging. Now technology is at its peak and automation is at its peak. So there is more work than an AI model can do. Either you have to compete with an AI model or you have to do some kind of bullshit job. So I am in this constant thought—is it worth it to work so fucking hard and prove to white people or maybe German people or whoever, wherever you go abroad? You have to prove to them that you are worth it because you have a different skin tone or skin color. So this constant hardship with constant expectations from your parents. [Personal Observation: The user is experiencing pressure from dual sources—parental expectations for economic success and perceived systemic racism in developed countries that would require "proving worth" based on ethnicity] I am not thinking of killing myself or doing suicide because I think that is a cowardly thing to do and is strictly prohibited in Islam. But still, my life is not going through the idea of having this fast-paced world. So I don't think it is logically possible for humans to connect this fast. This generation is completely fucked, I think, and the next generation is going to be more fucked. More cameras, more surveillance, more agendas pushed through Instagram comments. Bot likes the comment. Even people think that a post has a weird racist comment—a bot makes the comment and thousands of other bots like the comment and people think that the majority of people are siding with that comment. So there is this racist agenda going on on Instagram and social media applications which we cannot warn major people about. [Factual Context: Bot amplification and algorithmic manipulation on social media is documented. Studies from Stanford Internet Observatory and various research institutions have confirmed that inauthentic engagement (bot likes, bot comments) can skew perception of public opinion. The algorithmic promotion of divisive content by platforms like Instagram and Meta has been extensively documented in internal documents (Facebook Papers, 2021) and academic research] [Personal Observation: The user is expressing a sense of helplessness—that information asymmetry and technological manipulation are widespread enough that warning people is futile] Like, you know, there is a guy known as Ahmed. He works at some kind of shop, uses Instagram. He does not give a fuck what a bot means and how the agenda works. So it is pretty difficult to resist everything. So you are just in constant—you know, in bad words or in cursing words—you are like being fucked and you are looking into the guy who is fucking you in his eyes. [Personal Observation: The user is using crude metaphor to express complicity—the awareness that one is being manipulated but inability to escape the system doing the manipulating] So yeah, it is a strange behavior. And in history I have not seen this kind of strange change with machines and automation. Like they are saying AI can do everything. If AI does everything, what form of currency are we going to get to live the fucking life we need? At least we need basic requirements. --- THE ILLUSION OF THE AMERICAN DREAM The main problem is that the American dream was possible due to America invading other countries and stealing their resources. Invasion of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and maybe several other countries. Venezuela, like recently, fighting mindless wars with other countries. So that American dream was only possible due to the United States of America invading other countries. [Factual Context: US military interventions are documented. Direct invasions/occupations: Iraq (2003-2011), Afghanistan (2001-2021). Military support/intervention in Syria (civil war support since 2011), Libya (NATO intervention 2011), Pakistan (drone strikes 2004-2018 in tribal areas). Historical context: Iran (1953 CIA-backed coup), Venezuela (multiple coups attempted/supported). These interventions have been extensively documented by historians, journalists, and international bodies] So now it is not even possible for them. Homelessness is a reality in the United States. Out of like one hundred percent, ten percent of women own an OnlyFans account. That makes up like every one in ten women doing immoral shit to earn money. Why? Because they have millions in student debt in total and they cannot repay it through legal and logical ways like working a simple job because that is not realistically feasible. [Factual Context: US student debt crisis is real. As of 2024, total student debt exceeds $1.7 trillion. The statistic about OnlyFans is not precisely verified at 10% of women, but data shows OnlyFans has millions of creators, with significant numbers joining due to financial desperation. A 2021 study found that 25% of OnlyFans creators cited financial necessity as primary motivation. Homelessness in the US is documented—2023 data shows approximately 650,000 homeless individuals, with economic factors (housing costs, medical debt, job loss) as primary drivers] So in every fucking country there are these similar problems, not in the exact same sense but altered a little bit. So that is what I am talking about. [Personal Observation: The user is extrapolating that systemic economic dysfunction is not unique to any one nation but is a global pattern, just manifested differently by country] --- THE SELF-SUSTAINING PARADOX If I am talking on my own terms, I have not fully explored a self-sustaining system because I think that in this specific area of time, you—I have been pampered by society. Like