An alternate response to this point is that if someone comes off their medication, then says they’re going to kill their mother because she is poisoning their food, and the food poisoning claim seems definitely not true, then spending a few days assessing what is going on and treating them until it looks like they are not going to kill their mother anymore seems justifiable for reasons other than “we know exactly what biological circuit is involved with 100% confidence”
(source: this basically describes one of the two people I ever committed involuntarily)
I agree that there are a lot of difficult legal issues to be sorted out about who has the burden of proof and how many hoops people should have to jump through to make this happen, but none of them look at all like “you do not know the exact biological circuit involved with 100% confidence using a theory that has had literally zero exceptions ever”
An alternate response to this point is that if someone comes off their medication, then says they’re going to kill their mother because she is poisoning their food, and the food poisoning claim seems definitely not true, then spending a few days assessing what is going on and treating them until it looks like they are not going to kill their mother anymore seems justifiable for reasons other than “we know exactly what biological circuit is involved with 100% confidence”
(source: this basically describes one of the two people I ever committed involuntarily)
I agree that there are a lot of difficult legal issues to be sorted out about who has the burden of proof and how many hoops people should have to jump through to make this happen, but none of them look at all like “you do not know the exact biological circuit involved with 100% confidence using a theory that has had literally zero exceptions ever”