I hope those who are offended by your seeming condemnation don't latch onto this as a complete counter-argument, but please note:
Instant gratification doesn't necessarily mean future detriment.
It just correlates with it.
Certainly in many situations delay of gratification is necessary for good or optimal outcome, and in those situations instant gratification is just impulse and stupidity.
But please don't equate speed with lack of patience.
Taboo must be a topic of great interest to you. It seems there can be social inertia despite common individual preference or even broad popularity.
Hm. Your idea of promoting frankness does seem to be a good one. It's not something that "established" personalities can do easily because they're believed to be relatively static and thus less forgivable for mistake or aberrance. "Youthful indiscretion" is a shield that youth can use to embolden their openness. So maybe it's a good thing that social sites are used primarily by youth. (Teach them well and let them lead the way...)
Ah, but it seems also that visibility is a double-edged sword. Sure, if most folks were open about their lives we might find greater tolerance for or even acceptance of evident commonalities. Even to the degree of changing "unfair" laws. That's great. However, unpopularity still remains, and oddity (does not equal) immorality, harmfulness, or bad. In a new era of openness there could be a far greater tendency towards intolerance of deviation, especially since the major in-group would be that much more pervasive. You'd have to assure somehow that oddity tolerance did not evaporate. I think the only truly effective way to do that would be to establish a fundamental value system which folks of all stripes could buy into. With that clarified folks would be able to deduce morality rather than relying on sheer popularity (of intuitively presumed pre-deduced morality).
Oh, hm. It seems that moral decisions resulting from a value system are needed rather than just relying on popularity to vouch for the acceptability of behavior. For example, let's say when all was revealed that a vengeful mindset were overwhelmingly the tendency. That could empower (legally, socially) vengeance. So that there is a edge to the sword, perhaps more appropriately the first edge, in opposition to oddity devaluation, than was the concept of empowering common good nature. Unpopularity does not mean bad, popularity does not mean good. The benefit of empowering common good nature might be the sword's pommel or something. Anyway.
Again, establishing a popular and fundamental value system would be necessary to avoid the fallout from these two main effects of widespread frankness. So maybe come up with some good ideas and travel around teaching folk. As a marketing strategy perhaps get yourself nailed to a tree and we'll all cross our fingers that your ideas take.
(It's interesting that you call the privacy patch-up a "greedy" solution. Do you mean that in the sense that it's driven by short-sighted personal needs rather than an eye towards greater social benefit? There's one other sense I can imagine for use of "greedy", but it's a quirky perspective that I don't think others would be familiar with. It's fun, though: Impulsiveness can be seen as subverting the welfare of your future self for your current self's satisfaction, and you can cast that future self as something like a different person. Future me == "other", current me = "self". Thus impulsiveness, as opposed to delay of gratification, can be seen as a sort of selfishness.)
What about the people who do actually unpopular things? Is ostracism okay then?
I'm with you as far as wanting everyone to get along, but I consider that a harder problem than the privacy matter. Nonetheless, I care about it and intend to help.
Okay, after R'ing the FA, scenarios are more imaginable.
So, in effect, any time you're in the company of other persons you should adopt a feeling like what you're doing is being video relayed on the net. Charming, no?
Eventually you should get that same feeling when you step out your front door. But don't let that (perhaps dystopian?) distant future distract you from the above-mentioned situation which mobile phone-wielding monkeys are bringing you now. The outside-is-globally-visible horror is a long, long ways away. Nothing to worry about just yet. Give it another, say, 7 years. Unless you live in Britain.
... I, for one, do not post the intimate details of my life on the Internet.
I think the point is not what you reveal, but what is revealed about you.
If the norm is everyone posts private details about their lives which includes their private interactions with you... Then your reasonable expectation of privacy doesn't include your puking Friday night. Maybe not even what happened with that person on your friend's couch at 3 AM. What becomes public about your life is not only what you report, but what others report about you.
If at some time law (specifically interpretation, but maybe also legislation) starts obviously including the ramifications of our increasingly visible intimate lives, there might be some backlash. I'm having a hard time seeing the particular form such a law or interpretation would take. Maybe something like a precedent that it's okay for employers to use services that link together all references to you from friends' social site posts...::shrug::
The point is that what is considered "private" is changing because all your friends are posting your and their lives publicly. It's not about what you post. If you want a non-public life, you'll have to spend time only with people who won't post your life.
