Well, that's pretty much escalating it to a point where all discussion becomes useless. I say that is pretty weak.

I'm going to do two things here:
1. I am going to respond to the ontopic part of your attack.
2. I am going to go offtopic, see your weak nihilism and raise you strong nihilism.

1:
Rational means: 'making the optimal decision to further your goals.' The only thing I needed to prove was that there could be reasoning behind not wanting to be seen as weak. I went a little further and stated that there often is reasoning behind not wanting to be seen as weak. I repeat: rational conclusions are not universal; they depend on your goals. What is rational for one, may not be rational for another.

2:
I agree, there is no goal in the universe. I'd state it even stronger: there can ultimately be no ultimate goal of the universe (this particular universe may have an ultimate goal if it is nested in another universe, but that is sort of cheating with the word universe). The word goal is dependent on time and on a ranking of configurations of the universe. Coming closer to your goal means that the configuration of universe has changed in such a way that it is more likely that the set of configurations that define your goal will occur. Attaining your goal means being in the set of configurations that define that goal.

If all configurations exist 'simultaneously' (i.e., time is just another dimension), then the whole notion of 'moving to another configuration' is nonsensical. There can be no goal if there is no passing time.

Even if the universe is really only in one state at a time, there is no absolute reason to value one configuration over another. Reasons can emerge within the universe, but not outside of it. I.e.: all species have a basis to rank certain configurations above others (the dinosaurs might have certain preferences concerning asteroids), but without this emergent value system, there needs to be an inherent value system that defines which configurations of the universe are more desirable than others. The universe doesn't work that way: it has no concept of values. It is as you said: it just exists; it just happens. There are configurations that are statistically more likely and in that sense one could argue that the universe 'favors' those, but that is a far cry from our intuition of a 'goal' (heat death doesn't seem that interesting).

Finally: if there happened to be an ultimate goal, what would we do after attaining it? Suppose the ultimate goal of the universe is pushing a big red button in some crevice on Mars and we manage to push it. Then what?
In more technical terms: the set of configurations that would define an ultimate goal is necessarily relatively small and ranked above all other configurations. The only option when reaching it would be to 'roam' indefinitely in that limited set of configurations (although admittedly, it can still be an infinite set).

The antithesis of rational is irrational. If you wish to disprove my point, you need to prove that it is irrational to care about being ostracized for being a weak man.
Hiding what is perceived as weakness is generally a very wise and rational strategy. Ask any leader of anything anywhere.

1. We weren't talking about Metro.
Metro is a piece of shit, introduced due to MSs tablet market-'us too'-thinking (but that is a whole other story and even then still not 'change for the sake of change').
We were discussing flat design which doesn't fundamentally change the functionality. Just the visuals.

2. See the sibling posts and threads. The flat design also generally doesn't matter, functionally. There are some points to be made about affordance and intuition which aren't applicable to a(n again: fucking) hammer, but that's about it.

3. 'Believe in UX'?
I believe users experience things, yes. Your point?

No. I explicitly included the query 'design hammer' to show that the same holds for normal hammers.
Next time: read.

Also: you only attacked (and failed at it) what you regarded as the weakest part of my post and disregarded the rest (which was independent from that part). That is the sign of a coward.

I'm not doing this again with you. You consistently ignore my points and just change the subject.

Goodbye.

Rational.

1. That wasn't the point. I was pointing out the fallacious reasoning.
2. It is rational to not want to be ostracized by society as being a weak man. But there is a fine line here as well. A lot of our emotional behavior has a basis in rationality. You could say that if someone does (or doesn't do) something out of shame, but doesn't think about the rational part of doing so, it is purely driven by emotion. To return to your question: only when emotion leads someone to doing something that they wouldn't have done had they rationally looked at it does it become a problem.

Really?

What does the pixel configuration of the recycle bin icon have to do with its functionality?
That's right, very, very little. Even if it were just a yellow square, it'd still have 'Recycle Bin' under it and the fundamental functionality would not be different. Just like a yellow polka dot hammer.

