Twisted Metal (1995) via Duckstation. Installed using Emudeck.

Playing normal difficulty, abused save states on the first character, Sweet Tooth. But after that stuck to only saving in between levels or level password.

Playing the characters in order from Sweet tooth moving right, on the final rooftops level atm with Crimson Fury.

Game obviously is janky as hell but its deep in terms of learning curve. I’m more familiar with TM2, but always want to play through TM1 at some point.

Also watching the cut FMV endings on youtube after beating each character. They’re delightful.

For the compatibilists

The problem is, maybe you are right that Sapolsky hasn’t looked into them but I’ve looked into them and their definition of free will is not meaningfully different from a theoretical conscious yet programmed robot’s “will”.

It also shouldn’t disagree arguably with the more important issues of justice and meritocracy. Its just shifting the definition of ‘free will’ to just be ‘autonomy’.

If those are the same thing, sure whatever that definition of “free will” is true but then robots also have free will, and we treat a programmed autonomous robot very differently compared to a human.

For the libertarians

They’re religious and I don’t engage in religion, spirituality, supernaturalism, or theology. Absolute waste of time.

The problem with Sapolsky is that he doesn’t engage with the mountains of literature that have already been written about this exact subject

Read what some of the most famous minds throughout history have to say about it before enacting upon your theory with practice that may be harmful to yourself or the people around you.

Maybe Sapolsky knew they were wastes of time and skipped them. You don’t have to read the bible to know christianity is a waste of time. I don’t need to read libertarian ideology to know the same about their ideas.

instead supplements his own definition of free will that no one is utilizing, so ultimately he is engaging with a strawman.

Free will hasn’t been meaningfully defined to differentiate itself from “Autonomy” by compatibilists. Their definition as a result is worthless. Libertarians basically believe in magic.

If anything, he’s offering a steelman.

Whatever your core beliefs are, having them be inflexible when challenged with new information or perspective is not rational.

My “core beliefs” are basically my axioms. And axioms are more like ideological goals or ways of thinking. Changing those certainly can happen, it used to be the case for me that my moral axioms placed “truth” above basically everything but now its below harm reduction for instance.

If someone’s core belief is more of a specific “factual statement”, then sure. One should be willing to change one’s beliefs with new evidence. And really it shouldn’t even be a core belief in the first place.

yes but [Empiricism’s] obviously limited by the subjectivity of the observer. Have you ever read any Hegel? If we utilized empirical thought alone then we wouldn’t be able to process any abstract thought. Empiricism is what I was talking about with the phenomenon that is observable and repeatable. If your claim is that “shared truth” is theory that can be put forward through the scientific method… Okay, but that invalidates a vast sum of what it means to be human, including most rational and abstract thought. Arguments against empiricism are famously as old as Socrates.

What I believe is true: 1) I engage with empiricism or scientific consensus. 2) If something is outside of empiricism or scientific consensus I fall to Occam’s Razor. 3) If something can’t be engaged with either of those things, I simply assume I cannot know right now and have to wait for empiricism or scientific consensus and that it isn’t worth fabricating a comforting fairy tale to explain it.

The “abstract thinking” all happens essentially at 0) My way of figuring out what is true stems from rationality and rational thinking structures. Abstract thinking never follows the other steps.

Healthy for you my dude… Learning how to manage scenarios like we discussed in a healthy way is all about self improvement. I don’t imagine you like feeling depressed or feeling like you are in pain when you see a particular person who didn’t wrong you.

Given that its earnest, I appreciate the concern. That said, if I hadn’t avoided them I’m pretty sure I would have unironically risked suicidal ideation. There wasn’t a safe way for me to engage at the time but to minimize. The only reason I’m able to talk about it now is that it was a long time ago and I’m kind of dead inside anyway at this point.

There have been people I’ve seen that I also felt similar to, but they’ve not been people I had to regularly see.

