Psycho-Babble Social Thread 1092227

Shown: posts 1 to 9 of 9. This is the beginning of the thread.

 

Turn Left

Posted by alexandra_k on September 17, 2016, at 23:57:17

Just because all the market research predicts you will turn right.

 

Re: Turn Left

Posted by alexandra_k on September 18, 2016, at 0:35:53

In reply to Turn Left, posted by alexandra_k on September 17, 2016, at 23:57:17

So if you turn left then you screw up how their product placement affects you. It makes it easier / more likely that you will make better food choices. I mean... Currently... Walking left around the supermarket enables me to avoid looking into any of the television screens... The stuff that is visually salient is different...

All the 'freedom' stuff that I used to think was misguided (from an analytic philosophy point of view)... I'm starting to see the sense in it, now. What those authors were (perhaps) gesturing towards... Degrees of freedom, of course. Mostly about little choices that we make that reduce the impact of environments that conspire to control you...

Great Expectations... The story of Pip. So... Pip finds himself in pretty sh*tty environmental conditions much of the time. But he fails to adapt... He doesn't become a good thief. He doesn't give up his principles in order to make the best of a bad situation...

We're supposed to think that *the reason why* was because he had good biological parents.

But what if... There were Pip's who turned out to have sh*tty thieving parents? What about those Pip's?

Those Pips... The human Pip's. The humane Pips. The Pips that make us feel proud to be a member of homo sapiens...

The trouble with this whole... Some people having other peoples genetic sequences and having control of infant mortality and so on and so forth... The trouble is that they might have interests other than identifying and supporting the Pips.

Of course I understand that the response to this is that the whole idea of personality or person through time or Pipness is a construct. People aren't really like that. They are environmentally controllable. People will follow instructions from the person in a white coat to electrocute someone to death... Only... Only... What we really found (seems to me) was that there were a few people who aren't like that at all - a few people who do have personal integrity (lets call it). A few people who stood out as being exceptional.

Maybe their view of what should be supported and encouraged to thrive is... Their genes. Just because they can. Or the lackeys who suck up to them the most because they think that they are in the position such that they will always have control over their lackeys...

I suppose the idea is to increase the numbers of people who are predictable and controllable. Precisely because they are. Known quantity. Allows you to future forecast the outcomes of investing in this or that... Increase those people... Less of the... Humane? Not just humane... Other things, too... Something something about linked traits...

The trouble is you can see the people collecting the data... The interests... I don't think these people are looking out for humanity as a whole... I really don't think that is particularly plausable...

Would you call it 'freedom'? The freedom people have to be like Pip even with sh*tty parents and sh*tty environmental circumstance? If you could identify the Pips and... Mark them in some way... Prevent their getting into college or whatever... Make sure they never get jobs where they have any access income... Make them sterile... Who knows what... Would the world be better without the possibility of Pip? It would be if you and your's were decidedly not pip-like.

That was kind of brave new world?? No... That wasn't about how you might do your best to induce gamma-hood and yet... Ah, well, just so long as they don't make you or yours look bad... Sigh.

Something something about local optima and fitness traps...

 

Re: Turn Left

Posted by alexandra_k on September 18, 2016, at 0:42:09

In reply to Re: Turn Left, posted by alexandra_k on September 18, 2016, at 0:35:53

I didn't mean pip. I meant Oliver Twist. Insofar as I remember it. Hmm...

 

Re: Turn Left

Posted by alexandra_k on September 22, 2016, at 3:56:19

In reply to Re: Turn Left, posted by alexandra_k on September 18, 2016, at 0:42:09

I've been thinking a lot about "Brave new world" and also "1984" insofar as I remember them. I found an essay from the Brave new world person writing later... Talking about the differences in the dystopian vision...

Brave new world was pre WWII. I didn't properly appreciate that before...

In the essay (post-WWII) he said some stuff about population control... Which is also interesting to me... Tragedy of Commons etc... Anyway... He said about how it was more humane to come in with birth control than to need to limit care to old people (or similar). Something like that...

And of course... To me... That's a no brainer. Of course.