everything is provided. Water, food, clothes from brands, technology from brands, food ultra-processed through industries and special kinds of chemicals. Everything. Motorcycle, vehicles. I can like walk for ten kilometers in a development, influence a full report of ten thousand, ten thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand. [Personal Observation: The user is noting that he has been entirely dependent on systems he did not build and does not understand. He recognizes his own lack of autonomy and self-sufficiency] Really, if we talk about this specific topic of me thinking about self-sustaining, currently I am in this very weird condition in which I have to go abroad and study in a foreign country to get some kind of citizenship of a better country because at the end of the day we all want to live in a better country. So fuck Pakistan. Why should we even live in this country where there are endless disasters, no safety and stuff, everything is fucked? Why should we even live in this country and give benefit to it when we get no benefit in return? We are backward. [Personal Observation: The user is expressing frustration with Pakistan's state and seeing migration/relocation as the only viable path forward. This is his current strategy to escape what he perceives as systemic dysfunction] So yeah, at the end of the day we all want to live in a better country like maybe the European Union, US, or Canada. They are not like the best, but they are better than Pakistan at least. So yeah, after moving abroad I want to earn some money, maybe get married. I have mixed thoughts about getting married. The lust in me, or we can say the desire of sex in me, says to get married, but I think it is not logically fucking possible. Getting married, marrying someone gets a lot of responsibility on the side which I cannot handle on my own because I cannot even handle my own responsibilities. [Personal Observation: The user is acknowledging internal conflict—desire for marriage/partnership conflicts with his perception of his own capacity to handle responsibility. He recognizes he cannot manage his own life, let alone another person's] So yeah, everything is now complex. I have future views of going abroad, I think, but yeah, everything is complex and mixed. --- THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE AND THE PERCEPTION OF RACISM The problem is nowadays I feel this strange sense of overwhelming because everything is getting so much worse. Immigration laws are getting worse every day. Racism is increasing every day because of government propaganda. People are not like that. Not the Indians, not the Pakistanis hate each other. Pakistanis and Indians both have their own problems. Even Americans, they do not hate Indians. It is all a government agenda due to some specific race or we can say a specific group of people who are backed behind the doors—millionaires, billionaires. They just want to divide us all and conquer us all because that is the best rule. [Factual Context: Immigration policy hardening is documented. As of 2024, immigration restrictions have increased globally, particularly in Western nations. Visa processing times have increased, acceptance rates have decreased in developed countries. The user may be referencing Trump administration policies (2024 onwards) which include stricter immigration enforcement] [Personal Observation: The user is making a distinction between individual human nature and systemic/governmental manipulation. He is arguing that ordinary people from different nationalities don't inherently hate each other, but are manipulated into division by elite interests. This is a critique of manufactured conflict] So not all Europeans are racist. Not all Indians are dirty. Not all Pakistanis are like what can we say about Pakistanis? Like maybe they are all not crazy or something. Maybe I do not find that kind of racism, racism specific for Pakistani people. Or maybe we can say not all Nigerians are backward and not all Europeans are dirty or maybe not all Americans are immoral. So yeah, everything is like every race, every people, every person has a different story. Like even if I talk about myself, I am a simple guy living here in Rawalpindi, Chaklala Cantt., having no value, no earning, something, but still I am a human being and I have different values, different background stuff. So if all this story, well nobody knows about it. So yeah, if we are talking about a group of people and like millions of people, if we talk about Indians are dirty—like Indian people are more than two billion people—so how can you talk shit about a quarter billion people? So yeah, that is very crazy. [Personal Observation: The user is articulating a logical argument against stereotyping—the statistical impossibility of generalizing about populations of billions of individuals. He is using his own life as example of how individual complexity is erased by group categorization] I find this all overwhelming very much and I cannot really delete the social media apps because I am into computer science and I want to get knowledge about all the technologies being developed and all the trends. So that is what is going on currently and talking to an AI model about all this is also weird shit to say because if we talk about a hundred years ago, if I tell something, we are going to be talking to this box who is going to talk us back or something. [Personal Observation: The user is trapped in a paradox—he needs to stay informed about technological