I might recommend more "me" time. Perhaps alone in the basement. If you want social interaction, online chatting is good. But use a pseudonym. And maybe Tor. And you should probably make up a different identity or two that's hard to link with the real you. Like you're a 15-year-old female elf or something.
And make sure you read the news lately on using SSRIs:
Limits to antidepressants' effectiveness: study
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Mild to severe depression might be better treated with alternatives to antidepressant drugs, which do not help patients much more than an inactive placebo, researchers said Tuesday.
My drug recommendations all come with the serious urging that you research deeply on your own. That includes my recommendations for plant-derived or synthetic, brand-name drugs. Do you think gobbling down Tagamet and aspirin, just because you can buy them off the drug store shelf, without an understanding of drug metabolization is a good idea?
For difficulty sleeping or resetting a sleep schedule, for antioxidant effect, plant-derived melatonin. As such a fundamental neurochemical, you'll want to be careful about your usage. A specific effect to be wary of is immunomodulation.
Kavalactones present in the Kava plant are anxiolytics — they have anti-anxiety effects. They work on GABA receptors, similarly to alcohol, but don't have the same stupefying effects. If using the raw plant, do not take leaves and stems, only the root, macerated in water, per the traditional use. As with all drugs, take in moderation.
For mental stimulation and performance, caffeine from green tea (or coffee). Also theobromine from cacao. Also cinnamon scent (go ahead, look it up). And again Kava. Flaxseed meal (alpha-linolenic acid, which converts to EPA and DHA — omega-3s), walnuts, etc.
For bronchodilation, theophylline from cacao.
For anti-emetic (nausea/vomiting, including motion sickness), ginger (active ingredient zingiberene). Perhaps marijuana.
For mood, theobromine from cacao, kavalactones from Kava, plant-derived melatonin, caffeine. Plant-derived 5-HTP (beware interactions with MAOIs and SSRIs). I'd suggest looking into St. John's Wort, but I haven't delved deeply into it myself except to note that it's a drug metabolization inhibitor, and so requires special care regarding interaction. The first thing to do with poor mood is not to begin applying drugs anyway, plant-based or synthetic.
For energy level, caffeine from green tea or elsewhere, theobromine (cacao), cocaine (coca).
For anti-inflammation, depending on severity, curcumin (turmeric), eugenol (cloves), and zingiberene (ginger), bromelain (pineapple), papain (papaya), alpha-linolenic acid (flaxseeds), cinnamon. Maybe
For digestion, ginger, pineapple, papaya.
Surely that's a big enough list that you can find something wrong in it. I know you're looking for chinks in armor.
Why do you believe that these remedies are effective?
Reading. Broad-spectrum data factoring (e.g., including absence of certain kinds of information) anchored mostly by published studies (with an appropriate eye towards credibility). You? (Seriously. How do you know about your own choices?)
How do these remedies compare to the drugs that target the same complaints in both cost and effectiveness?
Well, gee, which ones? How about the anti-inflammatories... NSAIDs have an issue with promoting GI irritation and stomach bleeding. If you've got ulcers already, IBD or Crohn's or Coeliac Disease, NSAIDs will be pretty hard on you. On the other hand, the degree of inflammation present in autoimmune disorders is probably not the right scenario for trying to address solely with eugenol/zingiberene/curcumin. But back on the gripping hand, adding these to your diet can only help.
Side-effects and come-down from SSRIs are pretty gnarly, especially in the suicide cases. Make sure not to miss your doses.
Green tea can be pretty expensive, I admit. But, whatever. Ginger, turmeric, cloves... not that expensive and serve dual purpose as freakin' spices. Kava's pretty pricey, I have to say, but I quite like it. If anyone knows a good source of quality root, please chime in. I expect whole root to be less expensive than capsule or tincture preparations.
What qualifies you to be making medicinal recommendations to others? Do you have relevant training?
Yeah, I forgot THC. And caffeine. And theobromine. And dimethyltryptamine. And musicmol/muscarine. And mescaline. And... the list was off the top of my head, for the purpose of showing that serious drugs can come from plants.
This is even worse if you take the ineffective treatments over the scientifically tested treatments
Like Vioxx?
