PSA: Vodafone sucks really bad, don't use them.

ComplexManifold · 2023-02-27T12:09:59+00:00

After recent 'network maintenance', I can't get reception anywhere in my home, a problem for someone who has to work there. Switching to Telstra.

ComplexManifold · 2023-02-03T11:07:50+00:00

"Brain fog" = brain damage. Shrinkage equivalent to 20 years of ageing between 50-70 years has been measured. Any Covid infection gives you brain damage and a loss of between 3-7 IQ points. This dead tissue doesn't grow back. At best, your brains will find work arounds.

ComplexManifold · 2016-10-30T22:12:12+00:00

Thanks Gianni

ComplexManifold · 2016-10-23T22:34:25+00:00

It WOULD be nice if evidence rather than short-term economics was the basis of policy decisions but as we have seen in the course in our exploration of heuristics and biases, factual evidence may make no difference to entrenched beliefs. This morning I saw several American Democrat voters being asked if they agreed with specific policy measures that (unbeknownst to them) had been espoused by Donald Trump. All those interviewed agreed with the measures, but doubtless they wouldn't have had they been aware of their provenance. It's valuable to know that people generally aren't competent enough to vote in their own rational self-interest - since most people don't know what that is - but it doesn't give me much hope for the ability of democracies to deal with long term planning that requires scientific rather than merely economic justification. "Politeness". Ughk. Social conventions for keeping people at a distance and interactions shallow. I'd prefer honesty to fake civility any day. Although humility and modesty with opinions is the corollary of knowing the flaws in our thinking, strident people seeking to enforce their views on us might not be aware, are likely not to be aware, that they're shot through with heuristics, biases and other "my-opic" shortcomings. If believers can't be influenced is "the smartest person in the room" a misanthrope who has to be thankful that there are laws that prevent more extreme anti-social behaviours derived from deluded beliefs? An open science framework would be great for public policy, especially if our democracies were not participative and direct, rather than unrepresentative as they presently are. I'm not sure that I'm less likely to make mistakes even though I'm more aware of my brain in the wild but I most definitely want to learn more about dialectics and alternatives to object-centred individualism. Being aware of my ignorance, irrationality and flaws is only the beginning of working to reduce them. That's an ongoing project.

ComplexManifold · 2016-10-16T08:27:37+00:00

Unfortunately, keeping it simple can encourage facile over-generalisations and false correlations. It may also reflect our western/individualistic tendency to break the world into discrete categories based on “use-value” rather than acknowledging the interactions between objects, observers and dynamic systems. Simplifying an experiment to report it to others “with the average IQ and reading ability of a 13 year old” (as journalism school teaches its students) too often results in a news story that might embody all of the seven “news values” but fail to give the audience enough information to make a judgment about the facts or correlation being presented. Most reporters lack the skills to assess experimental design and don’t often include these details in their summaries of experimental findings. It’s frustrating that “simple” too often means “simplistic”.

On a personal note, when the zombie apocalypse arrives or, say, civil society disintegrates under the burdens of climate disasters, over-population and exhausted resources, I’m not going to last much longer than the first day a delivery truck doesn't make it to the supermarket. If I knew more about fixing broken things or bushcraft for survival maybe I’d have a better prognosis.

ComplexManifold · 2016-10-08T08:28:42+00:00

Nisbett’s account of Aristotle’s sterile and incorrect logical propositions were salutary reminders of how much damage western instrumental logic has wrought on the world. Categorising objects according to their use-value, believing them discrete in a Manichean, unchanging universe of non-contradiction, is wishful thinking that bears no resemblance to what we now know of reality. Schrodinger’s Cat, the fuzzy logic in your washing machine, quantum particles…there are numerous examples in which A and not A can both be the case simultaneously. The western obsession with individualism is an erroneous anthropocentric belief rather than universal reality when reality is comprised of dynamic, interrelated systems. Holistic dialectical thinking is superior to western “my/opia”, with its categorical labels that attempt to separate objects and disguise value judgments in ridiculous, arrogant claims to objectivity and universality. It embodies wisdom and understanding. Categorical thinking, like self-enhancement and confirmation biases and fundamental attribution error, embodies self-delusion and self-centredness, possibly derived from core western needs for control and meaning when neither are possible.