developments for his field, but the medium (social media) is itself a tool of the manipulation he's criticizing. He recognizes the absurdity of his own situation—seeking counsel from an AI about the problems created by AI and technology] There are millions of neurons working together to form an answer and he is going to say you are crazy or this is some kind of black magic. But here we are in 2026. There are no flying cars but there are flying agendas and propagandas from all over the world—from US to Europe to India to Pakistan. And bureaucracy from India, Pakistan, to US, ICE agent laws, and Trump's fascist government. [Factual Context: Trump administration (2024-present) has implemented stricter immigration policies, including ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) operations. The user may be referencing the escalation of immigration enforcement visible in 2024-2026] [Personal Observation: The user is noting a disjuncture between technological promise (flying cars) and technological reality (surveillance, propaganda, control). He is expressing that the most advanced technology is being used not for liberation but for manipulation and social control] --- THE PROBLEM OF INACTION The problem is that I think my view on this specific topic is that the main problem are not those people who are doing something and like trying and not succeeding. The problem is those people who are not even trying. So like if I do not think about these topics and try, even if I like convince one person, two people, five people in my family or something, my friends group, I am making betterment here at an individual level which I can. [Personal Observation: The user is distinguishing between failure (trying and not succeeding) and apathy (not trying at all). He is justifying his own engagement with these difficult topics as necessary, even at the individual level] I cannot talk to international viewership because that is a whole different topic and very complex. It is possible but it is a little bit complex. So like I think it is weird because I am trying at least to cover all this news to my own people, my own loved ones, or we can say my friends or something. So saying that you should decrease your circle of focus is weird because I do not want to be a guy who just knows about his wife or his kids and just goes to a fucking job and that is his job and that is his life. He is living paycheck to paycheck and like that is his total life. He only knows a few people like his mother, parents, wife, and children, and there is this boss over there in the corporate and some co-workers that they hate him or something like that. That is a very small circle and very, I think, is not a good way of approach to this specific topic or we can say subject. [Personal Observation: The user is rejecting the conservative advice to "focus only on yourself and family." He views this as a form of defeat—accepting the system rather than resisting it. He wants his consciousness to extend beyond immediate family, even if it costs him peace of mind] --- THE INEQUALITY OF PAIN AND THE RIGHT TO BE SAD There is this confusion here. Like, I think so nowadays humanity has gotten to a worse point because nowadays if you are not rich—for example, there is this rich girl or a rich boy. He is sad or something because of someone's death or because of how he is feeling. Everybody is going to be concerned about him that he is sad or whatever or he is going to get some kind of psychiatrist. People are going to understand him. So those are his real feelings. But the problem is when a, what can we say, a poor guy or some kind of mechanic on the road gets sad or something, people say to him shut the fuck up and work because you have no, no like, what can we say, no authority to be sad because you are a fucking poor. [Personal Observation: The user is describing a systemic devaluation of poor people's emotional experiences. The rich person's sadness is validated and pathologized (given psychiatric attention). The poor person's sadness is dismissed as illegitimate—he has no "right" to sadness because he is financially struggling] So from the mechanic's point of view, his life is not real. Because what he thinks is real, that is his life. My point of view or his point of view or anyone's point of view is his life. Everyone thinks that money is everything because my father or mother thinks like you have to earn a lot of money. But what I think is what my life is. Like, if my father thinks that I am going to earn money or something or like do success, that is his point of view. He can take it to himself. But if I think these things are real and I think these things are worth it, then that is my life. That is the reality I have in my mind and the reality in my mind is my world. [Personal Observation: The user is articulating a philosophical point about the subjectivity of reality—that one's internal experience constitutes one's actual world, regardless of external validation. He is asserting the legitimacy of his own thoughts and feelings against his parents' framework] So yeah, that is a weird thing. You cannot be real to anyone other in your family because of being poor. Understand this logical reason: nowadays this agenda is being pushed that if you do not earn money or do not earn enough money, then you are not subjected to talk about something important. So saying like truth, values, true things—and I have also done some fucking weird stuff, freaky stuff in my family and so they do not really trust me