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I think it’s a bit of both in my case. I have a lot of popular friends, and that happens to turn a lot of heads my way and make some people insecure around me, but I also act unintentionally rude quite often, which I’ve been making an effort to fix, and I’ve been told by some people that it does make me look stuck up until people get to know me and realize I’m not rude, just very autistic.

I do have that resting bitch face (if you can see my profile picture, that’s evidence enough.) I also have a habit of being unintentionally rude on account of autism. It causes most people who interact with me to really quickly turn away because I give off the vibe that I don’t wanna be around them, even when I am enjoying their company. I end up being unintentionally popular anyway though because most of my friends are very popular, on account of them being so social even my unintentional rudeness couldn’t turn them away. And naturally having a lot of popular friends turns heads in my direction as well.

As far as sexual reasons go, I don’t really need that myself. I’m not exactly asexual, I’m sexually attracted to people, I just find it’s easy enough to take care of that need without a partner.

Losing friends to relationships though, I haven’t ever had that happen. I just become friends with their partner too and absorb them into my friend group.

Although I found out that way through some of them that apparently I give off a really intimidating aura. Apparently I give off the vibes of “the popular girl who refuses to associate herself with the peasants” as somebody said. They tend to be pretty shocked I had any interest in being friends with them at all.

I can see that perspective, and maybe subconsciously it is that stability I’m looking for, especially because I’ve gone through 2 separate traumatic events that resulted in me losing every friend I had, the second, the only person who stayed with me was my ex, who I was dating at the time.

I guess though I kinda feel like I have achieved some level of stability even without a relationship. That ex I just mentioned is still a good friend, and he and his girlfriend talk constantly about trying to move closer to me, because at this point they both consider me more of family than just a friend.

And it’s like that for most of my close friends. I’ve got some that come and go, but my tightknit inner circle seems here to stay at least, at least for a very long time. I can see the appeal of wanting somebody to be there for my entire life though. Granted, the only people I can think of that I want that out of are the friends I already have, but on account of the fact that my friend group is practically composed purely of exs and people who’ve rejected me romantically already, it seems I’ll have to look elsewhere. Although that’s kind of a sad prospect to me, that I don’t get to choose any of them to stay by my side forever.

Depends more on which man than which bear for me. Random man I know nothing about? The bear. Friend who’s been nothing but nice and respectful for years? The friend.
We aren’t answering the question thinking “well the bear might not kill me,” it’s “the bear will only kill me.”

You remembered wrong.

I suppose I was overly vague about what I meant by “exact copy.” I mean all of the knowledge, memories, and an exact map of the state of our neurons at the time of upload being uploaded to a computer, and then the functions being simulated from there. Many people believe that even if we could simulate it so perfectly that it matched a human brain’s functions exactly, it still wouldn’t be conscious because it’s still not a real human brain. That’s the point I was arguing against. My argument was that if we could mimic human brain functions closely enough, there’s no reason to believe the brain is so special that a simulation could not achieve consciousness too.
And you’re right, it may not be conscious in the same way. We have no reason to believe either way that it would or wouldn’t be, because the only thing we can actually verify is conscious is ourself. Not humans in general, just you, individually. Therefore, how conscious something is is more of a philosophical debate than a scientific one because we simply cannot test if it’s true. We couldn’t even test if it was conscious at all, and my point wasn’t that it would be, my point is that we have no reason to believe it’s possible or impossible.

I see, so your definition of “physical” is “made of particles?” In that case, sorta yeah. Particles behave as waves when unobserved, so you could argue that they no longer qualify as particles, and therefore, by your definition, are not physical. But that kinda misses the point, right? Like, all that means is that the observation may have created the particle, not that the observation created reality, because reality is not all particles. Energy, for instance, is not all particles, but it can be. Quantum fields are not particles, but they can give rise to them. Both those things are clearly real, but they aren’t made of particles.
On the second point, that’s kinda trespassing out of science territory and into “if a tree falls in the forest” territory. We can’t prove that a truly unobserved macroscopic object wouldn’t display quantum properties if we just didn’t check if it was, but that’s kinda a useless thing to think about. It’s kinda similar to what our theories are though, in that the best theory we have is that the bigger the object is, the more likely the interaction we call “observation” just happens spontaneously without the need for interaction. Too big, and it’s so unlikely in any moment for it not to happen that the chances of the wave function not being collapsed in any given moment is so close to zero there’s no meaningful distinction between the actual odds and zero.

