Those who claim to be the most logical, rational, and the least emotional, are often the most emotional who just refuse to acknowledge their own emotions - because they’re convinced having emotions means you’ve “lost”.
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No, people de-legitimize, shout down, and impugn popo all the time. All because (@popobawa4u you prefer It, right?) popo has wildly different views and a cadence that doesn’t fit into 99% of day to day communication.
And through all the shit that has been slung, all I see is popo maintaining a rather sunny and damn consistent attitude. Honestly I consider him (it??) an inspiration. And thank FSM there aren’t downvotes.
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If you look at the corpus of popos posts, it becomes obvious ‘emotionless’ doesn’t enter into it. Taking a single post,I can see how you may come to that conclusion.
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I am gonna go on a tangent. @falcor feel free to have a snack if this gets too surreal.
I personally see, and this is weird, intersections between @popobawa4u s questioning of homelessness, and my questioning of… A tomato.
What is homelessness? Is it natural? Should it be cured? Is it less of a life than an apartment? Are people there because they want? If they aren’t do they learn to love it?
What is a tomato? Is hothouse better than organic? Should I sauce it? Is it better with mozzarella or by itself? Do people like them because of intrinsic qualities or training? Why discard the seeds and jelly? Why discard the leaves!? Is a mealy tomato actually bad!!?? Why shouldn’t I enjoy the skin??
I see the same questioning, regardless of answer, as valuable.
What is blame? What happens if we don’t have it?
What is empathy? Can we apply it uniformly?
What are the repercussions of ignoring social contracts?
A lot is psych 101, but playing it out in RL–as you can see–is different than theoretical.
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I am very thankful to you and all the moderators for going through those flags and assessing the situation impartially. I’m just glad we don’t have something like downvoting where the assessment of what should be banished is made on the fly by people involved in the discussion.
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I have to disagree somewhat. I’ve been down in it on some of the issues he mentioned as examples, and I have to say my interpretation of what happened, what went down, who said what, who was “logical” and who was “emotional”, and it wholly different from popos interpretation.
We are all limited by our biases, this is true. And hopefully most of us here have enough empathy to counter-act that.
I like most of us, including popo, even though we are diametrically opposed on some issues. 
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We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one particular poster, but to stay OT I agree that downvotes is not the in the right spirit on this forum.
I think that an ignore user function could be useful – if @codinghorror never had to look at another @Mindysan33 gif, I think that would make two people very happy! – but for most of the time, for most of the posters, I think scrolling down works well enough for most posts. (That’s often what I do with the aforementioned poster, for example.)
Still, as I said, there are going to be those few times where an ignore button might save the sanity of one or two regular posters, and that’s worth something.
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My perception is that the longer the post, the more likely it’s another “I think entirely differently than everyone else on this topic, and I’m right” and no responses will elicit any real conversation anyway, so I just scan quickly as I scroll on by. It’s boring, you know? If you can supposedly experience some of the tougher human crucibles in life and come through with no emotional response and no change to your theoretical philosophy, there’s nowhere to go with that.
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Yup. A wall of text is very good at keeping dissenting opinions at bay.
Also, I very much doubt that “no emotional response” claim. Even Vulcans have emotions, they just don’t show them. The only people that don’t have emotions… well, we have a word for people without empathy or emotions.
We are stateful bags of meat-logic.
A term I’ve coined in discussion with Mssr. le Popo as he so often comes across to me as wanting people to respond to situations purely logically. Which may be desireable, but not at all possible with a bunch of meat-bags and their soft, error-prone logic processors.
A term I try to use fondly.
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Differentially empathetic? Non-neuraltypical? Autistic?
I disagree that it’s desirable, and I strongly disagree that emotions are some kind of “error”. The people who claim that emotions or bad, or that they only work on “logic”, are consistently the ones who poison internet discourse and blatantly don’t care about the well-being of others (when they’re not trying to make that well-being actively worse).
There’s a reason that “logic” has become a buzzword for the “anti-SJW” types, the bigoted “egalitarian” types, and the GG types. It’s used as an excuse to not care about the harm done to other people. Anyone telling others in a conversation that they should “just be logical” or “just not be offended” is playing right into that, and not only ignoring the needs of others, but blaming them for having emotional needs - human needs. But say anything against them, and their own emotions go into full overdrive, and it’s the greatest persecution the world has ever known, somehow.
Playing into the discourse of “logic” being superior to “emotion” is outright harmful.
Edit: Emotions, to me, are very important in making sure we care about others. Attempting to purge off your own emotions is attempting to purge off caring about others.
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I need to clarify. I don’t think anyone here is without emotion, and everyone, myself included can work on their empathy.
Persons that do not have empathy or emotions are psychopaths, and I would call no one here a psychopath.
Logic is great for robots, but as you say, we are ugly bags of mostly water, and emotions are hard wired into our brain-meats. Attempting to discuss “emotional” issues without emotion is always going to fail.
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Speak for yourself, I am gorgeous. …and mostly full of piss and vinegar.
And while we disagree on some points that were brought up, I think the important bit is: limited mute good, downvotes bad.
Eta
My cats just reminded me I’m not gorgeous, but sassy
Eta
My dog just reminded me I’m not sassy, but obnoxious
Eta
My wife just reminded me to stop pretending to make my animals talk, and please nix the Cartman voice.
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You seem very angry. I’m not really sure who you are arguing with.
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A psychopath may have diminished empathy, but is primarily characterized by anti-social behavior – hence the alternate term “sociopath.”
I think @popobawa4u often approaches situation with the desire/request that people should respond logically to situations and then all “this” (whatever the current issue is - environment, economics, racism, etc) would be solved.
I tend to point out that we are not emotionless robots.
But I also like to think I defend those who are perceived as emotionless robots, because not having a diminished emotional response does not make one a sociopath. Non-neurotypicals probably don’t need my white-knighting. But I also feel the need to speak up for others.
Do you think I’m trying to argue with you about something other than sociopathology and autism? Because I’m not trying to.
No, but come on, you do have a tendency to Bleep and Bloop.
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Two Juliet Romeo Romeo Two Xray Alpha One Sierra Foxtrot Eight Kilo Hotel Uniform AFFIRMATIVE
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Similar but not the same, though both pull from the same diagnostics.
I agree, we are not emotionless robots.
I didn’t know we were arguing?
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