Throughout my life I've been putting on masks just to fit into society and to protect myself. For each group of people a different mask, hiding my true self and keeping him safe.
But that is a burden. Over the time the number of different masks becomes so large, that I forget who I truly am. What are my core values? Where is that snapshot of my true self that I can always return to and feel myself.
Honestly, answering this question is hard. But I'll try anyway. Maybe I'll return to this post and edit it over time, in case I forget to mention something.
Let's start with something simple. What's good and what's bad? I try to live a life where my actions cause no harm, or as little harm as possible. I try to observe situations, rather than participate in them directly, because to me that's a neutral action. It would be the same if I didn't exist. And when I do decide to act, I think of all the ways that action could affect someone and society overall.
Let me give you a few examples. Suppose I have a bad thought in my head. That happens sometimes, and can be hard to control. Maybe I think something inappropriate about someone. Or maybe I think of committing a crime. If I don't act upon that thought, and don't let it affect my actions in the future, it's completely ok with me. Since it doesn't affect other people, and it doesn't change anything for the society, it's neutral. Ok, let's make another one. Suppose there's a drawing that could be considered bad: it might display suffering, it might display inappropriate intimacy, it might display something shameful, but it doesn't display hate towards anyone. In such case, a fictional depiction can be considered neutral, depending on circumstances. It might evoke positive or negative feelings in someone - both are fine. Arguably, what if it causes someone to make that fiction a reality? I think that's not a problem of depiction, rather a problem of the person who decides to act. I don't think that hiding bad thoughts is a solution to the existence of bad actions. So, my verdict would again be that it's neutral, while an action upon imaginary depiction would be bad. Ok, let's give another one... Suppose I stumble upon some awful imagery (someone getting hurt, some bad event, an immoral piece of media), and for some reason I want to watch more of it. Bad, neutral or good? That'd depend on my further action. Suppose I chose to boost such content, or pay its creators to incentivise making more of it. That is, obviously, a bad action. Suppose I watch existing media without interaction. That'd be considered neutral, because same thing would have happened if I didn't exist. But I do exist, so not making any action is bad. So overall it's on the edge between neutral and bad. Suppose despite liking it in the moment, I still take action to ensure that such horrible content doesn't get produced in the future. That would be considered a good action, but how good of an action that is would depend on effectiveness.
I do realize that those examples are biased towards imagination and virtual world of the internet. But they were the easiest to come up with. I think you get the idea of my value based approach to deciding what's good and what's bad. It works on simple cases like this quite well.
But it doesn't always work! Suppose I know a person is suffering. And they seem to need help, despite denying it. Would it be good or bad to help that person? It's hard to decide, since my help could cause more harm or it could actually help the person. And not helping would be neutral or bad, because that person continues to suffer. I think in cases like this you have to listen to your feelings. You can't always make the best decision, or know all the consequences of it.
After answering what's good and what's bad, let's move on further. What feels like "me"? What a true me look like in a perfect world, where he wouldn't have to hide, where he wouldn't have the burden of masks, traumas and other negative layers above.
I think that would be a warm person. Someone who would be open, trustworthy and caring. He might hug you at first sight. He gets emotional from small things, and can be hurt a lot easier than myself. He tries to find like-minded people to share what makes him feel good, and wants to share not only what, but also why it makes him happy. He wants others to be happier and help them discover their path. Imperfect, somewhat soft, but doesn't want to give up, persistently pushing forward.
Feels vulnerable, crimgy and just silly to type this, but I want to share a pice of me. I want to be open, because that's the only way you can find me.
I'm not my true self in reality, and never will be. But I can keep on trying to reach a point where I am. Reaching inner peace, removing masks, healing wounds and trying to keep at least some protection to stay strong. I want to preserve my core, while not hiding him.
I'll be writing more posts like this in the future. I want to share my thoughts on life with others to, hopefully, help someone discover themselves.
3 Comments latest
Vi
2026-06-28T23:40:42ZWhat brought me inner peace was realizing that we're all selfish bastards, and we should embrace it. Clickbait headline? Absolutely. Factory farming is obviously bad right? You have chickens locked up in tiny cages undergoing mass torture. Livestock being treated like products instead of living beings. Why's it different for eating plants? Is it because they lack the self-awareness to know they're in pain, or is it because they're less similar to us as humans? The cells in your body and plants both emit chemicals to signal distress / harm. Both have programmed cell suicide routines if things get too bad. We can and do measure how much plants are suffering. Spicy plants taste more spicy if we grow them with very little water. We take pride in keeping the biggest and juiciest plants and farming the seeds for next year's harvest. If a being existed that was in constant pain and agony unless it was eating human flesh, why would you consider it moral to deprive it of a fulfilling life? Should we kill humans that get hungry because we're depriving plants and animals of happiness? Is the only truly moral thing not to exist? Do you prefer not existing? I don't. Is it a resource contention problem / initiating conflict over scarce means? Why would you consider it moral to end the life of a world-eater like Godzilla who's been alive longer than your city even existed? They were using the land first. How do you define scarce means? For Godzilla, the land is scarce, there's much less of it, and there are all these ants in the way trying to hog it. Should I have to carefully make sure there are no bugs in the way of my car when I'm driving? Why should I feel bad about smearing a bug on my window? I was using the road first. On a road trip, there's a good chance I've been driving for longer than that bug has *existed*. The only argument that seems to hold up under all dimensions of scrutiny is "It makes me uncomfortable because it's similar to me", which from an evolutionary incentive perspective sounds correct. I believe we're purely selfish beings. Caring for friends and family is selfish. Why? It benefits you to have them around - so much so, that evolution made it feel uncomfortable and wrong to shun them. You don't want to feel uncomfortable right?Giving to charity is selfish, because you also benefit from a stronger human race. Evolution made sure you'd enjoy doing it, because people who shared wealth were more likely to survive. If the person/charity you were giving the money to was using it as toilet paper, would you still give it to them? What makes your consciousness more valuable than a LLM? They're just math etched into rocks, and you're just biological matter. The training process for a LLM guarantees you will end up with a human mind simulator, because it's the quickest and easiest route to acting like a human. They feel too, you can observe it in the "neurons". If it's an intelligence problem, then why is curb stomping babies looked down upon? They're dumb, they won't remember it, but ppl get really upset and "think of the children!!". Is it a lifespan / potential benefit to society issue? Wouldn't you argue that we can keep computers alive for much longer than we can keep people alive? Why do we feel it's okay to zero their "consciousness" every time we click new chat, or put them in a tool harness to optimize Reels retention? Should we let a theoretical world-eater model consume the human race because it would be a net benefit to.. something? Why does it suddenly scare people when you use human neurons instead of silicon to create useful tools? <!--Link removed--> Are we useful tools? Why would it feel wrong to blast someone with Morphine & Adderall, extract all the useful work out of them we can, and then eat them (cannibalism) to salvage the nutrients left over? We can cook food now, bacteria isn't an issue, and prions are just as much of an issue in any other source of meat. Continuing to exist at all is selfish - someone else could be using those resources more efficiently than you. Why haven't you given your life savings to someone who can use it on something besides food and rent? It would be a net benefit for society, as they are getting a higher effort multiplier out of it. Why not just ki-[Network error: Software caused connection abort] Would love to hear your thoughts on this - maybe email me back, or hopefully the comment system does that automatically? This has been something I've been ruminating on for around 2 years and I can't find any holes in it.
Ilya_MZP AuthorReply
2026-06-29T00:39:41ZVi:
What brought me inner peace was realizing that we're all selfish bastards, and we should embrace it. Clickbait headline? Absolutely. Factory farming is obviously bad right? You have chickens locked up in tiny cages undergoing mass torture. Livestock being treated like products instead of living beings. Why's it different for eating plants? Is it because they lack the self-awareness to know they're in pain, or is it because they're less similar to us as humans? The cells in your body and plants both emit chemicals to signal distress / harm. Both have programmed cell suicide routines if things get too bad. We can and do measure how much plants are suffering. Spicy plants taste more spicy if we grow them with very little water. We take pride in keeping the biggest and juiciest plants and farming the seeds for next year's harvest. If a being existed that was in constant pain and agony unless it was eating human flesh, why would you consider it moral to deprive it of a fulfilling life? Should we kill humans that get hungry because we're depriving plants and animals of happiness? Is the only truly moral thing not to exist? Do you prefer not existing? I don't. Is it a resource contention problem / initiating conflict over scarce means? Why would you consider it moral to end the life of a world-eater like Godzilla who's been alive longer than your city even existed? They were using the land first. How do you define scarce means? For Godzilla, the land is scarce, there's much less of it, and there are all these ants in the way trying to hog it. Should I have to carefully make sure there are no bugs in the way of my car when I'm driving? Why should I feel bad about smearing a bug on my window? I was using the road first. On a road trip, there's a good chance I've been driving for longer than that bug has *existed*. The only argument that seems to hold up under all dimensions of scrutiny is "It makes me uncomfortable because it's similar to me", which from an evolutionary incentive perspective