From the sounds of it then this isn’t a male problem, but a class problem… My point is that painting it as a male problem as most like to do, can lead to a misdirection this anger towards parties whom do not deserve it, namely women and leftist in general. We’ve seen a massive rise in mysoginy and young men being attracted to the alt right because of this misdirection of blame.

It can be both. Its in fact many things, religious and cultural norms play a major role as well.

Again, women also like sex and are restricted from it for the same reasons.

Absolutely, but they simply aren’t at the same rates and getting consent for sex from a heterosexual/bisexual man is rarely a problem for the average heterosexual/bisexual woman.

I would say actively avoiding someone is doing something.

Its doing something, but its not “Doing something to her.” Its more like doing something to myself.

Which we are doing. Adding in personal perspective is important to determine how a person feels and acts within a society, which is why you added your anecdotal experience in the first place. I think it’s a bit of a double standard to then expect not to address your anecdotes.

OK, let me break this down because there needs to be fewer people who do this.

I added my anecdote for context as supporting contribution to my argument to demonstrate an idea or probable reality. I wasn’t interested in actively changing the subject to me personally as the focus. Especially since that can often just result in discussing my character instead of engaging with the main argument, which is basically what you did.

If you wanted to attack the relevance/factuality/meaningfulness of the anecdote itself that is fair game. However, you then took your chance to decide largely to attack my character. This was ultimately me being good faith and willing to open up for the sake of a more meaningful discussion and you turned it into a dunk and a personal criticism.

This did not hurt my feelings but it annoyed me because its escaping from my actual points and meant suddenly I needed to defend my character, something I really don’t even care that much about on here as this is specifically the account I use to misanthropically complain about the state of the world during slow times at work. In order to maintain the legitimacy of my argument I ended up having to waste time defending myself. It just bogged down the conversation.

I do think you have some pretty flawed beliefs when it comes to your philosophical perspective and would be interested what exactly influenced them.

The first time I came to the conclusion that there is no free will was when I was neutrally discussing it on the internet and someone asked “What is your will free from?” I was already leaning against it at that point but wasn’t sure. That framing immediately cemented my belief.

There is also Robert Sapolsky. Who has recently been promoting what is essentially the exact same belief I’ve had for about 5-6 years now. He’s a much smarter person than I and maybe could explain my perspective better.

Mental health professionals aren’t supposed to help you lie to yourself, they are supposed to help you understand your own perspective and help you come up with ways to navigate the world in a healthy way.

Healthy for me? Or healthy for society? Healthy by the metrics of me enjoying my best possible life or healthy by the metric of expected normal human behavior?

What one person defines as healthy is not always the same as another.

The generalization he was speaking about were about claiming the male loneliness epidemic was just about trying to get laid.

Well, its not only about that. That’s a major component but there are other issues.

That said the framing of it as “only” sex seems to belittle the importance of having sex as a form of existential fulfillment. I’m someone who thinks we all should have more of it with more people. Which the reason I engage in one night stands.

A bit of a tangent but I also identify as polyamorous. Though still looking for a polycule with some deeper relationships, I don’t live in a particularly progressive area though so I don’t expect to get one unless I can escape this conservative rural hell hole I currently live in. I almost got a girlfriend here a little while back but she insisted on monogamy so we ended up just as friends. Though admittedly possibly a strained friendship, since she seems annoyed that I insisted on polyamory years ago.

there is no such thing as “truth of reality”.

This is a fundamental disagreement I think. Do you not believe in empiricism?

If men are being fucked over to more significant degree than who is doing it? Pretty much every social structure is dominated by men. So are we claiming that men are responsible for fucking over men?

Anyone with power to effect the way society is structured. So yes this would include men. But generally the men complaining aren’t powerful men with the needed influence over society and culture to fix the problem on their own.

By specifying it as male loneliness, you are alluding to a problem needing to be solved. When people look for the source of the problem and suggest it may be men, people yell victim blaming. So who does that leave?