Also: http://stanford25blog.stanford... (reflex hammers)
And Google 'design hammer'. There are definitely hammers out there that look as stupid as all the flat UI crap we're dealing with today.

The big difference here is that switching away from Windows (or the flat design) isn't as easy as not buying a ridiculously looking hammer. I'm pretty sure that if MS would make the icon sets and a lot of the interface easily switchable, that many would indeed switch away from the flat stuff. Sure, a lot of people wouldn't know about it or even give a shit (I've see many an XP desktop with the hideously bloated blue look and the default desktop background) and sure, that would make MS say: "See! They LIKE it!", but for those among us with a brain, it would quickly show the collective dislike for the flat style.

Although GP is clearly a troll, you are attacking his point fallaciously.

1. Even if men were by far the most emotional irrational beings on earth, that would not disprove "emotion is [females'] fundamental mental underpinning"
2. Risk taking, murder and aggression are not necessarily driven by emotion. It's a fine line, but technically those behaviors can be (and might often be) about attaining social status or power.
3. There is evidence that there should be many more 'husband shelters' and that their lack is driven largely by a culture of (implicitly) shaming 'weak men', not by a lack of battered husbands.

Let me state clearly that I do not agree with the GP. The only thing I'm trying to do here is point out some logical fallacies in the hope that this will improve the quality of the discussion.

No, it doesn't.
Hammers come in all kinds of different colors with all kinds of designs.

Also, a UI for an inherently complex and extremely powerful and versatile thing such as an OS is not a fucking hammer. That's like comparing an industrial complex to a dog house.

Except that only works when the world thinks you and your bonds are reliable investments in the first place.
Would you buy any Greek bonds on the day they switch back to the Drachma?
Yeah, me neither. Even if there was a veritably sick interest rate attached to them, I wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole before at least the first massive devaluation.

The only people for whom it wouldn't really matter are people who have Drachma to spend in the first place (although given the imminent devaluation, they'd be better off changing them to a more stable currency ASAP).

Apparently there has been a reboot effort going on with significant improvements in the noise department.
They had a (miserably failed) indiegogo-campaign 2+ years ago: https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...

The turbulence doesn't look half bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Looking at how close people are standing during the landing procedure, it is much, much better than the same situation for helicopters.

In the noise department the info given by these guys is this:
"Due to advances in technology the fuel consumption has been reduced by 66% and the 98 decibels of noise is now around 62 Decibels; A helicopter main rotor break the speed of sound that is why you can hear it coming for miles and miles.

Now you would be lucky to hear the WASP at 500 feet." (from the Youtube comments at the video above)

Seriously. Both the incident itself and how it was subsequently 'dealt with' are of the kind of shit we only expect from actual police state wannabes like China, Russia and any number of fictitious dystopian states.

On behalf of the civilized world: get your fucking shit together.

It would have to be big rig hacking or physical cracking, not hijacking.

You can't exactly hold a gun to the driver's head and kick him out of the driver's seat if it's AI- (or even remote-)driven.

It would probably be very easy to get the trucks to stop, simply by creating an obstacle. Even then, for a hijacking, you need to gain access to the cabin (if there even is one), override (or prevent) the 'exception: vehicle stopped due to obstacle'-alarm from being sent, prevent all communication of position of the truck, make sure you and your material are unrecognizable for the shitload of live feed cameras on the thing and then perform some control override to get it to actually start moving towards wherever you're planning on stashing it.

Hell, for a successful hijack, it'd be far easier to just hack into the network of the transporter or do some 'social engineering' on an insider and direct the truck to wherever. Obviously not a job for ex-truckers.

Of course, the far easier alternative is just to get the trucks to stop in a fairly quiet place (traffic wise), break them open and transfer the contents to another truck. It would still have to happen fast and visually anonymously, of course.

It was and is relevant to both the OP, this comment thread AND the post I was directly replying to.

I will happily provide proof for these statements if you make an effort to do the same for yours. I do urge you to reread the comment thread first, though.

Christ, everything is politicized in your them vs. us two-party system, isn't it?