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Fruit machine (homosexuality test)

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Re: Fruit machine (homosexuality test)

#21

Post by taneq »

diggan wrote: post #6

“The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a campaign to eliminate all gay men from the civil service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the military.” This is very interesting considering in ancient Greece it was the opposite. Having soldiers being gay was said to improve morale and make the soldiers fight better, as their partners was fighting together with them. More info…

> Having soldiers being gay was said to improve morale and make the soldiers fight better, as their partners was fighting together with them.

Which is interesting because one of the most coherent arguments against women fighting on the front lines is that if they got injured or captured, the male soldiers in their unit would get themselves killed trying to rescue them.

Re: Fruit machine (homosexuality test)

#22

Post by ordu »

diggan wrote: post #9
mavihs wrote: post #8

On the subject of pupil dilation, in the book Thinking fast and slow, Daniel kahneman explains that for any mentally taxing task pupils dilate in proportion to the difficult of the task. If the task is too difficult, they don't dilate at all.

That's interesting. I could imagine a video game to employ this somehow, as basically the difficulty in designing video games is trying to make the game not too hard or too easy, so the player gets a challenge but doesn't experience it to be too hard. Bit intrusive to get the pupil dilation currently, but maybe with future VR gear we can get better information and adjust video game difficulty depending on how the pla…

There is a theoretical risk of player mind spotting the causal link and abusing it. I cannot say definitely is it possible or not, but if pupils dilated not only due to complexity of the task but for other reasons too, then it would seem completely plausible for me.

Re: Fruit machine (homosexuality test)

#24

Post by [deleted] »

smcl wrote: post #10
zeristor wrote: post #2

“The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a campaign to eliminate all gay men from the civil service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the military.” O Canada I imagine this level of national homophobia was standard in most countries at the time. The irony of branding homosexuals as security risks because they could be blackmailed seems to be the sickest form of circular l…

I don’t think whoever was responsible for this policy genuinely believed that they were making the RCMP more effective by eliminating risk of blackmail. I think they started with “I don’t want gay men working here” and searched around for justification that they thought was a little less unpalatable.

[deleted]

Re: Fruit machine (homosexuality test)

#25

Post by christopher8827 »

krapp wrote: post #20
7952 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have always wondered if the pendulum is really about sexuality at all. It could be that we just become more or less authoritarian. And certain groups are just a victim of that swing.

The labels we give to sexual orientation are mostly a political and cultural construct, and different societies draw the lines of propriety and transgression in different places.

But those lines seem to be re-drew every few decades. It's hard to tell what currently is considered sexual deviancy be permitted in the future.

Re: Fruit machine (homosexuality test)

#27

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

thrwayxyz wrote: post #18
7952 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have always wondered if the pendulum is really about sexuality at all. It could be that we just become more or less authoritarian. And certain groups are just a victim of that swing.

Unlikely. When people talk about homosexuality being acceptable in ancient societies they leave out the fact that it was acceptable for barely pubescent boys to be the receiving partner for adults. So are we going to head down that route in another decade or two when we become even less authoritarian?

In the early phase of the german ecological/anti-authoritarian party "Die Grünen" there was actually a scandal involving pedophilia (see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A4dophilie-Debatte_(B%C3%...).

So there is this one data point of correlation.

Re: Fruit machine (homosexuality test)

#28

Post by zeristor »

Compare this to the US Navy trying to root out the subversive cell of 'The Friends of Dorothy'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_of_Dorothy#Misunderstan...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOn9grCVO7c

!! Facepalm concussion warning !!

If only they could get to this Dorothy then they could maybe get her to give up a list of all the gay seamen, simples.

Re: Fruit machine (homosexuality test)

#29

Post by cjfd »

7952 wrote: post #12
diggan wrote: post #6

“The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a campaign to eliminate all gay men from the civil service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the military.” This is very interesting considering in ancient Greece it was the opposite. Having soldiers being gay was said to improve morale and make the soldiers fight better, as their partners was fighting together with them. More info…

I have always wondered if the pendulum is really about sexuality at all. It could be that we just become more or less authoritarian. And certain groups are just a victim of that swing.

Things related to this seem to be religion and the state of the economy. One factor in the acceptance of gay people is that christianity is much less powerful nowadays. Also, when the economy is doing badly it seems popular to find a scapegoat and that can be the gays or the jews or some such minority. These two things may not be unrelated. It seems that well-fed and reasonably happy humans are much less prone to religion.

Re: Fruit machine (homosexuality test)

#30

Post by FatDrunknStupid »

I'd like to ask the LGBTTQQIAAP (googled that) community - would this actually help if it's use was reversed? Instead of pupil tracking etc. if you swipe left or right on a bunch of images then indicate your own view of your sexuality, it could be correlated against the responses of others. This might help alleviate the 'confusion' phase and perhaps could offer advice. Tell me if I'm being daft?
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