MSC

I personally find the title to line up well literally and metaphorically. Trump has literally raped people (and tbh I think we all suspect there is more than one victim of his on that front) and on the metaphorical front he raped the USA, is raping the wallets and pockets of his imbecilic followers, is raping the legal system and I bet @dimreepr would agree that now he's metaphorically raping the bible. 

This comment is in no way meant to trivialize the real act of rape; I'd never describe a garden variety bad experience as metaphorical rape, but when I think about all the things TFG has done, how many he has done it to and the malignant effect his public presence has on both the USA and political discourse everywhere in the past and to this day, can you blame me for describing it as a rape? On a personal level too I have watched as my own fathers political views have been warped and changed from someone who was very much a working class liberal, into someone who wants to shoot "wokeists" and calls the majority of Palestinians terrorists. 

I'd also argue that cult leaders especially could be thought of as mind rapists. Just my two cents really.

17 hours ago, Eise said:

Obviously, you do not know what formal logic is

Assumptions. I do have some understanding of what formal logic is, I am not good at using it to be fair to you, but I know what it is and most of the time when I've seen others use the term "pure logic" they aren't referring to formal logic but their own intuitions.

18 hours ago, Eise said:

The point is that many crackpots call 'logic', is in fact nothing more than intuitions put in words. Without any knowledge about (established) science (and logic), their minds are free to create ideas out of thin air, and think they have some revolutionary and correct ideas.

I agree with you. Which is why they should read Cohens preface to logic, as a start. 

Since you mentioned intuition though, I'd be interested to hear your viewpoint on the phenomenology of intuition. What is intuition to you? Avoid the magical thinking type definitions or explanations, obviously. 

On 4/13/2024 at 1:22 PM, MigL said:

Philosophy that ignores science is a Lewis Carroll 'rabbit hole'.
And you know what they say of people who assume ...

Thank you! Nobodies making an ass of you and me today.

On 4/16/2024 at 1:53 AM, Eise said:

Full ack (of course). Some kinds of philosophers, e.g. some outgrows of post-modernism, have still not understood that. For them everything is a a 'narrative'.

Another kind is self-proclaimed philosophers who think that philosophy is another way to the same 'truths' that science is investigating. By 'pure logic' they think to be able to refute even established science (like GR). Nearly always this 'logic' is both based on false assumptions and confused 'logic'. 

I like Swansont's comparison with Zeno's paradoxes. 

This is why I think Cohen's preface to logic should be required reading. Sick of the magical thinking types of logic and everyone thinking they are Vulcan. I don't even know what is supposed to be meant by "pure logic". To me it's like saying you need a pure hammer or a pure screwdriver. "State of pure logic" is a pet peeve too, sounds like saying you're a complete tool. 

On 4/13/2024 at 11:05 AM, Maartenn100 said:

As Immanuel Kant formulated it: the passage of time belongs to the phenomena not to the noumena.

Well obviously, if you can put a name to it, then it can't be noumena can it?

On 4/13/2024 at 11:05 AM, Maartenn100 said:

Because even if there was nothing in the universe, there would still be a duration.

That is my assumption.

How do you define duration with no objects moving around to measure time with? 

On 4/13/2024 at 11:05 AM, Maartenn100 said:

The assumption is that if duration actually existed 'out there', you would have to go back infinitely to get to the beginning.

Why is this an assumption? I thought the beginning was 14-15billion years ago? 

Lets say I could actually time travel and I start going back, my plan is to travel infinitely back, so I never stop time travelling backwards. It's never time to start travelling infinitely forwards again because from my perspective I've not yet reached infinite. 

6 hours ago, dimreepr said:

I think it's entirely plausible that the driver's reaction was driven by fear of the word disorder, bc the news was heavy with a guy suffering from a schitsofrenic 'disorder', that has killed 2 or3 people recently.

Definitely plausible, I can see however how some forms of stimming could be distracting for a driver. You do hit upon a good point, there is a kind of general blanket behaviour people adopt towards individuals with any psychiactric condition that is reminiscent of behaviour a person takes when they believe a person is psychotic, no matter what the diagnosis actually is or to what degree it affects them. They get guarded, wary, frightened, standoffish and even aggressive. Because when they hear disorder, they can only conceptualize that as "crazy and dangerous".