I highly recommend researching any drug you take, whatever the source. Just having it come out of a pharmaceutical company with attendant testing does not mean the efficacy is going to be great, that there won't be interactions, that there won't be dangerous side-effects.
Hell, even eating grapefruit can be dangerous. Seriously. Of course there's some concern over non-primary compounds in plants, but testing can be performed on whole plant extracts about as easily as synthetic drugs. Except there's not much money for funding such studies.
On March 11, 2009, Scott S. Reuben, former chief of acute pain at Baystate Medical Center, Springfield, Mass., revealed that data for 21 studies he had authored for the efficacy of [Vioxx] (along with others such as celecoxib) had been fabricated in order to augment the analgesic effects of the drugs. Dr. Reuben was also a former paid spokesperson for the drug company Pfizer (who owns the intellectual property rights for marketing celecoxib in the United States).
The VIGOR (Vioxx GI Outcomes Research) study, conducted by Bombardier, et al., which compared the efficacy and adverse effect profiles of rofecoxib and naproxen, had indicated a significant 4-fold increased risk of acute myocardial infarction (heart attack) in rofecoxib patients when compared with naproxen patients (0.4% vs 0.1%, RR 0.25) over the 12 month span of the study.
And clearance speed is a factor. I need a mathematician to help me out here, but at a certain half-life a substance begins to accumulate in your system if you're taking daily doses.
I'm an advocate of herbal remedies. Well, the ones that work. Plants can be pretty potent, and to think otherwise is shockingly naive. Not every herb is going to be a cure-all, but there's a gamut of plants that effectively address an array of health problems. Or recreational desires.
Over-reliance on synthetics created by for-profit organizations is itself basically a disease. If, say, your first choice for addressing depression is an SSRI prescription, you've been infected by advertising.
it has the added bonus of being impossible to know exactly how much of the drug you are taking, as concentrations will vary wildly by plant/time of year/soil
I didn't see this information in your source link.
Anyway, it seems pretty plausible that batches can be tested and normalized, no? I've seen bottles of herbal supplements with the active compounds rated in milligrams.
Huh... Even the synthetic stuff that works ends up by the wayside eventually as slightly altered and currently-patentable versions are created and pushed.
I hope folks don't get the idea that there aren't potent drugs that come from plants. Off the top of my head: Atropine, bromelain, papain, eugenol, curcumin, zingeberene, alpha linolenic acid, nicotine, hyperforin, kavalactones, tyramine, ricin, various monoamine oxidase inhibitors, fucking opium...
Herbal supplements are not anything to rashly play with or disrespect wholesale.
When I square off against someone on a forum about, I know it will get nasty, but I'm there for that reason: to test my skills, my power of argument, and possibly to persuade some and be persuaded myself, if the case arises.
Little progress is ever made when the focus is on combat, domination, and personal greatness. Antagonism does not lend itself to effective listening. If we focus more fully on triangulating on truth, in cooperation, we are all better off.
Ah. I hadn't noticed before. Well, be careful of letting others' jokes get under your skin. They're usually just havin' a piss, as they say, so it would be sad to suffer some elevated blood pressure and cortisol needlessly. If you think the substance of their joke (jokes are often ultimately founded in truth or sincerity) deserves addressing — say you think it's a harmful idea and could be a bad influence if folks took it seriously — I might suggest coming at the matter a different way. Maybe something like "The reason your joke is funny (as much as it is) is that the idea is ridiculous. Not at all helpful. And, really, it's not that funny. So please knock that off." Or maybe just ignore them.
I can totally understand being a killjoy when there are harmful jokes being made. But I'd advise being clear on when that's the case rather than squandering your reputation and health being a less precise killjoy.
I can appreciate the idea of an "argument from emotional need", but I feel like it could use some detail.
What, for example, differentiates "primal *need*" from "oh man, I *need* another hit"? Surely not every emotion should be acted on?
Also, "[some] folks used to act barbarically" is not a very good argument. Though I can see how it might have some relevance. But hasn't self-control been the hallmark of a better civilization?
You'd be wrong about my not having suffered violation, by the way. And in any case, whether I have has no bearing on the logic of my position. In fact, if such a thing did, I'd say that a person who's been permanently traumatized by violation might be less able to think about the matter clearly.
Muting "some" is probably fine as it's only "some" who are the "more vocal" and who are likely themselves guilty. There are enough normal people to champion reasonable protection of children in non-rabid ways.
