Viz magazine is famous for its surreal and deliberately useless “Top Tips.”
An empty aluminium cigar tube filled with angry wasps makes an inexpensive vibrator.
Olympic athletes. Disguise the fact that you’ve taken steroids by running a bit slower.
The similarly surreal and useless fellows who populate the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit have decided to have a go at the advice thing themselves. A post there today asks the question: “If you could give women one piece of advice, without being crucifed, what would it be?”
The assembled MGTOWs have happily provided dozens of answers. Unlike Viz’ Top Tips, though, their little nuggets are funny only by accident. Also, most of the “advice” is not so much advice as it is a random misogyny-dump onto the internet.
That said, here are my picks for the Top Ten Tips for Women From Men Who Hate Them.
Get a goddamn hobby, something that requires effort and intelligence and builds character. I am so sick of reality TV addicts whose only real interests are complaining about a world they didn’t earn.
Pot, Kettle — have you two met? Yelling about women online is not a “hobby … that requires effort and intelligence and builds character.” Take up something more worthwhile and less embarrassing, like subscribing to magazines you never get around to reading and letting them pile up for years, a hobby I used to enjoy in pre-everything-is-on-the-internet days.
Also, dude, how many worlds have you personally “earned” anyway?
Deleting fakebook, instaslut, or myfake will improve your “personality”
Wait. People still use MySpace?
Make yourself useful in areas that don’t involve sex.
This might have been a tad more persuasive if it hadn’t come from someone who has proven himself completely useless as a human being by posting on the MGTOW subreddit.
Grow up, and take responsibility for your own emotions you goddamn overgrown parasitic, entitled infants.
This one is also a teensy bit ironic, given that it was offered by the highly emotional compulsive liar John the Other — remember him? That is, a man who doesn’t seem to take responsibility for anything he says.
Feminism is 100% complete fraud, ALL of it. From the very beginning 50 years ago. Everything you think you know about gender is wrong, so is most of what you think about the world at all. Men are not oppressing women or holding them back. We’ve rolled out the red carpet for you, yet you’re lazy, not all that bright, no ambition, too cowardly and too whiny with no real interests in anything productive anyway. The only one holding you back is yourself.
This is not technically advice, just a bunch of random angry wrongness.
There’s 3,5 billion of you. You’re nothing.
If you think 3.5 billion women and girls is “nothing,” you try fitting even a billion of them into a summer rental on Cape Cod.
Also, there are slightly more men in the world than women, so does this mean that they’re, I dunno, slightly more nothing?
Suck my [deleted] and get lost.
Yeah, I don’t think that one is going to happen for you, champ
Do you realize that in the grand scale of evolution, progress and civilization, women contributed almost nothing compared to men?
I don’t realize that, partly because it’s not true.
If you want to be truly physically, psychologically and spiritually happy, strive to learn how critically important it is to set your emotions and feelings aside while unrelentingly seeking out and attending to TRUTH, FACTS and and irrefutable INFORMATION, even when it makes you uncomfortable to do so (this is where you’ll find out just how coddled and spoiled women are and have been compared to men).
Of course, knowing you’re intractably ingrained with a toddler’s lack of attention, accountability, responsibility and emotional control, we both know offering you the aforementioned nugget of wisdom is a complete waste of time.
Yes, the guy telling you in two rambling paragraphs to set your emotions aside is pounding out angry misogynistic screeds on the internet that intermittently break out in ALL CAPS.
The more people you have sex with, the less interested I am in a relationship with you.
This may be the only bit of actually useful advice for women in the bunch, offering a handy technique that women can use to avoid being pestered quite so often by woman-hating men who still want to have sex with the women they hate. The women in question don’t even have to have sex with a lot of people if they don’t want to; printing up a batch of business cards saying “I’ve had sex with lots of people,” even if you haven’t, should also do the trick.
Possibly. I’m not sure these guys are all that good at taking a hint. I mean, they call their movement “Men Going Their Own Way” but it seems pretty clear that not a single one of them has gone anywhere.
@Ohlmann
Interesting. I’ve found the opposite. “Oh, well, he’s an INTJ. Don’t take it personally when he acts that way, he can’t help it.” Doesn’t matter that I’m also an INTJ and manage to not be an asshole.
“There’s 3,5 billions of you”
That already implies they get to decide what group I identify most strongly with.
