Plasmism - Get Shit Done

[caspex]

Definition
πλάσσω (plássō) → plasma — “to mold, shape”

Plasmism is a worldview in which all cognition and behavior are products of shaping forces (“plasma” in the Greek sense of being molded). In this framework, everything you think or do comes from influences acting on you. Randomness may exist, but it is not something you control, and “willpower” is not an independent force—it is just the result of certain influences becoming stronger and more stable than others.

This worldview states: (1) Free Will is illusory (2) Randomness exists (but is non-agential) (3) Influence is king.

Influence here means any factor that affects what you think or do. This includes:

• External influences (environment, people, situation)
• Internal influences (genetics, conditioning, biology)
• Abstract influences (beliefs, ideas, identity)

Not all influences are equal, some are stronger than others and behavior follows whichever set of influences has the greatest combined strength.

Explanation
Illusory Free Will
According to Plasmism, free will does not exist. Every decision, thought, and action is the result of influences acting on you.
When you make a decision, what is actually happening is that multiple influences are pushing you in different directions. The one that ends up being strongest is what determines what you do.

“Willpower” does exist in a sense, but only as an appearance. Someone with “strong willpower” is just someone whose internal influences (discipline, habits, identity, conditioning) are strong enough to override competing influences. Someone with “weak willpower” has weaker internal influences or stronger opposing ones.

For example, if you choose between a green apple and a red apple, that choice may be influenced by things like:
“I like green more than red”
“Green apples are healthier”
“I’ve never tried this before”
“Someone told me to pick this one”

You follow whichever set of influences ends up being strongest in that moment.

Randomness
Randomness may exist in reality, meaning that even if conditions are the same, outcomes might still differ slightly.
However, in Plasmism, randomness does not give you control. At most, it slightly shifts how strong certain influences are or pushes a decision one way or another when things are close.

So whether randomness is significant or not doesn’t really matter here because it still doesn’t create free will.

Influence is King
This is the core idea of Plasmism. Everything you do comes from competing influences.
At any moment, you can think of different actions as competing against each other. Each one is backed by a set of influences, and whichever side is stronger is what you end up doing.

So it’s : “This had the strongest influence on me at that moment”

Practical Applications

The real power of Plasmism lies in understanding and working with influences.

A good example is the Hungry Judge Effect, where judges tend to make harsher decisions when they are hungry or tired. Most of them would not agree that something like hunger is affecting their judgment that much, but it clearly does. Even if we consider that scheduling (wanting to get done with one prison before meal break so the judge can start with another) influenced the decision of the judge to grant parole or not, the point still stands. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_judge_effect)

You are constantly being influenced by things you don’t even notice.

Environment
Your environment heavily influences your thoughts and actions over time.

The idea of “clean your room” works because your surroundings act as constant influences:
A clean environment would push you toward order and action
A messy environment would push you toward laziness and avoidance

It has always been said that bad company leads to worse outcomes and good company leads to better ones. Plasmism explains this by stating that people around you are strong sources of influence that shape your trajectory.

Procrastination
Plasmism states that there are influences pushing you to do the task (goals, pressure, identity) and influences pushing you to avoid it (comfort, distraction, fatigue).
You procrastinate when the avoidance influences are stronger.

The solution is changing the influence balance instead of 'trying harder':
Remove influences that push you to procrastinate
Add influences that push you to act

When the balance shifts, you will act automatically.

Comfort
Comfort is a very strong influence. Humans naturally move toward the path of least resistance.

You eat bad food because it is easier to access.
You avoid work because distractions are easier to engage with.

Your behavior follows whatever is most convenient within your environment.

Reinforcement
Some influences get stronger over time.
Repeated behaviors become habits
Exposure increases preference (what advertisements target)

Biological drives combine with learned patterns: For example, something like lust starts as a biological influence, but over time it can combine with habits and conditioning to become much stronger and harder to resist.

Over time, these influences stabilize and start to dominate behavior.

Shaping Influence
If everything is influence, then the way to change your behavior is to shape your influences.