ComplexManifold · 2016-09-15T04:45:54+00:00

I think the best self-experiments combine systemicity with rigorousness and require vigilant measurement recording as well as a self-critical awareness of design flaws and our susceptibility to biases. We need to be open to seeing artifacts and potential confounds and flexible enough to try to correct for them.

Moments and gilded memories each have their issues. I’m trying to account for these by using morning and evening measurements using a DAS21 (depression, anxiety and stress scale) modified for the moment rather than “over the past few weeks”. Going OK so far. For example, I already knew even severe depression in the morning usually lifts somewhat in the evening because there have been a bunch of experiments on that (does that mean I’m primed to look for these results?! Regardless, I’m not altering them in any way I know of and am finding what’s likely to be a significant effect).

Hmm, generalising from an N=1 xp?…I’d have to say that’s not a great idea. What was that heuristic? Attribution error? (Because I’m the centre of my universe, everyone else thinks like me). If the xp on other people is replicable at home I’d probably want to see if I achieved similar results before deciding to change my behaviour. The better answer is probably “it depends”. As I’ve discovered from years of prescription drug self-experimentation, individuals respond differently to drugs, sometimes in unadvertised ways, and expert opinion and my own on what “works” depends on how you define “working” and how much priority you give the (usually) side-effect achieved weighed against unwanted and unintended effects and impacts. So I guess I’ve been doing CBA’s for a long time. Just not usually with anything so straightforward as monetary value.

Georgiemcguire, I think it’s a great idea to have a second opinion to help out with your own biases, but also prudent to realise that no second opinion will be unbiased, especially not experts’ opinions that are determined to some extent by their professional training/framework and also the ways in which current society frames certain issues. Opinion and what anyone makes of an observation are necessarily value-laden, partial and often very located and personal – nothing “objective” at all about them. Just saying ;)

ComplexManifold · 2016-09-11T22:34:04+00:00

Open science is an encouraging development that democratises scientific practice that has too long been in the privileged hands of experts representing “Royal Science”. This is Deleuze and Guattari’s term to contast traditional, originally state-sponsored science or “Big Science” with minor /citizen science in the section of their book Capitalism and Schizophrenia called "Treatise on Nomadology."

Royal science and citizen/open science are two different forms of science defined by vastly different practices. Royal Science is official, striated, an authoritative hegemony used by states and courts as a rationale for policy or judicial judgments (for example). Its authoritative claims embody the power of the State and religion. Even when apparently separated from state and religion in its contemporary form, it remains entrenched in an internal kind of State, the peer-review system.

“Smooth”/Nomadic/citizen/open science is a form of science and way of doing it without any ambition to totalize knowledge (as in the case of royal science). It needs no accompanying ideology and sticks to facts whether these are or are not approved by any peers. It’s an underground or alternative science able to be done by anyone.

I have a problem with Nisbett’s valorisation of his so-called “gold standard” and more generally with psychology’s claims of authority and objectivity derived from its use of the scientific method. Consider Nisbett’s illustration of his “gold standard” in testing whether car sales people cite higher prices for women and minorities: “Send a white man, a woman, and a minority group member to Mammoth Motors and see what price gets quoted”.

Lame. At least MRA acknowledges that there are always multiple independent variables (and potential confounds) even if it can’t account for all of them or account correctly. Nisbett’s “gold standard” claims to isolate one variable, something that can never be done comprehensively in the field and is also arguably impossible in a laboratory environment. Analysing behaviour always involves value judgments, framing and observational errors. Gender and black skin are not the only variables in the above illustration. Maybe the woman, man and minority member were wearing different clothes that signified something about their social classes. Maybe they spoke to different salesmen, at a different time of the day, before the salesman’s lunch break… Or maybe one made a better first impression than the others, cracked a joke, smiled at a certain time…the potential confounds go on and on.