What if I feel more strongly about my nationality? Then there’s 8 millions of us. I’m rather passionate about my work; in the country, there are 2400 with the same job. Still nationally, fewer than 500 people speak Esperanto. Probably not many of them share my profession.
Cut it up enough and you end up with only one of me. They have some nerve believing they can tell me what slice I get to take into account!
@John : I don’t find your argument much less valid than ableism. Saying to someon “you should not have reproduced” is an extremely violent charge against their daughter and sons if they have some. Both because it implicitely say they should not have been born, and because of the implication they are less, or pitiable, or somehow tainted by their father.
Of course, comparions between an asshole and a genetic disease is disgusting too. In the end, being evil is a choice, being diseased is imposed unto someone.
And also of course, one can be a formidable human being and not be a good parent. That happen, too.
@ Sinkable John
I initially thought you were referring to the Perseid meteors! I was admiring your determination to claim as many of them as you could. 🙂
I was going to say that No Man’s Sky sounds a bit grindy, but then I remembered that I like Elite Dangerous, so…glass houses etc. Anyway, I won’t be buying NMS just yet, because it would eat into my important ED time. Also, I’m a man, so it says right in the name that the game is not for me.
I’m building a head tracker for Elite! It’s possible I’m taking the game a little too seriously.
@Ohlmann
I only meant that the same jokes, in a different context, could have very different and much more harmful implications – all the while still being the same “please don’t procreate” shit. But yeah, “runs in the family” arguments are still way too common in regards to the amount of bullshit they serve as a vehicle for.
@Alan
Oh I’m doing that too. While waiting for the game’s release I got bored so I made a bunch of tiny flags, and I built a catapult.
I’m having trouble calculating the timing and trajectories though, I might need some help.
ETA : @Moggie
Elite always kinda scared me. I don’t do good with “simulation” stuff. To give you an example, recently I played Rebel Galaxy, which is basically an oversimplified, arcade version, and I liked it precisely for not being too complex. Even though I love complexity.
As for the title, I guess you can be the Sky’s Man instead, then ?
Thanks for this tips, i am an asexual woman, who really have no interest in sex. I always approach by so many men, if i say no, they always insist to get my number
@ sinkable john
My fave meteor fact (which on recent form will probably turn out not to be true) is that most of them burn up at about 100km altitude. At that height the atmosphere is about the same density as that on the Moon so the Moon also has meteors.
They’ll probably CGI some in when they do the ‘special edition’ version of the Apollo landings 😉
I have to wonder whether it’s an intentionality thing. Children are very much that way (though that’s not the proper term, I can’t recall it, halp), and it’s a very common bias. It’s all about describing things in terms of what they do for people. Specifically, for the person doing the describing.
“Clouds are for looking at, and for bringing rain to farmers.”
“Dogs are for petting and fetching sticks.”
“Trees are for growing apples to eat.”
PUA and MRA talking points have the same intentionality as a weird undercurrent.
“Women are for sex. If she isn’t putting out you’re a beta chump.”
“Women who can’t cook, clean, and raise your children are garbage.”
Their “advice” is self-contradictory and, in the end, little more than self-serving. I have to wonder if *this* is the bias they’re faced with more than others? Something to ruminate on at least.
@Scildfreja
I don’t remember the proper term either, but I believe it was the basis for Pangloss’ philosophy in Voltaire’s Candide. (which I believe was in parody of Leibniz’s thought)
I think it went something like that : “Indeed, noses are for setting your glasses on, and legs are for wearing trousers.” (I’m heavily paraphrasing from memory, obviously).
Is this what you’re talking about ?
@Alan
Wanna help me fake my own landing on a burning meteor ?
@ scildfreja
Ooh, weird but of synchronicity; was just about to post something for you anyway.
AI has managed to consistently beat human pilot for the first time. Still at the simulator stage but there is talk of testing some of these AI apps with a real F-35 or Hornet.
http://magazine.uc.edu/editors_picks/recent_features/alpha.html
@ sinkable john
Only if we can have Clanger in the background!
We did once consider whether a meteorite might be a good murder weapon. You know, bash someone with it then assume people will say “Ooh, unlucky!”; but it transpires there’s a way of telling how recently they fell to Earth. Boo.
(It was just speculation for a story idea, we didn’t have it in for any particular person)
@Alan
Wouldn’t a smashed piano be easier to procure ?