Then why dictate it [lack of sex] as a “male loneliness” problem?

Because generally if you ask men if they’d like some sex with someone that they’re even only slightly attracted to, they are pretty likely say yes. I know because I’m bi. Guys are extremely easy (at least bi and gay ones), even the hot ones.

Most average individual men are very willing to “solve” the problem but whether they can solve it is largely dictated by gatekeepers. And those gatekeepers aren’t always women deciding to forego sex with them on a broad scale. Sometimes its just societal rules and expectations. Sometimes its law restricting sex work. Sometimes its cultural influence (religion, fictional media, social media) and capitalist enterprise: Like dating apps which are specifically engineered to keep paying customers romantically and sexually unsatisfied so they’ll keep using the app. Its also the dynamics of the economy but that’s a whole other can of worms.

Sounds like you could use that excuse anytime an action you do hurts someone?

Maybe if you interpret it in a very specific way. If I did or said something to her that was specifically rude or harmful that isn’t really “excusable” obviously.

But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about me taking active steps to minimize our interaction. I do not owe other people my time or energy outside of previous agreements.

You can’t exactly talk to society…

But we can talk about society.

This tends to happen for me under specific circumstances. Like if its work related, or its a new social environment with people I don’t know as well, or it involves social activities that require live performance from me of some kind.

I use LLMs in a way that reduces social anxiety from my autism, I give it details of a strange social interaction that I could not parse on my own and ask if I should worry about it, or if I should make any kind of amends or inquiries, or if I’m over thinking something and leave it alone.

I use LLMs to bounce my own ideas off of that I’m not comfortable bouncing off someone I know IRL.

I use LLM’s to role play. (all kinds)

I use LLM’s to find things that I can’t find via conventional research methods.

And you know what, my perspective on using it for “productive/generative” usage is nuanced. I get why artists and writers are upset, however there is nothing magical about human’s and their artistic abilities and in terms of material economic impacts automation of various kinds has screwed working people in the past and generally I’ve seen a lot less push back.

I do think that generated images and writing is pretty bland and near worthless though without a ton of human done work atm anyway. Like, sure I could generate a video of a cat dancing on a moving bus while a nuclear bomb is going off in the background or whatever wacky shit with a simple prompt but what exactly am I even going to do with that?

Highly directed AI content that includes a lot of human work tends to actually be pretty amazing IMO.

And even though all the outrage pertains to intellectual work, this technology is going to likely result in a lot of blue collar work being automated via “embodied” neural network AI’s. In fact, it may be that it was needed for this kind of automation to really take off at all. Its not just white collar work. We aren’t just automating slop content and corporate purposed art. The day is coming when stuff like laundry, factory/warehouse work, and kitchen work, etc. is also all being done by robots.

Generative AI uses the same technology. It learns when trained on a large data set.

This seems like a questionably designed study… No shit eating only lasagna (I mean c’mon) and breakfast bars is going to be ineffective at losing weight compared to only spaghetti bolognese, oats soaked in milk, and yoghurt.

More people should watch this:

The Secret War To Censor The Internet

The CC companies have religious morons contained within their executives but they’re mainly being puppeted by outside religious evangelical organizations with a long history of wanting to destroy all sex work or erotica art.

Lol, that’s a bit of a pedantic tool to evaluate of determinism. However in simple terms free of the concept of predetermination.

“predeterminism” is as you acknowledge a concept and that’s not what the question is asking. What is your will free from that has a real effect on what your decisions actually end up being? Are your decisions somehow made outside of the dictation of physics?

I don’t have the ability to choose between different courses of actions, or have the agency to control my own actions to fulfill a personal sense of morality?

Your brain is dictated by physical reality. Your sense of control is an illusion. This doesn’t mean we should curl up in a ball and wait to die. The future is unknown to us, trying to make it a better future is a natural goal to seek.

However, “no free will” also means that “punishment” and “reward” are both fundamentally amoral tools to achieve ends and not intrinsically justified. Meritocracy has no intrinsic moral value.

