Different things in your mind can care about different sets of things. An important example is your fear being disconnected from your inner state and your long term success. Harmony of these things is how to be free.

("the McDonald's girl" = girl 3. That phrase was the motorycle boy's idea. This story is not related to McDonald's or motorcycles.)

On January 8, 2024, I began to feel the physical attraction whenever I was in the one class we were both in.

On February 29, when I was sitting down and she was walking in front of me and I probably looked at her for a moment, she appeared to pause and make eye contact with me, and I was very shocked. Later in the same class period, when she was sitting in front of me, she appeared to turn back and look at me. I felt like I knew that she had some sort of interest in me, maybe a crush idk. I gradually started to think about how good she was (this was likely affected by a lot of bias) and have a crush on her. The beginning of the crush was between March 2[^1] and March 5[^2].

This is around the time when finding my future wife before graduation if she could be found was slowly becoming almost like a goal, instead of just a hypothetical possibility in the distant future. (Both of these mindsets are worse than the exploration goal.)

On March 2, me and most other seniors went on a field trip to Disneyland. Experiencing scary rides for fun might have influenced my mindset.

In a group chat (not with the McDonald's girl), I sent:

• "Last Thursday in religion class, [the McDonald's girl] looked at me in an interesting way"
• "It seems to reveal interesting feelings"
• "Probably attraction, but could also be a feeling of impending doom" (joke)

I did not ask "Does [the McDonald's girl] have a boyfriend?" I did not reach that level of fearless communication yet. Eventually you will see that asking this would have made a difference.

I considered going to the table with the McDonald's girl during lunch and asking to sit there. On March 6, while feeling uncertain that I would be able to do it and that we we would have the same lunch period, I saw her but gave up and did not sit there. On March 12 (the next day that we had the same lunch period), I cared more about having undelayed success in doing it, and while being completely calm, I did it, and I was welcomed to sit there. Praying for strength in a bathroom stall at the beginning of lunch might have had an effect. I did this 3 times in total. Also, the motorcycle boy (one of the people I previously sat with) told me in a text "they both asked me what I did to make you sit over there. They thought I pushed you away! 🤬"

On March 17, at night, I believed that I would probably ask about her looking at me and confess to her at lunch the next day. The next day, the feeling of certainty faded away, and I did not do it. But in the evening, I sent her the creative writing club project that I was working on, with "I'm trying to impress you" as the message. It took several minutes to have the courage to click the send button.

On March 19, when all students were walking from the church to the school, the motorcyle boy appeared and told me something like "Dullbananaaaaaaaaaas. So the McDonald's girl was telling me... in case you forgot... she wanted me to remind you... in case you forgot... that the McDonald's girl has a boyfriend. I know it hurts!" This meant I was finished with the McDonald's girl. I felt calm at first. Then I started having negative thoughts in less than an hour. The decision of whether or not to sit at her table the next day seemed more scary than it should have. There was a little bit of perceived risk in both choices. Also, I vaguely remember fearing that I would be humiliated a little bit. I thought "maybe I was too ambitious" (this thought is a big no no), but then I had these positive thoughts:

• My mental model, with lasting regret and lack of freedom being a worse danger, is still correct.
• There is light at the end of the tunnel. This suffering is part of the path to an extremely beautiful situation that I'm looking for.
• This is better than the previous situations with other girls. This time I went so far and finished the situation in less than a month. I hit a new PR. (Very important)

I was slowly becoming nauseated. I constantly thought about the situation. That night, I felt so much shame, and multiple times in the same night I had sleep paralysis while seeing static everywhere. In the beginning, the positive thoughts didn't stop the discomfort, but they did prevent me from being owned by the discomfort or doubting myself.

That evening, in the shower, I realized that what I was experiencing was the growth of only one person, and that I could try to have a ripple effect. Later, this led to sharing of wisdom and encouragement, and eventually Project Pansystellar. This stuff might be described in another post.