Where autism is concerned there is a small minority of individuals who recieve the diagnosis and engage in criminal acts. Of those, some don't know what they are doing or fully understand right and wrong, while others clearly are using an incorrect diagnosis as a potentia shield from consequences or accepting responsibility. This is an area of overlap that I was talking about earlier via motivational spectrums. An example is that narcissism and some forms of autism share symptomatic overlap to some degree but motivationally and cognitively they are different behaviours.  Dunnings krueger effect hits narcissists hard and they fool themselves into thinking they are great at things they actually suck at, so they then obnoxiously brag about it and how good they are at something or how awesome they are and if they fail there is always an excuse and a deflection of why it wasn't their fault. I know of an individual who is classicly autistic, who knows a lot about buses and bus routes in Edinburgh and he's very proud of that and sees it as a hobby. He can sound obnoxious when talking about it and praising himself for it, but for him it's not an attempt to get attention that's just how he socialises and believes people are meant to have conversations. With conditions like aspergers and ADHD the motivational and social differences are more subtle than that in terms of narcissistic behaviour. Sometimes you can't tell without spending enough time with a person to see how they talk about not only things they are good at, but how they react when they perform badly or make a mistake. If it's not crystallized narcissism and they are just overzealous about their strengths and values, they'll be capable of acknowledging mistakes and poor performance and will have a shame or defeat response that is very different to someone suffering with a Narcissistic personality.

You're also correct about the term "disorder" in the cases where capabilities are differing and context dependent. Take the friend I mentioned earlier, he'll never be able to give consistently good social advice but anyone lost in Edinburgh and doesn't know which bus to get, is currently experiencing more disorder than he is. Then you have the pandemic and the lockdowns and again you can clearly see that a lot of the people with social "disorders" handled it better than most who weren't considered disordered.

Hell, I consider anyone who isn't capable of walking for over an hour while having two capable legs and isn't morbidly obese, disordered. When I say capable, I mean that if given the time to make either choice, walking/saving money/using less fuel loses to I'll just take the car for an 5m drive for something 30 minutes away on foot. 

I am curious though; when do you feel like the use of the word disorder is justified? For example let's imagine I'm a person diagnosed with ADHD as an adult and I believe my life is disordered because of my condition, maybe I can't keep friends or a job or give up some vice. If I self identify myself as having a disorder, and am not pointing to anyone else and saying "They have a disorder" and I'm only saying "I have a disorder." How would you respond to that?

6 hours ago, dimreepr said:

The problem isn't with the label or the generalisation per say, I think the word disorder does quite a lot of damage in and of itself;

What I will say to this is that this issue has many problems in it, a few of the problems are with the labels and how we label. The linguistic composition of a diagnosis is something we are both highlighting in different ways. 

Hello all,

Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this. 

Everything I'm going to discuss here got started in what can only be described as a bit of a dumpster fire thread, which I feel led to an interesting discussion about autism and psychiatry, in the responses... which were thankfully absent the OP.

To be clear, the OP seemed to believe that autism is a blood born condition that can be cured with bloodletting and hemodialysis. The OP was essentially a snakeoil salesman. 

So rather than really engage with this person, there was a pretty fruitful and calm discussion amongst myself and others (Whom I'll take the time to tag in the comments) about Autism as a concept and what is really meant when people say autism spectrum and what autism is exactly. 

Quote

Just so people are aware of what is meant by spectrum, it is a collection of symptoms and behaviours of which many conditions, neurological and psychological states share a lot of overlap. 

Because of this, many react to words like "cure" or "low functioning" negatively due to a misconception amongst autistic individuals and their advocates to be expert authorities on the "condition" because they or someone they know doesn't fit into certain boxes. 

The two divergent models of disability also plays a significant role in this. Those who's issues lie within the medical model of disability absolutely need effective treatments and cures. Those who's issues lie within the social model of disability require their environments to be treated or cured. To make this more confusing, most of the conditions still have overlap. Hypersensitivity to light is an example often associated with AS conditions. The medical fix may be via optometry and the social fix is accomodating lighting installations. 