But that simply isn't the case for some of the cultural groups in NZ. I think... If you really were very clear with people and you said to them 'look, either you can have end of life care to help you live to a ripe old age... You can have cancer care and so on... Or... You can have babies... And all those resources can go into keeping them alive for those first years of their life' I really do think that many of them would chose to live what I might consider a nasty, bruitish, and short life for themself... Just so long as they get to have their bunch of kids.

That is their priority. And I suppose... That if they really make that choice then that should be their right... I suppose...

Or should it?

Why should it be?

Sigh. Things are pretty f*ck*d up.

____________
I went to rounds. At least, I went to a publicly advertised version or approximation of rounds haha. I thought one of the talks was going to be by a drug rep promoting a product... Only it turned out to be from a doc who trained overseas who had experience prescribing the med... Since we only had just obtained it with the last pharmac purchase... And I suppose... What's the difference?
____________
I vaguely read a book before about how the cost of participating in a treatment trial was that one was potentially forgoing current gold standard of care. Depending on the state of the current gold standard and depending on the stage of the trialled treatment that could be a better or worse decision... Then I heard that often the only way we can (possibly) get current gold standard of care in NZ is by participating in a treatment trial. Because one may strike it lucky and get placed in the control group, I suppose...
_____________
Treatment trials... If that's the case... How is that for a fair health system? Random... Lottery... Who gets health care and who doesn't. Whether you get a hip replacement or whether you merely get a cut along the side of your leg... Which group you get placed into. Back to having a litter...

 

Re: Turn Left » alexandra_k

Posted by Tabitha on September 22, 2016, at 10:54:53

In reply to Re: Turn Left, posted by alexandra_k on September 22, 2016, at 3:56:19

Didn't know that about those books. Read old paperback copies of them long ago. Don't recall much except they were both very grim.

Children. Never wanted them, don't really understand the impulse. Yet I don't look forward to being old and existing primarily to consume health care. The young work and feed the insurance system then the money gets routed into the health care industry through the deteriorating bodies of old people.

Does NZ have different ethics requirements on clinical trials? In U.S. it's unethical to deny standard of care.

 

Re: Turn Left » Tabitha

Posted by Clearskies on September 22, 2016, at 21:37:27

In reply to Re: Turn Left » alexandra_k, posted by Tabitha on September 22, 2016, at 10:54:53

> Didn't know that about those books. Read old paperback copies of them long ago. Don't recall much except they were both very grim.
>
> Children. Never wanted them, don't really understand the impulse. Yet I don't look forward to being old and existing primarily to consume health care. The young work and feed the insurance system then the money gets routed into the health care industry through the deteriorating bodies of old people.
>
> Does NZ have different ethics requirements on clinical trials? In U.S. it's unethical to deny standard of care.


I still have my copies of both books. Also "Animal Farm".

 

Re: Turn Left

Posted by alexandra_k on September 23, 2016, at 23:27:05

In reply to Re: Turn Left » alexandra_k, posted by Tabitha on September 22, 2016, at 10:54:53

> Didn't know that about those books. Read old paperback copies of them long ago. Don't recall much except they were both very grim.

Dystopia. There were utopia books, too. Apparently Skinner wrote a Novel of how we could use conditioning to lead to a utopian society. "Clockwork Orange" was a dystopian response. Not sure why, but I got it into my head that 1984 was... Well... Written closer to 1984... But it was pre-WWII. They treated the foetuses with alcohol, you see. I thought the effects of alcohol on foetuses would have been a Nazi Doctor discovery... But no, evidence was earlier (or at least some people were aware).

> Children. Never wanted them, don't really understand the impulse. Yet I don't look forward to being old and existing primarily to consume health care.

Aw. I don't know that anybody likes the idea of existing 'primarily to consume health care'. I mean, I think most people like to think they would have the freedom / power to say 'I no longer consent to treatment' and have that decision be respected.

I'm not sure that we have that right in NZ. I think because of trials... Because we are enrolling people in trials without them being aware they are participating in a trial. Because we aren't telling people the sad, sad truth that they can either participate in a trial or there is no health care for them. I think that is the situation, actually... That there is really rather a lot of that. That's why all the data has to go overseas... So people can keep track of outcomes and so on... Of the trials.

> Does NZ have different ethics requirements on clinical trials? In U.S. it's unethical to deny standard of care.

Who will treat you, then? If you get mowed down in the street and you don't have health insurance... Who will pay for / provide you with standard of care?