@Alan : the image of someone wielding a big meteorite and crushing skulls with it is amusing.
I instinctively think of Churchill, the WW2 guys who killed people with all kind of strange for the era weapon like claymores and bows. I am pretty sure he would have loved the idea of adding a big lump of celestial rock in his arsenal.
@ sinkable john
True; but as a rule they don’t randomly fall from the sky (although Wyle E Coyote might have something got say about that)
@ olhmann
One of the reasons that a lot of the research into defence against Earth Crossing Asteroids is classified is the worry that someone may weaponise the technology. Churchill would probably have loved that.
@Alan, neat little toy they’ve built there! GFTs are pretty powerful. I think the author’s gone a bit overboard about how revolutionary they are, mind you – there’s more impressive stuff going on elsewhere – but the game theorist in me rather loves a good old fashioned fuzzy minimaxing algorithm :3
For more context, the simulator they’ve got there is basically doing the same thing that Big Blue did to Kasparov. For every action (in ALPHA’s case, all the time) the algorithm examines all of the variables it can see, then “imagines” all of the possible futures that can come from the current position, selects the best future, and then takes the actions needed to head towards that future.
ALPHA does things a little differently, being more advanced than the raw minimax/negamax/negascout/etc algorithms. I don’t know the details obviously, but from the words they’re using I imagine it’s doing stuff like…
– recording likely scenarios and advantageous plays in a “play-book”. This playbook is altered pseudo-randomly from time to time and then comparatively tested, hence the word ‘genetic’.
– selection from possible futures is probabilistic, not deterministic, hence the “fuzzy” part. It’s also why it can react quickly to situations – it doesn’t know exactly which future is going to be best, but it can tell that the odds of Family X of futures (all sharing feature Fa) being beneficial is high, so take an action which leads towards futures in Family X.
– the ‘future creation’ algorithm is probably fancy, and is likely also developed genetically as well. All of those training flights the article talks about aren’t to test the program or the pilot; they’re to provide material for the genetic algorithm to run on.
It’s a neat little program, in the same vein as other game-playing algorithms. Fuzzification fell out of favour a decade or so ago, so I imagine that ALPHA has been in development for a long while now. Their setup is mathematically equivalent to a proper bayesian neural network though, as far as I know, so that’s not a problem.
Frankly I’m sort of surprised it’s taken them this long to get something like that! We’ve been doing this sort of thing for a long time now, I figured they’d have this sort of thing installed in the fly-by-wire whatsit on every fancy jet out there by this point.
Neat article, though, thank you for sharing!
@Scil : I honestly suspect that that AI don’t work that well, based on the fact that, apparently, car AI still need 30 or 40 years of work before they can drive without a human inside, based on recent articles I have read on them.
Maybe that’s because using a fighter jet require sharp reflexe, but less empathy and judgement call. Maybe that’s because the aforementioned car AI are done shoddily.
@ scildfreja
Glad you enjoyed it; and thank you for explaining some of the terminology! Military apps tend to be a long time in development. There are procurement/financial reasons for that. Also they like everything to be tried and tested technology. That’s why squaddies often ditch the kit they’re provided with and just go to a civvie camping store; a lot of the open market stuff is more advanced.
There’s quite a lot of resistance from the humans to not be replaced for understandable reasons; so that’s a factor. There are also political/legal implications. The F-117 for example can carry out missions completely autonomously. It more or less does. It’s incredibly aerodynamically unstable so it needs constant computer assistance just to stay in the air. Human interference just cocks things up so every aspect of the flight from take off to landing is normally done automatically. However it’s deemed essential that a human has the final say on whether to strike the target. So the plane basically says “This is what I’ll be aiming for; ok with you?” and the pilot confirms. That could easily be done remotely (as we do with drones) but there’s that weird thing that putting a human at risk is less controversial.
Human decision making in combat is a fascinating area. Sometimes it’s almost tautological. A machine identifies a target and checks with a human. But the human uses the information provided by the machine to decide. That can be problematic in lots of ways though. In the Falklands/Malivinas conflict our automated ship defence systems ignored Exocets because they were catalogued as ‘friendly’. It was a major job to re-write the software; which in those days was pretty much hardware (the ‘computer’ on the Vulcan bomber used at the time had a chain drive)
@alan
What type are you?