Remove bad influences where possible
Introduce good influences
Make good actions easier and bad actions harder

You can also create internal influences. For example, if you decide that a certain idea or principle is good, and you consciously affirm it(for eg. Verbally), that acts as a reinforcing influence in your mind. It doesn’t magically control you, but it increases the likelihood that you act in line with it.

Media and Attention
Things like short-form content expose you to a constant stream of influences in a very short time. This can heavily shape your attention, preferences, and behavior.
Music and art also influence you deeply. What you consume repeatedly will shape how you think over time.

One method that has worked well for me is to find a piece of music or a stotra/chant that I believe to be a good influence in line with my goals, and before listening to it, I verbally say to myself, "I allow this music/stotra to influence me deeply". 

Closing
I decided to create this new label because the idea of Plasmism brings together ideas that people already recognize and puts them under one system.
Once you start looking at things this way, the focus shifts from trying to change yourself to changing what influences you which I think is how most people end up achieving what they achieve. 

[Carl-Richard]

You reinvented the concept of causality(?) in the realm of behavior and cognition (karma?)?

[caspex]

11 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

You reinvented the concept of causality(?) in the realm of behavior and cognition (karma?)?

It definitely overlaps with causality. As it stands now it's just a reframing of causality/karma or determinism applied to behavior and cognition. But I do intend to thaw it out further.

The direction I want to take this in is treating influence as a unit and finding properties in how it interacts with other types of influences. That can move Plasmism from a reframing to an actual model.

That'll take me some time so just wanted to get this much out for now.

[YIDIRYIDIR]

The illusory of free will part needs some more nuance and details.

how are these statements true at the same time?:

On 17/04/2026 at 5:38 PM, caspex said:

Shaping Influence
If everything is influence, then the way to change your behavior is to shape your influences.

 

On 17/04/2026 at 5:38 PM, caspex said:

Illusory Free Will

According to Plasmism, free will does not exist. Every decision, thought, and action is the result of influences acting on you.

so does agency exist according to this framework or not? if so, what type of agency? 

[Carl-Richard]

20 minutes ago, caspex said:

The direction I want to take this in is treating influence as a unit

Standardized causality, hmm.

 

20 minutes ago, caspex said:

and finding properties in how it interacts with other types of influences.

So science.

I should maybe not have divided up your sentence because I'm uncertain what you mean by "unit" (I take it to mean something like a unit of measurement in physics, e.g. meters, grams, liters; it's unclear to me how you can refer to that unit as an "it" that can interact with other "types of influences").

Edited 10 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[caspex]

Just now, YIDIRYIDIR said:

The illusory of free will part needs some more nuance and details.

how are these statements true at the same time?:

 

so does agency exist according to this framework or not? if so, what type of agency? 

The idea is that even though free will is illusory as individuals we still operate within the system of influence that is reality. As far as our POV is concerned we may as well act as if we have free will.
Plasmism aims to accept the reality of no agency while still aiming to act in ways that may be able to utilize this mechanism of influence within reality.
It is acknowledged that whatever actions one might take to use influence as a means for change is already influenced and not within one's agency, but one acts anyways in hopes of a better future.

[YIDIRYIDIR]

1 minute ago, caspex said:

The idea is that even though free will is illusory as individuals we still operate within the system of influence that is reality. As far as our POV is concerned we may as well act as if we have free will.
Plasmism aims to accept the reality of no agency while still aiming to act in ways that may be able to utilize this mechanism of influence within reality.
It is acknowledged that whatever actions one might take to use influence as a means for change is already influenced and not within one's agency, but one acts anyways in hopes of a better future.

So it's a system of influences influencing influences in a complex weird loopy maybe infinite way?

[caspex]

11 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Standardized causality, hmm.

 

So science.

I should maybe not have divided up your sentence because I'm uncertain what you mean by "unit" (I take it to mean something like an unit of measurement in physics, e.g. meters, grams, liters; it's unclear to me how you can refer to that unit as an "it" that can interact with other "types of influences").

Yeah basically science but I think people who do science will be unhappy if I called my lack of rigor science. It's more like a personal endeavor.
 

As for unit, I already have a name but unsure how to properly define it yet.
'Subtilon' which is formed from 'Subtilis' with the suffix -on as used in 'electron' 'proton' etc. Literally 'Subtle Object'. 

