[Lorric]

who's trying to be funny. if i had read this thread 10 years ago, id have agreed with red and bat as well. but since then ive seen too damn much in about as much time to have any remaining respect for any human life what so ever. burn it, burn it all to the ground, that is your enlightenment, then eternal blackness.

Learn some history Nuke. The human race has come a long, long, LONG way. The stuff that happens today, as bad as it is, is like a walk in the park compared to the past.

You can do all the dying you want, but leave the rest of us out of it.

[Flipside]

It's easy to give up on the world, every day provides a new reason, but I'd rather choose the harder route of hope, despite everything that has happened to me in the last few years. It is those who lose the strength to believe we can do better that contribute to the downward plunge.

To quote Iron Maiden, of all things:

If you're gonna die, die with your boots on,
If you're gonna try, stick around,
It you're gonna cry, just move along.

[Luis Dias]

What a terrible thread in response to such a great article.

I'd say the crux of the matter is summed up nicely at the end though,

But isn't the issue of gaslighting ultimately about whether we are conditioned to believe that women's opinions don't hold as much weight as ours? That what women have to say, what they feel, isn't quite as legitimate?

And the reaction here generally seems to be that of people terrified of losing their superiority and having to deal with a level playing field.

What the hell man. It even seems that you do need to calm the frak down. Apart from Nuke's mysanthropy and some strange disagreements, I'd say that most of the thread shows that people *do* understand the problem very well. What probably irks some people is this notion that only women get the "you're so sensitive" treatment. I have no problems with highlighting this problem as mostly a feminine one. Perhaps they do, perhaps they don't. The only thing that matters is that "gaslighting" is basically summed up as "being a jerk", and if you don't want to be a jerk, you'll be careful not to enter this kind of ****-talking.

It would be great if one could discuss these things without someone saying "either you fully agree with me or I'm just gonna insult your asses".

[redsniper]

Calm down, you're overreacting.

[Rodo]

hehehe, everyone is so worked out about this
nice work syphed

[Nuke]

who's trying to be funny. if i had read this thread 10 years ago, id have agreed with red and bat as well. but since then ive seen too damn much in about as much time to have any remaining respect for any human life what so ever. burn it, burn it all to the ground, that is your enlightenment, then eternal blackness.

Learn some history Nuke. The human race has come a long, long, LONG way. The stuff that happens today, as bad as it is, is like a walk in the park compared to the past.

You can do all the dying you want, but leave the rest of us out of it.

you assume that progress is always positive, always in the forward direction, that it never takes a step or a thousand back. i do not think this is the case. there will be many a dark age ahead just wait and see. i know lots of history, i also know that it likes to repeat itself. so we dont drive poles through people anymore and put them on display, not since at least nam anyway (though not as bad-ass as vlad's work). we might not see many behedings anymore, except when terrorists are killing someone. do i need to point out the holocaust? thats still in living memory. we may have gotten better at filtering out violence and suffering, especially with our eyes glued to screens all day, but that does not mean it does not exist. it just takes the collapse of civilization to throw us back at the mercy of wolves. and history tells is this has happened many times.

[Lorric]

hehehe, everyone is so worked out about this
nice work syphed

The amusing thing to me, is do we even have girls at HLP? I wouldn't have thought there'd be very many of them.

who's trying to be funny. if i had read this thread 10 years ago, id have agreed with red and bat as well. but since then ive seen too damn much in about as much time to have any remaining respect for any human life what so ever. burn it, burn it all to the ground, that is your enlightenment, then eternal blackness.

Learn some history Nuke. The human race has come a long, long, LONG way. The stuff that happens today, as bad as it is, is like a walk in the park compared to the past.

You can do all the dying you want, but leave the rest of us out of it.

you assume that progress is always positive, always in the forward direction, that it never takes a step or a thousand back. i do not think this is the case. there will be many a dark age ahead just wait and see. i know lots of history, i also know that it likes to repeat itself. so we dont drive poles through people anymore and put them on display, not since at least nam anyway (though not as bad-ass as vlad's work). we might not see many behedings anymore, except when terrorists are killing someone. do i need to point out the holocaust? thats still in living memory. we may have gotten better at filtering out violence and suffering, especially with our eyes glued to screens all day, but that does not mean it does not exist. it just takes the collapse of civilization to throw us back at the mercy of wolves. and history tells is this has happened many times.

