Perhaps psychiatry is a bad mix of science and ethics
Perhaps psychiatry is a bad mix of science and ethics
Some psychiatrists wish to revise the definition of depression. This controversy sheds light on psychiatry as a science.
As Gary Gutting, professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame shares puts it, in the NYT:
Psychiatric practice does seem to be based on implicit moral assumptions in addition to explicit empirical considerations, and efforts to treat mental illness can be society’s way of controlling what it views as immoral (or otherwise undesirable) behavior. Not long ago, homosexuals and women who rejected their stereotypical roles were judged “mentally ill,” and there’s no guarantee that even today psychiatry is free of similarly dubious judgments.
And:
Foucault is, then, right: psychiatric practice makes essential use of moral (and other evaluative) judgments. Why is this dangerous? Because, first of all, psychiatrists as such have no special knowledge about how people should live. They can, from their clinical experience, give us crucial information about the likely psychological consequences of living in various ways (for sexual pleasure, for one’s children, for a political cause). But they have no special insight into what sorts of consequences make for a good human life. It is, therefore, dangerous to make them privileged judges of what syndromes should be labeled “mental illnesses.”
Perhaps psychiatry is a bad mix of science and ethics
opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/0…
Some psychiatrists wish to revise the definition of depression. This controversy sheds light on psychiatry as a science.
As Gary Gutting, professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame shares puts it, in the NYT:
Psychiatric practice does seem to be based on implicit moral assumptions in addition to explicit empirical considerations, and efforts to treat mental illness can be society’s way of controlling what it views as immoral (or otherwise undesirable) behavior. Not long ago, homosexuals and women who rejected their stereotypical roles were judged “mentally ill,” and there’s no guarantee that even today psychiatry is free of similarly dubious judgments.
And:
Foucault is, then, right: psychiatric practice makes essential use of moral (and other evaluative) judgments. Why is this dangerous? Because, first of all, psychiatrists as such have no special knowledge about how people should live. They can, from their clinical experience, give us crucial information about the likely psychological consequences of living in various ways (for sexual pleasure, for one’s children, for a political cause). But they have no special insight into what sorts of consequences make for a good human life. It is, therefore, dangerous to make them privileged judges of what syndromes should be labeled “mental illnesses.”
Tonguz and colleagues are designing a road-efficiency system, based on emerging-vehicle-to-vehicle technology, called Virtual Traffic Lights. The idea is to shift traffic control from fixed street signals to the moving cars themselves. The result, says Tonguz, is an optimized traffic flow that should greatly reduce city congestion.
How Virtual Traffic Lights Could Cut Down on Congestion, let’s get rid of these.
Tonguz and colleagues are designing a road-efficiency system, based on emerging-vehicle-to-vehicle technology, called Virtual Traffic Lights. The idea is to shift traffic control from fixed street signals to the moving cars themselves. The result, says Tonguz, is an optimized traffic flow that should greatly reduce city congestion.
Story Rush, a kindergarten teacher from Greenwood, Alaska, fires an M1919 Browning .30 caliber machine gun on the first night of the Oklahoma Full Auto Shoot and Trade Show
Amazing photo for the 2013 Sony World Photography Awards.
[gallery]
Story Rush, a kindergarten teacher from Greenwood, Alaska, fires an M1919 Browning .30 caliber machine gun on the first night of the Oklahoma Full Auto Shoot and Trade Show
Amazing photo for the 2013 Sony World Photography Awards.
Where have all the scientific geniuses gone?
Where have all the scientific geniuses gone?
Do you sometimes think that we’ll never see a new Einstein or Newton? You might be right:
Today, according to Simonton, there just isn’t room to create new disciplines or overthrow the old ones. “It is difficult to imagine that scientists have overlooked some phenomenon worthy of its own discipline,” he writes. Furthermore, most scientific fields aren’t in the type of crisis that would enable paradigm shifts, according to Thomas Kuhn’s classic view of scientific revolutions. Simonton argues that instead of finding big new ideas, scientists currently work on the details in increasingly specialized and precise ways.
And to some extent, this argument is demonstrably correct. Science is becoming more and more specialized. The largest scientific fields are currently being split into smaller sub-disciplines: microbiology, astrophysics, neuroscience, and paleogeography, to name a few. Furthermore, researchers have more tools and the knowledge to hone in on increasingly precise issues and questions than they did a century—or even a decade—ago.
Where have all the scientific geniuses gone?
arstechnica.com/science/2… arstechnica/index (Ars Technica - All content)
Do you sometimes think that we’ll never see a new Einstein or Newton? You might be right:
Today, according to Simonton, there just isn’t room to create new disciplines or overthrow the old ones. “It is difficult to imagine that scientists have overlooked some phenomenon worthy of its own discipline,” he writes. Furthermore, most scientific fields aren’t in the type of crisis that would enable paradigm shifts, according to Thomas Kuhn’s classic view of scientific revolutions. Simonton argues that instead of finding big new ideas, scientists currently work on the details in increasingly specialized and precise ways.