I do get what Dim is getting at though and agree with the sentiment. The generalised psychiactric labelling of what is clearly many different conditions, for the purpose of simplified medical signposting is confusing enough for medical experts and downright dangerous in it's invitation to invite public misunderstanding and stereotyping of austism spectrum conditions to the degree where even the sufferers and their advocates just don't get it. 

It's similar to but obviously not as bad as if they decided that instead of specific cancer diagnoses, all medical signposting would say is "Cancer spectrum disorder" and just hope the person on the treatment end knows what to do. Because cancer spectrum disorder could be anything from a small mole to stage 4 stomach cancer or an inoperable brain tumour. 

What many psychiatrists fail to grasp is that the act and implications of psychiactric labelling have broader ramifications than just how they as individual doctors treat them, but how everything outside of the doctors control is going to treat them. 

Just so we are clear, cancer most certainly is a disease and I don't believe autism is anywhere near cancer nor do I believe people with autism are a disease. My criticisms revolve around medical signposting and careless, thoughtless, lazy labels. A cry for more precise terminology is a standard that most scientific fields adhere to. Exhibit A, pluto is no longer thought of as a planet. 

- MSC (from the aforementioned thread)

So there is a lot to unpack and discuss from this; but I'm going to start by making a claim, giving my arguments for that claim and then talk a little bit about what led me to this line of thought (because it's been something I've thought about long before being on this forum.) and be clear on my skin in the game.

Claim

The way we label and categorise different conditions, oftentimes does not work consistently well enough towards outcomes that are positive for patient or care provider, harms a fair amount of patients more than it helps them in numerous ways and the broader ramifications of all of this leads to the field of psychiatry and it's practitioners oftentimes being negatively stereotyped in the public eye, in ways other medical professionals are not, discouraging more people from entering the field itself. 

I have the utmost respect for psychiatrists and psychiactric nusing staff etc. This is in no way meant to disparage or further stereotype anyone. I've known many psychiatrists and only three of them in a clinical setting, I lived with one for a few months also in an airbnb and he's a friend for life. Not to mention a lot of the obstacles that contribute towards mental healthcare inefficiencies are put there by policy makers, lack of investment, pop culture, patients themselves or their families and the general public... general public on many counts, we kind of suck.

Below I'm going to share a publication from The Leonard Davis institute of Health Economics. It's worth a read, touches on a lot of what I won't get into here yet but will in the responses.

Quote

Although the White House, Congress, and state governments have launched various new initiatives designed to improve the U.S. mental health care delivery system in recent years, a panel of experts convened by the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI) concluded that, overall, the system is worsening at a faster pace than it is improving.

- https://ldi.upenn.edu/our-work/research-updates/worsening-faster-than-its-improving-the-us-mental-health-care-delivery-system/ 

Now I don't think what I have to say applies to just autism, but I am going to focus on autism as I think the claim most strongly applies to that. 

As I mentioned earlier;

Quote

My criticisms revolve around medical signposting and careless, thoughtless, lazy labels. A cry for more precise terminology is a standard that most scientific fields adhere to. Exhibit A, pluto is no longer thought of as a planet. 

- MSC

Does the word Autism or the phrase Autism spectrum disorder really capture the depth and complexity of what is going on, in a way that gives us a clear picture on how to treat a patient? 

If I ask what is autism spectrum disorder? The honest answer, is many different conditions and they don't all have the same causes. For example when I was 23 I was diagnosed with Aspergers in Scotland, now I live in the USA and it's autism spectrum disorder. My psychiatrist here however doesn't believe I have autism, he doesn't believe I have a personality disorder or ADHD, he just feels I was brought up in a chaotic and inconsistent environment around family members with mental health issues where I was parentified from a young age. (This isn't invitation to make my mental health the subject of this discussion, it's my skin in the game as it were and what prompted me to think about this stuff. Me sharing this is explanation of why the subject, not the subject itself.)

