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There is no significant difference between 'pain' as perceived by animals, plants, humans or malware.

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Actually, there is. In psychology and neuroscience there are accepted ways to measure pain behaviourally. Crudely speaking, humans and other complex animals pass more of these tests than plants or computer programs (mostly). These fields make a distinction between simple nociception, and awareness of pain. An animal with nociception will reflexively withdraw from damaging stimuli, but an animal with an awareness of pain can respond in more complex ways.

For example, imagine that there is a rat in a cage with two troughs of water. One is plain water and the other is water with a pain-killer dissolved in it. A healthy rat will tend to drink from the normal trough, but a rat with inflamed joints will tend to drink from the trough with pain-killer in it. This ability to make trade-offs is clearly something more than a simple reflexive response to harmful stimuli. Note also that pain-killing drugs are not something the rat has evolved to deal with. Plants do not show this kind of flexibility in their behaviour, but many complex animals (including fish and crustaceans) do.

N0body said:

Really, we should solve the issues within our own societies and cultures (yeah, I know, also not likely to happen in any of our lifetimes unless something miraculous happens) before we start trying to hammer away at the rights of other lifeforms (possibly including AI, when it eventually meets enough criteria to be 'intelligent').

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Maybe not. If things like cows, chickens, and pigs can suffer anywhere near as much as humans can, then animal farming is probably where humans are causing the most suffering, simply because there are many billions of animals involved.

pentagathus said:

...morons like you who like to pretend women have greater rights than men, or equal at least. ...

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But women aren't behind in legal rights in most western countries, are they? Most imbalances favouring men come from social norms or biology, not laws.

Jhessail said:

Papa Lazarou said:

He's obviously not a troll. You're the one posting inflammatory bull****.

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Says the guy who literally contributes nothing but drive-by sniping from the bushes. I must have really hurt your precious feelings at some point, and I can't even remember it. Ego, such a fragile thing. 

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No, I'm just sick of the constant abuse in your posts. What purpose does it serve?

Jhessail said:

You made four posts that were nothing but inflammatory bull**** - ie, trolling - before you finalle came around and made a proper post.

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He's obviously not a troll. You're the one posting inflammatory bull****.

Jhessail said:

You're again being willfully obtuse.

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Please be civil.

I think it's a shame that men's issues tend to be framed in terms of sexism against women, even when men are clearly the ones suffering from the sexism. I don't think sex roles are universally advantageous to men and so I don't see why every issue needs to be framed as if they are.

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Because the problem would not even exist if women had not been seen as the inferior, weaker, dumber, useless-aside-from-reproduction(and working low paid menial jobs of course)-gender for a long, long time.

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I don't understand how that follows. Are you suggesting that the best way to solve mens issues is to talk about them in terms of sexism against women even though men are suffering and there is a sexual stereotype about men involved?

Mrs D isn't downplaying the seriousness of the topic of the video, or the subject in general - she's pointing out, rightfully, that it's not the fault of feminism that a man being beaten by a woman is seen as a joke, but of the very sexism that feminism combats.

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I don't know what others have said but I'm not suggesting it's the fault of feminism. I just don't think framing the issue in terms of sexism against women is necessarily the best approach.

Violence against men is not taken as seriously as violence against women. Is that because women are considered weak, because men are considered expendable, or some mixture? Does anyone know?

I'd prefer to deal with that when it occurs than pre-empt it, but fair enough...

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If you cared to browse this thread far enough back, you would find several sexist ******* who acted just the way she described.

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Understandable.

Mrs. Dryvus said:

This issue, however, is often wrongly co-opted by opportunistic MRAs for their package message that holds that there is a shift in power from men to women in the form of educational discrimination, economic discrimination, and now domestic violence. The package message is a load of unsubstantiated horse****.

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I'd prefer to deal with that when it occurs than pre-empt it, but fair enough. As I said before, I'm not convinced it's relevant which group is more downtrodden overall. Assessing the net position of the two groups overall would be extremely difficult and not all that helpful as far as I can imagine.

It's not at all unfair. I'm not de-legitimizing a problem faced by men or saying that the effect is not harmful to men. I'm saying that the ridicule that a man faces in being beaten down by a woman is a product of gender stereotypes regarding which of the two is the stronger and more dominant.

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I think it's a shame that men's issues tend to be framed in terms of sexism against women, even when men are clearly the ones suffering from the sexism. I don't think sex roles are universally advantageous to men and so I don't see why every issue needs to be framed as if they are.

Mrs. Dryvus said:

This attempt by MRAs to not only make equivalent but to cherry pick and amplify male victimization as if the power pendulum has swung the other way and males are now the downtrodden is tiresome.

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Who has done that? The video isn't making any claim about the relative amounts of victimisation. I don't really think that's even relevant.

The reason that those idiots would laugh at a man being hit by "his woman" is exactly because of gender stereotypes that make a victimized, submissive male ridiculous in society's eyes. It seems ridiculous that a man should be a victim of a weak woman.

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I think this is pretty unfair. You're taking a legitimate problem faced by men and saying that it is just another example of negative stereotypes about women. Obviously there is a complementary stereotype about men and in this case the effect is harmful to men.

Splintert said:

Male support groups for domestic violence and sexual abuse should tip off anyone.

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Why?

Ililsa said:

Well as far as western martial arts goes, all we have before about 1300 is pictures drawn by monks or other artists. It isn't until the renaissance that we actually get combat treatises, which is what HEMA practitioners go off.

Before then all we can really do is go off a few pictures and theory-craft by actually using the weapons and guessing, hence Lloyd's approach.

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Yeah and the approach is fair enough. His conclusions are just a bit strong for me. It's like someone  trying to teach themselves to play the piano, having no musical training and having never even seen someone play. Such a person would certainly make progress and learn things, but they'd probably think that many of the things a professional can do are impossible.

Problem with Lindy is that he seems not to believe in martial arts. He seems to go with the assumption that what untrained reenactors can come up with is what was done historically.

Very interesting! Any details you can share about the combat mechanics and how they differ from those of Warband?

Rides chops. They finally made it!

Jujutsu still exists. Judo and BJJ are competition styles developed from Jujutsu.

And it's a bit unfair to say that Judo is just Jujutsu without the "bad" techniques. It's a matter of perspective. Jujutsu isn't ideal for competition, and Judo would've looked like a pretty bad school in the 16th century.

Might makes right, I guess.

In psychology experiments, mirrors have been found to reduce anti-social behaviour in some situations.

Not heater shields, but a pretty cool video about fighting with centregrip shields: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkhpqAGdZPc

Moral support is also appreciated 

And while we don't want to give everything away, we can probably answer most specific questions to some extent. We have pretty thorough plans, but we're still keen to hear what people would and would not like to see from this kind of project.

Yeah I agree, and most of that stuff is on our list in one form or another. Our first goal and the main point of the prototype is to test our ideas for weapon interactions (attacks, blocks etc.). If that goes well we'll try out combat footwork (something I'm very keen to get working), and much later we'll look at other kinds of movement, picking up objects, etc..

Thanks for the reply, xenoargh. Actually we're not planning to use real-time IK in the prototype. Like in Warband, the core mechanics (for attacking, blocking and moving) will not involve physics or advanced animation systems at all. That said, the mechanics are designed to allow for good blending between animations (basically a more advanced version of what I did in CAE, if you're familiar with that).