And to some extent, this argument is demonstrably correct. Science is becoming more and more specialized. The largest scientific fields are currently being split into smaller sub-disciplines: microbiology, astrophysics, neuroscience, and paleogeography, to name a few. Furthermore, researchers have more tools and the knowledge to hone in on increasingly precise issues and questions than they did a century—or even a decade—ago.
When the US government kills its own citizens
A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or “an associated force” – even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.
The memo can be found here.
When the US government kills its own citizens
A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or “an associated force” – even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.
The memo can be found here.
Li Hongbo shows off his paper sculptures.
Li Hongbo shows off his paper sculptures.
Parikh is Facebook’s vice president of infrastructure engineering. He oversees the hardware and software that underpins the world’s most popular social network, and if that notification doesn’t appear within seconds, it’s his job to find out why. The trouble is that the Facebook infrastructure now spans four data centers in four separate parts of the world, tens of thousands of computer servers, and more software tools than you could list without taking a deep breath in the middle of it all. The cause of that missing notification is buried somewhere inside one of the largest operations on the net.
Meet the Data Brains Behind the Rise of Facebook, a profile of Jay Parikh who runs one of the most complex Internet infrastructure in the world.
Parikh is Facebook’s vice president of infrastructure engineering. He oversees the hardware and software that underpins the world’s most popular social network, and if that notification doesn’t appear within seconds, it’s his job to find out why. The trouble is that the Facebook infrastructure now spans four data centers in four separate parts of the world, tens of thousands of computer servers, and more software tools than you could list without taking a deep breath in the middle of it all. The cause of that missing notification is buried somewhere inside one of the largest operations on the net.
When I was younger, I promised myself never to reblog an image with big, bold, inspirational text laid on it. Today I break my promise because this is something that needs to be known about memory.
Read more about it.
[gallery]
When I was younger, I promised myself never to reblog an image with big, bold, inspirational text laid on it. Today I break my promise because this is something that needs to be known about memory.
Read more about it.
The history of Coca-Cola and why we took cocaine out of it
When cocaine and alcohol meet inside a person, they create a third unique drug called cocaethylene. Cocaethylene works like cocaine, but with more euphoria.
So in 1863, when Parisian chemist Angelo Mariani combined coca and wine and started selling it, a butterfly did flap its wings. His Vin Marian became extremely popular. Jules Verne, Alexander Dumas, and Arthur Conan Doyle were among literary figures said to have used it, and the chief rabbi of France said, “Praise be to Mariani’s wine!”
Pope Leo XIII reportedly carried a flask of it regularly and gave Mariani a medal.
Thereafter, some guy called John Stith Pemberton decided to make his own version of the Mariani wine and called it French Wine Coca. His Coca, however, became illegal, not because of the cocaine, but because of the alcohol. In Georgia a prohibition law was passed.
Pemberton took the wine out and replaced it with sugar syrup and in 1886, Coca-Cola was born. From 1886 to 1899, for thirteen years, Coca-Cola was very popular among “intellectual” white males. In 1899, Pemberton started selling Coca-Cola in glass bottles which made it accessible to a bigger market.
Remember, there was still cocaine inside it, just sugar syrup instead of wine. So why did they take cocaine away?
Middle-class whites worried that soft drinks were contributing to what they saw as exploding cocaine use among African-Americans. Southern newspapers reported that “negro cocaine fiends” were raping white women, the police powerless to stop them. By 1903, [then-manager of Coca-Cola Asa Griggs] Candler had bowed to white fears (and a wave of anti-narcotics legislation), removing the cocaine and adding more sugar and caffeine.
The history of Coca-Cola and why we took cocaine out of it
When cocaine and alcohol meet inside a person, they create a third unique drug called cocaethylene. Cocaethylene works like cocaine, but with more euphoria.
So in 1863, when Parisian chemist Angelo Mariani combined coca and wine and started selling it, a butterfly did flap its wings. His Vin Marian became extremely popular. Jules Verne, Alexander Dumas, and Arthur Conan Doyle were among literary figures said to have used it, and the chief rabbi of France said, “Praise be to Mariani’s wine!”
Pope Leo XIII reportedly carried a flask of it regularly and gave Mariani a medal.
Thereafter, some guy called John Stith Pemberton decided to make his own version of the Mariani wine and called it French Wine Coca. His Coca, however, became illegal, not because of the cocaine, but because of the alcohol. In Georgia a prohibition law was passed.
Pemberton took the wine out and replaced it with sugar syrup and in 1886, Coca-Cola was born. From 1886 to 1899, for thirteen years, Coca-Cola was very popular among “intellectual” white males. In 1899, Pemberton started selling Coca-Cola in glass bottles which made it accessible to a bigger market.
Remember, there was still cocaine inside it, just sugar syrup instead of wine. So why did they take cocaine away?
Middle-class whites worried that soft drinks were contributing to what they saw as exploding cocaine use among African-Americans. Southern newspapers reported that “negro cocaine fiends” were raping white women, the police powerless to stop them. By 1903, [then-manager of Coca-Cola Asa Griggs] Candler had bowed to white fears (and a wave of anti-narcotics legislation), removing the cocaine and adding more sugar and caffeine.