[FRIAM] Statistical poser (aka fact checking is hard)

Wed Jan 2 15:01:59 EST 2019

Depression, bipolar disorder, and OCD are examples of the kind of mental illnesses I had in mind.  They make life hard for those that have it.  More downsides than upsides.   As for sociopathy, for most people, just being too damned irritating will eventually create a cost for them too.   Others become the president, at least for a while.

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Steven A Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Date: Wednesday, January 2, 2019 at 12:47 PM
To: "friam at redfish.com" <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Statistical poser (aka fact checking is hard)

It is to this point that I prefer to think in terms of "neurodiverse" rather than "mentally ill".   Your definitions here respond more to my idea of "sociopathy".    I don't think of sociopaths as being mentally ill, just not good members of the society they find themselves in.   Most *L*ibertarians I know seem to be on the verge of sociopathy as a matter of honor.

There has been a move afoot to recognize the selection value of neurodiversity in a group and to de-stigmatize or de-pathologize what was previously considered dis-ease or dys-function.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/books/review/neurotribes-by-steve-silberman.html
On 1/2/19 12:33 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Nick writes:

“A mentally ill individual is one whose behavior is so annoying that other individuals are willing to cooperate to put him away?”

Sure, in that case the “mentally ill individual” may have failed to connect their actions with the consequences.   Or maybe they wanted lodging in a psychiatric facility on the family dime -- probably a bad call if your name was Rosemary Kennedy.

Marcus

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com><mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net><mailto:nickthompson at earthlink.net>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com><mailto:friam at redfish.com>
Date: Wednesday, January 2, 2019 at 12:15 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <friam at redfish.com><mailto:friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Statistical poser (aka fact checking is hard)

Marcus,

Forgive me if I am entering this party late, but what exactly means “mental illness”

I would expect that mental illness is massively underdiagnosed in this country, and especially in the blue collar mid-west where it is considered a taboo topic and people have not had adequate health insurance to use to diagnose it.

So, is a young person who hears voices, but who integrates those voices into a well-organized and effective life mentally ill?  Is the homeless person who prefers to sleep on a subway grate than go into a shelter mentally ill? I had a colleague once who famously checked himself into a mental hospital making a vague claim to hearing voices and then, once on the ward, behaved absolutely as he would have otherwise.  His only aberrant behavior was that he constantly took notes.  Explaining that he was doing a study of the ward.  When, after a few weeks, he got bored of it and tried to check himself out, he could not get out!  He had to use his “fail-safe” (the chairman of his department, if I remember) to extract himself.  Was he mentally ill?

Is trump mentally Ill?  WAS he mentally ill before he became president?  Or was he promoted to his level of mental illness. (CF, Peter Principle.)<https://www.amazon.co.uk/Peter-Principle-Things-Always-Wrong/dp/0285631764>  (In a political hierarchy a politician will rise to his level of insanity.) (cf, All the Kings Men<https://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field-keywords=All%20the%20kings%20men&index=blended&link_code=qs&sourceid=Mozilla-search&tag=mozilla-20>, a fabulous novel, by the way).  Not clear to me how a libertarian of any stripe can allow the concept of mental illness into a conversation.  A mentally ill individual is one whose behavior is so annoying that other individuals are willing to cooperate to put him away?

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2019 11:44 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com><mailto:friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Statistical poser (aka fact checking is hard)

Robert writes:

“Estimates vary by source, but fraction of opioid deaths that are suicide is around 20-30%”

What I’d really like to know is how the fraction of opioid deaths occur with individuals that have no historical sign of mental illness at all, and would be described by their friends and colleagues as effective and engaged prior to their initial prescription.   I would expect that mental illness is massively underdiagnosed in this country, and especially in the blue collar mid-west where it is considered a taboo topic and people have not had adequate health insurance to use to diagnose it.    I strongly suspect a structural cause of all this is the idea that free will exists, combined with the inevitable evolution of the economy toward more automation.   Millions of people, maybe hundreds of millions of people, have what amounts to a mistaken view of the world.   Similar arguments apply to the ongoing outbursts of gun homicide (instead of suicide).

Marcus

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