What's this? A level-headed post? I think you need to get with the program: you know, the five people who modded me down in lieu of actually responding to my arguments, or the six people who flamed me.
You can probably tell that I am not a psychologist or anything of the sort, but I think these are still good points. I would appreciate any enlightenment you could give me on this. Am I understanding you correctly? As I reread our posts, I think I have gotten a little outside what you were talking about. Still, I would like to know what you think.
Okay, let's see:
I don't think that Anxiety is labelled a "bad" thing, but an undesirable thing. The people I know with anxiety disorders go get help not because they think they are sinners or cursed or "sick," but because they are experiencing something over which they seem to have no control, and they don't like it. It's getting in the way of the life they want to live. So they go get help.
True. But this doesn't make it a disease. People try to control and get help for their rudeness. That doesn't make it a disease. Put a gun to someone's head, you can make him be less rude. Put a gun to someone's head, you can make him do something of which he is anxious (Cf. Fight Club).
To address the delusion example you gave, that sounds really simplistic to me. I have a hard time believing that "delusional" should include religion. Not even religions that aren't mine!:) Why not? because the people who 'suffer' from the 'delusion' feel good about it, and they still live a full, rich, and happy life. This belief, or systematic bias, doesn't get in the way of anything.
You made my point for me, even better than I could. You just admitted that delusions are called delusions, not because they're wrong, but because they lead people do to things many of us would not like. That's a moral judgment. If you're defining something as a medical illness, you can't make moral judgments at all. By your own admission, if someone holds delusional beliefs, but doesn't do "bad" things, it's it's not an illness.
I would think that any definition of disorder or "illness" would have to include something about how it iterferes with life. It's like my eyes. There's nothing that makes my eyes bad, or ill, or evil, or anything else, I just don't see well, and no amount of squinting will control it. My eyes are just that way, and they have been for a long, long time. But they get in the way of the life I want to lead, so I have them dealt with through glasses to reduce the bad effect they have on my life. Can't we compare this with other disorders? Maybe it's the way we are, and there's nothing wrong with it until it gets in the way.
I think the best definition is what I gave: you can only count it as an illness if it's a constraint. You can't see well without lenses. If someone put a gun to your head you would not be able to correct your vision. Do some mental "illnesses" interfere? Sure. But all preferences interfere. That's what a tradeoff means - to compromise a preference.
Eyes may not be a good example, because eyesight is not a behavior. Let's look at addicions maybe. If someone is addicted to porn or drugs, there are multiple reasons for this behavior, but people aren't going to get help until they realize that it is getting in the way of the life they want to lead. When they realize that, they can get help or really watch their behavior, and they can stop the addictive, self-destructive behavior.
People do realize it's getting in the way. The evidence is right in front of them. We as a society don't want to have to admit that the person is acting based on a preference for that temporary satisfaction over the needs of his family. Is that a bad choice? Sure. But that can never be a criterion for classification of illness.
With ADHD or ADD in children it would be similar, except that it is up to the parents and teachers to be re
Given the abundance of scientific literature pointing to the genetic, chemical, and physiological causes and sequali of mental illnesses such as...
I responded to this already in the post of mine that you did read. For the second time (this time listen), I'm sure you can correlate the physiology and the behavior. That's why, in the post that you did read, I presented what people who have gone to college call a "thought experiment". Then I posited a world in which some physical trait correlated one-to-one with Catholicism or gayness and I asked if those would then be considered diseases. Since you definitely read the full post, you have an answer to this; you must have just forgotten to post it this time around. I mean, no one would respond to a post without reading it!
Same thing with anxiety disorders (and many mental illnesses) - you treat it the same way, sometimes with medication, changing behaviors, therapy, etc. A person may have a preference for not undergoing treatment - and if you put a gun to their head and said "change," they might temporarily adapt their behavior, or they might not; just the same as if you put the gun to the head of someone with the heart condition. They may change their behavior, they might not ("But I like my french fries and sitcoms and lying on my couch all day") , but in either case, getting them to change their thoughts and behaviors around their illness doesn't change the fact that the illness exists and is there....
That in no way contradicts what I said. Of course it may be a good idea to change behaviors. There are people who try to be less rude, less miserly, less messy around their homes. That doesn't make rudeness, miserliness, and messiness diseases!
Relating economics to the mind, specifically a state of mind is just plain ignorant because you assume even a mentally ill person is capable of consistently making sound judgment. By definition, this is obviously not the case!
Do you not realize how poor an argument this is? Seriously. You're defining yourself to be right - a tautology.
Let's go over this again:
I'm denying the existence of a distinct category of "mental illness". I'm claiming their actions are explainable by preferences, not constraints, like normal illnesses are.
Then you come back, and, in a blinding display of genius claim that, by definition, someone mentally ill doesn't follow the laws of economics!