@ohlmann
I don’t consider Myers Briggs to be a con, in fact I’ve found it very useful for identifying my weaknesses and being more understanding of other people. It is based on Jung’s theories, so I think it’s stood the test of time. However, it has to be done right. There are a lot of tests on the internet which are incorrect and are too biased to give a correct typing. If you can find a proper MBTI practitioner, that is the best way to go, but if you really must do online tests, do a few different ones, then read the type descriptions (keirsey’s are the best) and choose a best fit.
Typing is actually very useful, I remember back in the day when I was at college doing psychometric testing, it does help to identify what things you will be good at, where your energies are and how you interact with people. There are so many people in the wrong jobs instead of jobs where they would be effective and happy if they chose things to suit their temperament. And, doing things you hate to build character? Really, that does nobody any favours, it just creates disgruntled and grudging workers. Find things you love to do, and it’s hardly like work at all.
@kat
INFJ are very honest. We don’t like things which go against our values. Lying makes us feel icky.
@bokep
I am asexual as well, there are a few of us out there. I seem to be quite good at avoiding the advances of men, although I do like their company if they are stimulating to talk to. Most men think I am gay anyway, so they know better than to make sexual advances toward me (usually!)
Past encounters with TRPers and MGTOWs tells me that these people are upset when women do that.
Unlike Reddit, which can only make you more likeable.
I can think of some other people who need to hear that more, MGTOWs.
There’s 14,000 of you, if 3.5 billion women are nothing, then you’re subatomic nothing.
You’re an MGTOW, there aren’t many women interested in a relationship with you regardless of how much sex they have.
@Ohlmann,
Nope! Different problem. Jets live in a very simple world – mostly open space, a bumpy “floor”, and a hot-body shape to chase. There are little complexities of wind and identifying an aircraft in a cluttered background, but since jet engines are very hot compared to their surroundings it isn’t so bad.
Cars, on the other hand, live in an incredibly complicated world. They have to stay in very confined areas (sometimes-unmarked lanes on roads), there are enormous numbers of things that you can easily hit, but aren’t allowed to (other vehicles, pedestrians, trees, poles, curbs), and all of these things almost never look distinct. They’re all the same temperature (or close to), they’re all sort of cement-grey, and often they’re damaged, reflect light strangely, and are moving in relation to the world and to the camera.
Self-driving cars represent a massively complicated problem. Huge, huge props to the people involved in that. The self-flying jet people have nothing on them.
@Alan, military computing is a strange world, for sure! I’m rather glad I’m not in that field, for a few reasons. The human decision making problem you talk about is a pretty big one, though. We run into the same problem when it comes to educational assessment and automated tutors. By helping a student navigate a difficult course, you sort of constrain them into a pathway decided by the software and increase their passivity, while the actual goal is to *decrease* passivity and increase engagement. It’s a bit of a tricky pickle, that one.
re: MBTI and personality assessment
This stuff is sort of related to my field of work! I’m sort of embedded in the problem of metacognition and knowledge discrimination / identification and whatnot. It’s often considered part of personality assessment, and we often share tool-kits.
(erm, please don’t take this the wrong way, but) the Myers-Briggs tests have been largely discredited as a valid perspective on human personality assessment. The categories are theoretically nice, but it’s been shown that people shift between categories based on the situations in which they find themselves. They aren’t stable descriptions.
MBTI remains wildly popular, though, for a number of reasons! Businesses and academics especially love it, because it puts numbers on things, and then you can do statistics to them, and produce shiny graphs and powerpoint presentations. People like it because it lets you categorize things that are otherwise mysterious. It’s sort of like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in that way. It’s not true, but people like the story it tells. There’s something appealing about that.
In that way it’s still sort of useful, too! It provides a language for something that doesn’t really have one. As long as you keep in mind that your MBTI can and will shift wildly based on the situation you’re in, it’s not a bad thing to keep around!
I feel like INTP, which is what I am fits me eerily well. I look at it as a former entertainment purposes thing though.
I view MBTI similar to horoscopes, or tarot readings. They aren’t things to be taken at face value, but they do present ideas that you can compare to your life, and reflect on. There’s very commonly parts that are clearly wrong, since it’s more or less impossible to simplify the complexity of people to so few categories, but for the parts that they do get right (or plausible), it can give me a different perspective on aspects of myself, which I find useful. Even the process of answering questions for an MBTI test can spur useful self-examination.
@wwth
You should try doing the proper test, or maybe the one at humanmetrics.
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp