AMA: Ask the Spook

[Spook of the lost]

well for me, I'm compelled to keep my mind active. Always working on something, always studying something, always thinking and pondering something.

however I've always struggled with conversations and such, because I too easily get wrapped up in my head and tend to ignore the rest of the world, keeping that occupied with something else allows me to focus outward more.

combine that with how I perceive the world around me, as problems and solutions, challenges and tasks, and it comes off in a way that seems to make people uncomfortable if they aren't aware of or used to it.

effectively though, what seems to bother people the most is that my natural relaxed state is one where I'm internalizing more and externalizing less, working on several things at once, my mind active and unhindered, emotion having been minimized while I work, I'm calm, receptive, even cracking the occasional joke, especially when someone is genuinely interested in what I'm working on.
but to try to understand that maelstrom is overwhelming and causes most people to become uninterested and avoid me after a while.

I do my best to try to seem normal, approachable, but this is difficult given how I grew up.

Inspired by sherlock holmes I observe everything I can when conducting a conversation, every stance, every expression, the slightest twitch can mean the difference between sarcasm and seriousness, mostly because I never learned to interact other than a basic level in person, I simply wasn't interested in my peers when I could be reading some new fantastic story or reading up on the latest discoveries.

I missed so many opportunities growing up and had I known then what I know now I feel things would have gone much better.

I also do my best to keep grammar down to shorter words and terms because I don't want to come off as arrogant and a know it all when using words that for me help describe something better.

I don't know nearly as much as I want to, and I'm always working to know more but I'm also frustrated because I have to keep so much of it to myself, nobody cares.

it's complicated, and I do my best to hide how much I'm actually thinking when around others, and it takes a lot of work to slow down and try to communicate at a more "normal" level.
this is actually more stressful and I can come across as exhausted, or frustrated at times no matter how much I try to emulate those around me.

I've gotten better than I used to be however, going from cold and quiet to more friendly and outwardly expressive.

I guess it's kind of an inversion of the norm really.

laid back and relaxed is focusing on and working on something, while hard work is trying to interact with and participate in "fun social activities".

it's why gaming works so well for me as far as social situations go (I hang out at the arcade a lot), because I can do both, finding a middle ground where I'm neither cold nor attempting to express the normally suppressed emotions, I can just be me.

it also comes out when I write, play music, sing, I've found ways to do both but it's always a struggle to appear "normal" without losing myself in the process.

[Juneberry]

How do you manage to make such interesting and long responses that intrigue me?

[Spook of the lost]

no clue lol, most of it is diluted down to trying to keep things as simple an explanation as possible.

hey here's a good one that someone will ask eventually.

if I could have a super power what would it be.

easy, I would want the power to manipulate space/time.

with my understanding of things I could do some pretty crazy stuff eventually from folding space to travel like teleportation along the W axis (4th dimension), to altering how my mass effects local space/time for flight, to any number of things, including changing the flow of time by altering the properties of space/time in an area.

it's probably the most powerful superpower outside of immortality.

and the hardest one to create with science while maintaining a small form factor.

[Juneberry]

What would you do if you could fly (like as a superpower, not on a plane)?

[Spook of the lost]

well provided I fly at the right altitudes so as not to have missiles fired at me...

I'd likely use it to perform my hobbies and such better.

it'd be easier to get up on the roof to work on the multi-purpose antenna array and solar panels for example.

or to get soil and flora samples from hard to reach places.

or heck just travel anywhere with my only limits being how long I could fly since I could travel the most direct 3 dimensional route, a straight-ish line (accounting for curvature of the earth of course).

it'd be great but with the way the world is, I'd be severely hampered and to fly in certain zones and altitudes would need some way to communicate with ATC so it's not as liberating as they make it look in the comics lol.

[Juneberry]

Do you often think about the illogical parts of comics and other media you read/watch?

[Spook of the lost]

I honestly try to enjoy the story for what it is, applying real life to fiction doesn't really mix all that well.

that being said, when fiction tries to invoke real life as part of the story I enjoy it a lot.

like hard science fiction, or certain more realistic hero stories, be they in comic, text, video, or even audio drama form.

it's sorta like accepting that in an infinite meta-verse filled with possible multi-verses other realities far different than our own, no matter how absurd, could, and probably do exist.
so those illogical parts are part of the story, and a lot of them are for the benefit of the reader, to make things more interesting.

I have no doubt that in a reality where entities really do control actions on a grand scale, and extremely powerful beings exist, and may even be common place.
such things like good always triumphing over evil, and some sort of counter-balance effect to ensure long term stability could possibly exist.

but that's mostly just theorizing based on expanded multiverse theory, I wouldn't know where to begin to get the truth there.

[Juneberry]

Do you believe in other universes or dimensions?

[JennyorAlice]

Do you ever read anything? If so, what do you normally read?

[Spook of the lost]

@ Juneberry.

yes, absolutely, honestly due to the nature of physics, both theoretical and not, as well as the weirdness of how quantum mechanics works, I'd say that there are likely thousands, quite probably structured in an insanely complex way.

right now I like to think of temporally divergent realities as still part of the same universe, if you consider how layered dimensions are structured it sorta makes sense.
like a layer cake, each layer is a different timeline or possible reality, and if Stephen hawking is right it's easier to move sideways than go backward in time to generate a whole new parallel 4 dimensional reality similar to our own because going back in time causes an energy feedback through a wormhole or other rift making it collapse as it's forming.

beyond that are other universes, some younger, some older. many with completely different rules and starting physics to our own, and some just non starters due to being unable to get that kick start that ours did due to not having that initial imbalance, voids of hot material likely as foreign to us as life evolving on titan would be on earth, probably more so, nothing but positrons, electronics, and neutrons zipping around with too much energy to stick to anything and remain that primordial energy soup that matter coalesces out of once it expand enough to cool down some.

by the way, one other possibility, it is indeed quite probable that a race that's sufficiently advanced could create universes.
in fact it's theorized that we're doing just that occasionally, accidentally, in particle colliders, however the universes split off almost instantly.
a more advanced species or race with a greater understanding could possibly do this intentionally to create universes with desired outcomes.

but that's all theoretical right now.

that sorta goes into my position on "god" in that given things like the Fibonacci sequence acting almost like a signature, and the statistical improbability of what's currently existing, I feel ours may be something like this.
which would make the person or persons that created the universe, just as mortal and able to make mistakes as we are, and not some immortal omniscient thing that controls fate and has a plan.

but that's just my personal opinion, and anyone that advanced might as well be an extremely powerful entity capable of observing large regions of reality at once... who knows?

@ Jennyoralice.

I read tons, it's my primary mode of information consumption because audio and video media is slow compared to my normal rate and I don't get absorbed in it as easily.

fiction wise I Primarily stick to science fiction, usually cyberpunk or space based stories, and occasionally science fantasy.
a really good 4 book series I read recently is the webmage quadriology, it combines fantasy and mythology with a kind of computer coder/hacker mentality, and I found it very interesting.

I don't actually read a lot of non fiction, preferring papers and articles over dedicated texts on a person or place.

I also like manga, comics and things of that nature, usually hero stories, but I also really really enjoy mad scientist focused ones, as rare as they seem sometimes.
I'm also a sucker for romantic comedies.

I read a lot of scientific papers on a variety of subjects, however usually physics, biology, genetics, Astronomy, and medicine are my go to topics.

I highly recommend a paper I read last year on the Gaia Hypothesis, it goes into detail theorizing that life evolved early on and likely helped maintain an early balance, without which our world would be a desolate rock, completely uninhabitable by anything.
in a sense, the earth was ideal for creating life, and life formed, however it was life that kept it that way.

I've also been known to read textbooks on something I'm trying to pick up.

finally there was one time I read an astronomical dictionary from cover to cover... that gave me a huge head start in astronomy and really opened my eyes when watching programs on astronomy as a kid, everything just made a lot more sense once I had a decent understanding of what terms were and how things were thought to work at the time.

In fact I believe that was my first brush with expanding my understanding of things beyond the realm of what was accepted for my age... I think I was 7 or 8? from that point on I began striving to know more and to try to grasp a greater understanding of everything.