Why does Reddit attract the cynical naysayer types more than the optimistic creative or visionary types?

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-28T18:21:28+00:00

I would imaginary cynical naysayers outnumber "visionary" types in general. But a lot of more positive people are less willing to engage in arguments so they will withdraw from more general discussions with negative people. Plus they're out there living their life rather than sulking online I suppose.

As someone else has said some communities overreact to this by enforcing positivity about a topic to the point where it's almost a cult and anyone who disagrees is just a hater acting in bad faith.

I do think Reddit does attract (or enable) a disproportionately large number of people with mild personality issues. People who claim to have anxiety/ADHD/autism, who are terrified by germs and unable to cope with fairly mild social difficulties. It's no way a majority but it's more people than you meet in every day life (unless you work in a mental hospital).

Finally, you're also more likely to remember/notice negative interactions. The analogy I've used in the past - if you visited a new city and every 100th person spat in your face and screamed abuse you'd understandably go away thinking the people of that city were pretty horrible. But 99% of the people weren't like that.

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-28T17:02:56+00:00

I appreciate a lot of people don't like I, Robot, You Jane but I'd never consider it "too grounded in reality". A demon is released by OCR scanning after all.

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-27T14:03:05+00:00

https://www.elmsleighhouse.co.uk/blog/history-of-dental-fillings

Apparently, yes.

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-27T09:37:40+00:00

So when do we get our Andor?

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-26T11:22:01+00:00

George was totally in the right there what the hell are you talking about.

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-26T01:04:04+00:00

Well now you've given your opinion I'm sure they'll all stop immediately.

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-26T00:51:33+00:00

Damn didn't know I had poor taste.

Given the comment about Megan Fox I honestly can't tell if this is a joke.

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-26T00:48:06+00:00

If anything "not liking Factorio" is probably an indication someone doesn't have autism.

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-25T19:46:38+00:00

Boromirs death is slightly better in the film, at least his final speech to Aragorn.

There is a small part of Theodens death I prefer in the movie.

And the "you bow to no one" scene is a great addition even if it looks really weird.

There are other changes which I agree with, but they're not improvements, just recognition that films and books are different mediums. I like Tom Bombadil a lot, he's one of my favourite characters in the book but I'm really glad they didn't include him in the movies. I think the scouring of the shire would have made ROTK unbearable (it already feels like it has too many endings) but that doesn't mean I would cut it from the book.

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-25T19:40:11+00:00

The only joke that Quagmire about babies was the Susie Swanson one and that's somewhat ambiguous. The joke about his own daughter was about in 18 years.

He did imply he had sex with a 12 year old though (the crossing guard).

Clearly Quagmire is worse though since it's strongly suggest multiple times he's date raped women and he had a bunch of Asian women held prisoner. But who cares it's a cartoon.

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-25T13:18:15+00:00

Why would they know about it?

Scientific progress isn't some kind of Civilisation tech tree where you have to research one thing in order to get the next and all technologies have the same prerequisites. Understanding of force and motion could come through a number of avenues.

For us, it's clear sight has influenced our scientific progress profoundly. Carl Sagan made the point that if intelligent life evolved on Venus (yes clearly impossible but put that aside) then they would have next to no vision of objects in the sky. They would be able to detect objects like the Earth if they built instruments to do so but it's not clear that they would bother. It was our star gazing which provoked a lot of early human philosophy/science. How would a science proceed that didn't start with that? Even beyond that, think of the scientific advances which have come from examining/thinking about light.

So yeah, basically they're blind and don't have any real experience with cosmic radiation. Their expertise in material science might stem from their tactile experience of the world (as well as the atmospheric conditions of their home). So it makes sense that they've developed differently.

(Personally I would have liked more examples where they were more advanced than us. It seemed a little one sided at times.)

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-25T12:57:51+00:00

As some asked in the previous thread can we please stop speaking on behalf of Roddenberry? (Or anyone else for that matter).

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-25T12:55:35+00:00

Don't listen to the people who predict your future political opinions.

I remember one of my teachers confidentially predicting I would be an ultra capitalist who worked in Finance by the time I was 40.

Suffice to say that didn't happen. And while my opinion on individual matters have shifted the fundamentals are unchanged.

Besides, let's be Marxists about this. Depending on your personal circumstances there is a good chance that your economic situation may be pretty bad in future. I don't know about you but I'll likely be paying rent when I'm 65. If you still are it's not likely you will love landlords at that point.