The next day, at lunch, I did not have the strength to sit at the table with the McDonald's girl or at the table where I sat previously, so I sat far away by myself near a tree and facing a field of grass. In retrospect, this was the right choice. It was therapeutic. I had a huge need for rest.

I developed a mindset of fully allowing and embracing this level of discomfort, just like falling when learning how to walk, or like recovering after intense workout. On the next day (March 21), I changed my senior quote submission from "I accept control over Lemmy's code to sabotage Reddit, not Lemmy" to "Try, mess up, have nauseating embarrasment. Better than no ambition."

Before March 24, I had these thoughts:

• All I did wrong (not morally wrong) was I didn't ask if the girl had a boyfriend (as mentioned earlier), and I didn't recognize the lack of sufficient connection after 2 or 3 times of sitting at her table at lunch. The idea that I messed up more severely was an illusion.
• Reducing one's level of ambition is a poor substitute for tweaking the goal that is thought of. In other words, only change how the ambition is applied. (This turned out to be a important concept, and it's very fundamental to my design approach for the Pansystellar Architecture.) (In this situation, I decided to make my goal include finding a girl that I develop a deep enough connection with easily enough in the beginning. This did not fix everything, as you will see in a future post.)
• Physical attraction, either to or from me, should be mostly ignored. (This one is not very useful, and it's probably false. The underlying problems can be solved differently, partly using things from my other posts.)

Around a month later, I realized that my discomfort and doubt after finding out that the McDonald's girl had a boyfriend was probably mostly an attack from Satan, and that a person like me having the persistence needed for the path to marriage and parenthood is probably scary to Satan because it's a path to things that strongly oppose Satan's vision for society, including these things which all cause increased similarity to Jesus:

• Obsession with the good of someone other than myself
• Positively influencing the world through how I raise my children

Eventually I knew that the motorcycle boy was surprised that I didn't know that the McDonald's girl had a boyfriend.

I quickly began to see this as just a high school memory.

Key ideas:

• Don't treat uncertain information as very likely to be true (in this case, the girl having interest in me that I should act on).
• Someone being interested in you is not necessarily a special and important situation. (Seeing your ability to do something that makes someone feel good is different)
• Other people can overestimate your knowledge about someone.
• An uncomfortable situation is not a forbidden situation.
• Taking a break can be a good choice.
• Think of the past and the future so you can recognize self-improvement and not falsely see your current situation as being disconnected from goodness. To be clear, you shouldn't try too hard to make your specific actions connect with a future goal.
• Emotions don't accerately reveal something about you. Judge your actions and decisions using reason. Be skeptical of negative emotions.
• Modify the mental system that ambition is applied to, instead of reducing the level of ambition. Resting is an exception to this.
• Allow the present to be like a childhood memory.

[^1]: On this day, I said a joke hoping it would impress girl 2 (in the same restaurant near Disneyland in which I wrote this comment).

[^2]: On this day, in the shower, I thought about telling the McDonald's girl that I have a crush on her.

Edit: to clarify, my discomfort was about the situation I perceived myself to be facing, not about the fact that the girl had a boyfriend

I should not have tried to directly resist feelings, but another thing I did which is good is lightly trying to make a tiny positive feeling become huge, which can do things like shifting focus and indirectly resisting exclusive attention. The only thing I can think of at the moment where I should advise resistance is if you feel negatively about someone being with someone else.

Proper use of control over feelings will be in the Pansystellar Architecture for sure.