I can imagine another argument you and I might have:
me: Pink unicorns don't exist.
you: A pink unicorn is a horse with a horn that is pink and exists in the mountains. By definition, they exist!
You were arguing that their preferences were not rational, whether or not you used that precise word, because your post implicitly assumed there's something wrong (i.e., a moral judgment) with preferring death to life. I happen to agree with that moral judgment. It is still a moral judgment.
As for the next part, I really don't see where you're going? Are you agreeing that people are not consciously thinking in their decision to engage in homosexual acts? My positions is that people who do that prefer the benefits to the costs. You take the same condenscending view as the earlier generations of psychiatrists, that their actions do not really reveal what they prefer, that there is something "wrong" with their minds.
And yes, the earlier edition is relevant. Homosexuality was removed, not from some dispassionate re-analysis of the logical grounding of classifications of mental illnesses, but because it was unpopular to continue so classifying. Just as it's unpopular to call religious people delusional, in direct contradiction of the definition of delusions!
First, call of the dogs. (the people who modded three of my posts in this thread as flamebait and one as trolling, which was clearly unjustified)
You know, this is really depressing. I was actually beginning to think against-the-grain posts were welcomed on Slashdot, provided they were well-reasoned (which mine were). I mean, just recently I built up good karma by denouncing the space program and supporting MS's disposable DVD. People were actually listening to my unconventional views rather than emotionally modding them down.
But then, things like this come along and make me lose faith all over again. Come on guys who modded me down, can you really not come up with a rational response?
The depressed prefer death to continued existence (or so they claim). That is a preference. In reality, of course, the overwhelming majority do not commit suicide, proving that the whole time they were fully capable of not committing suicide and didn't really prefer death.
That you deem this preference "irrational" is your moral judgment. Many have a hard time understanding why anyone would want to work for a wage or borrow money at interest if they weren't being coerced. Should Alan Turing have been locked up for his homosexuality? (In fact, he was, using your exact reasoning.) Should non-socialist laborers be locked up for "supporting the wage system"? (In fact, many were, using your exact reasoning.)
Actually, I have reported panic attacks despite the fact that, looking back, I probably would have failed the gun-to-the-head test. If people like me are poisoning the pool...
But that's okay, be as smug as you like. You're just another segment of the population getting modded up for bad arguments against an unpopular position.
Right, like nobody would pay $25 for a Britney Spears CD, right? And no rational person would borrow money at interest, sell his labor at a price such that the employer makes a profit, or respect the property rights of people richer than they are. Don't let your disdain for other people's values cloud your judgment.
"Hey, if I could convince people I get panic attacks, they would lower their expectations of me."
Are you claiming no one thinks that way? When there are incentives, people take advantage of them. That you would find such a tradeoff ridiculous doesn't mean it doesn't happen. A hundred years ago people would find it inconceivable that women would have children out of wedlock for the welfare payments, using your exact reasoning.
"Mental illness" is not generally not "illness" in any meaningful sense of the word. First, some background. In economics, choices are said to be based upon a person's preferences and his constraints. Preferences are what you want, in the order you want them; constraints are anything that stops you from getting what you really want. Normal illnesses can be described purely as constraints. No matter what you want, you can't will yourself to stop sneezing, or de-AIDS yourself, for example. So those are constraints. To understand the difference, you can apply the "gun-to-the-head" test. Ask: if you pointed a gun at the person and credibly told him you would kill him if he didn't stop, and he still couldn't, it's a constraint. If he could, it's a preference.
Mental illnesses are generally not constraints, but preferences. ADD doesn't need constraints to explain it: the person just has a high preference for variety and a low preference for monotony. A person who habitually steals doesn't have kleptomania; he just likes stealing. You could stop him with a gun.
Now, let's talk about this blood test. What does it prove? If we could tell who was a Catholic by a blood test, would that mean Catholicism is a mental illness? No, the "anxiety" label is a moral judgment. Anxiety is "bad", so it must be attributable to something physiological; no rational person would think that way, right? In exactly the same way, homosexuality was an "illness" because of a moral judgment. Would the discovery of a "gay gene" change this? If you need a better example, think about delusions. You're said to have the mental illness of delusions if you hold systematically biased beliefs. Yet the same standard specifically excludes religion. Now, whatever religion you are, you must believe some other religion's views are systematically biased. But they're arbitrarily excluded, because psychiatrists don't want to offend religious people. When attitudes change, so does what counts as a delusion, just as homosexuality got lobbed of the list.
This is a lot more serious than you're making it out to be. IBM cannot magically wave away the problem. Simple economics says they will discriminate if physically possible (i.e., they can get a DNA sample).
It's like this: Say one company genetically discriminates, and another doesn't. The discriminating one will get a higher return on its investements because it can more accurately ascertain productivity problems down the line. Then discriminating firms will over time beat out non-discriminating ones as investors redirect their capital into them.
Now, maybe IBM meant they're not going to discriminate on productivity-irrelevant matters, but everyone does that anyway for the same reason as above: if you unnecessarily raise the bar, you deprive yourself of workers with the highest value-produced-to-compensation ratio, killing your ROI. (Feel free to apply this logic to "equal pay" laws whenever you feel like it.)
The question then, is what can we do about it? Crazy as it sounds, I say remove all barriers on hiring and firing. If employers know they can fire for any reason*, it's much less of a risk to hire someone, and they will be far more willing to "take a chance" on someone with a "bad" genetic profile. Of course, this just ties into the whole "why bother getting a college education issue if it's irrelevant to work?". It's the same reason: employers take a big risk when they hire you (and the harder it is to fire you, the bigger the risk). This is why they filter out people who haven't "proven they can handle 'it'" in college.
*If an employer fires someone to cover up a crime, prosecute the crime and the coverup, not the firing.
Devoting resources to help scientists change their minds a sixth time on an issue of no practical importance to anyone takes away from resources that could be directed toward cancer research.
Second, failure to think on the margin. Electrical engineering is used to make computers. But we do not need theoretical physics that is so poorly done scientists change their minds every few years to make current computers. The marginal impact of padding the salaries of the good-ol'-boys on computers now is zero.
Now, you could argue that one day in far far future this research may lead to something someone can use (which seems to be the consensus here). And that's true. But for a fair comparison to practical research, like cancer, you would have to discount those discoveries both by the failures and the social rate of time preference (real interest rate). In that case, the return isn't so appealing.
Wow, that's really cool! I can't wait until next year's story! It sure was worth it to put that cancer cure on hold so that the good-ol'-boys of theoretical physics can change their minds again. What would we do without them?
Sorry, such a charming response doesn't wash. Your explanation would make sense if for all human history until time t1, people believed X, and then scientists proved not-X.
But if scientists "proved" not-X at t1, then "proved" X at t2, the re-proved not-X at t3, ad infinitum, something is wrong with the people we've trusted to do science. Tell me again, is the universe expanding or contracting? Would your answer be different in 1998? 1972? 1950? 1900?
And the thing is, they can keep this up because no one catches them. Let's say a scientist says "40 billion years ago, Y happened." Is he really afraid someone's going to go back in time and prove him wrong? Contrast this with a bridge engineer, who can be - painfully - proven wrong within his lifetime.
That's a good point. Have you ever considered how few eyeballs are invested in checking the work of physicists? Maybe 1,000 people worldwide a capable of truly discussing cutting edge theoretical physics. (Compare that with the Linux source code checkers.) With so few people - and the good-ol'-boy nature of professors - errors can easily persist for decades.
This is why I actually like creationists: they force biologists to rigorously prove all aspects of evolution. While otherwise they would content themselves with hand-waving excplanations of things like irreducible complexity, now they have to deal with such issues. Imagine if the Bible talked about quantum physics!
So why don't you try? Because you know you're onto a loser....
No, not at all. Because I have to make trade-offs. If I wanted to fully cover every side issue that comes up, I'd be here forever. But unlike you, I understand the concept of tradeoffs. If human life extremely valuable? Yes. Is it so valuable that no one should ever do anything that increases risk of death to themselves or others? No. Is pollution bad? Yes. Is pollution so bad that under no circumstance should anyone ignite anything? No. Is tearing slashdot environmentalists a collective new one on economics worth my time? Yes. Is doing so on political philosophy in an unrelated topic also worth my time? No.
> it's really getting off the main topic, which is whether we're really forgoing > valuable opportunities by using landfills.
Well that's not the main topic either now is it. You posted on slashdot that the pollution caused by millions of disposed DVDs is negligible and I responded that it is not. The topic as far as we are concerned would appear to be whether the pollution is negligible or not. So you seem to be slightly off on the facts again. But really the main topic as far as your concerned is hastily trying to conceal your rank stupidity.
Ah, the emotion bubbling up again. Yes, I am dicussing the same topic. You brought up pollution and the waste of landfill space. Those are separate issues. I agree that DVD makers should pay for the (tiny) pollution in the manufacturing of the DVD. The remaining question is, what is the harm of burying them in landfills? Are we really forgoing opportunities (i.e., causing waste) by burying them. In fact, we are not, and I address your argument against this below.
You're now trying to turn it into an economic argument about speculation, but seeing as you didn't mention this to start with, it is, by your own criterion, invalid.
