You are going on some over-sophisticated tangent that I don't even care to address.Dimebag wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2019 1:06 amBecause if some ideological agreed upon opinion makes it taboo for another person to choose to fix their brain when another would say “no, you should live with that condition because that is who you are”, then we need to err on the side of freedom, which means to allow a person to return their condition to that which would improve their living conditions, should they choose so. To do so, you need to place a certain hierarchy of operation on the brain. At one end, there is fully functional. At the other end is brain dead or vegetative. We value the highest degree of freedom, and therefore any functional divergence from that would be impeding that value. If a person is content with that level of freedom then it is their choice to remain that way. We don’t judge them, but we acknowledge that there is some impediment, if there were not there would be no grounds to render assistance to people with disabilities. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either you acknowledge that there is some preferred state and divergences from those states are impediments to a person’s condition and so they might require assistance, or you allow that there is no state which is more functional than any other, in which case no one can be rendered ANY assistance. This is the problem with this position which attempts to remove all measures of value or hierarchies of value. Either you acknowledge that there is a problem based no some sub-optimal measure or we are all the same no matter what our circumstances. Look how inconsistent that view is, and go with the more consistent view, that WE place certain conditions as being better or worse for the individual, and this affects how we should treat them. It doesn’t say anything of their intrinsic value as beings, but it does say something about what we should expect from them, I.e. complete autonomy and responsibility, complete accountability.
These are your exact words: "if a human has changes to their brain that affect its function, we can’t deny that that is sub optimal for them"
You are equating "change in function" with "disfunction" and you have trapped yourself in a false dichotomy. Your "norm" is some idealised conception of a Perfect Human Brain and every deviation from that norm is pathological to you. I am trying to point out to you that there are naturally occurring changes to the brain which affect its function which can be super-optimal relative to your perceived "norm".
That is literally how evolution does it - iterative improvement.
One trivial example - all the changes in functionality which take place until the age of 25 are not "sub optimal". It's the expected course of human brain development.
Given the fact that you see all changes that affect the brain's function as "sub optimal" (you see no positive aspects to change) then your preference is indeed a status-quo bias.
When did we get from neurological disorders to behavioural ones?Dimebag wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2019 1:06 am Of course no one is without any neurological problems, it is a Consequence of living to some extent, however, some are more debilitating than others.
The way this is measured is based on what is expected from people, such as self control, not acting out violently or against the law, not violating other people’s privacy/freedom, etc.
This is really hilarious. You are aware that psychology is not a science, right? It wants to be - it has been trying to be one for a long time.Dimebag wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2019 1:06 am Look at the DSM (diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders), it is extremely culturally informed, this is science mixing with culture to create a list of problematic neural disorders, or sub optimal conditions. Science and culture are not so clear cut as we would like to believe. Both are informing each other.
It has failed. Every diagnosis in the DSM is symptomatic based on behavioural observations and has nothing to do with neuroscience.
80%+ of psychology studies are failing to replicate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicati ... psychology
Scientism is the promotion of science as the best or only objective means by which society should determine normative values.
It's the belief that we can use science for arriving at an "ought".
So it seems that your definition of "mental disorder" is closer to "social norm non-conformism". At least you seem to agree with Focault - mental disorders are used as a form of social control.Dimebag wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2019 1:06 am I don’t believe in that, however, I also don’t agree with that post modernist interpretation of societal norms and that there is no reason for placing value on differing levels of neural functionality. Placing value allows us to help people based on our culturally determined conditions on how a person should act. It allows society to function.
Even if psychology wasn't a pseudo-science - it's still useless in practice. Diagnosing somebody with condition X, doesn't tell that somebody how to stop having said condition. Giving it a name doesn't solve the underlying issue.
Are you aware of the fact that all forms of assistance for people with debilitating disorders is not in the form of any science/medicine? They are in the form of social support structures.
We use science to detect people with special needs. We don't use science to fix their problems because we don't really know how to "fix" such complex systems.
How does ANY of this relate to AI research?