Edit: also gotta stay away from lust

I recently started a document, now called "what I like". It mostly includes things from observations, imagination, and values. Here's each section, and a small sample of the items for each section:

• Mandatory: wants to have children and raise them Catholic
• Likely necessary traits: can comfort our children, doesn't complain about people in a way that needs to not happen in my relationship
• Love languages: she doesn't rely too much on giving me gifts
• Perceived traits or actions that have made me feel something or have interested me after I noticed them: confident passionate speaking in presentations and debates, shows laughter or excitement in response to something I do or make, often has big smile, silently waving to me, welcoming towards me, staying in pew to pray when others aren't, being curious about me
• Other signs of good match for me in particular (mostly imagination of what complementarity would look like): seeks my thoughts, explains things in my mind that I can't explain, inspires me to pursue something, our humor fits together and we enjoy each other's humor
• Things that should be acted on in a big and complementary way: imagination, curiosity, excellencism
• Things we should be able to enjoy together: creativity
• Miscellaneous

It will probably help with having a more certain and accurately scaled perception. It could resist the confirmation bias caused by the appeal of the idea that my search for someone good enough for me is easy or already finished.

To be clear, this is not the entire process of figuring out what to look for. These lists are mostly unfiltered, except I don't feel like writing about most of my physical attraction mostly because that would be boring. The whole thing should not be used as a checklist, and it should keep on evolving. It is an additional input to intuition.

There's now also separate documents about some people with a few other specific observations. For example, in the one about the girl I've likely been most obsessed with (I was prematurely committed to someone else and/or in denial until it was too late), I included memories of her speaking with perfect confidence and the way she laughed when I said "Pretty Places by _, more like Porta Potties by _" (honestly I included this one so she knows this is about her if she sees this post). I could have avoided regret by quickly paying more attention to my vague feeling about her and trying more to have fun.

My search for my future wife might benefit from also writing about platonic friends.

This kind of activity will likely be part of the Pansystellar Architecture.

I often felt attracted to her from September 2023 to March 2024. I had a crush on her at least 2 times. We sat at the same table in math class from January 24 to March 5.

On February 5, with a simple mindset against regret and a growing repulsion towards postponing brave actions, when she went to her desk, I noticed some strength and ability in me, I quickly took advantage of it, and I successfully said "hi, [girl 2]". In response, she said "hi". Then the perceived difficulty of doing this seemed a little funny to me. Earlier that day, during lunch, I went to confession for the first time in about 9 months, which was a somewhat nervewracking experience that might have given me strength.

I have a note that was last edited on February 13. It's mostly about when I wanted to read a short story I made to the people at my table in math class (just my crush and 3 other girls) but did not do it. Here's some of what I told myself in it (edited a lot):

• I didn't do it because I forgot how good and euphoric it would be for me.
• I did sabotage.
• I did pull out the story, so I'm halfway there. I will do the whole thing next time, including the second half which will be more peaceful than self-induced regret and stolen fun. (I actually did not do it)
• Isolating myself from those people is a bad action with bad consequences for me.
• I should see those people as friends.
• With repulsion, I can become unable to choose sabatoge.

On February 27, I had the idea of saying "[girl 2], I like your hair". I then considered the possibility of this becoming a reality. Considering this possibility required me to be a little crazy because I still had a lot of social anxiety. I decided that I wanted to do it the next day. The next day, I randomly woke up 60-90 minutes earlier than usual (after having a dream where I reunited with my rabbit who was dead in real life, which suggests that I had deep optimism in my mind) and had thoughts that helped me find strength, including but not limited to:

• This is exercise. Discomfort when doing this has the same meaning and acceptability as when weightlifting.
• God intends it. He's suspiciously filling my mind with preparation. (I'm not completely sure about this, but it's very likely)
• I have a history of overestimating regret and not actually feeling much of it after doing something, like the one time I said hi at the wrong moment and felt almost no regret. But I have kinda regretted not doing some things.
• I heard the compliment over and over again in my head, which is the only reason it sometimes sounds weird to me.
• Doing this is ordinary.

I made an effort to remember these things. I successfully did the thing. It probably got rid of at least half of my social anxiety. The girl was silent, then she whispered a bunch of things into another girl's ear. I really noticed the secrecy. She was likely talking about my interactions. I vaguely remember that I might have very faintly heard what I said, but it was almost silent. They laughed. I was a little entertained, not embarrassed. My biggest regret in this situation is not saying something about the whispering for fun.