Oh, I didn't mention it? I didn't mention it here:
You seem to be thinking I'm making up this speculation thing, because the concept is new to you. It's not new to me, or to anyone with a firm understanding of these issues. Things are getting used up. People see that they are getting used up. They see that this use will result in higher prices later. So someone buys the resource and holds it out of use (which I know you love, given your rhetoric about equal ownership of the earth), attempting to profit from its sale when today's shortsighted morons use up the resource. But then the process iterates and the price rises to the point that no generation can afford (in the pure financial sense) to overuse it. That's what happens in futures markets. This is news to you; it is not news to me.
The futures market is based on cod economic theory and does little other than fuck up alot of poor people's lives whilst making some rich people even richer.
Wow, strong counterargument.
Most people don't spend their lives in minute analysis of the future consequences of their actions;...
Except that that doesn't matter. All that is necessary is that some people are doing it, which given the profit opportunities is inevitable. Their actions of bidding make people consider the long term affects. If a bad orange crop is predicted, orange futures prices go up now redirecting investment to correcting it now.
Yes, you have other options with which to collaborate or work independently, but, like all products in the marketplace, this is another innovation. Do you ask why people bring new brands of syrup to the market, when it's already possible to buy syrup? This is the process by which products are kept high quality.
This also benefits Sun in getting more users for the StarOffice related products, making businesses more likely to switch. Google seems to be trying to pull the rug out from under Microsoft. I can't wait until they offer a full OS!
I really don't follow. You're claiming that because some discoveries were unintended, if we do what they were doing when they made those unintended discoveries, we'll stumble upon useful stuff at a higher rate then when we identify real human needs and tailor research to satisfy those needs? Okay, so we should all adapt sloppy lab procedures because that's what led to penicillin?
And then you go on to claim that research with no real purpose is justified because at least it motivates scientists. What the fuck is this? Kindergarten? These aren't at-risk youth we're talking about. These are professionals. And besides, doing useless stuff efficiently... is still useless. I bet in another life you advocated government programs to pay people to dig holes and fill them up because the fun in it is more motivating than, I don't know, becoming a doctor. (Assuming the people in that life liked digging holes.)
If you want to give scientists something fun to do while wasting money, maybe you should look into hookers.
Hold on, your analysis seems a tad oversimplified. If the DMCA really is an unpopular policy, and only "the rich" support it, why haven't its supporters been voted out of office yet? Are voters so stupid they won't vote against politicians who support policies they oppose? Or could it be that voters genuinely like - or don't hate enough to change their vote - the DMCA? In any case, the problem seems to be voter ignorance, not a nasty cabal running the show.
Most people, rightly or wrongly, support intellectual property laws. They probably didn't see the DMCA as "that big of a deal". The solution is to educate them about how it abuses the concept of copyright, not blame it on a secret cabal.
I didn't claim every mousetrap maker should research alloys. One institution can research alloys (after seeing that there's a need for it) and then sell the fruits to the myriad mousetrap makers.
But I think you brought up a good point: there needs to be a distinction between research actively solving current human problems, and "fun" research which may or may not have any relevance. People seeking research funds from taxpayers need to make the distinction. Will it actually help someone, or is it welfare for scientists who otherwise can't market their current skills? Except, it's kind of hard to get funding when you put it that way. In any case, justifications for the former should not be used to argue for the latter.
I understand what you're saying about the goal of "expanding human knowledge", but that isn't the claim most supporters of research use. They say we should support things with no use because they may later have a use. That's an incredibly inefficient way of going about it. You would get a much higher social rate of return if that effort were directed at actual problems we have now. Remember, the cost of research is not "$10 million"; it's "the best other goal we could have achieved with that $10 million". You're saying that we should forget about current problems and research areas which may or may not have application to real human problems. That may be "fun", but like I said in another post, if you want to spend a fotune, have fun, and benefit no one, maybe a hooker is what you're looking for.
Light actuation may have uses, but the specific reasons it was being sold in that thread was how it could do stuff *within the body*.
My point has been that research should be based on need. Find the need, then research solutions. Most research going on today is to solve an interesting problem which has zero practical application. At the very least, don't make people (taxpayers) pay for it. If you want to fund research which is really just to give scientists some jollies, raise the funds yourself.
I agree. The rate of return on research designed to actually satisfy human desires is MUCH lower than the rate of return on the research people do for the hell of it.
Not.
Look, if you want to pour a lot of money into doing something because it's fun, maybe a hooker is for you. But if your justification for researching some cool technology is that some day, someone might figure out a use for it, maybe those funds should be directed to real, existing problems.
Slashdot Mirror
What's this? A level-headed post? I think you need to get with the program: you know, the five people who modded me down in lieu of actually responding to my arguments, or the six people who flamed me.
:) Why not? because the people who 'suffer' from the 'delusion' feel good about it, and they still live a full, rich, and happy life. This belief, or systematic bias, doesn't get in the way of anything.