As for you Nuke, as far as I'm concerened right now is the best time to be alive there's ever been in human history. Although it still depends on your location. If you're in the first World, you're good.

If civilisation crumbles and burns, and I am swept away, so be it. There's nothing I can do about it. But always something else has risen out of it's ashes. Civilisation has conquered anarchy and chaos numerous times throughout history. So you can either be all emo and hope for the World to end in nuclear fire, or you can try and squeeze something out of your time on this planet while you're here. If I find myself dying tomorrow, I will not regret what I did with my time.

[redsniper]

The amusing thing to me, is do we even have girls at HLP? I wouldn't have thought there'd be very many of them.

Never very many and never for very long. Threads like this drive them away.

[NGTM-1R]

Never very many and never for very long. Threads like this drive them away.

I know of at least one that lurks, I live with her, but she'd be as likely to mock your stance on this issue as she would anyone elses'.

[Luis Dias]

If civilisation crumbles and burns, and I am swept away, so be it. There's nothing I can do about it. But always something else has risen out of it's ashes. Civilisation has conquered anarchy and chaos numerous times throughout history.

What Nuke lacks in his mysanthropic vision is the simple fact that the end of civilization is a given. Everything dies out eventually, even if it takes millions, billions of years. There will surely come a time where even the faintest remnants of a "human civilization" will have been swept away. This vision of time could be even darker than what Nuke is allowing himself to think about, but at the same time it is liberating. You have just to think that we live in relatively good times and we should take advantage of them. Life happens in the present, not in the future, where we are all dead anyway.

[Aardwolf]

Unless we manage to last until the heat death of the universe somehow.

[Luis Dias]

There are some theoretical possibilities regarding eternity and heat death that I found quite interesting.

For instance, it is theoretically possible to build a thinking machine (where allegedly all mankind in the future would uplink to) that would symptotically decrease its thermal activity while synchronizing its thought speed with the decrease by slowing down. With the right equation, it was calculated that such a system would survive forever, and would be able to think "eternally". There were also more than one solution to the problem.

[Lorric]

Unless we manage to last until the heat death of the universe somehow.

There is no terror greater to me than this concept. When I really think about it.

[General Battuta]

There are some theoretical possibilities regarding eternity and heat death that I found quite interesting.

For instance, it is theoretically possible to build a thinking machine (where allegedly all mankind in the future would uplink to) that would symptotically decrease its thermal activity while synchronizing its thought speed with the decrease by slowing down. With the right equation, it was calculated that such a system would survive forever, and would be able to think "eternally". There were also more than one solution to the problem.

I, too, have heard of this behemoth. It'd be quite a project, assuming it doesn't run into the (probably unlikely) decay of the proton.

[Nuke]

i know all about entropy. the universe will have its own death throws. but i very much doubt we will remain to see it. like when it no longer becomes possible for protons to exist. and we will be dead and gone long before then.

As for you Nuke, as far as I'm concerened right now is the best time to be alive there's ever been in human history. Although it still depends on your location. If you're in the first World, you're good.

If civilisation crumbles and burns, and I am swept away, so be it. There's nothing I can do about it. But always something else has risen out of it's ashes. Civilisation has conquered anarchy and chaos numerous times throughout history. So you can either be all emo and hope for the World to end in nuclear fire, or you can try and squeeze something out of your time on this planet while you're here. If I find myself dying tomorrow, I will not regret what I did with my time.

the fire will burn. i need not hope for it, i need not even cause it. so long as we submit to our mammalian emotions and reptilian instincts it is almost certain. the first world has always stood on the backs of the third. if we can take pride in that fact, then we deserve to burn first, and first we shall. if civilization has conquered chaos many times over, then the inverse must also be true.

[karajorma]

What probably irks some people is this notion that only women get the "you're so sensitive" treatment.

Hell, I tend to find that taking something that happens to everyone and elevating it to a "Woman's problem" is actually just as patronisingly sexist as the behaviour it's trying to stamp out. Sure it might be well intentioned but the moment you start down the path of "Women, you need to watch out cause men do this" you've taken a retrograde step.

[General Battuta]

What probably irks some people is this notion that only women get the "you're so sensitive" treatment.

Hell, I tend to find that taking something that happens to everyone and elevating it to a "Woman's problem" is actually just as patronisingly sexist as the behaviour it's trying to stamp out. Sure it might be well intentioned but the moment you start down the path of "Women, you need to watch out cause men do this" you've taken a retrograde step.

