This article you linked is a great example of metaphysics (or philosophy in general) done right. — Pfhorrest

But it's not a work of philosophy. It's key claim is that

There is abundant empirical evidence presented since Darwin’s time that shows he had the right view

If there were not abundant empirical evidence showing species to be arbitrary, then it would probably not be "a concept that gives rise to unnecessary confusion and unanswerable questions". It would be probably one which accurately and usefully described the world.

Humans use theories and humans are part of the world so the question of whether some concept is "a clear and useful way of thinking about the world", is still a question about "is this how the world is?". If it is a useful concept then the world is such that humans believing it act more efficiently (or whatever your measure of usefulness is). One still cannot simply deduce its usefulness from the armchair, not unless one has the monumental hubris to claim to speak on behalf of the entire human race without even asking them.

I think you're missing the point of protest. Elections are utterly trivial in political terms because they are just a snapshot of what the electorate think at that time. One would be quite reasonable, I think, to not even bother voting if one's politics were so left-field that your candidate had no chance.

Protests are designed to change public opinion by giving the illusion of a large force being of some opinion or other. Politicians, if they want to stay ahead, can't afford to be reactive to elections, it's too late by then. They must instead predict elections. Given that the above works (protests>public opinion>election>new policy), the politicians can quite confidently cut out the middle man. If they acquiesce to the demands of what seems likely to be an influential protest, they get to stay ahead of the curve and are already in the place they need to be come election day.

It's an upshot of our democratic system that protests work, not an affront to it.

It's an interesting line of investigation for sure, particularly the actions AI would have to demonstrate before we're prepared to label them 'rational'. But that's a very different topic and I don't want to derail the thread talking about it.

What is also interesting about this, and more related to the thread, is the way in which the criteria for the term 'rational' are being created post hoc to reflect the way we'd like things to be. We've all been using the word 'rational' (or it's equivalent) for 2000 years. What on earth is a discussion about what it means doing 2000 years later!

What would it take to convince you that there are fundamental problems? — unenlightened

Evidence that there are fundamental problems. It's not that hard.

What I don't do is simply assume there are fundamental problems because there used to be. If people say they have dealt with them, if I've no reason to disbelieve them, and if I've no evidence they haven't indeed been dealt with, I tend to believe them. It's called trust. I think you wrote an OP all about how essential it was to functioning society.

Let me ask you this in turn. What is the alternative you propose? If we cannot trust psychologists to carry out their duties what do you propose we do?

Should we stop doing anything for the schizophrenic? Should we abandon the investigation into the changes schools can make to accommodate autistic children. Shall we just not bother finding anything out about how people think at all?

If so, should we do the same to every other institution with a history of reflecting cultural norms? Dismantle the art establishment, stop writing books, disband the judiciary and the bar, raise all universities to the ground, stop all investigation in physics, engineering and medicine? What's the plan?

I am not impressed by the various experiments purporting to show that crows and other animals can exercise reason. — Wayfarer

Well fortunately our scientific models do not turn on whether you're impressed by them.

@Snakes Alive, I'm beginning to see the issue here with regards to the kind of magical thinking you're referring to. "animals don't think rationally like us because.... I really, really don't want them to"

Animals don’t reason, no. It’s amazing what they do - salmon returning to their home streams from across the Pacific, birds flying halfway around the planet, but none of it involves if I do this, then that will happen. — Wayfarer

Firstly, I'm curious as to how you know this because there are quite a few scientists working in the field of animal neurology who'd be interested in your data.

But secondly, "do animals reason?" was not the question. Your claim was that "our ability to reason and navigate is grounded in our ability to discern meaning". That's a claim about the grounding (we'll come to whatever that means in a minute) of our ability to reason and navigate, not a claim merely that we have such an ability.

I'm not asking what the world would be like if we did not have such an ability. I'm asking what it would be like if we did have such an ability, but that it was not grounded in our ability to discern meaning as you claim.

Yep. You’d be an animal. — Wayfarer

So animals have an ability to reason and navigate that is not grounded in their ability to discern meaning? Is that your claim?