Or perhaps standard of care is different from gold standard of care...

HIV medications... Drug cocktail... So on... The most recent cancer treatments...

I do understand trade-offs need to be made... But it is hard to trust the people who make the choices (to trust that people are making choices in anything like best interests of anyone other than themselves) when they aren't forthcoming about the things that needed to be weighed... But then you have a population who are fairly damaged by alcohol etc... When you have a population that hasn't adjusted to infant mortality being down (a population who can't afford to feed all the teenagers they've produced and they couldn't even find a war to believe in).

I read something in the paper today about polytech occupational therapists writing lighting prescriptions for old people because many of them don't realise they need to turn on the lights. That's what it means - to have a prescription. That's the level of expertise and knowledge that goes into producing one. I have vague memories of doctors emptying out sacks of glasses / spectacles in 3rd world countries and basically people should just grab a pair and use them if they help them see better... That's pretty much what optometry has become here... There is a package, you see, for people on welfare. You pick one of these or those or these other plastic frames and they put a 'prescription' lens in for you for a single fee. The 'prescription' is about 'better or worse or much the same' and there isn't a fitting...

Bait and switch... The masses demand... Medical prescriptions / health care. Give them something else and call it 'prescriptions' and 'health care'. Most of them... Won't even notice... No harm. What's the alternative? Nothing at all?

People could choose to have no more than replacement children. But they don't. People could choose to have one child and to really invest in raising it so it would learn mathematics and read novels and play sports.. The time and energy that goes in to raising... A person... Or people can... Live more like animals.

There are some Australian Aboriginal communities... The alcohol... I always heard it was the solvent abuse but it really is mostly the alcohol... All the drinking... All the drinking while pregnant. You get really very high rates of... Basically... Really quite brain damaged human beings. I mean... Human beings who sexually interfere with their own young. Human beings who squawk emotions at each other and don't really communicate using contentful / symbolic speech... Human beings who can't repeat back what was just said or follow instructions (e.g., the instruction required for learning complex tasks).

We have a huge problem with alcohol in NZ, too. Our drinking age is 18 but some peoples parents have problems such that an adult supervised party that serves alchohol with 16 year olds is considered appropriate. Some people just party with their kids... They are just dragged up around that. And then all the drinking while pregnant. I mean... I remember my own family... My father's family... putting beer and lemonade in toddlers milk bottles...

What can you do if people decide they would rather live like that... If people decide that it is their right to have as many kids as they like and raise them to live like that? If people then start crying about how their kids should get to go to university too (in the name of equity!) and their kids should get to be doctors and lawyers too (in the name of equity!) and their kids should get healthcare and optometry and dental and lighting prescriptions...

We don't have enough senior people to teach the kids because we swamp them. It's always 'just one more, just one more, just one more'. Especially the cost of education... There is always room for just one more full fee paying international student - surely! But you can't appropriately direct attention and present in a way that's responsive to learners needs... All learners? Average learners? The worst learners in the name of equity!

But then some countries have been trying to legislate the number of children people are allowed to have and the people... Often... The people would rather have their numerous homo sapiens... Rather than concentrating all those resources into producing a person.

Here... I think quite a lot of our immigration is due to people fleeing those laws. They come here to raise family. The Maaori and Pacific Island culture (so long as that survives) will never allow restrictions on how many kids you are allowed to produce. It really is such an ingrained part of the culture... Because... Infant mortality was such an ingrained part of the culture... Because you never invested very much in anything since it would likely die (and / or leave you) anyway...

So I don't see how a cap on population will happen here. And everyone is on about 'growth' being the solution, anyway. More people... Our problems are apparently due to our not having enough people...

 

Re: Turn Left

Posted by alexandra_k on September 23, 2016, at 23:33:19

In reply to Re: Turn Left, posted by alexandra_k on September 23, 2016, at 23:27:05

Tampons are the obvious solution. Nuvaring whatever... Figure how to deliver it in a 3-7 day dose...

 

Re: Turn Left

Posted by alexandra_k on September 23, 2016, at 23:33:58

In reply to Re: Turn Left, posted by alexandra_k on September 23, 2016, at 23:33:19

yeah, okay, so I probably shouldn't have said that.


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