There shouldn’t be a distinction between quantum and non-quantum objects. That’s the mystery. Why can’t large objects exhibit quantum properties? Nobody knows, all we know is they don’t. We’ve attempted to figure it out by creating larger and larger objects that still exhibit quantum properties, but we know, at some point, it just stops exhibiting these properties and we don’t know why, but it doesn’t require an observer to collapse the wave function.
Also, can you define physical for me? It seems we have a misunderstanding here, because I’m defining physical as having a tangible effect on reality. If it wasn’t real, it could not interact with reality. It seems you’re using a different definition.

A building does not actually enter a superposition when unobserved, nor does Schrodinger’s cat. The point of that metaphor was to demonstrate, through humor, the difference between quantum objects and non-quantum objects, by pointing out how ridiculous it would be to think a cat could enter a superposition like a particle. In fact, one of the great mysteries of physics right now is why only quantum objects have that property, and in order to figure that out we have to figure out what interaction “observation” actually is.
Additionally, we can observe the effects of waves quite clearly. We can observe how they interact with things, how they interfere with each other, etc. It is only attempting to view the particle itself that causes it to collapse and become a particle and not a wave. We can view, for instance, the interference pattern of photons of light, behaving like a wave. This proves that the wave is in fact real, because we can see the effects of it. It’s only if we try to observe the paths of the individual photons that the pattern changes. We didn’t make the photons real, we could already see they were real by their effects on reality. We just collapsed the function, forcing them to take a single path.

I think you’re a little confused about what observed means and what it does.
When unobserved, elementary particles behave like a wave, but they do not stop existing. A wave is still a physical thing. Additionally, observation does not require consciousness. For instance, a building, such as a house, when nobody is looking at it, does not begin to behave like a wave. It’s still a physical building. Therefore, observation is a bit of a misnomer. It really means a complex interaction we don’t understand causes particles to behave like a particle and not a wave. It just happens that human observation is one of the possible ways this interaction can take place.
An unobserved black hole will still feed, an unobserved house is still a house.
To be clear, I’m not insulting you or your idea like the other dude, but I wanted to clear that up.

On the contrary, it’s not a flaw in my argument, it is my argument. I’m saying we can’t be sure a machine could not be conscious because we don’t know that our brain is what makes us conscious. Nor do we know where the threshold is where consciousness arises. It’s perfectly possible all we need is to upload an exact copy of our brain into a machine, and it’d be conscious by default.

We don’t even know what consciousness is, let alone if it’s technically “real” (as in physical in any way.) It’s perfectly possible an uploaded brain would be just as conscious as a real brain because there was no physical thing making us conscious, and rather it was just a result of our ability to think at all.
Similarly, I’ve heard people argue a machine couldn’t feel emotions because it doesn’t have the physical parts of the brain that allow that, so it could only ever simulate them. That argument has the same hole in that we don’t actually know that we need those to feel emotions, or if the final result is all that matters. If we replaced the whole “this happens, release this hormone to cause these changes in behavior and physical function” with a simple statement that said “this happened, change behavior and function,” maybe there isn’t really enough of a difference to call one simulated and the other real. Just different ways of achieving the same result.

My point is, we treat all these things, consciousness, emotions, etc, like they’re special things that can’t be replicated, but we have no evidence to suggest this. It’s basically the scientific equivalent of mysticism, like the insistence that free will must exist even though all evidence points to the contrary.

The long story short:
Fell in love with somebody, she rejected me, but we ended up becoming very close friends anyway. Now she’s going through a medical crisis and has been leaning on me a lot to get through it emotionally. Besides emotional support, I’ve been reminding her that even as friends I still love her, in fact a lot more than before. Hearing that she says has cheered her up a lot and really helped.
I don’t take it her answer will change given her reasons for rejecting me, but I’ve come to realize I don’t need it to as much as I thought I did. It’s enough for me that my love for her makes her happy. That’s all I need.

So I’d say in spite of everything seeming like it should be going wrong, I’m having a great week, and I’m going to try to keep having good weeks so she can rely on me to help her through whatever she needs.

I don’t have direct examples because I suck at googling, but what I saw that made me think of this was an ancient Greek philosopher insulting another, presumably in a rude tone, but still translated to look super polite and old timey. The explanations people have given here have really shed a lot of light for me on why that is though, so it makes sense to me now.

I tried to find examples but turns out I’m really bad at googling. Quotes of ancient Greek philosophers is one example though. Surely not all of them spoke formally, and I’ve heard some even spoke rather rudely, and yet when they’re translated they’re still translated into really formal, old timey language. There’s been some nice explanations here of why that is though, so I understand a lot better.

