• 🩸 The Devil in the Loophole

    A Faustian Origin of Vampires by William Cook ⸻ Faust never wanted power. He never wanted kingdoms, armies, or worship. He wanted something far more dangerous: To stop feeling like a fool. Faust wasn’t a genius. He wasn’t even respected. He was a man who felt small in a room full of learned men, haunted…

  • The Architects of Balance: A Brief History of Apollonian Minds

    William Cook ⸻ Abstract Throughout history, certain individuals have displayed an extraordinary drive to impose order upon chaos—a compulsion toward balance that manifests in art, science, philosophy, and design. This paper explores how that Apollonian impulse has advanced civilization, tracing its presence from antiquity to the modern age. While not the central focus, many of…

  • The Principle of Sustainable Compassion: Balancing Responsibility, Hope, and Investment in a Binocratic System

    Author: William Cook ⸻ Abstract This paper develops the Principle of Sustainable Compassion as a foundational concept within the Binocratic System. It argues that compassion must operate within the limits of sustainability or risk devolving into negligence. The paper unites moral philosophy with systems logic, framing welfare and aid not as perpetual entitlements but as…

  • Precision Is the New Blindness

    The Seduction of Accuracy by William Cook | Mental Root Kit Her words drip like honey, sweet and certain. Her voice is smoother than oil, each syllable a promise of clarity. You approach her like a lover, hungry to taste the perfection she offers. But she is no muse — she is a black widow…

  • Apples and Grass: Why the Simulation Argument Falls Apart

    by William Cook – Mental Root Kit ⸻ 1. The Resource Problem If the universe is a simulation, then somebody — or something — had to build it. But any intelligence capable of designing a cosmos so detailed it fools every observer would also be smart enough not to waste resources on it. A full-scale,…

  • The Radio of Reality: Observation as Selective Tuning in the Temporal Regulator

    William Cook MentalRootKit.net ⸻ Abstract Recent quantum-measurement studies, such as the delayed-choice and quantum-eraser experiments, are often described as evidence that photons “go back in time” to adjust prior behavior after observation.  Taken literally, that view undermines causality and implies that perception can rewrite the past.  This paper proposes an alternative interpretation: observation functions as selective tuning within a…