You may not notice, but you would not be able to ask such questions. You’d be chasing a stick, or something. — Wayfarer

So you're saying that if "our ability to reason and navigate is not grounded in our ability to discern meaning" we'd all be chasing sticks or something?

Firstly, what mechanisms do you think would cause this (or is it just a guess)? Secondly, if that's the case, then isn't that noticing?

For empiricism to get out of bed, it has to start from some assumptions, as to what to study, what to consider as ‘evidence’, what ideas to pursue. And those kinds of elements aren’t themselves empirical - they’re prior to it — Wayfarer

I don't see how. Are there other things one might consider evidence other than those delivered by our interaction with the world? I'm not sure I see the 'choice' empiricism has to make here - between some way the world seems to be and....what? What's the other source of evidence about the way the world is that empiricism is rejecting?

our ability to reason and navigate is grounded in our ability to discern meaning, this mode of existence is still fundamental to rational creatures such as ourselves. — Wayfarer

Again, not a metaphysical question. This claim is either meaningless or amenable to empirical evidence. Is our ability to reason and navigate grounded in our ability to discern meaning? If it isn't, what would be different about the world, how would we notice? If something about the world being the way it is demonstrates that our ability to reason and navigate grounded in our ability to discern meaning, then it is an empirical matter. If nothing about the way the world is demonstrates this, then what does it mean for it to be true?

there genuinely are high-level categories, like species and genera. — Wayfarer

No there genuinely aren't.

So the question is, in what sense is the idea of apple real? And that is a metaphysical question. — Wayfarer

So what would constitue an answer? What would you expect to see in a newspaper after the headline "Turns out the idea of apple is real"? By what criteria would we judge arguments for or against?

I’m also arguing that reason and language must make use of such ideas all the time, otherwise we couldn’t make any sense of things in a global sense. So the general ideas, which are universal, also correspond with real categories. That’s what I take scholastic realism to mean. — Wayfarer

If that's what scholastic realism means (not what it proves, or what it argues for, but what it actually means) then it's not a debate in metaphysics at all. It's a linguistic question.

people don't seem to have the ability to recognize that something might happen independent of their desires or ideology, and can 'deduce' what has actually happened in the world from whichever ideology they prefer. — Snakes Alive

I agree, but I don't think there's sufficient evidence to draw from this behaviour in the realm of discourse a conclusion that this extends to beliefs in the realm of real world consequences. We see time and again people talking one way and acting another. I'm not going to deny, though, that people do have beliefs about the world which do not stem from rational analysis of the evidence, I'm just not personally sure how much this spills over into philsophical rhetoric, but devising a means fo finding out for sure is complicated and, to my knowledge, no-one has really tried yet, so the matter will have to remain speculative I suppose.

I'm troubled by apparent independent parallels across the world, especially in India and Tibet, which developed parallel stylized forms of philosophical argumentation. — Snakes Alive

Interesting. I didn't know that Tibet had parallel developments. The progress from agricultural development to technological development ad thence to science (or at least empirical investigation) can be traced from at least three locations that I know of, so it might be like the evolution of the eye. There's just a tendency in that direction so that a fairly wide range of starting points will all still tend to converge on similar methods, like strange attractors. I wish I'd read more about the combined histories but this is areas which is of only recent interest to me.

On the one hand, my conclusions must be substantive – or else there is no point in drawing them – but on the other, they must be devoid of content, or that content could potentially be shown to be mistaken. — Snakes Alive

Yes. It think its reasonable to assume that multiple factors are involved. Again, determining which would require a level of research which has not been undertaken, but I think it's definitely an interesting line of speculation.

But it leaves open the questions around why and how we do it. — Marchesk

But what would an answer to those questions look like? "We do it because..." sounds like a sociological issue and "We do it this way..." sounds like a linguistic issue. Neither are the types of question which can be resolved by talking about them. That it references nothing in the world is self-evident. You can't identify the thing it references.