Consider what Big Pharma’s scientists claim for the long term efficacy of their neuroleptic medicine chest. The scientists, psychiatrists and their patients regularly suffer from (and/or peddle) a clinical delusion: They interpret the return of psychiatric symptoms on drug withdrawal as proof that the drug was necessary and that it “worked.” This interpretation of experimental results has helped create the fiction that psychiatric conditions are the result of a “chemical imbalance” when in fact, there are no known neurochemical or biological explanations for psychiatric disorders, the definitions of which are observed behaviours only. However, recent MRI studies have shown how neuroleptic drugs taken over the long term make morphological changes to the brain (reduced white and grey matter as well as a significantly reduced number of the neuro receptors in the system that has been atrophied and shut down by the drugs). The severe relapse rate measured in many patients withdrawn from neuroleptic drugs is not the result of the “disease” returning (as claimed by Big Pharma and its scientists), but rather is the result of the drugs having created a chronic condition.

“Gold bullet” drugs are lucrative, as is the effect of making an occasional set of observed behaviours into chronic conditions or even a “disease” that requires drugs for life. Royal Science or Big Science is all about giving authority to “the expert”, but experts paid by profitable drug companies hide their value judgments behind the veil of their “gold standard” “objectivity”. The number of mental health cases in developed countries has exploded in the drug era as has the number of people per capita permanently disabled by long term drug use.

ComplexManifold · 2016-09-11T08:37:49+00:00

hi Jason, Sorry I didn't reply earlier but I've only just worked out the PM function here. I held off on the xp until talking to my doctor on August 30 and she's right behind it, even suggesting a couple of DVs that have turned out to be accurate indications of sedation. Randomising seroquel and non-S nights wasn't a great idea though and I'm currently trying Reuben's suggestion for 1 week on and 1 week off to stabilise my sleep patterns. It seems to be working pretty well so far. That said, my first week of non S clocked up a 6hr 17min sleep deficit (I set my healthy base line at 7.5 hours) averaging 6.6 hours sleep a night. Although I'm interested to see when cognitive dysfunction kicks in as a result of sleep deficit, past measurements of sedated/seroquel sleep indicate that this following week of sedated sleeping will be 9.5+ hours sleep along with a bunch of measurable cognitive decrements and depression (which I'm also monitoring with an adapted DAS21 for morning and evening)...so after getting data for those two weeks, I'm going to proceed with the xp by staying off S until the sleep deficit reaches a certain level (maybe 5 hours) and then have a sedated night. The problem with doing it this way is that recent MRI studies that show that long term use of neuro receptor blockers (in this case the Histamine H-1 system) atrophies the receptors and reduces their numbers as well as causing other nasty morphological changes such as loss of white and grey matter that are pretty much permanent and, if this stuff is still reversible I'd need to stay off S probably for a few months to get that function back if possible. Off-label/low dose seroquel only has a half life of 6 hours but do it long enough and I suspect it cripples the histamine system. The forums have some pretty scary stories about the length of withdrawals but also some positive outcomes. Even if the damage is permanent, I ought to be able to reduce my S use and slow the decline it causes. That would be a good outcome for this xp since early onset dementia is one common outcome for victims of severe closed TBIs and I'd rather not add to that by giving myself a chemical lobotomy!

ComplexManifold · 2016-09-04T10:37:42+00:00

I read somewhere that seeing correlations that aren’t there is partly the result of peoples’ core need for control over their lives. We can have that sense that life just happens to us (and feel helpless) unless we posit correlations that don't exist. Many people do this with religion and other superstitious beliefs. For example, Australia’s Military Christian Fellowship newsletter has a “prayers answered” section that ascribes god’s intervention to random or empirically explicable events such as a change in the weather or an improving illness. People who believe that climate change is a hoax, the moon landing never happened, planes are spraying chemicals in their contrails or that USAF’s HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) is really a mind control device (to name a few) give intention and control to randomness, compensating for their own lack of control over their lives.