You can probably tell that I am not a psychologist or anything of the sort, but I think these are still good points. I would appreciate any enlightenment you could give me on this. Am I understanding you correctly? As I reread our posts, I think I have gotten a little outside what you were talking about. Still, I would like to know what you think.
Okay, let's see:
I don't think that Anxiety is labelled a "bad" thing, but an undesirable thing. The people I know with anxiety disorders go get help not because they think they are sinners or cursed or "sick," but because they are experiencing something over which they seem to have no control, and they don't like it. It's getting in the way of the life they want to live. So they go get help.
True. But this doesn't make it a disease. People try to control and get help for their rudeness. That doesn't make it a disease. Put a gun to someone's head, you can make him be less rude. Put a gun to someone's head, you can make him do something of which he is anxious (Cf. Fight Club).
To address the delusion example you gave, that sounds really simplistic to me. I have a hard time believing that "delusional" should include religion. Not even religions that aren't mine!
You made my point for me, even better than I could. You just admitted that delusions are called delusions, not because they're wrong, but because they lead people do to things many of us would not like. That's a moral judgment. If you're defining something as a medical illness, you can't make moral judgments at all. By your own admission, if someone holds delusional beliefs, but doesn't do "bad" things, it's it's not an illness.
I would think that any definition of disorder or "illness" would have to include something about how it iterferes with life. It's like my eyes. There's nothing that makes my eyes bad, or ill, or evil, or anything else, I just don't see well, and no amount of squinting will control it. My eyes are just that way, and they have been for a long, long time. But they get in the way of the life I want to lead, so I have them dealt with through glasses to reduce the bad effect they have on my life. Can't we compare this with other disorders? Maybe it's the way we are, and there's nothing wrong with it until it gets in the way.
I think the best definition is what I gave: you can only count it as an illness if it's a constraint. You can't see well without lenses. If someone put a gun to your head you would not be able to correct your vision. Do some mental "illnesses" interfere? Sure. But all preferences interfere. That's what a tradeoff means - to compromise a preference.
Eyes may not be a good example, because eyesight is not a behavior. Let's look at addicions maybe. If someone is addicted to porn or drugs, there are multiple reasons for this behavior, but people aren't going to get help until they realize that it is getting in the way of the life they want to lead. When they realize that, they can get help or really watch their behavior, and they can stop the addictive, self-destructive behavior.
People do realize it's getting in the way. The evidence is right in front of them. We as a society don't want to have to admit that the person is acting based on a preference for that temporary satisfaction over the needs of his family. Is that a bad choice? Sure. But that can never be a criterion for classification of illness.
With ADHD or ADD in children it would be similar, except that it is up to the parents and teachers to be re
Given the abundance of scientific literature pointing to the genetic, chemical, and physiological causes and sequali of mental illnesses such as ...
...
I responded to this already in the post of mine that you did read. For the second time (this time listen), I'm sure you can correlate the physiology and the behavior. That's why, in the post that you did read, I presented what people who have gone to college call a "thought experiment". Then I posited a world in which some physical trait correlated one-to-one with Catholicism or gayness and I asked if those would then be considered diseases. Since you definitely read the full post, you have an answer to this; you must have just forgotten to post it this time around. I mean, no one would respond to a post without reading it!
Same thing with anxiety disorders (and many mental illnesses) - you treat it the same way, sometimes with medication, changing behaviors, therapy, etc. A person may have a preference for not undergoing treatment - and if you put a gun to their head and said "change," they might temporarily adapt their behavior, or they might not; just the same as if you put the gun to the head of someone with the heart condition. They may change their behavior, they might not ("But I like my french fries and sitcoms and lying on my couch all day") , but in either case, getting them to change their thoughts and behaviors around their illness doesn't change the fact that the illness exists and is there.
That in no way contradicts what I said. Of course it may be a good idea to change behaviors. There are people who try to be less rude, less miserly, less messy around their homes. That doesn't make rudeness, miserliness, and messiness diseases!
because they're not able to delete a post they're really, really going to regret.
Is that a threat, anonymous mod?
If you want to attack my well-reasoned posts, attack them with arguments, not modding.
Relating economics to the mind, specifically a state of mind is just plain ignorant because you assume even a mentally ill person is capable of consistently making sound judgment. By definition, this is obviously not the case!
Do you not realize how poor an argument this is? Seriously. You're defining yourself to be right - a tautology.
Let's go over this again:
I'm denying the existence of a distinct category of "mental illness". I'm claiming their actions are explainable by preferences, not constraints, like normal illnesses are.
Then you come back, and, in a blinding display of genius claim that, by definition, someone mentally ill doesn't follow the laws of economics!
