“But the most convincing explanation I have read for why so many people are opposed to medical solutions for social conditions is a signaling explanation by Robin Hans...wait! no!...by Katja Grace.”
Yeah! The hell with that Robin Hanson guy! He’s nothing but a signaller trying to signal that he’s better than signalling by talking about signals!
I am so TOTALLY not like that.
;)
Great article, by the way; I just can’t resist metahumour though.
I recently wrote a blog article arguing that 95% of psychology and psychiatry is snake-oil and pseudoscience; primarily I was directing my ire at the incoherency of much of it, but I had the implicit premise of dismissing the types of ‘conditions’ you wrote about as pathologizing the mundane.
While on the one hand, I object to much of classifying these conditions as such—if the government ever manages to mindprobe me I know they’ll classify me as an alcoholic paranoid with schizoid tendencies (something that I see nothing wrong with), you present a powerful argument of “Hey, if it works, what’s wrong with that?” (The day they invent a workout pill, is the day I stop going for bloody stupid jogs.)
I’d wager that most people here are contrarian thinkers to some degree—that they’re distrustful of over-diagnosis, over-medication, etc—but I’d also guess that your stance is something most of us do agree with, and it’s important to segregate the “Psychology isn’t founded upon empirical data” argument from the “Brain Pills violate the nobility of the human condition” argument.
I plan to amend my blog post with your excellent distillation.
“But the most convincing explanation I have read for why so many people are opposed to medical solutions for social conditions is a signaling explanation by Robin Hans...wait! no!...by Katja Grace.”
Yeah! The hell with that Robin Hanson guy! He’s nothing but a signaller trying to signal that he’s better than signalling by talking about signals!
I am so TOTALLY not like that.
;)
Great article, by the way; I just can’t resist metahumour though.
I recently wrote a blog article arguing that 95% of psychology and psychiatry is snake-oil and pseudoscience; primarily I was directing my ire at the incoherency of much of it, but I had the implicit premise of dismissing the types of ‘conditions’ you wrote about as pathologizing the mundane.
While on the one hand, I object to much of classifying these conditions as such—if the government ever manages to mindprobe me I know they’ll classify me as an alcoholic paranoid with schizoid tendencies (something that I see nothing wrong with), you present a powerful argument of “Hey, if it works, what’s wrong with that?” (The day they invent a workout pill, is the day I stop going for bloody stupid jogs.)
I’d wager that most people here are contrarian thinkers to some degree—that they’re distrustful of over-diagnosis, over-medication, etc—but I’d also guess that your stance is something most of us do agree with, and it’s important to segregate the “Psychology isn’t founded upon empirical data” argument from the “Brain Pills violate the nobility of the human condition” argument.
I plan to amend my blog post with your excellent distillation.