There's a least one time where during first period, which was mostly just time available for doing things like homwork, I sat and did nothing, with the intention of conserving energy so I can be brave enough to do one of the interactions with this girl later in the day. I don't know how much difference it made. It might have worked through the placebo effect.

The firecracker in this meme reminds me of my interactions with this girl: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/s/0DvRrdJpxQ

Key ideas:

• Be very skeptical of (and hopefully identify) the thing in your head that tells you to wait, and think of waiting as a risky action.
• Be very skeptical of the division between fantasy and what you are capable of in real life.
• Be very skeptical of the feeling that a planned action is weird.
• Try to prevent yourself from forgetting at the last minute why you should not doubt your decision to do something.
• Regret of not doing something is the result of your own choice.
• Do not avoid discomfort. If it happens, it's a signal of growth, not danger.
• Action is usually less risky than lack of action.

x: How unique the thing in me is

y: How uniquely well the thing in the other person fits the thing in me (this is probably more strongly sensed emotionally)

Examples:

• The existence of my attraction to smart girls: x is low, y is how smart
• My sense of humor: x is high, y depends on how well our humor fits together and how much the other person enjoys my humor

If there's nothing with both high x and high y for a person, then you need to continue focusing on exploration if you're looking for a good match (definitely when looking for future spouse, and maybe some cases of being unsatisfied with platonic friends)

Things with low x can be nice to have. It seems like emotion alone is what can be used for figuring out how they should affect decisions, but I would be interested in something better than emotion alone for this if the resulting process is improved for some people. I think emotion can't be completely removed from this.

I'm thinking out loud a lot with this one

To look for complementarity, seek interactions as if they are discoveries of new land. A good goal when there's a group of people (such as the girls at your school) is the "exploration goal": to learn about everyone and discover the highest level of complementarity possible.

If you have the long term goal of finding and dating a person that would be good to marry if that person exists in the group, then focusing on that is much worse in every way than focusing on the exploration goal, especially in complexity.

1. Things about the person that are legitimately unique and special to you
2. Things that affect how much you know or infer about the person, such as how much you interact with or think about the person

Being aware of the second factor could help you try to know more people and reduce the chance of hallucinated differentness or specialness of people.

I did not think about this at all before today.

I started having a crush on her in the 2021-2022 school year. In August 2023, she sat next to me in math class. I began to be interested in the whole person, not just her body. Then my belief that I don't want relationships, marriage, and parenthood slowly went away, for reasons that might be out of scope for this project.

I kept on wanting to say "Hi, [girl 1]" next time she approaches the desk at the beginning of class, but I never did that. Each time she came, I gave up. I vaguely remember having a fear of how people would think of the motive or something like that. I prioritized comfort and others' perception of me too much. This will likely be represented as a heavy filter that I got rid of and is intentionally excluded in the Pansystellar Architecture.

Edit: There's stuff I forgot to mention.

• I felt a lot of regret and frustration after each time I chose to be silent. I felt so distant from happiness. This should be treated the same as any other danger. And it should be the one that's fled from. I have another experience that I would pick over this one despite the other experience being more nauseating and unfamiliar. I will describe that experience later.
• Weeks later, we unexpectedly had to change seats, and the girl was now at a different table. I felt so much regret, and I saw the problem of being slow. The way I see opportunities began to change.

Edit 2: First day she sat next to me was August 14. Seats probably changed on August 29 or 31.

Some of what we need to become one with someone else (todo: make this more broad) is certain things in our minds and souls. All of us are entitled to obtain these things. Not just your mom, or those without social anxiety, or the neurotypical, or those who already know what genuine romantic love is.

Cell phones were not doomed to remain as big as a brick. Humanity was not doomed to never send a person to the moon. You are not doomed to remain broken.

(This was mostly written for narration when I was planning on making a long documentary about the entire story. Now I want to create something short, which means less focus on small details of personal events. I will need to remove most of the details that are not related to the 2 items of the list at the bottom.)