... of course some explanation is needed. I guess I was ignoring a niggling expectation of that.
The base yearning for retribution is understandable. It's natural. There's no wrong in feeling it. (There's never wrong in feeling any emotion. Emotions are inherently valid. It's the choices inspired by emotions that can be right or wrong.) I believe it is essentially feelings that are the source of all that is valuable, so feelings need to be honored and supported as much as possible.
But we all know it's dangerous to act on every feeling.
We should minimize the chance of more harm, not slake the emotional need to inflict suffering.
Revenge is a kind of malice. And it is malice in the first place that causes harm and spurs vengeance.
Our perceptions, our knowledge, our beliefs, our deductions, and our actions are never perfect. Can you know perfectly what retribution is just? Can those who suffer your wrath know perfectly that your retribution is just and will they call it even? Or is it more likely that hate blooms at least a little every time it's fed?
Do those who hate themselves and fear others act less selfishly when you stoke their hate and their fear with your attacks?
How many conflicts in the world might have started with misunderstandings yet have grown into irreconcilable antagonism? Start with "oops" and get wedged into a state of endlessly pushing for bloody agony?
Devaluation of others, the core of malice, spirals out of control.
Stop the harm. Take away the power of the malicious to cause harm. And refrain yourself from intending harm.
(There's yet more reason to care for everyone, but this argument is sufficient.)
I might have said rehabilitate, too. That's a good idea.
This sentiment may be unpopular with most folks, and Hammurabi, but I don't believe that people should be made to suffer for the sake of some kind of balancing out.
Sentences should be given for deterrence or containment. Not retribution.
I know it sounds kooky. I know it flies in the face of intuition. But that's what I think.
Slashdot Mirror
I received notice via the Slashdot system that you'd replied to me.
I understand now what you mean by greedy. It actually jibes well with all kinds of conception of greed.
You're very welcome.
I for one am happy to forego the particular journey or journeys he's pre-empted.
I hope those who are offended by your seeming condemnation don't latch onto this as a complete counter-argument, but please note:
Instant gratification doesn't necessarily mean future detriment.
It just correlates with it.
Certainly in many situations delay of gratification is necessary for good or optimal outcome, and in those situations instant gratification is just impulse and stupidity.
But please don't equate speed with lack of patience.
Taboo must be a topic of great interest to you. It seems there can be social inertia despite common individual preference or even broad popularity.
Hm. Your idea of promoting frankness does seem to be a good one. It's not something that "established" personalities can do easily because they're believed to be relatively static and thus less forgivable for mistake or aberrance. "Youthful indiscretion" is a shield that youth can use to embolden their openness. So maybe it's a good thing that social sites are used primarily by youth. (Teach them well and let them lead the way...)
Ah, but it seems also that visibility is a double-edged sword. Sure, if most folks were open about their lives we might find greater tolerance for or even acceptance of evident commonalities. Even to the degree of changing "unfair" laws. That's great. However, unpopularity still remains, and oddity (does not equal) immorality, harmfulness, or bad. In a new era of openness there could be a far greater tendency towards intolerance of deviation, especially since the major in-group would be that much more pervasive. You'd have to assure somehow that oddity tolerance did not evaporate. I think the only truly effective way to do that would be to establish a fundamental value system which folks of all stripes could buy into. With that clarified folks would be able to deduce morality rather than relying on sheer popularity (of intuitively presumed pre-deduced morality).
Oh, hm. It seems that moral decisions resulting from a value system are needed rather than just relying on popularity to vouch for the acceptability of behavior. For example, let's say when all was revealed that a vengeful mindset were overwhelmingly the tendency. That could empower (legally, socially) vengeance. So that there is a edge to the sword, perhaps more appropriately the first edge, in opposition to oddity devaluation, than was the concept of empowering common good nature. Unpopularity does not mean bad, popularity does not mean good. The benefit of empowering common good nature might be the sword's pommel or something. Anyway.
Again, establishing a popular and fundamental value system would be necessary to avoid the fallout from these two main effects of widespread frankness. So maybe come up with some good ideas and travel around teaching folk. As a marketing strategy perhaps get yourself nailed to a tree and we'll all cross our fingers that your ideas take.
