Low-substance comments about inflammatory topics, like this one, end up triggering flamewars, like this one. We're trying to avoid those on HN. They're boring—alternately flippant and nasty—and if the term 'stupid' has a local definition, this would be it.

There are other places on the internet where you can ply that art if you want to. If you want to continue to post to HN, please behold the damage you wrought and refrain from doing it again here.

I thought HN welcomed diversity of opinion.

Starting flamewars was not my intention.

When I posted the comment the title of this posting was quite different and it made more sense in that context.

If you wished to ask me to substantiate the comment - you could have done exactly that, no need for threats.

EDIT: I've read the thread in it's entirety.

You're right, it's not the level of discussion I had hoped for.

But I will still maintain that I acted with intellectual integrity and if people have collectively steered towards the lowest common denominator - that is just the way people are.

A sign of times perhaps, but so was this US presidential election. I subscribe to Marcus Aurelius' philosophy of stoicism: "All men are made one for another: either then teach them better, or bear with them."

I think this is a reductionist point of view. There are bazillions of cases in which is not true. Female lions for example.

I think he means restricted to humans.

In the animal kingdom you have uncommon scenarios such as seahorses where the male caries the fertilized eggs or spiders where many times the male is just eaten by the female.

If he means that human females evolved to extract resources from males it is also reductionist. Females were not hunters, but they were harvesters and growers. I think he is implying that females could not get resources because they took care of the offspring and the male got them. This is also wrong, evidence of early human settlements point that females took care of the offspring while harvesting and growing crops.

True but the vast majority of protein intake was provided by males.

They also performed the most dangerous activities because women are reproductively far more "valuable".

You are implying that we mostly evolved eating meat, which is wrong. We evolved being omnivores and we ate everything we could get, mussels, large insects, fruit, tubercules... Make no mistake, humans were hunters but that was only one part of the picture.

I think you are mixing two different (although very related) terms.

We did evolve by eating meat. The archeological and even biological evidence for that is quite strong. Eating meat (more specifically fish) allowed for the necessary proteins for brain increase.

But we seem to have evolved to eat as much as possible, thereby, we evolved to be omnivorous.

The difference here is between by what diet we did evolve and to what diet we evolved to. But the by part is purely biological in nature, the to part is also a sociologic one, since it depends, amongst other factors, on the use of fire to cook.

How do you mean "restricted to humans"? What exact cases do you have in mind?

I made the original comment in this thread, let me attempt to clarify.

The person you replied to thought that I was referring to humans exclusively (Close enough, I had not only humans but most primates in mind), while a comment above that level the person thought that I was referring very broadly to animal kingdom.

What the hell is going on here? Why are you being downvoted for politely asking for clarification?

Because the question is extremely stupid, he should take an extra 10 seconds and it should be obvious

This breaks the HN guidelines about civility. We ban accounts that do that, so please don't do it.

You should also have better manners than to presuppose "he" when speaking of a fellow user.

In which sense is this "obvious", hubert123? I am really interested in what the comment meant by "restricted to humans". Try to be explicit in explaining.

"By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher." --Socrates

Spoken like a true footballer.

It might be pithy but nature is full of counter-examples.

Come on, now!

That's a ridiculous oversimplification.

I think by removing the word "monkey" you have opened yourself up to a charge of inaccuracy. After all, I'm going to hazard a guess that this is not true of all males of all species.

Now some cynical people might think that you removed the word monkey in order to map this research onto humans, in order to make a point. While I'm sure that's not the case, I think it's worthwhile to recall many other evolved qualities human beings have, such as:

cannibalism

child molestation

incest

murder

organised genocide

disorganised genocide

So I think we can all agree that our ability, however occasional, to transcend our evolved behaviours is a positive and that people who advocate for further improvements are to be respected.

you don't get this joke, do you (yes, it's mostly for guys but not only, and no it's not completely hypothetical)

Please don't post like this here. There's no information or substance about it—just flame fodder. We don't want that on HN.

I'd be very interested in your explanation of the joke. Please elaborate in as much detail as you can.

The joke is we're primates too, and human females do this all of the time, you can see this in the motif of two heros(one "good" and the other "bad") fighting for a female, "golddigger" being most of the time attributed to the female, to the psychological game called "Rapo" where a female entices a particular male's attention so that another male would fight the first male, and so an and so on. The joke is believing all of the "Women are wonderful" effect, that there's a "rape culture", vilifying men and pedestalizing women, and all of the PC crap that dictates males and females think/feel and behave the same way and disregarding all of the obvious evolutionary and logical conclusions that males are predisposed to violence and females to manipulation in order to get what they want.

You know I could be tricksy but I'll answer you straight. Even if I thoroughly believed the rather reductive propositions you make about male/female biology, I would still disagree with your conclusions.

You seem to want it both ways: you assert men are naturally violent, women are naturally manipulative, therefore we should accept this state of affairs and not be dishonest about it. At the same time you want us to reject the idea of rape culture, even though inherent in your assessment of men is an acceptance of exactly that.