I can imagine another argument you and I might have:
me: Pink unicorns don't exist.
you: A pink unicorn is a horse with a horn that is pink and exists in the mountains. By definition, they exist!
me: *burying face in hands*
You were arguing that their preferences were not rational, whether or not you used that precise word, because your post implicitly assumed there's something wrong (i.e., a moral judgment) with preferring death to life. I happen to agree with that moral judgment. It is still a moral judgment.
As for the next part, I really don't see where you're going? Are you agreeing that people are not consciously thinking in their decision to engage in homosexual acts? My positions is that people who do that prefer the benefits to the costs. You take the same condenscending view as the earlier generations of psychiatrists, that their actions do not really reveal what they prefer, that there is something "wrong" with their minds.
And yes, the earlier edition is relevant. Homosexuality was removed, not from some dispassionate re-analysis of the logical grounding of classifications of mental illnesses, but because it was unpopular to continue so classifying. Just as it's unpopular to call religious people delusional, in direct contradiction of the definition of delusions!
First, call of the dogs. (the people who modded three of my posts in this thread as flamebait and one as trolling, which was clearly unjustified)
You know, this is really depressing. I was actually beginning to think against-the-grain posts were welcomed on Slashdot, provided they were well-reasoned (which mine were). I mean, just recently I built up good karma by denouncing the space program and supporting MS's disposable DVD. People were actually listening to my unconventional views rather than emotionally modding them down.
But then, things like this come along and make me lose faith all over again. Come on guys who modded me down, can you really not come up with a rational response?
The depressed prefer death to continued existence (or so they claim). That is a preference. In reality, of course, the overwhelming majority do not commit suicide, proving that the whole time they were fully capable of not committing suicide and didn't really prefer death.
That you deem this preference "irrational" is your moral judgment. Many have a hard time understanding why anyone would want to work for a wage or borrow money at interest if they weren't being coerced. Should Alan Turing have been locked up for his homosexuality? (In fact, he was, using your exact reasoning.) Should non-socialist laborers be locked up for "supporting the wage system"? (In fact, many were, using your exact reasoning.)
Btw, rational Alan Turing committed suicide.
Actually, I have reported panic attacks despite the fact that, looking back, I probably would have failed the gun-to-the-head test. If people like me are poisoning the pool...
But that's okay, be as smug as you like. You're just another segment of the population getting modded up for bad arguments against an unpopular position.
Look, honey, another person modding down a well-reasoned post because he disagreed with it.
That's nice, dear.
Right, like nobody would pay $25 for a Britney Spears CD, right? And no rational person would borrow money at interest, sell his labor at a price such that the employer makes a profit, or respect the property rights of people richer than they are. Don't let your disdain for other people's values cloud your judgment.
"Hey, if I could convince people I get panic attacks, they would lower their expectations of me."
Are you claiming no one thinks that way? When there are incentives, people take advantage of them. That you would find such a tradeoff ridiculous doesn't mean it doesn't happen. A hundred years ago people would find it inconceivable that women would have children out of wedlock for the welfare payments, using your exact reasoning.
"Mental illness" is not generally not "illness" in any meaningful sense of the word. First, some background. In economics, choices are said to be based upon a person's preferences and his constraints. Preferences are what you want, in the order you want them; constraints are anything that stops you from getting what you really want. Normal illnesses can be described purely as constraints. No matter what you want, you can't will yourself to stop sneezing, or de-AIDS yourself, for example. So those are constraints. To understand the difference, you can apply the "gun-to-the-head" test. Ask: if you pointed a gun at the person and credibly told him you would kill him if he didn't stop, and he still couldn't, it's a constraint. If he could, it's a preference.
Mental illnesses are generally not constraints, but preferences. ADD doesn't need constraints to explain it: the person just has a high preference for variety and a low preference for monotony. A person who habitually steals doesn't have kleptomania; he just likes stealing. You could stop him with a gun.
Now, let's talk about this blood test. What does it prove? If we could tell who was a Catholic by a blood test, would that mean Catholicism is a mental illness? No, the "anxiety" label is a moral judgment. Anxiety is "bad", so it must be attributable to something physiological; no rational person would think that way, right? In exactly the same way, homosexuality was an "illness" because of a moral judgment. Would the discovery of a "gay gene" change this? If you need a better example, think about delusions. You're said to have the mental illness of delusions if you hold systematically biased beliefs. Yet the same standard specifically excludes religion. Now, whatever religion you are, you must believe some other religion's views are systematically biased. But they're arbitrarily excluded, because psychiatrists don't want to offend religious people. When attitudes change, so does what counts as a delusion, just as homosexuality got lobbed of the list.
Just my two cents.
This is a lot more serious than you're making it out to be. IBM cannot magically wave away the problem. Simple economics says they will discriminate if physically possible (i.e., they can get a DNA sample).
It's like this: Say one company genetically discriminates, and another doesn't. The discriminating one will get a higher return on its investements because it can more accurately ascertain productivity problems down the line. Then discriminating firms will over time beat out non-discriminating ones as investors redirect their capital into them.