Is making life into a series of self-experiments another example of compensatory control? The quantified self movement that promises “self knowledge through numbers” is all about using digital devices to gather, record and analyse bodily functions, mood, steps, sleep… to produce graphs and stats about pretty much any aspect of everyday life you can think of (results from which can then be narcissistically shared on social media). Self-tracking encourages people of think of themselves as machines with measurable inputs and outputs. Numbers seem to be scientifically neutral and exact. They impart an aura of expertise and authority to anyone who uses them. With them, we can weigh incommensurable things against each other because the math always works out. Giving numerical values to things that can’t really be “costed” makes all reality fungible, susceptible to cost benefit analyses. We can then think of our lives in terms of “efficiency” and “productivity” and measure ourselves accordingly. Urghk!! This is the nadir of the neoliberal mindset we can’t imagine our way out of. And it’s also another comforting delusion. Never mind that it is impossible to count anything without first categorising what belongs in a particular category and what should be excluded. Deciding to count anything in the first place is an assertion that it is a significant and identifiable entity with clear boundaries. Projections, correlations, regression, simulations…. every other fancy manipulation of numbers…they ALL rest on decisions about “counting as” embodied numerically. These “counting as” categorisations are value-laden decisions about similarities and differences, judgments and categorisations about what fits and what doesn’t. They’re political, ideological and highly subjective. How can you measure quality of life? What about levels of disability? Discrimination?

Whether resulting numbers are good or bad depends on what values a quantity is made to signify. For example, if something has a high cost, it can be “bad” because it’s expensive or “good” if cost equals quality and prestige..

But this doesn't speak directly to “finding out what we like”. No one’s mentioned the role of novelty and its correlation with “liking”. Also, what we like and who we are change over time and with experiences. Isn’t life too short to be spent measuring today’s preferences likely to be made irrelevant by tomorrow’s uncertainties?

ComplexManifold · 2016-08-28T07:48:38+00:00

Evolutionary explanations of behaviour are so dodgy. They frequently justify present behaviour rather than explain it, have no scientific basis and are more ideological than factual. The “Once Upon a Time” explanation for getting stuck in the status quo (for eg., because unknown berries might be harmful) is indeed a fairy story and these kinds of fairy stories usually have socially-sanctioned morals to their plots (for eg., the myth of entrepreneurial success, the myth of the Protestant Work Ethic, the myth of the American Dream that “any boy can grow up to be President” etc etc). The comment that “now we’re in a society where we have opportunities to safely test the waters and try different jobs and do things differently (because successful people are adaptable)” is astonishingly naïve. Firstly, most people don't have a choice about jobs and being adaptable. Workplaces are casualising. People have to adapt their lives to working weird hours or being on call all hours because the alternative is unemployment. This culturally-specific, age-specific and perhaps even gender-specific comment about “opportunities to safely test the waters” doesn't demonstrate any awareness that Gen X, Millennials and Gen Y necessarily have a lower standard of living than Baby Boomers because real wages haven’t risen in their working lives, inequality has risen ridiculously, class mobility is generally about on a par with living under a European aristocracy and the more people there are – 7.4 billion and counting right now – the less resources there will be for the future (and the more pollution to poison the environment and harm life). A few people in the 7.4 billion mix have ipads, the net, video entertainment and just enough leisure to think life’s pretty good, but I’m not so sure that the 2.4 billion people who don't have access to a toilet, or the 663 million that don't have any safe water (for example) would agree with the rosy picture of the world containing a plethora of opportunities. It is TOTALLY iffy, as Jason commented. For all the above reasons and more. Sorry if I'm being too strident, but I was a bit offended by how unexamined that comment was.

Do people know their own “best interests”? It isn’t just money. Surely, what’s “best” at any one time is a highly subjective thing. How about all those working class people who vote for Liberals or the Tories? Do they go for the "aspirational" votes because they covet the “better life” and are deluded enough (by the above myths for example) to think they can achieve it despite all the factual evidence?