Here is why labelling a bunch of different conditions with an umbrella term, in the case of autism, is really just over-generalising. It's not just a spectrum, it's a spectrum of spectrums and few pick up on just how many we are talking about. Hypo-hyper sensitivity scales, for all 8 (maybe 9, cerebroceptive hypothesis is speculation for another thread) senses. Symptom and behaviour spectrums and within behaviour, motivational spectrums. When I say behaviour I don't just mean what you can see but cognitive behaviour too. 

Now some could respond to all this and say making it more complicated and adding more diagnoses and psychiactric labels will invite more public misunderstanding, not less, sure, that's true. Although I'd ask which is the more harmful misunderstanding? Not expecting a regular person to understand what autism is or to not expect them to understand what classic autism, PDD, Aspergers etc is? How much does that even matter, can you tell the difference and guarantee that the person reading their file can tell the difference and can you explain it to the patients family/employer/school in a precise and clear way?

If I was to try and put this all into a too long, didn't read. I'd just say very simply, some of psychiatries word tools suck. Autism is one area, PTSD is another as are personality disorders.

Switching out complex terminology in a complex situation for something simple, is like removing pieces from a beautifully engineered piano, and expecting it to still give out a crisp clear note. An engineer will tell you that the simplest most efficient design to get the job done, is the correct one, what that doesn't mean is a simple design always works. It's always as complex as it needs to be to do the job it needs to do. A piano isn't just a hammer hitting a string. Psychiatry shouldn't use hammers to hit patients either... literally and figuratively. 

Probably haven't said everything I could have said and I could always say some of it better, but I will see how people respond and where folk want to go with this discussion. 

Be excellent to each other and party on dudes. 

Btw I'm discussing mental healthcare in the USA and the UK as my frames of reference but if the boot fits your nations mental healthcare then by all means share. 

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

It wasn't a criticism it was an observation, but however you spin it them = people.

Not really.

Them 

=

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

Because it's subconsciously dividing people, it's not about how you talk about them, we can all hide our feelings when them is bigger than us, it's about how we think about other people; it's easy to call them assholes, when everyone else does. Like I said it's an insidious word/concept.

Except there I was not talking about people I was talking about concepts. Also you literally weren't able to make your point, without using the word "them" in the same way except you were referring to people. I also didn't call anyone an asshole that was just an example to try to illustrate to you that your language policing just does not make sense here. Them is not a dirty word and my usage of it in no way speaks to any hidden ill will I have towards anyone. 

10 hours ago, dimreepr said:

So why do you call them, them?

Them = autism spectrum conditions like aspergers or PDD. I'm not referring to people but to diagnoses, so them is appropriate. It's not my intent to other anyone or refer to them as being anything less than human. Even if I was still talking about a group of people, I still don't see why you'd be annoyed at me using the word "them" in discussion. "I call them a bunch of assholes" "I call them awesome". "them" isn't the problematic part, how you talk about "them" is. 

19 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

Yes, that’s a good point. I think there’s no objective measure for this - normal is what accords to the general consensus of what constitutes normality, so it’s down to who is in the majority. It’s a numbers game.

It's even worse than a numbers game, since nobody actually knows what the numbers are. The assumption is that the majority of people who have never entered into the psychiactric diagnostic process and have not had their brains scanned, make up the group that is known as neurotypicals/normal people. When all that can really be known about this group, is that their neurological and psychological states are as yet undetermined. 

6 minutes ago, iNow said:

Would it help if I flipped you off?

No need, you entered the room. Trust me, I'm turned off already..

On 3/24/2024 at 3:02 PM, MSC said:

What many psychiatrists fail to grasp is that the act and implications of psychiactric labelling have broader ramifications than just how they as individual doctors treat them, but how everything outside of the doctors control is going to treat them. 

Just so we are clear, cancer most certainly is a disease and I don't believe autism is anywhere near cancer nor do I believe people with autism are a disease. My criticisms revolve around medical signposting and careless, thoughtless, lazy labels. A cry for more precise terminology is a standard that most scientific fields adhere to. Exhibit A, pluto is no longer thought of as a planet. 