An example of what I mean here: If there was a method of rendering a serial killer harmless without causing them any pain or death that would be the more moral decision than punishing them for killing people.

Your point has shifted goal post so hard that it has nothing to do with the original prompt. We are now in the territory of you not believing in people being held responsible for their own actions… You already dropped the entire original argument. Which was based on the post claiming it’s not about sex. You’ve already admitted nits mostly about sex.

The comment you were responding to was talking about how they thought Lemmy hated them because of the generalities contained within OP’s screenshot post and I responded to that. I have never established that whether the loneliness epidemic among men was “about getting laid”. I would say its not exclusively about that, but that sex is a major component, as well as any physical intimacy in general.

We’ve branched out our conversation and in ways that largely was more dependent on what you and I have and have not refuted/argued with each other. This is a meandering conversation at this point but at the very least we are moving close to core philosophical disagreements. That’s fine by me because its at least meaningfully possible for some kind of ideological reconciliation as far as I can tell. But maybe not, maybe our perspectives are fundamentally at odds and we may run into a brick wall.

I mean… Maybe your fundamental beliefs are not condusive to maintaining your mental health. I would highly suggest you choose to talk to a mental health professional about it, which is statistically proven to help.

Lying to myself for the sake of my own mental health is both something I pragmatically and ideologically reject. Truth of reality is maybe not a core axiom of mine but its pretty damn close and might as well be one. But also I just think “changing my beliefs” (lying to myself) is unsustainable anyway and wouldn’t work or if it did would result in potentially more catastrophic results long term.

Your beliefs seem to have painted your mental health into a corner with no room for improvement. At some point everyone needs to take some level of personal responsibility in their lives, and sometimes that personal responsibility comes in the form of accepting you have negative attributes that you need to address in a healthy way.

I need to clarify something: My life is not good but I do try to make it better. Again, I don’t think a lack of free will means I shouldn’t try to make things better. I just don’t ascribe my “trying” as some sort of magical will essence outside of physical reality. The end resulting actions I take are the result of neurons in my brain firing a certain way.

Furthering my point: Human beings do have some level of autonomy, but so do robots (literally “automatons”). Human’s have agency (the ability for their actions to effect the world outside of them) but again, so do robots. But robots do not have free will either right?

You don’t have to delete emotions, you process them. Evaluate why you are actually feeling that way, and if that is a reasonable way to to feel in the given circumstances. Why were you upset? Does it make sense to feel upset just because someone is attractive, does that happen to you every time you see someone attractive? Once you figure out the reason you are feeling those emotions they are easier to manage and control. Emotions don’t just happen to you, they are how you respond to stimuli, meaning you have control over them.

I did understand them. Like I said, I ruminated. I thought about them probably more than necessary.

Both my wife and I are autistic, it’s not a valid reason to shirk personal responsibility.

I never said that it was. My perspective on responsibility stems more from a core belief that free will doesn’t exist.

In fact, unfortunately it means you have more responsibility to evaluate your own emotions and behavior to make sure you don’t hurt people’s feelings. It’s a lot of work, but it is completely manageable. As an older autistic person I can basically guarantee your coworker noticed your behavior.

I already try to do that. If she knew and that upset her, then that’s unfortunate but I did not owe her anything beyond professionalism and politeness. And you know what, she never made it clear that I had bothered her by my avoidance. I’m pretty sure she just figured I was busy.

I’m guessing it’s a reflexive avoidance behaviour you utilize to most criticism you experience.

If I was avoiding critique, we’d be not having this conversation. TBH, I find talking about me, maybe not boring, but besides the point.

Fucked by who? It seems the major impediment isn’t something society can really change for you. Pulling yourself up by the boot straps is an analogy meant to represent something impossible, no one is asking you to do that. I just recommend learning to get back on your feet after being knocked down for whatever reason.