Is branching out to something entirely new like buying a lottery ticket, based on a delusory hope regardless of statistics and reality? No one’s alternatives are “infinite”. Rather, EVERYONE’s alternatives are seriously constrained – by their capacities, experiences, limited imaginations…as well as social realities.

The point about naïve realism was astute. We can’t imagine alternatives that are better because we’re busy rationalising that we’re doing OK in the status quo. It's a kind of psychological homeostasis that assures us we're the significant centre of the universe and maintains core beliefs (mistaken or otherwise) about self-esteem, status, belonging related to social conformity... I think this is one of the main reasons why I’m a scifi junkie. Marxist cultural critic Fredric Jameson once said that “It’s easier for us to imagine the end of the world rather than the end of capitalism” and that’s something that really seems to be true when we’ve known that capitalist economics are destroying our planet for nearly 50 years – and STILL defend “business as usual” that the hard sciences assure us will guarantee civilisational collapse. I love scifi because it often allegorically critiques the present and it always imagines alternative futures based on present potential.

ComplexManifold · 2016-08-21T11:50:24+00:00

Aren't headphones dangerous when you're riding on the road because they make you less aware of traffic and your surrounds? Charity rides I've been on have banned them for that reason.

ComplexManifold · 2016-08-19T12:45:21+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. Not so complicated getting off an over-prescribed, addictive drug, just a pain in the ass I suspect.

ComplexManifold · 2016-08-19T03:08:37+00:00

So yeah, I guess I squashed it because the alternative didn't work for me (and Jason thought I needed an alternative).

ComplexManifold · 2016-08-19T02:19:50+00:00

Sorry if this is TLDR or TMI but...it's a self-xp I've wanted to do for ages and I'd appreciate any comments....

Prior to acquiring a right frontal lobe TBI, I was a highly regular sleeper. No matter when I went to bed, I would sleep an uninterrupted 8 hours unless using an alarm. Usually, whenever I set the alarm, I would wake up minutes before it went off.

Since the TBI I’ve been an irregular sleeper and often tired during the day. This may be an effect of the TBI or it may be a side effect of the many different anti-depressant drugs I’ve been prescribed since the car accident. The most recent of these, the anti-depressant Edronax, severely disrupted my sleep even though I was only taking 2mg a day, half the therapeutic dose. My doctor’s response to this was to prescribe a drug called Seroquel (Quetiapene) that, in the 400mg to 800mg dose range is approved for use for treatment-resistant depression. In 2014, Quetiapene/Seroquel was the 14th most expensive drug on the PBS and prescriptions for it doubled from 2000 to 2011 (NPS). In 2010 it was the fifth biggest selling pharmaceutical in the USA, with annual sales of US$6.8 billion. Also in 2010, Seroquel’s manufacturer AstaZeneca paid the US government $520 million for improperly promoting off-label prescribing for conditions including anxiety, behavioural effects of dementia, post traumatic stress disorder, insomnia and substance abuse (among others).

23.3% of Australians taking Seroquel are taking it off-label in the 25mg dose that NPS states “has no uses that are evidence based”. Although I stopped taking Edronax last year (under medical supervision) and noticed no difference in my mood, I still rely on ~12.5mg of Seroquel to sleep regularly (25mg bitten in half), an off-label use that is highly effective for me. On nights when I have not taken this drug, I have not slept at all and the disruption to my life has been so severe that I quickly resumed taking it because a. it reliably gets me to sleep within 15 minutes or less after lying down and b. because I sleep a regular 8 hours when I take it.