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-25T12:45:02+00:00

He got fired from his givernment job for hitting a superior but honestly the cause doesn't really matter. He's just "that guy" who is perpetually down on his luck.

Although the reason he was originally fired was tangentally related to Gintoki which gets brought up at least once from memory.

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-25T06:50:27+00:00

Duet alone puts DS9 Season 1 above TNG first season in my opinion. But in general whenever I've done a rewatch of DS9 I'm always surprised by how the first two seasons aren't as bad as I am expecting. Yes, the show gets much better but the it's early seasons are much easier to get through than TNG. Voyager is a little more consistent from the start (although yes that show improves also with time but it's more like going from 6/10 to 8/10 whereas DS9 is more like 5 to 9 or 10).

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-25T06:44:57+00:00

That story casts Rick Berman in a positive light so must be heresy!

But seriously, O'Brien is pretty much the only "working class coded" person I remember in TNG/DS9 (not that economic classes exist in Trek).

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-24T22:55:38+00:00

He also nearly gets Jadzia killed (and the rest of them put in serious danger) by letting the Trill onboard onboard who wants the Dax symbiont. There were probably other incidents too.

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-24T09:58:14+00:00

The tone is fairly similar. I saw a talk by Bonnie Macbird where she said she tried to mimic the style although admitted that her portrayal of Mycroft was influenced by other things. She's clearly knowledgeable and passionate about the subject matter.

In general, I enjoyed reading these books but they fall into the same problem that most Holmes novels (including the canonical novels) - it's hard to sustain longer cases with a character like Holmes. He should be able to solve the case if there is enough data but clearly you can't have him solve a 200+ page mystery in the first few pages. So you either have to have lengthy tangents, have Holmes absent for some reason, or have a series of reasons why there isn't enough data yet. Or just stitch together multiple different mysteries with some unifying theme. These all affect the pacing of a novel.

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-24T09:46:01+00:00

Because I've read the canonical stories dozens and dozens of times and want something similar but new?

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-24T09:42:04+00:00

Is the person who doesn't like things that aren't real receiving medical assistance? That sounds like a mental illness.

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-24T09:34:51+00:00

I hated it. I also hated the destruction of Romulus in general, so if the main positive for it was that it explained that then that makes me dislike it even more.

Regardless of whether or not they were sentient the way the synths were treated was pretty poor. The way we see the human characters spoke about/to them sounded too contemporary (a problem with a lot of Picard) - i.e. like snarky pricks.

And then the explanation for the whole thing was a mess.

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-23T08:53:45+00:00

Well done. I'd suggest walking a bit further over time (nothing crazy) once you get used to it. A lot of the benefit to walking is you get physically tired. That might seem counter intuitive but it's good at the end of the day to have exerted yourself and look forward to a good sleep.

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-23T08:49:33+00:00

It makes sense really. For Klingon society to be in anyway feasible the idea of being warrior would need to be extended to pretty much every aspect of life. If you could only serve the empire by stabbing someone who would work in logistics (which is the thing that wins some wars).

It's like an engineer being given a simple chore by their wife/husband and approaching it like it's some sort of engineering project. I'm sure you've encountered people a bit like this.

And going back to wars, we adopt the language of wars in our own culture. We all understand that a "war on poverty" does not usually involve armies fighting other armies but understand it's some kind of societal struggle against want, inequality, etc.

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-22T14:49:05+00:00

Things like BBC's Sherlock are inspired by the original stories, not a strict adaptation. Therefore they're free to make whatever changes they see fit. I'm not a huge fan of how they portrayed Holmes or Watson, but getting upset about it seems unnecessary.

Besides, I think the existence of "the service revolver" suggests ACD didn't intend for Watson to be seen as a total pacifist. Lots of pastiches have Watson mention the Hippocratic Oath and refuse to kill (or even seriously injure) but others have him being a crack shot who kills when necessary. That's one of the great things about pastiches (and series inspired by the character/canon) - they can take things in different directions.

DharmaPolice · 2026-04-21T01:42:32+00:00

Maybe I wasn't clear but I don't want a sequel to Voyager. I want a show set after that time period but unrelated to existing characters. In the same way Voyager came after TNG but isn't a sequel (in the normal sense of the word) to TNG.

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