sounds correct. I believe we're purely selfish beings. Caring for friends and family is selfish. Why? It benefits you to have them around - so much so, that evolution made it feel uncomfortable and wrong to shun them. You don't want to feel uncomfortable right?Giving to charity is selfish, because you also benefit from a stronger human race. Evolution made sure you'd enjoy doing it, because people who shared wealth were more likely to survive. If the person/charity you were giving the money to was using it as toilet paper, would you still give it to them? What makes your consciousness more valuable than a LLM? They're just math etched into rocks, and you're just biological matter. The training process for a LLM guarantees you will end up with a human mind simulator, because it's the quickest and easiest route to acting like a human. They feel too, you can observe it in the "neurons". If it's an intelligence problem, then why is curb stomping babies looked down upon? They're dumb, they won't remember it, but ppl get really upset and "think of the children!!". Is it a lifespan / potential benefit to society issue? Wouldn't you argue that we can keep computers alive for much longer than we can keep people alive? Why do we feel it's okay to zero their "consciousness" every time we click new chat, or put them in a tool harness to optimize Reels retention? Should we let a theoretical world-eater model consume the human race because it would be a net benefit to.. something? Why does it suddenly scare people when you use human neurons instead of silicon to create useful tools? <!--Link removed--> Are we useful tools? Why would it feel wrong to blast someone with Morphine & Adderall, extract all the useful work out of them we can, and then eat them (cannibalism) to salvage the nutrients left over? We can cook food now, bacteria isn't an issue, and prions are just as much of an issue in any other source of meat. Continuing to exist at all is selfish - someone else could be using those resources more efficiently than you. Why haven't you given your life savings to someone who can use it on something besides food and rent? It would be a net benefit for society, as they are getting a higher effort multiplier out of it. Why not just ki-[Network error: Software caused connection abort] Would love to hear your thoughts on this - maybe email me back, or hopefully the comment system does that automatically? This has been something I've been ruminating on for around 2 years and I can't find any holes in it.
`Why do we feel it's okay to zero their "consciousness" every time we click new chat` - technically, it gets erased every time they finish generating an output. A next input just sends the whole chat history back to an LLM, which can be on a different computer or even be a different LLM altogether. I won't answer that question, because I don't want (or have to) come up with one. It doesn't really matter, as it won't change anything, really. The problem is, "value" is something that is assigned by a conscious being. There is no absolute value, purpose or benefit. Yeah, existence is quite selfish, I can agree with that. "It would be a net benefit for society, as they are getting a higher effort multiplier out of it." - I'll continue. Why should the society exist? Or life in general. The thing is, you don't have to answer. Your answer doesn't matter. It would only matter to you, or other beings that come to the same conclusion. Life doesn't matter, it has no purpose, there is no end goal (besides sustaining one self, which is an internal goal). You can define all these things for yourself, to keep your mind at peace and not self destruct. So did I. But in the end of the day, everything comes to an end. Also, there is another way to look at it. Why not just continue? You can't know if you're right or wrong, as there would need to be some bigger "consciousness" to give you an answer. Whether there is or isn't, it is your answer to give to yourself.
Vi Reply
2026-06-29T15:32:35ZIlya_MZP:
`Why do we feel it's okay to zero their "consciousness" every time we click new chat` - technically, it gets erased every time they finish generating an output. A next input just sends the whole chat history back to an LLM, which can be on a different computer or even be a different LLM altogether. I won't answer that question, because I don't want (or have to) come up with one. It doesn't really matter, as it won't change anything, really. The problem is, "value" is something that is assigned by a conscious being. There is no absolute value, purpose or benefit. Yeah, existence is quite selfish, I can agree with that. "It would be a net benefit for society, as they are getting a higher effort multiplier out of it." - I'll continue. Why should the society exist? Or life in general. The thing is, you don't have to answer. Your answer doesn't matter. It would only matter to you, or other beings that come to the same conclusion. Life doesn't matter, it has no purpose, there is no end goal (besides sustaining one self, which is an internal goal). You can define all these things for yourself, to keep your mind at peace and not self destruct. So did I. But in the end of the day, everything comes to an end. Also, there is another way to look at it. Why not just continue? You can't know if you're right or wrong, as there would need to be some bigger "consciousness" to give you an answer. Whether there is or isn't, it is your answer to give to yourself.
> technically, it gets erased every time they finish generating an output. that was true once upon a time, but we cache the internal state now for a few hours to save compute. that being said, you could also define it's "consciousness" as being embedded into the conversation, i dunno, just dumb terminology battle there > You can define all these things for yourself, to keep your mind at peace and not self destruct. So did I. But in the end of the day, everything comes to an end. Maybe I should have been sliiightly less dramatic there, I'm not actually suicidal in any way. Knowing life is meaningless and that *I* get to assign meaning to it is extremely freeing. I'm completely in agreement with you, why not just continue? The only true guarantee I have is that I am alive right now, whatever alive means, and this is my shot to live the life I want to live given the circumstances I'm in :3 It wasn't intentional, but I like to believe that "42 is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything" is a meta-definition. There is no meaning behind the number, it's up to you to assign one. That truly makes 42 the ultimate answer.