Just wanted to include with this a comparison between the USA and the UK, I was diagnosed with aspergers in the UK where it is or was still a diagnosis, but I live in the USA where no such diagnosis exists as it is under the umbrella term of AS conditions. 

6 hours ago, dimreepr said:

This is a topic on it's own; each one of us could be describe as disabled by that criteria. It's like anyone who declared themselves as a self made millionaire, they're deluded.

If we think we can function in any way, without the help of other's, then so are we.

The vast majority of us would struggle to stay alive, without the cacoon of society.

This is why I call them autism spectrum conditions instead of disorders and don't like the term disabled. A person without arms cannot arm wrestle but can run, a person without legs can arm wrestle but cannot run. I know I sound like a broken record when talking about contextualism, but context really is one of the most important factors in discussing everything. If I were to ask how long will it take a 20kg weight to fall 20 metres when dropped; most will rush to start calculating the answer, but very few will ask something like "are you dropping it on planet earth or somewhere else?".

11 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

Yes, absolutely. But remember the context of this discussion - the claim was made that autism is a disease that’s due to blood toxicity, and can be cured on that basis. This of course is utter nonsense, and as an autistic person myself I’d really wish there was a way to rid us of such snake oil salesmen (and there are many of them)

Just so you're aware, OP made a similar post in the psychiatry and psychology section but I posted a link there to the only known experiment where a round of hemodialysis was administered to an infantile girl with autism which had no effect or significant change in symptoms. Since there was no significant change and the procedure would be difficult to administer to a larger group of autistic individuals due to behavioural or cognitive issues they opted not to look any further, thankfully. It's not something in our blood.

It does suck that we have to suffer these charlatans but all we can do is respond with facts and truth. This guy will probably get himself banned soon and his posts rightly put in the trash can section. 

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

Second that.  There are a fair number of us neurotypicals (possibly a misnomer in my case)

Possibly, there is a belief that neurodivergence is a lot more common than we realise and since people have a tendency to only see it when there is a lot of contrast; as in we see and acknowledge neurodivergence only when an individual is really struggling with some aspect or aspects of life and is considered disabled or on the other end we only see and acknowledge it when the person is something of a savant. That tendency makes us miss the more subtle signs of it. 

That said, who decides what neurotypical is? Where is the baseline or control group of humanity that we can point to as having "normal" brains? 

Quote

Madmen define what mad is, turning witches and saints to ashes. 

Heretic blood - Avenged Sevenfold

The line from this song always makes me think about this stuff. Historically it speaks to the fact that those who led, orchestrated and took part in witch hunts suffered from paranoid delusions about witches being real, and more contemporary meanings around the nature of mental healthcare and how many of the workers and professionals in the field of mental healthcare, have mental health issues of their own. From the psychiatrists to the psychiactric nurses. 

38 minutes ago, swansont said:

Yeah, independent creation happens all the time*. Especially on a smaller scale than calculus. “you stole my idea” is pretty common, too

*I’ve got a cartoon sketch about dinosaurs watching a triceratops and claiming to be tricurious, and Colbert made a similar joke on his show a few years later. Nobody stole the idea from me, and it’s a fairly obvious play on words. Not the only time something like this happened to me.

Nor me, only yesterday I found out some random idea I had about nuclear propulsion was dreamed up in 1941.  It's either a case of collective consciousness or just the reality that intelligent people looking at reality intelligently will come up with similar ideas. The earliest examples being pyramids. It doesn't take much to understand that a low entropy stucture like a pyramid will withstand the test of time far longer than an obelisk will. 

10 hours ago, Eise said:

Leibniz. See Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy.

Thank you! Knew it was a German name. The consensus in the end was that they'd both developed calculus independently, although I do find the timing curious, which is why I mentioned Jungs collective consciousness in my response to swansont. 

Anyway sorry for making the joke thread less about jokes. I can't find my off switch. 