Has it ever occurred to you that Political Correctness acts as training wheels for people who are exhibiting bad natural behaviours? And that this might be a good thing? We teach our children to have good manners, to share and to curb their violence. Of course, no adult wants to be treated as a child, but if there is a social consensus that somebody is infantile, then it seems appropriate to have a mechanism to put manners on them. That consensus is far from punitive. For the most part it doesn't restrict individual liberty.

Many contrarians and "rugged individualists" I know seem to fear that we will fall into a kind of group-think if we allow PC ideas to develop. This it seems to me is just the despair of autocrats. It's our social consensus. We get to form it together. But just saying "PC Crap" doesn't work. We live in a big complex society. It's going to just get more complex.

Many smart people are bored and repelled by these arbitrary social rules - I get that. But your natural repulsion is overcoming your judgement. These are systems. They can work well or badly. Contribute to them to support your values.

> Has it ever occurred to you that Political Correctness acts as training wheels for people who are exhibiting bad natural behaviours?

I get your points, but I disagree on this one. How people adapt to be perceived by others on the surface - I couldn't care less about that. When they are rotten deep inside, broken and shattered to pieces - no matter how many correctness masks they put on, they are still same piece of s__t. I'll rather know straight upfront who I am dealing with, life is much easier.

So yeah, PC is evil for me. Noble goals for sure, worst possible implementation how to get there.

Well I don't want to sound more cynical than the OP, but the surface is actually what matters in the broader social context. Without shame, human society would be a violent anarchy. Some people have relatively good natures, but many do not. That is not even a criticism. After all, one cannot be ashamed of nature - only of the inability to control it.

Absence of shame is like power: it corrupts.

So whatever we call PC, we need something like it. That is my view.

You don't have to believe all women are "wonderful" in order to find distasteful the notion that women evolved to manipulate men.

Why not "men evolved to be dumb as rocks on the topic of what they put their penises into?" Equally applicable and evidence backed, no? Equally irrelevant to the topic at hand?

But instead men are simultaneously superior and somehow at the mercy of these "manipulative women."

I would say that "dumb" has nothing to do about the topic in question since reproduction is probably one of the first goals of a male (non-human) and they will do whatever is needed to reach that goal. It isn't practically a choice for them.

Yeah, we got that part from the original. To qualify as a joke I would have thought there needs to be a punchline that allows it to transcend lazy stereotyping. "Ha he means gold diggers" isn't adding that.

Good trap. He totally fell for it!

That's a misinterpretation of how HN works. We don't care about being political, we care about not being stupid. This thread is the stupidest one I've seen in months and, considering which months, that is impressive.

The rest of the internet has the opposite priority, so you don't lack for other places to post like this. Please don't do it here.

Second comment from the top, "Women are gold diggers."

Screencapping this for when HN's users claim they don't make the tech space awful for women.

That's pure sample bias. You can support anything that way.

Which is not to say that this thread isn't bullshit.

When individual comments on Reddit or HN get voted up, they cease to be sample bias and become a reflection of the community's opinion. That's what these sites do.

I guarantee you'd never see a comment like that voted up on r/2xc.

It's a clear indication of a problem with the community, and there's no way you don't see that...?

Sorry I was late to seeing this.

That's still sample bias: plenty of such comments also get downvoted, and plenty of opposite comments also get upvoted. Drawing general conclusions about the community in this way is projection.

I'll refer you to this book by a female writer, it is a light read and she presents the point that I made far more eloquently and persuasively than I could in the limited space of a HN comment: https://dontmarry.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/the_manipulate...

Males also have evolved to extract resources from tech males, though sacrificing some self-safety in war ops, etc. Maybe because geeks always make fun of them in tech field. "Oh, those strong males are so stupid, they can only take taxes and play with their tanks." They have no chance to get smart and enter the club.

Be sure to also screencap the hundreds of statements made against males in order to keep your perspective accurate.

Please link a few of these hundreds of statements made against males on HN in order to provide accurate evidence for your claim.

You can do the work for yourself and search HN. I'm not going to sift through it all. If you're actually interested in knowing, take a few minutes.

You do it. You're the one making the claim. I've been on HN like 8 years and I'm wondering what you mean too.

He won't. He is very afraid that his perception is indeed skewed and that he may actually learn something. Just like some other commenters in this branch.

As someone who has actually been here for like 8 years, I know better than to be baited into doing basic legwork research for the uninitiated.

I think the vernacular is "It's not my job to educate you"

I guess you don't feel that strongly about the matter. Why bother posting then?

In order for you to make such a statement, you have to believe what the parent said was completely false or that it is true but shouldn't be said.

If number one: Human evolution did not start 50 years ago. How do you think humans used to live for thousands of years, or how primitive tribes live right now? (Spoiler: it is not a feminist's dream) Are human males not more capable of gathering resources due to their inherent traits? Does evolution not select those most capable of reproduction? It does not take a degree in anthropology to put two and two together.

If number two: If basic evolutionary biology is too hurtful, perhaps it is time to consider whether the ideology that led you to feel inadequate is the social construct that needs to be done away with, rather than commonly agreed upon facts.

Loool ok, not that for the longest time society has dictated that women shouldn't work outside of the home and should be housewives that depend on their husbands.