On April 21, 2023, there was a retreat day at school. It counted as a school day, so I attended mostly because I had to. The retreat was about Jesus being a divine healer. I mysteriously had a lot of mental clarity during it.

[Display a basic timeline of the day]

One moment, I was thinking about the possibility of being healed from my addiction and returning to Jesus in many years, like in the year 2030 or something. A few hours later, I was in a state of grace. Let's back up a little bit.

At the end of the retreat, in the cafeteria, we had adoration. I sensed Jesus a lot. I really saw that I was looking at Jesus. There was also a bunch of priests available for confession, and the guy with the acoustic guitar encouraged us to go to confession even if it's been a while, which probably made it seem more like the normal and right decision to me. I knew about the possibility of going to confession at that time. Knowing about that possibility was routine. But this time, I did something different. Without thinking I would actually do it, I took little steps towards it. I used the examination of conscience that was handed out, along with my memory of the list of sins that I made 7 months earlier, to write down what to confess. I knew that confession would be almost pointless if I did not start going to Mass on Sundays, so I was also thinking about the need to tell a parent about that so I could be taken to Mass, which was hard because I had severe social anxiety back then. I became hopeful that I could do that. Now the decision to go to confession gradually formed. I was prepared. The next step was to get out of my seat. Having strength was more important for this moment than for any other moment in my life. It felt like I was glued to my seat, but I did not give up. I was clinging onto something, probably hope. Eventually, I got up, walked to the back, and looked for a priest. After many awkward seconds, one of the Dominican sisters asked me if I needed confession, and I said "yeah." All of the priests were praying, so she got the attention of one of them, and then me and the priest were walking into a room. I was in a very important place. It felt like a different world. My heart was racing, but I did not hesitate. Also, it was the most in persona Christi experience of my life, enough that after I confessed my sins and said "for these sins and the sins I have forgotten", I then said "forgive me" without thinking. The priest was excited about me coming back into the Church, and the only penance I was assigned was to pray for the person I said I had grudges against. The priest saying the words of absolution was very exciting. The repentance actually being done felt very strange. A few days later, I knew that my addiction was gone for good.

These are to be included as 1 or 2 elements of the Pansystellar Architecture:

• "Without thinking I would actually do it, I took little steps towards it."
• "...I did not give up. I was clinging onto something, probably hope."

This is in a very early stage of development and is not designed for people who are in a relationship. I probably need to add more items. This might become a diagram.

• Prohibition of absolutely any commitment (the word "commitment" is not specific enough; maybe "exclusive attention" covers most or all cases)
• Tolerance for anything having a big influence on who I date or marry
• Fear of fear itself (applied broadly)
• Prohibition of text communication with someone who's not responding, even if I don't know the reason or whether or not there's a technical problem (this prohibition is made possible by the prohibition of commitment, the tolerance for anything having influence, and the fear of fear itself)
• Clinging instead of giving up when about to do a planned courageous task (such as saying hi to crush)
• Focus on finding natural complimentarity
• A lightweight filter that greatly reduces risk of creepiness without any measurable sacrifice (it should exclude things like "I think about you every night" and "you're cute"; but not things like "I like your hair")
• No separation between platonic and romantic (todo: make this more specific)
• Interact with girls I feel like interacting with, even if I can't put my finger on anything other than appearance that attracts me or I don't predict that the interaction will give me something other than short term enjoyment

Project Pansystellar is my attempt to harness the intellectual potential of my journey in which I courageously repeanted, destroyed an addiction, built social confidence from almost nothing, and gained understanding of the path towards having a girlfriend. The goal is to share the current mindset and the gained wisdom in a way that allows anyone to replicate it, which involves pursuing an ambitious level of simplicity, concreteness, and accessibility. In other words, Project Pansystellar will be love and freedom for the rest of us. The end result will probably be a video (effort on this began on June 14, 2024).