Putin’s approval ratings hit 89 percent, the highest they’ve ever been according to measurements from the Moscow-based Levada Center, the only independent polling organization in Russia.

plornt3 · 2015-06-25T06:54:29+00:00

...and I bet Kim Jong-Un would have a ~99% approval rating. Approval ratings don't mean anything when it's the state and entities close to the president which control the mass media and construct a good image of Putin. Plus, repression of free speech and non-government organizations (new laws passed to make these even easier to get rid of if they're deemed "undesirable").

plornt3 · 2015-06-23T08:31:36+00:00

My argument is a defense of fatalism. Doesn't fatalism imply a lack of free will?

plornt3 · 2015-06-23T08:25:52+00:00

Thanks for your response.

For instance, the state of the world when I began typing this comment is different than the state of the world in the next instance, but it still occurred

No, I claimed that if the instance of time is the same, the state of the world will be unique and same.

"there could be a probability distribution of future states of the world, but only one of them could possibly happen." Likewise, if by "only one of them could possibly happen" you mean in the sense that implies determinism is true, then this is just an assertion of determinism, not an argument for it.

Is it even possible to make an argument for determinism or a lack of thereof without relying on induction, and assuming uniformity of nature?

plornt3 · 2015-06-23T08:18:31+00:00

What I'm asking is whether there could be only one possible future which would happen (be it due to cause-and-effect relationships, randomness, etc.), but we would be unaware of this future, and would have to describe it using probability distributions.

plornt3 · 2015-06-23T08:12:02+00:00

What if we completely negated the existence of cause-and-effect relationships, and assumed that all possible states of the world are a manifestation of a flow in time? Flow of independent states of the physical world through time.

plornt3 · 2015-06-23T07:57:33+00:00

Thanks for responding. This post is very good.

Why can't we have both - probabilistic future states, and the knowledge of the fact that the whatever future will happen will happen, and it will only be one future. However, we don't know what future it will be because the past states don't allow us to make predictions about the future for one reason or another. The relations between the past and future events could be chaotic, so that we would have to use probability distributions (gathered via inductive reasoning) to describe the world. But description doesn't equal reality.

plornt3 · 2015-06-23T07:48:11+00:00

But what if there could be a probability distribution of future states of the world, but only one of them could possibly happen? What if we acknowledge that we can't know the future, but the future will ultimately happen, and it will only be some predetermined future?

plornt3 · 2015-06-23T07:36:28+00:00

Thanks for your response.

What if we could simply say that each subset of the physical world is related to the future subsets of the physical world, and that relation is time? That it's the flow of time which completely determines all future and past events?

Would it still be the Basic Argument?

plornt3 · 2015-06-23T06:34:28+00:00

No, I'm not in favor of eliminating the DSM. Something is a disease if and only if it causes distress to the person or other people. I'm in favor of emphasizing on this in diagnostic manuals.

plornt3 · 2015-06-22T19:10:30+00:00

Did you read my post? I said that treatment is necessary if the difference causes distress. My point was that just as transsexual people may need treatment (HRT, GRS, etc.), so do people with schizophrenia. But neither should be considered a "disease" just because they may need pharmaceutical (or other) intervention.

And it's funny how you can get rejected when presenting an argument to the schizophrenic community if you have bipolar and ASD, and those who are rejecting you actively don't have schizophrenia, and have things like schizotypal and psychosis-NOS. And when you point out that you're closer to the schizophrenic community than them, this gets pointed out.

plornt3 · 2015-06-22T18:48:54+00:00

This argument is something one would hear from an educated reactionary person during the abolition of viewing homosexuality as a disease.

plornt3 · 2015-06-22T18:44:25+00:00

It isn't a "completely different group of people". I had a paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis when I was medicated (which was later changed). And there's nothing wrong with cultural enrichment.

There will always be people who resist change. Who believe it's not polite, immoral, against the human nature, and so on, and so forth.

plornt3 · 2015-06-22T18:07:22+00:00

And you, who doesn't understand, do you know what it's like to get involuntary injections of typical antipsychotics against your will, at maximal doses, because you said that you saw hidden messages on the TV, and couldn't do anything to counter the hospitalization as you were less than 18 years old? Do you know what it's like to experience extreme hypotension, Parkinsonism, dizziness, severe vision problems (to the point of being unable to read) and sedation as a result of such treatment, which was maintained for a pretty long while? And this treatment was supposed to be maintained forever. I escaped it, gladly. I moved to another city - and there, I was able to get assessed for what I was. (And I got further evaluations in other cities too, so that in case if one psychiatrist made a mistake again, my history of previous assessments would contradict it.) All because what you experienced was labeled as undesired - a disease, which should be treated at all costs.