Now, maybe IBM meant they're not going to discriminate on productivity-irrelevant matters, but everyone does that anyway for the same reason as above: if you unnecessarily raise the bar, you deprive yourself of workers with the highest value-produced-to-compensation ratio, killing your ROI. (Feel free to apply this logic to "equal pay" laws whenever you feel like it.)
The question then, is what can we do about it? Crazy as it sounds, I say remove all barriers on hiring and firing. If employers know they can fire for any reason*, it's much less of a risk to hire someone, and they will be far more willing to "take a chance" on someone with a "bad" genetic profile. Of course, this just ties into the whole "why bother getting a college education issue if it's irrelevant to work?". It's the same reason: employers take a big risk when they hire you (and the harder it is to fire you, the bigger the risk). This is why they filter out people who haven't "proven they can handle 'it'" in college.
*If an employer fires someone to cover up a crime, prosecute the crime and the coverup, not the firing.
Wow, two major economic fallacies in one post.
Devoting resources to help scientists change their minds a sixth time on an issue of no practical importance to anyone takes away from resources that could be directed toward cancer research.
Second, failure to think on the margin. Electrical engineering is used to make computers. But we do not need theoretical physics that is so poorly done scientists change their minds every few years to make current computers. The marginal impact of padding the salaries of the good-ol'-boys on computers now is zero.
Now, you could argue that one day in far far future this research may lead to something someone can use (which seems to be the consensus here). And that's true. But for a fair comparison to practical research, like cancer, you would have to discount those discoveries both by the failures and the social rate of time preference (real interest rate). In that case, the return isn't so appealing.
Wow, that's really cool! I can't wait until next year's story! It sure was worth it to put that cancer cure on hold so that the good-ol'-boys of theoretical physics can change their minds again. What would we do without them?
No, I'm not bitter.
Sorry, such a charming response doesn't wash. Your explanation would make sense if for all human history until time t1, people believed X, and then scientists proved not-X.
But if scientists "proved" not-X at t1, then "proved" X at t2, the re-proved not-X at t3, ad infinitum, something is wrong with the people we've trusted to do science. Tell me again, is the universe expanding or contracting? Would your answer be different in 1998? 1972? 1950? 1900?
And the thing is, they can keep this up because no one catches them. Let's say a scientist says "40 billion years ago, Y happened." Is he really afraid someone's going to go back in time and prove him wrong? Contrast this with a bridge engineer, who can be - painfully - proven wrong within his lifetime.
That's a good point. Have you ever considered how few eyeballs are invested in checking the work of physicists? Maybe 1,000 people worldwide a capable of truly discussing cutting edge theoretical physics. (Compare that with the Linux source code checkers.) With so few people - and the good-ol'-boy nature of professors - errors can easily persist for decades.
This is why I actually like creationists: they force biologists to rigorously prove all aspects of evolution. While otherwise they would content themselves with hand-waving excplanations of things like irreducible complexity, now they have to deal with such issues. Imagine if the Bible talked about quantum physics!
Now that you mention it, what about those poor Aboriginals in Australia's interior when they tested it?
How do you say "Don't mind us, we're just passing through" in Japanese?
So why don't you try? Because you know you're onto a loser. ...
...
No, not at all. Because I have to make trade-offs. If I wanted to fully cover every side issue that comes up, I'd be here forever. But unlike you, I understand the concept of tradeoffs. If human life extremely valuable? Yes. Is it so valuable that no one should ever do anything that increases risk of death to themselves or others? No. Is pollution bad? Yes. Is pollution so bad that under no circumstance should anyone ignite anything? No. Is tearing slashdot environmentalists a collective new one on economics worth my time? Yes. Is doing so on political philosophy in an unrelated topic also worth my time? No.
> it's really getting off the main topic, which is whether we're really forgoing
> valuable opportunities by using landfills.
Well that's not the main topic either now is it. You posted on slashdot that the pollution caused by
millions of disposed DVDs is negligible and I responded that it is not. The topic as far as we are concerned would appear to be whether the pollution is negligible or not. So you seem to be slightly off on the facts again. But really the main topic as far as your concerned is hastily trying to conceal your rank stupidity.
Ah, the emotion bubbling up again. Yes, I am dicussing the same topic. You brought up pollution and the waste of landfill space. Those are separate issues. I agree that DVD makers should pay for the (tiny) pollution in the manufacturing of the DVD. The remaining question is, what is the harm of burying them in landfills? Are we really forgoing opportunities (i.e., causing waste) by burying them. In fact, we are not, and I address your argument against this below.
You're now trying to turn it into an economic argument about speculation, but seeing as you didn't mention this to start with, it is, by your own criterion, invalid.