I was talking about “men” in general. Not myself. Men are fucked by the current state of things when it comes to loneliness and intimacy, I don’t assign meaningful blame to any one individual or group and blame isn’t needed, solutions are. Hell, I think women aren’t really benefiting either.

Your focus on me is misguided. My love life atm is possibly worse than average, but its definitely better than the men complaining for their own sake given that I have sex here and there. At least one night stands. Not gotten a more stable relationship in a very long time though.

My arguments have to do with the overall amount of sex that’s being had. And its significantly less across the board at a society wide level (well in many countries). I think that’s bad and should be fixed. Sex is fun, we should all have more of it.

So is it okay to hurt people if the damage is not permanent?

If she was hurt, she was hurt by her own emotions. I can’t control how other people react to my decisions.

I work in healthcare, specifically with a lot of patients who have physical and mental disabilities.

That explains your focus on me as an individual I suppose. You are used to thinking that way.

Just letting you know I’m leaving work from home now meaning I wont have access to this account. If you respond I’ll respond Monday morning.

Despite the seeming hostility and intense disagreement here I don’t hold anything against you. I look forward to reading what you have to say. I genuinely enjoy the discourse.

Man I got a lot of them.

1. Free will isn’t real.
2. I’m kind of OK with AI replacing our jobs under capitalism, even if things get bumpy because I think because its unsustainable for various reasons and it’ll eventually cause economic collapse and we might live in a better society afterward.
3. Nuanced “soft” Anti-natalism
4. Currency is fine. The left was wrong about Crypto.
5. He might not always be right but Vaush is funny and its OK to watch his streams.
6. We should all fuck each other more and monogamy is retarded.
7. Oh also its OK to call things and people “retarded”
8. Virtue doesn’t matter only consequences.
9. Bisexuality is secretly more common than hetero & homosexuality.
10. Religion and spirituality should be illegal.
11. Autistic people should rule the world.
12. That Trump won a second time reflects a fundamentally disgusting moral weakness in most of humanity that I will never emotionally recover from.
13. Linux is good but most of Linux users ideology about GUI is awful.

If you are trying to string me along/troll me, you are doing a good job.

And if free will does not exist does your opinion on the matter have any effect on the predetermined outcome? Most forms of determinism believe that people’s happiness and well being are predetermined and our opinions about their feelings has no effect on how they feel. I’m wondering if you actually understand the philosophical concept of determinism?

Do you think people who don’t believe in free will shouldn’t express their ideas or beliefs in order to be consistent with a lack of belief in free will?

Pure determinism isn’t my stated belief. I said I don’t believe in free will. You are adding to what I said again, pulling stuff out of thin air.

Here is the core question I have to ask you, given that you seem to believe in free will: What exactly is our will free from?

Random chance doesn’t mean free will either. I don’t believe in some meta-physical super natural aspect of our will either but even if there was, that still wouldn’t mean we have free will either.

Pre-determination isn’t the issue: its the nature of choice and how its a completely meaningless illusion. The main impact on morality it would have is in terms of justice and how society functions, but also it essentially means on a interpersonal level that you forgive yourself and others because no one chooses to be born. No one chooses to be who they are, we don’t choose our parents, our bodies, our brains. We are shunted into existence and expected to perform life and to take responsibility for it, even when we never choose it to begin with.

It’s an alternative explanation detailing why there are less women on dating apps.

Do you actually think that’s the reason? I’m pretty sure its because men have to try a lot harder. Meaning if they want to maximize their chances they need to go on dating apps even when they know they’re financially predatory and awful.

So sex… Just like the original post claimed. This is about sex.

Its not only that, but that’s a major component. Yeah.

You seem to lack healthy coping skills when you don’t get what you feel you’re entitled too. You seem to reaching out for someone or something to blame for this lack of coping skills.

I never said that I thought I was entitled to that woman. If I thought I was entitled to her I would have kept asking her out or insisting on her dating me.