6 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

There’s another thing I’d like to mention, which is not so often talked about - some commonly held life goals and values that are normal and generally unquestioned in the neurotypical world may not be shared by all autistics. For example, wanting and needing to be social and around others, wanting to acquire possessions and material goods, wanting to have family and procreate, conforming to gender norms, following generally accepted blue prints for how life should be lived, ideas around what has value and what doesn’t, concepts of what gives us meaning and joy in life etc. While this is of course very individually different, not all of us autistics share these goals and values, so we end up in a situation where we are forced to try and fit into a society and culture that feels fundamentally alien to us. We can’t be our real selves, but must train ourselves to wear a certain mask and act a role so that we might appear to be able to meet the expectations of a neurotypical society, simply because it’s practically and logistically very difficult to exist outside that system. We feel like we don’t have a choice, so we live a life that’s at odds with who we are. This creates a lot of suffering and struggle. So at least part of our suffering isn’t due to autism itself, but due to demands and expectations placed on us by others to “be a certain way”. 

Glad you said this; for example not a lot of people understand that I do not have a very strong material drive at all and I have a hatred of money. Which personally I don't see as that disabling really. It can certainly make things difficult in some respects but in others it's better. For example if I was on SCOTUS, all the crap that corrupted Thomas Clarence wouldn't motivate me to be as much of a corrupt asshole as he is. 

Feel free to go up and read my earlier comment by the way. 

7 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Nobody creates in a vacuum.

Actually, Astronaughts on the ISS going on Spacewalks do. 

Sorry, was the joke section so couldn't resist. 

Didn't someone else independently invent calculus around the same time that Isaac Newton did? I forget his name, German guy. Him and Newton hated each other. 

It wouldn't be that crazy for two people with a similar sense of humour to look at memorial benches and come up with this though. How tf can someone own putting bittersweet messages on memorial benches? Or what if that bench isn't a joke at all but serious? 

16 hours ago, dimreepr said:

What I will say is, who are we to decide they even need a cure, let alone welcome it?

I'd like a cure for social anxiety and I'd like to have the ability to regulate my emotions without having to take medication everyday. 

It is a hard question you ask, besides the individuals who are with it enough to say yes or no, I really couldn't say. Parents/Guardians maybe? Whomever pays for their care? It's not very clear cut. I could argue that absent a declaration of wilfully being against cures for certain symptoms or disorders, how would we know either way? They could be living in a mental hell and if these hypothetical cures enable more people to live independently and free up care and medical resources for others who still need it, why shouldn't we when adhering to all other legal and ethical considerations?

Like I said, I don't really know. It was a good question though.

12 hours ago, TheVat said:

The decision is made when a person wants to communicate and relate with others, hold a job, have their own home, pay the bills, travel around unassisted... and has a disability which prevents these. 

I think what Dim is referring to are the cases of low cognitive functioning or such extreme sensory hypersensitivity, where an individual would not understand or could not make sense of, nor respond to, the usual "Do you give permission to have this medical treatment performed on you?".

Hopefully my response to Dim satiafies him somewhat.

Quote

Abstract

A course of 10 weekly hemodialyses was conducted on a young adult female with infantile autism. Multiple parameters were measured to assess outcome. No significant changes were noted in her mood, behavior, or cognitive functioning. Several other autistic individuals were evaluated for the study but were felt to have either behavioral or cognitive limitations, which made the procedure unsafe. It is concluded that hemodialysis in a larger group of autistic individuals was not justified.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6927743/

Hemodialysis treatment + Autistic patient = still autistic patient.... who might have gotten injured during the procedure due to behavioural issues or cognitive limitations, for no significant improvement of symptoms. 

23 hours ago, Guille Yacante said:

I'll tell you about my case.

I am 27 years old, I only finished high school, but I have found the cure of autism and a lot of chronic illnesses

Ahhh perfect timing, I needed a new snake oil supplier. How much ya got? 

2 hours ago, TheVat said:

It's a spectrum.  At the high functioning end, one might argue it's just a different cognitive style and I'm open to that.  But I worked for a while with people elsewhere on the spectrum, where there were severe cognitive and social disabilities, and for them a cure (or, realistically, any amelioration) would be most welcome.  

 

Yup. I'm all for hijacking this weird af thread for as long as it lasts to talk about autism. 