I agree about BMI often being a bad measurement. Even my own doctors ignore it on me because my BMI is well into the obese range and yet every other measurement of health is in the healthy range, most well into it. My body fat for instance is just below 30%, which is perfectly healthy for a woman. My waist line is well into healthy range as well. Additionally, all my tests such as blood tests come back more than healthy and show that I’m not at risk for any obesity related conditions. Of course, I don’t look like the standard “healthy” body most people imagine a woman should have. I would look fat to anyone who doesn’t know the full picture.
That’s why I always hated that whole thing people say that “If you’re BMI is high and you’re still healthy it’ll be really obvious.” People just assume that high BMI and healthy means muscular, when you can have a normal body fat percentage as well as other measurements but still have a high BMI.
This is even ignoring the fact that even when you are genuinely obese and unhealthy, it often stems from body image issues in the first place. The same way a depressed person often goes “I’m doing everything wrong anyway so why bother even trying?” A fat person often is having the struggle of “I’m ugly anyway so why even bother trying to be pretty and healthy? Healthy just means I gotta live longer being ugly.” That’s why berating people for being fat usually doesn’t work. It just makes them feel worse and reinforces that idea they already have that they’re too ugly to bother. Sure, some people it might kick into gear to try their best to lose weight to prove they’re not ugly, but that’s the difference between somebody who still has hope and somebody that’s already lost it all.

Responding late but as somebody who has trouble expressing emotions through words but easily communicates through music, I’ve been waiting my whole life for somebody to ask this exact question.

Edit to note that a lot of these songs are Japanese, but they have subtitles. Also it’s mostly Vocaloid, which can be grating to hear to people not used to that kind of music.

First up, This specific cover of “Dark Woods Circus” gets my childhood down pretty well.
Second, experience the immediate mental consequences of that childhood with “Echo.”
Third, “Abstract Nonsense.” …yeah…
Fourth, “I’m Glad You’re Evil Too,” finally a happy one, still my favorite song.
Fifth, “Tell Me Why”
Sixth, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind,”
Seventh, and last, describing my life today, “Life Starts Now.”

It’s been rough so far. I still have really, really bad days, but things are looking up. I’ve been genuinely happy more days in a row the past month than ever happened in the rest of my life.

I think I’ve given the misimpression that I immediately jump to blaming my partner for everything and telling them they’re a bad person. I used to do that, but not so much anymore. How things typically go nowadays is that I explain that I’m having an irrational thought because of a traumatic memory, and try to guide them through what I need them to do for me to help me feel better. However, the more common response, instead of listening to me about what I need, is for people to tell me that I’m taking the wrong approach and that they have a better solution to alleviating my fears. This inevitably leads to me having an emotional snapping moment where their solution didn’t work, my emotions spiraled out of control, and now I think they’re evil. This is immediately followed by me breaking down crying, apologizing profusely, and feeling like the whole thing was my fault. What I need people to understand is that I know what works for me and I cannot compromise on that.

I suppose it’s actually a little inaccurate to say nobody ever has a better solution, because my most recent ex actually was able to really easily keep me under control, simply by overloading me with being super nice every time I was about to have an outburst to the point where my brain would just short circuit and go “I couldn’t possibly have been thinking anything bad about her, right? Because I can’t see a single bad thing right now.” We still, however, ended up breaking up due to an emotional outburst of mine, but that was a very rare case where everyone who witnessed it or heard the story said it was justified (she was the one who I accused of being a compulsive liar, but she had literally just tried to gaslight me into believing I had never once told her I was uncomfortable with some aggressive types of advances she made on me, even though I said it constantly, all the time, and repeatedly asked her to stop. The only issue was I accused her of lying about a lot more than she actually had lied about.)

Unfortunately, my mental health issues just straight up aren’t going to go away. I can’t do anything except eliminate the triggers that cause them, and that’s what I want people to understand and help me do. I’m not expecting people to sit down and take my emotional blowups. I’m expecting them to work with me to prevent them in the first place. That’s what this new friend is so good at. Because she listens to me about what I need, with the sole exception of if it crosses her boundaries, where she informs me so I can work around it and work with her to find a solution that she is capable of doing for me.

And it’s not like people gain nothing from me. I’m told I’m exceptionally good at emotional support and giving good advice (which is largely because I have to do these things for myself all the time, and I’m exceptionally more fucked up than the average person I’m supporting.) I’m also the kind of person who doesn’t feel the least bit bad if somebody can’t be there for me all the time (in fact, I kinda appreciate it because it gives me plenty of chances to learn better control of my emotions without the need of somebody’s help.)

But even with all that said, maybe I am still asking too much. Evidently most people still can’t handle it, so at this point I probably have to admit it’s not a normal thing to expect of somebody, even if to me it feels like the bare minimum.