You also seem to adopt an attitude of morose self deprecation as a defense against any form of criticism. Attempting to redirect the criticism by utilizing guilt as a redirection, aka the pity fallacy or sometime pityfishing.

Here is the thing: I fundamentally disagree with criticism of individuals this way. I think things need to be solved systematically or technologically. Not with psychoanalysis or “pulling ourselves by our boot straps” or whatever. So yeah, when you argue with me and you decide to angle it based on me individually and my individual faults and personal defects and I’m just a bad person, I just fundamentally disagree on the very basis of your engagement with the topic.

I don’t need your pity to know I’m right or wrong about something. I want you to argue against my points. I want you to challenge my ideas. I’m not particularly interested in talking about me other than as example/anecdote for my own arguments (which is why I brought up the personal example). If I have “unhealthy opinions” I want to know specifically what they are and then I can either realize I’m objectively wrong or I can retort with some argument. I don’t care if call me a bad person is my point. You clearly don’t share my moral ideology anyway why would I?

That said, I am an open book: I personally am indeed incredibly depressed (which relates to the self depreciation) but not because of lack of sex. I mean I was depressed in the past because of that when I was still figuring things out maybe but now its because Trump won a second time and that’s kind of permeated and filtered how I see people in general. And I mean, also my life sucks and I legitimately resent having been born but none of that is relevant to the current topic of male loneliness in of itself.

You know you chose to avoid them… You have no idea if they knew or not, I don’t imagine reading social cue is probably a specialty of yours.

I mean, sure. I couldn’t know for certain. I tried my best to just function at work when I needed to with her. This is an important question: What else could I have materially done? Its not like I could just delete the emotions and just pretend I was fine to chit chat with her at the water cooler or something. If anything I was doing her a favor.

And true, being autistic tends to make me pretty weak at reading people probably on average but I’m probably a bit better than the average autistic person. I’m a very extroverted autistic person. Despite the nihilism and politically induced misanthropy.

You don’t sense that might be problematic? Avoidance is not a healthy coping skill. Avoiding emotions is pretty different than confronting them.

Healthy in what way? For me? I don’t think purposefully exposing myself to someone who rejected me who I badly wanted to be with romantically would have been good for me and my heavily obsessive and ruminating autistic brain.

Avoidance was a lesser evil. I have experience enough to know that.

Neither is being in pain because someone is attractive. There are attractive people everywhere, are you in constant crippling emotional pain? Or did that pain really come from being denied something you secretly feel you are entitled to?

There is not that many people that I am that intensely attracted to everywhere no. There is a difference between very attractive and “I want to die when I see them” level of physical attraction.

That said, its frequent enough that I’ve fallen into a few emotional holes through life, yes. Sometimes its not been avoidable. There are a few stories.

Empathy doesn’t equate to pity. Again you are pityfishing.

I’m not pityfishing what do I even have to gain from your pity? We will never ever meet. I don’t care about your opinion of me. I am not important. Neither are you. I care that I am correct that men are fucked by romantic loneliness right now and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps is not a viable solution.

By bringing up our relatively happiness what I was doing was making a point: She is almost certainly fine. She is not a baby. She is an adult woman who had her own life going on. Me keeping things strictly bare minimum and professional was perfectly reasonable. And if it did hurt her feelings, I’m sorry I guess? What do you want from me?

I don’t really think I do, it would negatively effect my work. Plus, even if I did, there’s a matter of scale. I’m not running away or avoiding people based on their looks.

Are you a psychologist or something?

If you don’t believe in free will then what is the point of disputing or chastising any claim? Why would consequences even matter if they are already pre-determined by circumstance or a higher power?

Because suffering, pleasure, and conscious beings are at stake? I’m confused about what you think of the moral implications of not believing in free will actually is. It sounds like you place all meaning on choice/will or something. I don’t do that. I care about people’s happiness and well being, not their will (at least not intrinsically).

