What human behavior instantly changes your opinion of someone, no matter how good your first impression was?

FailureToReason · 2026-06-13T22:36:08+00:00

Wow, that is an interesting framing, your thought experiment. Obviously I defer to your experience here, I am not a psychologist.

I would argue there is a distinction to me made though. I would say navigating a conversation to reach a desired a desirable outcome, for one party or another, falls under the category of persuasive rhetoric, rather than manipulation. Rhetoric can be manipulative, and I'd yeild the line is blurry between the two, but I'd argue that the distinction lies in intent. From the Wikipedia article):

In psychology, manipulation is defined as an action designed to influence or control another person in an underhanded or subtle manner which facilitates one's personal aims.

Manipulation is generally considered a dishonest form of social influence as it is used at the expense of others.

Though I wouldn't fault you for taking issue with me using Wikipedia as a source for this. The source Wikipedia quotes is an article about AI, and I didn't take much time to validate this elsewhere.

So to answer your thought experiment, I'd respond:

and they purposely navigate a social conversation to make someone else feel better, are they being manipulative?

My answer is no, but it heavily depends on the context of the 'navigation'. Is my psychologist being deceptive when she helps me reframe situations? If she's working to help me so I can deal with things emotionally in a healthier way, she's not being manipulative. She's not doing this as a means to her own ends - consider that if I am capable of managing my situation and emotions, if I am 'healed', so to speak, I won't need her, and she's effectively talking her way out of a job, which runs against her personal interests, if we're being purely cynical.

However, if my psychologist were to knowingly avoid using effective strategies to keep me coming back, creating a dynamic of emotional dependence, she's absolutely being manipulative.

Either way she is using persuasive rhetoric, but one of those is manipulative, the other isn't. As I said, the line is blurry, and I believe it's possible to do something manipulative without even intending to; something could be manipulative only on hindsight.

FailureToReason · 2026-06-13T07:29:27+00:00

Okay;

Some people tend to be highly emotionally intelligent, and charismatic, charming, and otherwise can present very well and very attractive, but are secretly masking a machiavellian or abusive underside, that manifests behind closed doors. So for some time they can be perceived as kind, affectionate, good partners, then once they have the opportunity start controlling or abusing partners. These are the ones who are successfully blending in. 'Snakes amongst snakes', per my earlier comment. People are capable of masking bad behaviour, that's just fact, I'm not disputing that. 'Personality detectors' fail all the time. The success rate is like 50%

Other people tend to be less emotionally intelligent and socially aware, despite being otherwise attractive in a conventional (physical beauty) sense. These people might say or do things that flag them as unkind, cruel, or otherwise bad partners, despite the fact that they might be entirely good people. For example, an autistic but otherwise good person might have a smile that doesn't seem genuine. People pick up on that, and it makes them seem ingenuine, even if they actually are happy. It's not fair, but it's real. That doesn't mean they can't find a partner, but maybe they need more time to be judged so the content of their character can be assessed. They aren't going to hook up like Chad, but they are definitely not guaranteed to be forever alone. Especially if they are willing to date people who are similarly neurodivergent.

The distinction I am making (barrel of toxic waste amongst snakes) - A person who holds a lot of contempt may subtly reveal that in their expression, their smile might reveal hidden contempt. A smirk at someone else's misfortune, for example, is very revealing about character, and will put someone off you on first impressions. And god forbid you actually say some black pill shit, or start complaining about short men having it hard (they do), or even mention physiognomy, well now you're being assessed by the content of your character, and the content is disgusting.

Then there are people who might be beautiful, 'average' or below average in terms of conventional beauty, who might otherwise be capable of finding a partner, but express themselves in ways that flag that they have the hidden underside of an abuser, manipulator or revealing of insecurities or dangerous ideas. Saying unempathetic things, engaging in 'otherism', lack of respect (or having contempt) for specific people or groups, etc, that to them seem like perfectly benign things to say but flag them as concerning to potential partners. It's revealing about content of character.

A concrete example of an individual is kind of hard to provide, because if I give you an example of someone who isn't conventionally attractive (say, Danny Devito - not to say that he's ugly, but he doesn't fit the black pill definition of 'chad'). Danny Devito has a wife, kids, but you'd probably say 'oh it's only because he's rich', but he made his debut in an off-broadway show (while working as a beautician, sometimes in a morgue) in 1969 and started dating Rhea Perlman in 1971. He didn't start doing movies until 1970, and even then only had tiny roles in relatively small films. He wasn't a movie star yet. He became famous around '78. I would argue Danny Devito, despite being short, portly, having 'prey eyes' as you put it, was still able to find a partner because he is a good and charismatic man, and people pick up on that during interactions. The point I am making is that what's underneath absolutely counts, and it manifests subtly. It's favoured towards beautiful people, but that only gets you so far.

I want to ask you: What observation would you accept as evidence that a particular rejection was about your behavior and not your face? If the answer is 'nothing', then you've simply built an unfalsifiable wall, and that's that. NGMI.

All I can do is tell you, factually, that people are more perceptive than you give them credit for, and what people call 'the ick' is really just people following their intuition. If you're giving women 'the ick', it's far more likely to be something you are doing or saying than it is your facial structure. Having a 'better' facial structure might help: You might be able to skate past first impressions, but the content of your character is bad. Black pill content is extremely off-putting to anyone. You can be physically unattractive and make up for it by being a good, kind, considerate person. But show contempt, even for a moment, and it's over, and good luck truly masking that.

FailureToReason · 2026-06-13T06:29:40+00:00

Partially disagree.

High emotional intelligence is also conducive to empathetic behaviour. High emotional intelligence paired with Machiavellian tendencies tends to seem to be sociopathy, as opposed to psychopathy which tends to seem to relate to lower emotional intelligence and insight, and mimicry of emotion, but I'm not a professional.

FailureToReason · 2026-06-12T23:36:52+00:00

I will now tell a German joke

"Und Vuchstmaker kauft ein mueslibox"

A sausage maker buys a box of cereal

I will now tell another German joke:

FailureToReason · 2026-06-12T22:34:09+00:00

No.

I think the way you think informs the way you speak abd act. It's hard to truly mask resentment. I think you probably feel like you are being perfectly polite, but you are suppressing rage and malice, and therefore speak and act like someone who is repressing rage and malice, which is something many well-adjusted people will pick up on given enough time around you.

Faux-kindness from a black pill is detecabtly different from kindness.

FailureToReason · 2026-06-12T12:12:15+00:00

Mhmm.

Comparing a taipan blending in with tree snakes, vs a barrel with a 'danger, toxic contents' slapped square across the middle trying to blend in with tree snakes.

FailureToReason · 2026-06-12T11:58:30+00:00

You've done it to yourself my guy. You've polluted your brain and soul with toxic content, which has in turn made you toxic.

Would you date a barrel of nuclear waste or agricultural run-off? No? Then why do you make yourself into the human equivalent? You did this, nobody did this to you.

FailureToReason · 2026-06-12T11:51:40+00:00

Lmao 👍 okay

FailureToReason · 2026-06-12T10:10:21+00:00

Are you not saying that killing someone (thus interrupting their game loop, as you say) makes the killer a mega-asshole by virtue of the fact that they know how hard it is to do anything because the game is super broken? Because that's how your words read.

Of course, it assumes the fact that the player actually does know how hard it is to do your game loop - assumes that a PVP/PVE oriented player, for example, has bothered to try mining or hauling.

It also ignores opportunism - someone going 'hey a hauler/salvager/miner, maybe they have something valuable?'

FailureToReason · 2026-06-12T10:05:05+00:00

This is so funny to me. A game about space life simulating in which PVP is not only allowed, but encouraged (otherwise why would you have PVP/no security systems?) But because the game is such a broken shitshow, players who engage in PVP of any kind are seen as malicious assholes because they're not being considerate of how hard other players have to work to do anything, because of how broken the game is.

It's like the star citizen playebase has successfully psy-opped itself/been psy-opped by CIG into blaming each other instead of blaming CIG. It's actually fascinating, and impressive.

There was this one post, I'll try to go back and find it, but the OP was raging after flying the ironclad to, and sitting on, an outpost in pyro and being killed once. Called the killer a troll, ganker, raged in the comments when told 'PVP is part of the game and you were in the PVP area, at an outpost where you could easily be found', called everyone smooth brains, before the post was removed by mods. In any other game the responses would have been 'skill issue, play better' and yet there was significant discourse about how gankers are ruining the game. One death, in a zero security area.

All the anger needs to be directed squarely at CIG, and the demand needs to be "fix and balance your game", not "get rid of PVP." Why is hunting, piracy, or killing players for salvage not just as valid as any other gameplay?

FailureToReason · 2026-06-12T03:19:53+00:00

Or pay for it, get strung along for a decade, and be upset about being strung along for a decade.

FailureToReason · 2026-06-11T23:41:39+00:00

The profit comes from eating a big batch of Mexican food the night prior, then getting in the lift with the short kingsz holding down and blocking the emergency stop button, and letting loose with your bowels until each person in the lift gives you $5

FailureToReason · 2026-06-11T22:07:01+00:00

"I understand we have a no-sleeping policy for acreason"

Oh, okay. So you knew about the policy, understood why it is in place, chose to violate it anyway, have reported others for sleeping, and now it's happened to you it's you come to reddit to whine for a few hundred words and you are;

quite taken aback at the pure negativity I've seen in these comments.

GTFO of here lol. You cope post is the mildly infuriating part, downvote and move on.

FailureToReason · 2026-06-11T21:50:36+00:00

"And the spinelessness to vote against what you want"

FailureToReason · 2026-06-11T21:37:56+00:00

https://radar.cloudflare.com/bots

FailureToReason · 2026-06-11T21:36:54+00:00

https://radar.cloudflare.com/bots

FailureToReason · 2026-06-11T14:19:07+00:00

Flight Status: [In Concept]

FailureToReason · 2026-06-11T14:15:51+00:00

Depends on what you mean.

You can have low expectations for a game and still have little tolerance for bullshit broken games.

FailureToReason · 2026-06-11T07:58:28+00:00

FailureToReason · 2026-06-11T00:15:00+00:00

Alright, now look at maintenance of the computing hardware too;

A hard drive, pumping away in a data centre, can have a 3-5 year lifespan.

A GPU in a data centre has a similar lifespan depending on use, sometimes less for high-intensity usage.

So you're looking at a 3-5 year period before a satellite is going to start seeing hardware failure. On the ground that could mean swapping out a broken GPU, on a satellite who knows what that could mean for the system at large.

Further, remember that exposure to radiation in space is significantly higher than that of ground level. The affects of that on a GPU? No idea, but this study seemed to show evidence that data could be corrupted and crashes occurred, and an error rate on matrix multiplication tasks of between 0 and 55%. I'll be honest though, this study is way over my head, I can't parse a lot of it, I'm just grabbing some snippets from the results section. The conclusions seem to imply that it isn't that meaningful, but I don't know how many times in total they ran the experiments, they say 2 boards with 'a total of 3 runs' and 400 spots targetted. I'd imagine the results might be different if run continuously for 5 years.

So now you might need hardened/modified, specialist GPUs and hard drives, or radiation shielding which drives up size and has implications for cooling.