(It's interesting that you call the privacy patch-up a "greedy" solution. Do you mean that in the sense that it's driven by short-sighted personal needs rather than an eye towards greater social benefit? There's one other sense I can imagine for use of "greedy", but it's a quirky perspective that I don't think others would be familiar with. It's fun, though: Impulsiveness can be seen as subverting the welfare of your future self for your current self's satisfaction, and you can cast that future self as something like a different person. Future me == "other", current me = "self". Thus impulsiveness, as opposed to delay of gratification, can be seen as a sort of selfishness.)
When used as an argument against the point, yes.
n/t
Ah, but I will say this: Ad hominem attacks are not entirely without merit. :D
What about the people who do actually unpopular things? Is ostracism okay then?
I'm with you as far as wanting everyone to get along, but I consider that a harder problem than the privacy matter. Nonetheless, I care about it and intend to help.
Okay, after R'ing the FA, scenarios are more imaginable.
So, in effect, any time you're in the company of other persons you should adopt a feeling like what you're doing is being video relayed on the net. Charming, no?
Eventually you should get that same feeling when you step out your front door. But don't let that (perhaps dystopian?) distant future distract you from the above-mentioned situation which mobile phone-wielding monkeys are bringing you now. The outside-is-globally-visible horror is a long, long ways away. Nothing to worry about just yet. Give it another, say, 7 years. Unless you live in Britain.
Touché! maxume strikes down an attempted ad hominem with flair.
... I, for one, do not post the intimate details of my life on the Internet.
I think the point is not what you reveal, but what is revealed about you.
If the norm is everyone posts private details about their lives which includes their private interactions with you... Then your reasonable expectation of privacy doesn't include your puking Friday night. Maybe not even what happened with that person on your friend's couch at 3 AM. What becomes public about your life is not only what you report, but what others report about you.
If at some time law (specifically interpretation, but maybe also legislation) starts obviously including the ramifications of our increasingly visible intimate lives, there might be some backlash. I'm having a hard time seeing the particular form such a law or interpretation would take. Maybe something like a precedent that it's okay for employers to use services that link together all references to you from friends' social site posts... ::shrug::
The point is that what is considered "private" is changing because all your friends are posting your and their lives publicly. It's not about what you post. If you want a non-public life, you'll have to spend time only with people who won't post your life.
I might recommend more "me" time. Perhaps alone in the basement. If you want social interaction, online chatting is good. But use a pseudonym. And maybe Tor. And you should probably make up a different identity or two that's hard to link with the real you. Like you're a 15-year-old female elf or something.
cacao: great
blueberries: great
acai: great
phytonutrients of all kinds: great
MLM: bad for your health and the health of others
If, say, your first choice for addressing depression is an SSRI prescription, you've been infected by advertising.
Said by someone who has probably never had major depression.
Severe depression isn't the only kind out there.
Make sure you read what I said about treating depression.
And make sure you read the news lately on using SSRIs:
Limits to antidepressants' effectiveness: study
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Mild to severe depression might be better treated with alternatives to antidepressant drugs, which do not help patients much more than an inactive placebo, researchers said Tuesday.
What herbal remedies do you recommend?
My drug recommendations all come with the serious urging that you research deeply on your own. That includes my recommendations for plant-derived or synthetic, brand-name drugs. Do you think gobbling down Tagamet and aspirin, just because you can buy them off the drug store shelf, without an understanding of drug metabolization is a good idea?
For difficulty sleeping or resetting a sleep schedule, for antioxidant effect, plant-derived melatonin. As such a fundamental neurochemical, you'll want to be careful about your usage. A specific effect to be wary of is immunomodulation.
Kavalactones present in the Kava plant are anxiolytics — they have anti-anxiety effects. They work on GABA receptors, similarly to alcohol, but don't have the same stupefying effects. If using the raw plant, do not take leaves and stems, only the root, macerated in water, per the traditional use. As with all drugs, take in moderation.
For mental stimulation and performance, caffeine from green tea (or coffee). Also theobromine from cacao. Also cinnamon scent (go ahead, look it up). And again Kava. Flaxseed meal (alpha-linolenic acid, which converts to EPA and DHA — omega-3s), walnuts, etc.
For bronchodilation, theophylline from cacao.
For anti-emetic (nausea/vomiting, including motion sickness), ginger (active ingredient zingiberene). Perhaps marijuana.
For mood, theobromine from cacao, kavalactones from Kava, plant-derived melatonin, caffeine. Plant-derived 5-HTP (beware interactions with MAOIs and SSRIs). I'd suggest looking into St. John's Wort, but I haven't delved deeply into it myself except to note that it's a drug metabolization inhibitor, and so requires special care regarding interaction. The first thing to do with poor mood is not to begin applying drugs anyway, plant-based or synthetic.
For energy level, caffeine from green tea or elsewhere, theobromine (cacao), cocaine (coca).
For anti-inflammation, depending on severity, curcumin (turmeric), eugenol (cloves), and zingiberene (ginger), bromelain (pineapple), papain (papaya), alpha-linolenic acid (flaxseeds), cinnamon. Maybe
For digestion, ginger, pineapple, papaya.
Surely that's a big enough list that you can find something wrong in it. I know you're looking for chinks in armor.
Why do you believe that these remedies are effective?
Reading. Broad-spectrum data factoring (e.g., including absence of certain kinds of information) anchored mostly by published studies (with an appropriate eye towards credibility). You? (Seriously. How do you know about your own choices?)
How do these remedies compare to the drugs that target the same complaints in both cost and effectiveness?
Well, gee, which ones? How about the anti-inflammatories... NSAIDs have an issue with promoting GI irritation and stomach bleeding. If you've got ulcers already, IBD or Crohn's or Coeliac Disease, NSAIDs will be pretty hard on you. On the other hand, the degree of inflammation present in autoimmune disorders is probably not the right scenario for trying to address solely with eugenol/zingiberene/curcumin. But back on the gripping hand, adding these to your diet can only help.
Side-effects and come-down from SSRIs are pretty gnarly, especially in the suicide cases. Make sure not to miss your doses.
Green tea can be pretty expensive, I admit. But, whatever. Ginger, turmeric, cloves... not that expensive and serve dual purpose as freakin' spices. Kava's pretty pricey, I have to say, but I quite like it. If anyone knows a good source of quality root, please chime in. I expect whole root to be less expensive than capsule or tincture preparations.
What qualifies you to be making medicinal recommendations to others? Do you have relevant training?
Do you have the relevant training as a consumer
Yeah, I forgot THC. And caffeine. And theobromine. And dimethyltryptamine. And musicmol/muscarine. And mescaline. And ... the list was off the top of my head, for the purpose of showing that serious drugs can come from plants.
This is even worse if you take the ineffective treatments over the scientifically tested treatments
Like Vioxx?
I highly recommend researching any drug you take, whatever the source. Just having it come out of a pharmaceutical company with attendant testing does not mean the efficacy is going to be great, that there won't be interactions, that there won't be dangerous side-effects.
Hell, even eating grapefruit can be dangerous. Seriously. Of course there's some concern over non-primary compounds in plants, but testing can be performed on whole plant extracts about as easily as synthetic drugs. Except there's not much money for funding such studies.
On March 11, 2009, Scott S. Reuben, former chief of acute pain at Baystate Medical Center, Springfield, Mass., revealed that data for 21 studies he had authored for the efficacy of [Vioxx] (along with others such as celecoxib) had been fabricated in order to augment the analgesic effects of the drugs. Dr. Reuben was also a former paid spokesperson for the drug company Pfizer (who owns the intellectual property rights for marketing celecoxib in the United States).
The VIGOR (Vioxx GI Outcomes Research) study, conducted by Bombardier, et al., which compared the efficacy and adverse effect profiles of rofecoxib and naproxen, had indicated a significant 4-fold increased risk of acute myocardial infarction (heart attack) in rofecoxib patients when compared with naproxen patients (0.4% vs 0.1%, RR 0.25) over the 12 month span of the study.
And clearance speed is a factor. I need a mathematician to help me out here, but at a certain half-life a substance begins to accumulate in your system if you're taking daily doses.
I'm an advocate of herbal remedies. Well, the ones that work. Plants can be pretty potent, and to think otherwise is shockingly naive. Not every herb is going to be a cure-all, but there's a gamut of plants that effectively address an array of health problems. Or recreational desires.
Over-reliance on synthetics created by for-profit organizations is itself basically a disease. If, say, your first choice for addressing depression is an SSRI prescription, you've been infected by advertising.
it has the added bonus of being impossible to know exactly how much of the drug you are taking, as concentrations will vary wildly by plant/time of year/soil
I didn't see this information in your source link.