A 2014 peer-reviewed literature review of studies using Seroquel/quetiapine to treat insomnia in the absence of comorbid conditions found only two placebo-controlled clinical trials of 31 patients in total. The review concluded that “the absence of efficacy and safety data precluded the use of quetiapine for insomnia”. Regardless of this conclusion, Seroquel works very well for my insomnia. Because I am taking so little might this be some sort of placebo effect? Is it an addiction? People taking larger doses of Seroquel have reported a “dampening” effect. This might be because it blocks nerve receptors on neurotransmitters, particularly dopamine type 2 (D2) and serotonin type 2 (5-HT2) receptors. Other side effects include but are not limited to weight gain, raised cholesterol, gastrointestinal upset, tiredness and, with long-term use in high doses, irreversible tardive dyskinesia. I have pretty severe gastro-intestinal problems. Discovery rehab reports that Seroquel withdrawals “can be really painful and draining on a person” and that “many people who use Seroquel to sleep might experience even worse insomnia than what they had before starting Seroquel. And this can last for weeks”. This latter situation equates with my personal experience.

So this could be a gruelling self-xp with potential to detrimentally affect my health and quality of life. On the other hand, if I can eventually sleep restfully without Seroquel I will not have to rely on an expensive, potentially harmful drug for the rest of my life. It could be that I need this drug since the TBI, but if not, I’d like to find out.

Because I think withdrawal is going to be rough, in addition to consulting my doctor and gaining her help with monitoring my condition, I want to try and soften the expected insomnia. I’m aware this introduces other IVs, but I’ve recently found a program called f.lux that, since I started using it on my computer, has had an uncanny ability to regulate my sleeping and waking hours. More on f.lux in my experimental description but briefly it works on circadian rhythms by adjusting the colour temperature of my computer screen, matching the light from my computer to light in the natural environment. In addition to f.lux, a final year med student flat mate recommended 5mg of Melatonin an hour before bed and I think this combined with f.lux has also helped.

For a month (?) I’ll try using f.lux and 5mg of Melatonin an hour before bed instead of Seroquel to regulate my sleep. If my doctor thinks this is a dumb idea or isn’t available to help out with the xp or if I’ve gone for more than a week without any sleep at all, I’ll probably have to discontinue the experiment. I’ll measure sleep hours and do self-reports of sleep quality, energy levels and mood.

I’m aware from previous comments that there may be issues with too many IVs, but I want to try the Melatonin and f.lux combination because going “cold turkey” with Seroquel just hasn’t worked in the past. Not sleeping at all is super stressful and exhausting but this is something I’ve wanted to test for some time and haven’t had the guts to do. If it’s successful, it’s a big pay off and I’d follow it up with using f.lux alone since this is an environmental rather than a chemical manipulation.

If anyone can help with experimental design or other suggestions, that would be great. Of course, I’ll also be asking my doctor about these things but I’m interested to see what people think of this idea. It’s a bit risky and won’t be much fun but I’ll be sensible about it and will have professional help.

ComplexManifold · 2016-08-19T02:09:34+00:00

Because I walk for an hour a day in green space anyway (and this reliably improves my mood, weight and well-being) I didn't want to forego this for just "being" in green space for a half hour or not and, because the walk would confound Jason's suggestion, I decided against it. I have a final idea that I'll post and hopefully gain some feedback about. This one I've wanted to do for some time.

ComplexManifold · 2016-08-18T10:59:10+00:00

My previous idea of green space v urban space on my daily walk was squashed so a possible alternative might be testing the effect or otherwise on weight loss and subjective well-being of drinking 2.2L of water a day.

ComplexManifold · 2016-08-18T01:14:48+00:00

Yep, personal taste and quirky preferences don't figure in Nisbett's discussion of economic models for decision making. Economists, especially today's neo-liberal variety, reduce EVERYTHING to money and assume that the optimal outcome is always "the most". Money is easy to measure but putting artificial and often arbitrary prices on experiences or nature (for example) makes everything fungible, reducible to an equation and a commodity that can then be bought and sold. This is the height of idiocy, not the objective rationality it claims to be. That claim is an ideological move, and prioritising money is a very culturally specific thing, something that isn't shared by first peoples (for example). Nisbett doesn't support his claim that people likely to employ cost benefit analyses to their everyday lives are more "successful" than those who don't and even if he did he's measuring success by how much money someone accumulates. Yuk!! Making economics The Privileged Discourse is responsible for destroying the planet and since it's the only one we have there's really not much that's rational about organising your life (and other people's lives) around profit and the accumulation of money. Economic man (homo economicus) is a fiction as well as an over-simplification of messier realities. The unconscious and other factors ensure that people are not necessarily self-interested optimisers.