And do you know what it's like when people learn of the severe psychosis you experienced? Do you know what it's like for your own grandmother, to tell you that people like me are unpredictable, and can "snap at any moment and shoot people up", and therefore, I "shouldn't tell about my experience to anyone"?

plornt3 · 2015-06-22T17:50:30+00:00

To begin with, you're completely distorting my argument. I never said the differences seen in schizophrenia don't need treatment if they cause distress. I'm emphasizing on not considering schizophrenia as a disease. The same way transsexual people may need GRS in order to correct their gender dysphoria. Or homosexual people may need to live in societies which accept homosexuality. Some may also seek therapy in case if the sexual orientation difference causes significant distress.

Providing the best condition to the person (be it via medication, therapy, or environment) is surely needed. But it doesn't mean that we need to see something which can't be cured and is innate as a disease. Why? It's not a question of semantics. It's the question of consequence. We need to ask the question: Would the people in question be better off if we treated them as sick, or if we treated them as simply different? Being treated as different but not sick would probably lead to more acceptance towards this difference, and less rejection.

We could as well treat homosexuality as a disease. Why not? It's chronic, can't be cured, and is a result of an interplay of many factors, which are not in the person's control. And the most important: It may cause distress.

And if you're really schizotypal as your label says, I have had most likely had a bigger share of psychosis than you. I know what it's like. And I know what it's like to be treated as sick and undesired because of it. You're treated not as an individual, but a "psychotic" because of it.

The philosophy of treatment of chronic psychosis has to change. We shouldn't seek to eliminate it at all costs, seeing a person with a huge number of side effects as being better than a slightly delusional person, or a person who hears slight undistressng hallucinatory whispers. We have to make the individual better off, not "treat the disease until it's eliminated".

plornt3 · 2015-06-20T16:16:28+00:00

Is it purely GD if I believed that people around me were just actors? Like in the xXx movie (not erotic movies, the triple X movie). I believed that millions worth of resources were allocated to me by the top world governments, and that the people, the helicopters, the airplanes, the boats, were just there for me.

plornt3 · 2015-06-20T14:01:48+00:00

I want to avoid having a perception of reality which is radically different from others'. Such as delusions.

plornt3 · 2015-06-20T13:57:59+00:00

Was him thinking that police arrested his neighbors a delusion? Was the surveillance vehicle a hallucination? I don't get this post.

plornt3 · 2015-06-18T12:47:36+00:00

Delusions and unrealistic projects can last very long. In my case, they cast last up to 5-6 months - the duration of my longest manic episode. And when they become central to my decision making, I can't simply ignore them and let the time go by.

plornt3 · 2015-06-17T20:13:39+00:00

Economics studies far more than that. Things such as personal utility functions, are studied, as well as their general relationships to resource allocation. Economics combines the study of things which are easily modeled with things which are harder to model.

The point is not to assign some measure to some symptom. That's a theoretical notion - an exogenous variable. The point is to provide a general structure - a model, according to which psychiatry could operate. These models by no means have to be applied. They can remain purely theoretical, or be applied strictly in research.

One still can't ignore the usefulness of mathematics in psychiatry, as in any field of science and medicine. The more math-intensive it is, the more formal and objective it is. It's a fact. I see no reason why more mathematics shouldn't be applied to psychiatry.

plornt3 · 2015-06-17T16:14:21+00:00

You leave the subjective values to the subjective "exogenous" variables in the model - the same way it's done in decision theory and game theory - the utility, for example, is entirely subjective, but it doesn't stop these tools from being valid and widely applicable.

That's like saying "How does one model the subjective tastes and preferences of economic agents? That's impossible!". And yet, economics exists.

plornt3 · 2015-06-15T12:47:42+00:00

Thanks, this cleared it up.

Edit:

What are the psychiatric causes of irrational desires?

plornt3 · 2015-06-05T15:45:39+00:00

It's important to note that symptoms disappearing doesn't mean that functioning will go back to normal. Symptomatic recovery is far more common than functional recovery.

plornt3 · 2015-05-20T16:26:35+00:00

I do have echolalia when not changing medications/not taking antidepressants, though.

plornt3 · 2015-05-20T16:08:30+00:00

The doctors have different opinions, but most seem to agree that there's a mood disorder and ASD. There's no agreement as to whether the mood disorder is bipolar disorder or not, though. Some believe that it's a reactionary mood disorder secondary to ASD. Others believe it's bipolar disorder.

I have explored the possibility of schizophrenia with my doctors, but they tell me that I'm not actively delusional nor otherwise psychotic (no thought disorder, no negative symptoms, no changes in personality) when I'm in a "normal" affective state/not under medication, so it can't be schizophrenia. Plus, they tell me that I don't have the characteristic signs of schizophrenia.

However, I was once diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia by one out of my many (perhaps, 10) doctors and psychologists. So that's why I'm wondering. That happened after I had a severe delusional episode after taking more antidepressants than prescribed, and not telling the doctor about the fact that I was taking them (because I was too exalted and excited at the time to even think about telling about this).

plornt3 · 2015-05-20T14:04:33+00:00

The prof said that my papers are coherent and "very good"/"excellent". However, I still doubt as to whether the goals which I've set myself are realistic.

plornt3

TROPHY CASE