Just so people are aware of what is meant by spectrum, it is a collection of symptoms and behaviours of which many conditions, neurological and psychological states share a lot of overlap. 

Because of this, many react to words like "cure" or "low functioning" negatively due to a misconception amongst autistic individuals and their advocates to be expert authorities on the "condition" because they or someone they know doesn't fit into certain boxes. 

The two divergent models of disability also plays a significant role in this. Those who's issues lie within the medical model of disability absolutely need effective treatments and cures. Those who's issues lie within the social model of disability require their environments to be treated or cured. To make this more confusing, most of the conditions still have overlap. Hypersensitivity to light is an example often associated with AS conditions. The medical fix may be via optometry and the social fix is accomodating lighting installations. 

I do get what Dim is getting at though and agree with the sentiment. The generalised psychiactric labelling of what is clearly many different conditions, for the purpose of simplified medical signposting is confusing enough for medical experts and downright dangerous in it's invitation to invite public misunderstanding and stereotyping of austism spectrum conditions to the degree where even the sufferers and their advocates just don't get it. 

It's similar to but obviously not as bad as if they decided that instead of specific cancer diagnoses, all medical signposting would say is "Cancer spectrum disorder" and just hope the person on the treatment end knows what to do. Because cancer spectrum disorder could be anything from a small mole to stage 4 stomach cancer or an inoperable brain tumour. 

What many psychiatrists fail to grasp is that the act and implications of psychiactric labelling have broader ramifications than just how they as individual doctors treat them, but how everything outside of the doctors control is going to treat them. 

Just so we are clear, cancer most certainly is a disease and I don't believe autism is anywhere near cancer nor do I believe people with autism are a disease. My criticisms revolve around medical signposting and careless, thoughtless, lazy labels. A cry for more precise terminology is a standard that most scientific fields adhere to. Exhibit A, pluto is no longer thought of as a planet. 

4 hours ago, dimreepr said:

I'm not suggesting print et al has replaced anything, I'm suggesting the acceleration phase is too fast for society to find it's feet before it takes the next step.

Now that point holds some serious weight for me, yet I do think it's a genie out of the bottle situation. Technological advancement is in general accelerating at a pace too fast for a generation to adjust, before it has to adjust to something newer. 

It's like we keep launching a ship to a distant star system where at some point in the journey, each ship is overtaken by the next generation ship, but now we have to figure out how to get everyone onto the newer faster ship without slowing down or stopping. At some point, while everyone is halfway onto a newer ship, an even newer ship will show up and really throw a wrench into things. Not to mention all the folk who will be saying "No I prefer the old ship!".

56 minutes ago, iNow said:

I didn’t realize things could get tensor here 

Wait until you hear the joke about how many meals a day a mathematician eats. The answer is 9. They eat 3² meals a day. 

This was fun, and before anyone says "Off-topic!" Humour is clearly part of the nature of human existence and Wittgenstein literally said a serious philosophical work could be comprised entirely of jokes sooooo shhh.

Euclidean geometry humor he gets but when it's non-euclidean he just can't seem to wrap his head around it.

2 hours ago, iNow said:

Subtle Euclidean geometry humor is all that was intended ✌️

Could have fooled me, I thought you were being hyperbolic...

34 minutes ago, swansont said:

It’s not a “discovery” as such. It’s a model based on tired light and varying fundamental constants, without the experimental support one needs to support those ideas. Not a good foundation for a model. The tone of the article suggests that this is somehow a credible experimental result, when it is very far from that.

Thanks for clearing that up, my pinch of salt was justified it seems. 

In an attempt to move the subject along; As humans we often find ourselves preoccupied with thoughts on right and wrong, justice, fairness etc.

Within the context of being human, there are many questions to ask about the nature of morality. I have a hyopthetical scenario to put to you all and I think engaging with it could bring about some very interesting discussion. 

I've asked these questions of a fair amount of philosophy professors, but just for y'all I'm gonna write an original story to wrap the questions in. Just so a theme is set and it isn't too boring.