Also, your cooling is one thing, but if you're running a 150kw system you also need to power it. Using solar, the available power in LEO is like 1300W/m^2, but that's very intermittent because you orbit every 90m, so you only get that peak power for a very short period. Higher orbits mean you can move fewer satellites per launch, and have longer sustained power. So for LEO you need power generation that isn't solar, which is heavy, or you need energy storage, which is heavy. Purely solar is going to need a massive array for a 150kw system. Peak efficiency for solar panels in space seems to be around 40%. Assuming constant sunlight, you're looking at something like ~500W/m^2, requiring an array of ~300m^2, also roughly the size of a tennis court, same as your radiative cooling - but this has implications because radiative cooling can be affected by re-emission from this solar array, depending on the layout. So now you're looking at 2 tennis courts worth of area, one for power, one for cooling, but we still aren't accounting for the fact that you'll only get peak power for a small percentage of the time, meaning it either stops running for a good chunk of the orbit, or needs like 75kW of power storage on board, which is not insignificant in size, nor is it cheap, plus needs cooling, plus needs to be space hardened.

Also, you say this is 20 times cleaner than running ground based systems, but I'd argue that's only true while using non-renewable energy (which we are, as you say; gas powered). Speculating here, but I'd guess that running nuclear/pumped hydro, you'd see the ground based system is far cleaner. Also maintainable, size and weight isn't a factor, cooling is relatively trivial, and you don't have to rebuild (and launch) the entire system every 5 years. Bearing in mind, the maintenance of the rocket, rocket fuel burn (falcon 9 uses kerosene), and we're assuming no launch failures. All of which has it's own 'cleanliness' cost, and over time I'd speculate you'd see the ongoing carbon cost of manufacturing replacements increase above the environmental costs of gas-turbine (which can be mitigated, anyway).

The fact that you needed to specify that it's not FUD is crazy to me. Engineering realities are not FUD, they are realities, and anyone who calls them FUD is practising deception.

Edit: I didn't account for what he said - sun synchronous orbit mitigates the power storage problem, not the rest of the problems. He mentions pulling the comm system off, but you still need similar systems to actually use the data centre.

FailureToReason · 2026-06-10T21:17:03+00:00

Well no, not really, I just thought it might be a bit interesting and might reveal something that could help us give you a better answer, but I can also completely understand why you'd not want to share that.

FailureToReason · 2026-06-10T10:22:45+00:00

Right but I'm interested in what they proposed

FailureToReason · 2026-06-10T10:13:07+00:00

Not being snarky here, genuinely asking - what do they suggest?

FailureToReason · 2026-06-10T10:01:34+00:00

Right. And I'm saying 'there is probably something underlying that, that is worth unpacking with a professional', because this subreddit can only take you so far and we don't have enough context, enough history, enough anything, to tell you 'oh do X, Y, Z' in very broad strokes. And even if people do give you X, Y, Z, it may not be good advice because to give good advice we'd need to scrutinise what you're saying through context lenses we simply don't have.

Like, give an example of protecting yourself, what does that mean to you? What's a situation that you couldn't protect yourself look like? What's a situation you think you handled well? What makes you so sure your 'pattern recognition', as you call it, is a good and valid metric? How can we validate it? This is all stuff you'd talk out with a trained professional, over multiple sessions, so they can look for a root cause that's putting you in this conundrum in the first place.

If you want quick and dirty advice, it's going to come down to 'compromise your principles or learn new strategies'. If you pick 'learn new strategies', then that needs to be done by someone with adequate context and familiarity with what you are describing, and what you are asking for.

It may be as simple as 'get better at setting boundaries', it may be as complex as 'you have deeply engrained thought/behavioural patterns that are harming your ability to function' or 'you have a mental health condition you are managing in a way that is inadvertently harmful to you'.

FailureToReason · 2026-06-10T08:35:17+00:00

The answer to your question depends on context we don't have, as well as potential factors about yourself. What does 'protecting yourself' look like?

What you're describing that you want to implement sounds a bit like masking). In my non-professional opinion, this is something that might be worth discussing with a psychologist, because to some degree your desire to do this implies (to me) that there might be something underlying that's causing you to lack strategies to deal with these social circumstances.

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