Anyway, it seems pretty plausible that batches can be tested and normalized, no? I've seen bottles of herbal supplements with the active compounds rated in milligrams.
Huh... Even the synthetic stuff that works ends up by the wayside eventually as slightly altered and currently-patentable versions are created and pushed.
I hope folks don't get the idea that there aren't potent drugs that come from plants. Off the top of my head: Atropine, bromelain, papain, eugenol, curcumin, zingeberene, alpha linolenic acid, nicotine, hyperforin, kavalactones, tyramine, ricin, various monoamine oxidase inhibitors, fucking opium...
Herbal supplements are not anything to rashly play with or disrespect wholesale.
When I square off against someone on a forum about, I know it will get nasty, but I'm there for that reason: to test my skills, my power of argument, and possibly to persuade some and be persuaded myself, if the case arises.
Little progress is ever made when the focus is on combat, domination, and personal greatness. Antagonism does not lend itself to effective listening. If we focus more fully on triangulating on truth, in cooperation, we are all better off.
Ah. I hadn't noticed before. Well, be careful of letting others' jokes get under your skin. They're usually just havin' a piss, as they say, so it would be sad to suffer some elevated blood pressure and cortisol needlessly. If you think the substance of their joke (jokes are often ultimately founded in truth or sincerity) deserves addressing — say you think it's a harmful idea and could be a bad influence if folks took it seriously — I might suggest coming at the matter a different way. Maybe something like "The reason your joke is funny (as much as it is) is that the idea is ridiculous. Not at all helpful. And, really, it's not that funny. So please knock that off." Or maybe just ignore them.
I can totally understand being a killjoy when there are harmful jokes being made. But I'd advise being clear on when that's the case rather than squandering your reputation and health being a less precise killjoy.
You okay today? I don't recall you usually being this mirthless.
I can appreciate the idea of an "argument from emotional need", but I feel like it could use some detail.
What, for example, differentiates "primal *need*" from "oh man, I *need* another hit"? Surely not every emotion should be acted on?
Also, "[some] folks used to act barbarically" is not a very good argument. Though I can see how it might have some relevance. But hasn't self-control been the hallmark of a better civilization?
You'd be wrong about my not having suffered violation, by the way. And in any case, whether I have has no bearing on the logic of my position. In fact, if such a thing did, I'd say that a person who's been permanently traumatized by violation might be less able to think about the matter clearly.
Muting "some" is probably fine as it's only "some" who are the "more vocal" and who are likely themselves guilty. There are enough normal people to champion reasonable protection of children in non-rabid ways.
And gays don't need "cover".
Otherwise your point is insightful.
You never submitted your report.
... of course some explanation is needed. I guess I was ignoring a niggling expectation of that.
The base yearning for retribution is understandable. It's natural. There's no wrong in feeling it. (There's never wrong in feeling any emotion. Emotions are inherently valid. It's the choices inspired by emotions that can be right or wrong.) I believe it is essentially feelings that are the source of all that is valuable, so feelings need to be honored and supported as much as possible.
But we all know it's dangerous to act on every feeling.
We should minimize the chance of more harm, not slake the emotional need to inflict suffering.
Revenge is a kind of malice. And it is malice in the first place that causes harm and spurs vengeance.
Our perceptions, our knowledge, our beliefs, our deductions, and our actions are never perfect. Can you know perfectly what retribution is just? Can those who suffer your wrath know perfectly that your retribution is just and will they call it even? Or is it more likely that hate blooms at least a little every time it's fed?
Do those who hate themselves and fear others act less selfishly when you stoke their hate and their fear with your attacks?
How many conflicts in the world might have started with misunderstandings yet have grown into irreconcilable antagonism? Start with "oops" and get wedged into a state of endlessly pushing for bloody agony?
Devaluation of others, the core of malice, spirals out of control.
Stop the harm. Take away the power of the malicious to cause harm. And refrain yourself from intending harm.
(There's yet more reason to care for everyone, but this argument is sufficient.)
I might have said rehabilitate, too. That's a good idea.
This sentiment may be unpopular with most folks, and Hammurabi, but I don't believe that people should be made to suffer for the sake of some kind of balancing out.
Sentences should be given for deterrence or containment. Not retribution.
I know it sounds kooky. I know it flies in the face of intuition. But that's what I think.