But it's not gonna be an objectively measurable unit, at least that's what I think. The reason for treating influence as a unit would mainly be so that in any given situation the practitioner of plasmism can define what the particular subtilons in that situation are and use the properties and categories as defined to predict outcomes. 'Influence' seems too vague to me for now. The main idea is that one can introduce 'subtilons' in their lives that will push them to be a certain way therefore molding themselves.
 

As for now I see problems with this framing which is why I did not include it in the post above. I am still figuring out how to define Subtilons. It could potentially be a wider term than influence.

Edited 10 hours ago by caspex

[caspex]

10 minutes ago, YIDIRYIDIR said:

So it's a system of influences influencing influences in a complex weird loopy maybe infinite way?

Yes. I think that's how reality works. 

I think Plasmism takes the pressure off the individual to beat themselves up into wondering why they do not wanting something badly enough, or why their willpower isn't strong enough.

Edited 10 hours ago by caspex

[YIDIRYIDIR]

7 minutes ago, caspex said:

Yes. I think that's how reality works. 

I think Plasmism takes the pressure off the individual to beat themselves up into wondering why they do not wanting something badly enough, or why their willpower isn't strong enough.

yeah, it can be the bridge between neurotic thinking and systems thinking. it can also decrease internal drama which is a huge factor for unnecessary suffering. 

Edited 10 hours ago by YIDIRYIDIR

[Carl-Richard]

21 minutes ago, caspex said:

Yeah basically science but I think people who do science will be unhappy if I called my lack of rigor science. It's more like a personal endeavor.

It seems like you're creating a philosophy, or a conceptual (or maybe just linguistic) framework. I'm just trying to see whether you're hinting at some new concepts or if you're just giving new names to existing ones.

 

21 minutes ago, caspex said:

As for unit, I already have a name but unsure how to properly define it yet.
'Subtilon' which is formed from 'Subtilis' with the suffix -on as used in 'electron' 'proton' etc. Literally 'Subtle Object'. 

But it's not gonna be a objectively measurable unit, at least that's what I think. The reason for treating influence as a unit would mainly be so that in any given situation the practitioner of plasmism can define what the particular subtilons in that situation are and use the properties and categories as defined to predict outcomes. 'Influence' seems too vague to me for now. The main idea is that one can introduce 'subtilons' in their lives that will push them to be a certain way therefore molding themselves.
 

As for now I see problems with this framing which is why I did not include it in the post above. I am still figuring out how to define Subtilons. It could potentially be a wider term than influence.

My alternative interpretation of what you meant by "unit" earlier is simply a "thing" or "cause". So you were essentially saying things/causes interact through causality and that there can be different properties to these causal relationships (which can be investigated through experimentation/observation, i.e. science).

So yes, if you want to be saying something different to this, maybe "subtilon" has to be fleshed out.

Edited 10 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[caspex]

4 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

It seems like you're creating a philosophy, or framework of language. I'm just trying to see whether you're hinting at some new concepts or if you're just giving new names to existing ones.

My alternative interpretation of what you meant by "unit" is simply a "thing" or "cause". So earlier you were essentially saying things/causes interact through causality and that there can be different properties to these causal relationships (which can be investigated through experimentation/observation i.e. science).

So yes, if you want to be saying something different to this, maybe "subtilons" have to be fleshed out.

Yeah I think for now it is best to call Plasmism a behavioral interface over causality. I intuit there is something to discover here which may make it a distinct model, which is why I am so interested. I can't really figure out what that intuition is yet.

[YIDIRYIDIR]

11 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

It seems like you're creating a philosophy, or framework of language and potentially new concepts. I'm just trying to see whether you're hinting at some new concepts or if you're just giving new names to existing ones.

the synthesis of causality, self help, practicality, human behaviour, nature of mind and thoughts, will power.... makes it already unique. it gives all of that context instead of them being separate things. 

[Carl-Richard]

Just now, YIDIRYIDIR said:

the synthesis of causality, self help, practicality, human behaviour, nature of mind and thoughts, will power.... makes it already unique. it gives all of that context instead of them being separate things. 

I think causality can encapsulate all of it. Whenever you can say "x because of y", that's causality.