The consequences of this behavior are not evenly distributed. As far as our empirical investigation right now can ascertain - and bear in mind that like all scientific belief it is subject to updating - women on average get hit harder by a broad spectrum of fairly subtle behaviors, like stereotype threat. This is not a problem linked to any particular defect in women; it's a product of the interaction between cultural information about women and fundamental traits of the human mind. All humans receive cultural instruction to some extent, and cultural instruction contains a lot of bad code along gender lines. Men also suffer, though!

[SypheDMar]

What the hell man. It even seems that you do need to calm the frak down. Apart from Nuke's mysanthropy and some strange disagreements, I'd say that most of the thread shows that people *do* understand the problem very well. What probably irks some people is this notion that only women get the "you're so sensitive" treatment. I have no problems with highlighting this problem as mostly a feminine one. Perhaps they do, perhaps they don't.

I had a different reaction from reading the response to this thread, and redsniper may be reading the same thing too.

I saw it as those who only nitpicked the article for targeting women as saying that there is little/no bias between genders, and it should only be a jerk vs. non-jerk argument. Also, how those that attack the merits of the article seem to think that feminists want to turn society into a matriarchal society or give women special privileges. The dismissal of the article in its entirety seems to say that how society treats women should stay the same because everything is okay except for jerks, which was a bit disappointing for the most part. I believe that ignoring the gender inequality and believing that we have reached a point where genders are fair is ignoring reality and reinforcing the biases within society for both men and women.

However, I think HLP is actually doing better. Comparing now to 2010 (I think that was the year of the incident [I wanna nominate that thread to be Classic'd because it is a great influence in HLP thinking for me and hopefully many others]), we are gradually moving forward. Battuta was a huge inspiration for me and opened my eyes to reality. I made the thread so that I can gauge how much HLP has changed and to see if it can improve further. I think we can.

When creating the thread, I thought about naming it "A Message to Women From a Man: You Are Not 'Irrational'" so that it had a more HLP flair but opted not to.

[karajorma]

Hell, I tend to find that taking something that happens to everyone and elevating it to a "Woman's problem" is actually just as patronisingly sexist as the behaviour it's trying to stamp out. Sure it might be well intentioned but the moment you start down the path of "Women, you need to watch out cause men do this" you've taken a retrograde step.

The consequences of this behavior are not evenly distributed. As far as our empirical investigation right now can ascertain - and bear in mind that like all scientific belief it is subject to updating - women on average get hit harder by a broad spectrum of fairly subtle behaviors, like stereotype threat. This is not a problem linked to any particular defect in women; it's a product of the interaction between cultural information about women and fundamental traits of the human mind. All humans receive cultural instruction to some extent, and cultural instruction contains a lot of bad code along gender lines. Men also suffer, though!

I won't deny that women get hit harder by certain problems but trivialising the problem when it comes to men is bad too.

[Lorric]

What the hell man. It even seems that you do need to calm the frak down. Apart from Nuke's mysanthropy and some strange disagreements, I'd say that most of the thread shows that people *do* understand the problem very well. What probably irks some people is this notion that only women get the "you're so sensitive" treatment. I have no problems with highlighting this problem as mostly a feminine one. Perhaps they do, perhaps they don't.

I had a different reaction from reading the response to this thread, and redsniper may be reading the same thing too.

I saw it as those who only nitpicked the article for targeting women as saying that there is little/no bias between genders, and it should only be a jerk vs. non-jerk argument. Also, how those that attack the merits of the article seem to think that feminists want to turn society into a matriarchal society or give women special privileges. The dismissal of the article in its entirety seems to say that how society treats women should stay the same because everything is okay except for jerks, which was a bit disappointing for the most part. I believe that ignoring the gender inequality and believing that we have reached a point where genders are fair is ignoring reality and reinforcing the biases within society for both men and women.

However, I think HLP is actually doing better. Comparing now to 2010 (I think that was the year of the incident [I wanna nominate that thread to be Classic'd because it is a great influence in HLP thinking for me and hopefully many others]), we are gradually moving forward. Battuta was a huge inspiration for me and opened my eyes to reality. I made the thread so that I can gauge how much HLP has changed and to see if it can improve further. I think we can.

When creating the thread, I thought about naming it "A Message to Women From a Man: You Are Not 'Irrational'" so that it had a more HLP flair but opted not to.

So we have been your guinea pigs, have we?

What is this "incident" anyway?