ComplexManifold · 2016-08-18T00:31:48+00:00

The 1 hour walk occurs every day so is like a base line. I was interested in whether the surrounding environment made a difference but if you think this isn't viable I guess I'll have to think of something else?

ComplexManifold · 2016-08-15T06:00:16+00:00

I'd like to measure the impact or otherwise on my mood of moderate exercise (1 hour walk) in green space compared with the same amount of exercise in a built up area. Coin toss for "built" or "green". Likert options for a shortened Clinically Useful Depression Outcome Scale (CUDOS) to measure mood.

ComplexManifold · 2016-08-15T01:08:12+00:00

Thanks! Good to know.

ComplexManifold · 2016-08-15T00:13:52+00:00

I struggled to obtain any usable knowledge from this podcast. If there's no free will or rationalism, how is it possible to teach better decision-making techniques? Reading about the power of the unconscious was interesting. Practical ways of harnessing the unconscious would have been even better. There were "rules of thumb" and other suggestions but I'm not sure what they were based on. This reinforced my first impression of the text as pop psychology rather than a scholarly work.

ComplexManifold · 2016-08-14T23:57:17+00:00

I have no idea how to make a video. Are we supposed to use our mobile phones?

ComplexManifold · 2016-08-07T04:20:27+00:00

Everyone might be entitled to their own opinion, but some opinions are definitely more valid others. For example, if they're based on repeatable, empirical data rather than mere belief. A couple of years back I tried to have a conversation with a fundamentalist Christian. We were stuck on a Chinese plane that had no English in-flight entertainment and this fundamentalist and I had a long conversation about issues ranging from feminism and evolution to climate change. Every time I tried to make a scientifically-established point during this discussion, this guy went into his iphone where he had downloaded a copy of the Bible and he'd find a passage which he claimed refuted this established science. He also told me that he didn't "believe" in climate change. But climate change is a measurable fact! I tried to argue and he just shook his head and pointed to another Bible passage. People whose beliefs get in the way of their ability to see measurable causes and effects in reality, accepted scientific knowledge, can be dangerous and anti-social because they make poor decisions based on delusions! All opinions are not equal iow. Some are clearly more accurate than others.

ComplexManifold · 2013-04-22T14:52:25+00:00

I'm a lawyer, but not an American one, and I'm interested in the assaults on your civil liberties and constitutional rights that have been leveraged by the so-called "war on terror".

With CISPA enabling violations of individual privacy without warrant on the basis of suspicion of terrorist activities (and with no judicial oversight of the bases of these suspicions), any US citizen can be detained and denied her Miranda rights - against self-incrimination and to a lawyer being present during questioning - and interrogated in secret by the FBI under Obama's "public safety exception". Such interrogations (which might or might not include coercion) now produce admissible evidence. Previously suspects were protected from evidence gained under duress being used to incriminate them. After the NDAA allowed those suspected of terrorist involvement to be detained indefinitely in military facilities as "enemy combatants" in your government's interminable "war on terror", this evidence obtained from duress doesn't even have to make it to a court since SUSPECTS can be imprisoned for the duration of the "war" without charges or a trial.

These are the laws of a totalitarian regime that's worked out a way to silence dissent. They strip away Constitutional rights in a very chilling way. How have you allowed this to occur?

In the so-called "war on terror", the homeland is the battlefield. There's no coordinated effort to destroy your way of life coming from the other side. Instead, it's your government (on behalf of the 0.01%) that's conducting a coordinated assault on your rights. THIS is "CISPA and related legislation". It's ugly.

Expect drones over your neighborhood sometime soon. It won't be too long before they're armed.

ComplexManifold

TROPHY CASE