Quote

You wake up with a jolt, from a sleep you didn't mean to have. You fell asleep on the couch in front of the TV. You stretch and rub your eyes, when you open them again, you notice movement at the corner of your eye, you turn to look and to your utter shock, there is a figure standing just a few feet from you. Not just any figure, this thing is clearly not human. Although clearly bipedal, it has a short yet slender frame with arms reaching down to it's first knee joints, of which there are two. It has a long neck, atop which sits some kind of angular ovoid shaped head, three black eyes with brown and yellow irises and black circular pupils, snake like slits for a nose, 4 small holes where ears would be on us, and no visible mouth. It is completely hairless but has 3 small nubs along it's forehead reminiscent of an adolescent male deer before it's horns begin to fully form. For some odd reason it is wearing an ill fitted Adidas tracksuit with matching sneakers/trainers.

At this point you are about to try slapping yourself in the face as you assume yourself to be dreaming. Almost as soon as the thought went into your mind, the alien holds up a 4 long fingered (3 fingers 1 thumb) hand as if telling you to stop, with it's other hand it offers you what appears to be some kind of tablet device, fully transparent with white bright lettering taking up most of the screen. 

After a long pause, as you get over your initial shock, you slowly take the offered tablet and begin to read. 

"Hello! My name is not something you'd be able to say with vocal linguistics. You may call me Adi. A name I have selected in veneration of these magnificent earth garments. I come from a star system in Ursa Minor you have called, Kochab. 

I have been studying your planet for some time, my species has never come across another intelligent life form before. I've almost finished my research and intend to return home very soon to tell my people everything I've learned about you. I've asked 99 humans these same questions and you will be the last and 100th human to answer. 

What do humans use ethics and morality for? 

Is it good at doing what you use it for? 

Is it just for humans or can we use it too?

Please speak your answer into the tablet. It will record your answer and I'll take it back to my ship to translate and store it in my ships database. I don't have the auditory capacity to hear your vocal ranges.

I've also decided, in return for the Adidas clothing, upon completion of my research I intend to gift your world the knowledge required to travel what appears to be faster than light. Kochab is approximately 130.9 light years away, a journey which will only take me one of your years. 

Now, if you will; what are your answers?"

 

- Random story I wrote on the fly.... fuck now I want to write a science fiction novel lol

Fyi not saying I believe the above, just that I put as much faith in it as I do the standard model due to the fact that I fully grasp neither and the fact that the standard model doesn't explain everything. I can't honestly say with any reasonable certainty that I know any theory that explains everything in physics.

You could make the exact same thread about the invention of email. It didn't just replace fax, it was a supercharged replacement. The amount of documents sent increased many times.

However, fax is STILL used today as are printing presses and they are hanging on not by a thread but are hanging on via still having relavent uses. For example hospitals and other industries still use fax because it is a much securer method of data handling than email is. 

The written word is still around, I keep a hard journal as do many others. To put it simply, if the thread that is keeping something around is human sentiment, then that thread is near enough indestructible.

1 hour ago, cladking said:

Are you suggesting it's relevant but doesn't support my position?

Who knows... Here's a suggestion.... read it! 

1 hour ago, cladking said:

You missed my point.  I meant that the nature of our existence is for animals to have a four dimensional world derived from four dimensional thought (which they don't experience) and humans to have a one dimensional reality composed of their own beliefs and thoughts (which we do experience).  

If I missed the point it's because you failed to make it. All this response makes me want to ask is if you know what a dimension is and what it would actually mean for a life form to exist in just one dimension? Because I really don't think you do.

1 hour ago, cladking said:

can't define logic since it would require centuries of study and involve omniscience.  I'm merely trying to put "the nature of our existence" into words anyone can understand.  That I might be wrong is irrelevant since everyone who has ever lived might be wrong and it's a rather all encompassing question.  

Okay so there are these things called dictionaries that have the meanings of words in them. They are very helpful. You can even get philosophy dictionaries and physics dictionaries to help you. 

You may be trying to put the nature of existence into words anyone can understand, but you're definitely not succeeding. 

8 hours ago, iNow said:

You do have a point there 

Is this how you felt when I first started posting here with my head up my own ass? I'm sorry I judged you lol