Oh, I didn't mention it? I didn't mention it here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=164419&cid=137 31573
Or on a post you definitely read, I didn't mention it here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=164419&thresho ld=1&commentsort=0&tid=109&mode=thread&cid=1374070 7
You seem to be thinking I'm making up this speculation thing, because the concept is new to you. It's not new to me, or to anyone with a firm understanding of these issues. Things are getting used up. People see that they are getting used up. They see that this use will result in higher prices later. So someone buys the resource and holds it out of use (which I know you love, given your rhetoric about equal ownership of the earth), attempting to profit from its sale when today's shortsighted morons use up the resource. But then the process iterates and the price rises to the point that no generation can afford (in the pure financial sense) to overuse it. That's what happens in futures markets. This is news to you; it is not news to me.
The futures market is based on cod economic theory and does little other than fuck up alot of poor people's lives whilst making some rich people even richer.
Wow, strong counterargument.
Most people don't spend their lives in minute analysis of the future consequences of their actions;
Except that that doesn't matter. All that is necessary is that some people are doing it, which given the profit opportunities is inevitable. Their actions of bidding make people consider the long term affects. If a bad orange crop is predicted, orange futures prices go up now redirecting investment to correcting it now.
The theory also fails to work when ap
Yes, you have other options with which to collaborate or work independently, but, like all products in the marketplace, this is another innovation. Do you ask why people bring new brands of syrup to the market, when it's already possible to buy syrup? This is the process by which products are kept high quality.
This also benefits Sun in getting more users for the StarOffice related products, making businesses more likely to switch. Google seems to be trying to pull the rug out from under Microsoft. I can't wait until they offer a full OS!
I really don't follow. You're claiming that because some discoveries were unintended, if we do what they were doing when they made those unintended discoveries, we'll stumble upon useful stuff at a higher rate then when we identify real human needs and tailor research to satisfy those needs? Okay, so we should all adapt sloppy lab procedures because that's what led to penicillin?
... is still useless. I bet in another life you advocated government programs to pay people to dig holes and fill them up because the fun in it is more motivating than, I don't know, becoming a doctor. (Assuming the people in that life liked digging holes.)
And then you go on to claim that research with no real purpose is justified because at least it motivates scientists. What the fuck is this? Kindergarten? These aren't at-risk youth we're talking about. These are professionals. And besides, doing useless stuff efficiently
If you want to give scientists something fun to do while wasting money, maybe you should look into hookers.
Hold on, your analysis seems a tad oversimplified. If the DMCA really is an unpopular policy, and only "the rich" support it, why haven't its supporters been voted out of office yet? Are voters so stupid they won't vote against politicians who support policies they oppose? Or could it be that voters genuinely like - or don't hate enough to change their vote - the DMCA? In any case, the problem seems to be voter ignorance, not a nasty cabal running the show.
Most people, rightly or wrongly, support intellectual property laws. They probably didn't see the DMCA as "that big of a deal". The solution is to educate them about how it abuses the concept of copyright, not blame it on a secret cabal.
I didn't claim every mousetrap maker should research alloys. One institution can research alloys (after seeing that there's a need for it) and then sell the fruits to the myriad mousetrap makers.
But I think you brought up a good point: there needs to be a distinction between research actively solving current human problems, and "fun" research which may or may not have any relevance. People seeking research funds from taxpayers need to make the distinction. Will it actually help someone, or is it welfare for scientists who otherwise can't market their current skills? Except, it's kind of hard to get funding when you put it that way. In any case, justifications for the former should not be used to argue for the latter.
I understand what you're saying about the goal of "expanding human knowledge", but that isn't the claim most supporters of research use. They say we should support things with no use because they may later have a use. That's an incredibly inefficient way of going about it. You would get a much higher social rate of return if that effort were directed at actual problems we have now. Remember, the cost of research is not "$10 million"; it's "the best other goal we could have achieved with that $10 million". You're saying that we should forget about current problems and research areas which may or may not have application to real human problems. That may be "fun", but like I said in another post, if you want to spend a fotune, have fun, and benefit no one, maybe a hooker is what you're looking for.
Light actuation may have uses, but the specific reasons it was being sold in that thread was how it could do stuff *within the body*.
My point has been that research should be based on need. Find the need, then research solutions. Most research going on today is to solve an interesting problem which has zero practical application. At the very least, don't make people (taxpayers) pay for it. If you want to fund research which is really just to give scientists some jollies, raise the funds yourself.
I agree. The rate of return on research designed to actually satisfy human desires is MUCH lower than the rate of return on the research people do for the hell of it.
Not.
Look, if you want to pour a lot of money into doing something because it's fun, maybe a hooker is for you. But if your justification for researching some cool technology is that some day, someone might figure out a use for it, maybe those funds should be directed to real, existing problems.