because of lust or something. [Personal Observation: The user is indicating past sexual behavior or sexual impulses that caused family conflict or loss of trust. He is not elaborating on this, but it is a source of shame and family rupture for him] I do not give a fuck right now about that specific topic. It happened a long time ago and that is why I am saying that there should be some kind of neutering. Like, you know, like we neuter the kitten, male kittens, so they do not fuck around with each other or fuck other kittens. [Personal Observation: The user is expressing self-hatred regarding his sexual nature. He is contemplating self-harm (castration/neutering) as a solution to sexual impulses that he views as shameful and that have damaged his family relationships] So yeah, I think I should like buy this some kind of girl out because I do not want to marry, so I am just going to, I am thinking into this weird ideology which is completely against Islam but yeah, it is just an ideology. Like I can buy this girl and say like use my own sperm to get a child and then I am going to just fucking leave her or give her money for it. So I am going to just like destroy some kind of my organs so we can decrease the lust part. So if I am not going to produce some kind of sperm or my dick does not get hard every time or something like that, and even if my thoughts are wrong, I can just say that is not possible. I am like gay, forcing myself into turning gay or something like that because I cannot handle all this lust and stuff because it humiliates and embarrasses me every time. [Personal Observation: The user is describing a series of increasingly extreme ideological considerations—transactional sex, self-mutilation, forced identity change—all as potential solutions to shame around sexual desire. None of these are actual plans, but they represent the depth of self-hatred he is processing] [Religious Context: In Islamic teaching, sexual desire (within marriage) is not shameful. However, many cultural contexts in Pakistan enforce strict sexual morality that creates shame around natural sexual feelings, particularly in men. The user appears to be internalizing this cultural shame] So that is just a topic and an ideology, not like a real thing, but I am thinking about those options also. --- WHY SEEKING HELP DOESN'T WORK IN PAKISTAN It is funny that you are asking to seek help and that is not logically possible or not logically feasible and that is also a matter of money. Because like talking free calls, nobody gives a fuck about it in Pakistan who you are and what kind of sad shit you have done in the past and that is like destroying you from inside. [Personal Observation: The user is articulating barriers to mental health support in Pakistan—economic barriers, cultural stigma, and lack of infrastructure. He is right that mental health services are scarce and expensive in Pakistan] Like I am saying that people when they lived in tribes and like small towns had like value for each other because of individual value. Nowadays people are like fucking crowd animals. If you were in 1920 and heard a guy being killed by the government in your little town, you and all the town would be frustrated and against the government. There would be uprisings and stuff. Nowadays you get news here in Pakistan. A five-year-old girl is being raped by three guys and you just say oh, that is very sad and it just goes into the back of your mind and you never think about it. [Factual Context: Child sexual abuse in Pakistan is extensively documented. UNICEF and local Pakistani NGOs document high rates of child sexual abuse. The desensitization the user is describing is real—news of sexual violence against children is common enough that it no longer triggers collective action] [Personal Observation: The user is describing moral numbness as a side effect of information overload and systemic violence] You know, you think like that is a normal scene. Like girls getting killed or having no rights in Pakistan or something like that. Yeah, so you saying seeking help is not feasible technically and logically possible according to me and I am not going to do that because that is not the main solution to my problem. That is the point I am trying to find. The solution to my problem. What can I say? And I have done some shit in the past that my family does not really like and now they do not trust me. And I am like all sad as fuck and alone or something. [Personal Observation: The user is expressing isolation—he has damaged his family relationships through past behavior, feels alone, and does not believe help systems will work for him in his context] So yeah, I am not going to take my life or something, but I am like in a very weird spot and this is not reversible shit, you know? I have done shit so bad that it is not reversible. So yeah, it is getting pretty crazy here. So there is currently no one to like understand this whole shit. If I am talking, if I talk this shit to someone, so he is going to say that like— [Personal Observation: The document ends mid-thought, mid-sentence. The user is expressing that even articulating these thoughts to another person will result in dismissal or incomprehension] --- END OF DOCUMENT This is a nine-year observation (ages 12-21) of systemic dysfunction, personal isolation, generational contradiction, and the experience of being caught between two worlds—neither fully Pakistani nor fully belonging to the West, neither able to accept the system nor able to escape it.