Maybe that’s because women are better at communication and thus are more likely not seek emotional support from friends instead of seeking codependency with a partner.

“better at” is this some sort of team sports competition? Yeah, some groups of people are better at certain things. Is there a reason you hang on that point in particular? I hear this point a lot and I don’t know if when I hear it they’re saying it as some kind of dunk on men or they’re making some kind of constructive contribution/suggestion without explicitly saying it. So you’ll need to clarify.

What is the actual difference between romantic loneliness and loneliness…kinda just sounds like you’re defining it as sex plus codependency.

I mean, when it comes to sex and relation with romance, its about physical touch, associating physical release with another human being, another person’s pleasure becoming your own. etc.

“Codependency”? If you are entirely cynical perhaps. The term is interdependence. When you romantically bond with someone deeply, you generally become deeply dependent on them and they become dependent on you. And yeah, sex is going to bond you way way stronger to a person.

Eh… Based on our previous conversation you appear to be harboring some unhealthy opinions.

You’ll need to be a little more specific. I already know I’m mentally unwell.

It’s not just embarrassing… It’s admitting to immaturity and an inability to process your emotions, and then treating someone poorly because of it. So what, you didn’t get something you wanted, that’s life. There’s no reason then to lash out at your coworker by avoiding them, just because they had the audacity to be attractive.

I did not treat them poorly. They had no idea I was avoiding them. I was polite and professional when I had to interact.

I did not lash out. I was avoiding psychological pain. That’s it. I did not hold anything against them individually. Seeing them made me cripplingly and dysfunctionally sad, but they did not know that. Shit if they had seen how sad they made me they’d probably assume I was being emotionally manipulative. There would be no benefit to them interacting with that, I had no desire to make them feel guilty and I had no desire to feel cripplingly sad if it could be avoided.

I think that’s a pretty mature and reasonable way to handle things. I’m not sure exactly what your alternative would have been.

You were avoiding confronting your emotional immaturity.

I think I confronted my emotions and decided the best way to handle them was to avoid making them worse and focus on other things and other people as best as I could. How is that immature?

I have empathy… it’s just for your coworker, who did nothing wrong and was treated differently just because she didn’t reciprocate your feelings.

Yeah I’m aware you’re real sad for them. I promise you they’re almost certainly happier today than I am. I would bet money. And she was never ever even aware of my internal feelings, other than at one point I asked her out and she politely rejected me.

You don’t have to be her work friend, just don’t treat her differently than everyone else because she’s an attractive woman.

You treat people differently based on their appearance all the time. Everyone does. You are probably just less conscious about it.

I think they’re primarily authentic rather than trolling/pretending, its just that they have twitter/bluesky disease where they think the best way to engage is by vapidly dunking.

I mean if that was true you wouldn’t have an issue with the original claim.

What? The original claim? That pedophiles are bad? Not believing in free will technically nullifies any moral evaluation of the virtues of any group. The only thing that would matter is consequences.

So what you are saying is that people are lonely.

Yes, but the nature of that loneliness is different when it comes to romantic loneliness within the heterosexual sphere. Just look at how many more men are on dating apps vs women.

And lashing out at other to seek a sliver of personal peace after making a personal choice is socially acceptable behavior that shouldn’t be criticized?

Lashing out? I think you are inserting something into the conversation that I never defended. Maybe mixing up responses.

Jesus Christ… No reason to call yourself out this hard. Are you in middle school or something?

I never understood this obsession with anon people “telling on themselves”. Its called setting aside ego and engaging in good faith. We don’t know each other, there is no reason for me to restrict what I say here about myself. I’ll tell you any embarrassing thing about myself because why would I care? There are no stakes other than the discourse. Which you don’t seem like you have a good authentic desire to engage with.

TBH I’m also pretty dead inside so I probably wouldn’t care if we were in person either but still why are you so obsessed with status on a random internet thread?

What if they believed that you were painfully ugly, and avoided you because of it, treated you differently just because of your appearance… Do you even understand what I’m getting at here?

I think you are potentially projecting additional details here and that by avoiding her I was hurting her feelings or something. She almost certainly had no idea I was avoiding her. I wasn’t making a big show of it.

I had no ill will towards her I just was avoiding an infohazard.

I don’t have a sliver of empathy for your “chronic pain”. Some random woman was attractive, and didn’t reciprocate your romantic interests and you chronically avoided them, a co-worker…

Its completely unsurprising to me that you lack empathy and it was an error of mine in assuming you were maybe capable of it considering your other responses. My mistake I guess.

Its not like I owed her my consistent presence outside of professional necessity which was fortunately rare. Its not some kind of injustice that I dare not be her work friend.

That is part of it for people who desperately need external validation, but if it was the only element no one would bother with prostitutes, VR porn, and sex dolls at all. Heck, if that was enough more men probably would be content to just be “friend zoned” because friendship is very validating.

In reality though its existential and experiential. Its men wanting to experience something extremely pleasurable and contentment bringing (and consistently) before they take their final dirtnap. Its fear of missing out on a major life experience of being in a sexual relationship for key parts of their lives (20’s and 30’s). Every day they’re single they experience the fear of their youthful years slipping away and missing out on some of the most fulfilling and fun activities a human can participate in.

Thank you.

Not if the trait itself was a valid criticism. All pedophiles are bad…is that a bad generality to you?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuous_Pedophiles

Acting on it is bad obviously.

Thing is, I also don’t believe in good/evil or free will. As a result I categorically reject virtue ethics anyway so IDK how meaningful discussing this further can be.

They were specifically talking about people with the idea of a male loneliness epidemic. An ideology that is utilized to radicalize young men by right winged influencers.

The male loneliness epidemic isn’t strictly a “rightwing ideology”. Incel/redpill is rightwing ideology.

There is also a female loneliness epidemic. Though its fairly different in nature.

If it wasn’t about sex then they would just focus on building healthy relationships with friends.

I never said that sex wasn’t an important component of the issue.

If they are making a conscious decision to not pursue sex then why are they upset?

You aren’t this dumb. You know exactly why they’d still be upset. They would be making the conscious decision because they are trying to seek a sliver of personal peace after a period of failure or simply because of disillusionment with heterosexual dating. Its not like they’d be making that decision and feel content that they’re going to live without a sexual or romantic partner. They’re trying to avoid the pain of the process of seeking it, they’d still want a partner.

Have you never seen someone so attractive to you that it physically HURT? I have. Literal physical chronic pain. And once I established they lacked any mutual romantic interest in me I avoided them like the plague and tried to forget they existed as best as possible, which was hard because I worked in the same building. Thank fuck I don’t work there anymore.

I mean, focusing just on the mental illness thing, your suggestions “to take meds that you need not the ones that you want” kind of also come off as patronizing TBH as well.

Anti-depressants have side effects that can directly get in the way of even getting laid (notably lowered sex drive). If someone is trying to get laid then it makes sense that they’re avoiding them.

I myself take anti-anxiety meds which lack that side effect and have helped me a lot though.

And if someone is so inclined, as long as they’re responsible I don’t think taking drugs to enhance one’s work out and fitness is intrinsically harmful. Though TBH I do think they’re a waste of time for attracting women anyway and absolutely there is a lot of toxic nonsense spread about them by grifters. Women pretty consistently state and demonstrate that they’re more attracted lean machines not muscle monsters anyway.

I agree to a major extent about avoiding social media though. Shit eats away at your time for almost nothing in return. I’m only on Lemmy myself during work.

I mask a lot better when I’m not depressed. (I’m horribly depressed.)

That said I still mask as second nature pretty well as I consistently get the “I wouldn’t have guessed you were autistic.” response from people a lot. I generally love socializing and I’m pretty good at it from experience and the topic of “people” being an on and off special interest.