We have rather established that fact and science are not the most significant factors either, but rather fashion and local prejudice. — unenlightened

I really don't think we've 'established' that at all. What I've been arguing for it that of the non-science, non-fact influences, culture is more important that state. I still think the greatest influence over the psychological body of knowledge has bee the results of the actual experiments.

We have already established that as old diagnosis of mental health issues have been found to be unacceptable, new one have come along to replace them, and that at least some of them are also highly questionable. — unenlightened

Right. Which part of that is not "Psychology has had some fairly shameful moments, as have most institutions, but it's coming along at least averagely at making the sorts of changes that address those problems". Are other institutions, or even just ordinary working class people, making better progress than that? We've identified some unacceptable practices, eliminated them, but there's still some to be dealt with. That sounds pretty much like the state of the entire world. Unless you have a bigger list than I do of these 'highly questionable' new ones. We can discuss examples if you do.

we have also established that fairly major fields in psychology aside from psychiatry can also turn out not just to be wrong, but to be politically (ie racially in my example) biased and motivated. — unenlightened

Again, nothing odd or unique here and none of the situations you described from the past are current, just as huge swathes of other openly racist attitudes in all walks of life are now thankfully less prevalent. If you have any examples of racist models which are currently being used we can discuss them, other wise this is nothing but historicism.

We have already seen quite a lot, and no evidence that fundamental changes in methodology, governance, or anything else have addressed these issues. — unenlightened

I've provided quotes, policy guidance, and anecdotal evidence to counter every single on of the supposedly harmful practices you and boethius have mentioned or implied, and yet neither of you have produced a single contemporary example. It's unbelievably disingenuous to suggest I'm the one failing to provide the evidence here.

For the sake of clarity, you tell me the list practices that you think are currently still going on in psychology and I will either re-iterate or produce the evidence if they are no longer supported.

Here's a couple to get you started

On IQ Testing.

As the concept of learning disabilities may be seen as a social construction...the idea of any permanency of the concept must be questioned...’ — BPS official guidlines on IQ testing

Here is the current BPS recommendations if you'd like to check for yourself. In summary, testing must be directed at specified therapeutic goal aimed at -"A person ...judged to be in need of community care or educational services due to a failure to cope with the intellectual demands of their environment and are suffering significant distress or are unable to take care of themselves or their dependents or unable to protect themselves or their dependents against significant harm or exploitation.". IQ testing to prove hogwash pseudoscience about race is contrary to current BPS guidelines.

On ADHD.

Educational psychologists (EPs) have become increasingly concerned by the number of children being identified as suffering from ADHD and prescribed medication, often without sufficient consideration of systemic factors or adequate professional liaison. Many children living in adversity may demonstrate behaviours that are associated with ADHD, but may be a reaction to stresses in their life rather than as a result of the underlying biology. — Vivian Hill, Chair of the BPS Division of Educational Psychology

On unequal intake.
The UCAS figure here show that there is “no evidence of bias within the [aggregate] admissions system” with regards to race gender or class. There is statistically significant bias in individual institutions (Oxford and Cambridge being two such), but the trend is consistently to reduce this bias in all institutions measured. Bias in universities is significantly lower than bias in government, law, top executive jobs and even literature.

Any more?

A very comprehensive summary, thanks. As you say, I think layer one is trivially true and the interest lies primarily in the mechanism by which layer two works (a linguistic study, well outside my area of expertise) and layer three, a psychological study much more within my field. So Lazerowitz is suggesting

that here the philosopher has a desire for the world to be some way, and expresses this desire, typically secretly and unconsciously, by holding metaphysical views. The philosopher knows in some sense that his attempting to change the way he or other people speak cannot change the world in this way, but there is a kind of sleight of mind where one entertains the illusion that perhaps, just perhaps, if I adduce enough arguments to show that time is unreal, time might stop. — Snakes Alive

To me this seems unlikely to me on face value. We don't tend to believe in an ability to manipulate reality in that way as adults. I could perhaps be more persuaded if we used metaphysical talk through childhood, but we don't. It seems to be almost entirely some kind of cultural tradition that came about at some point in our history and was practiced almost entirely by one sub-class of one culture. As such, I find it hard to believe it expresses some desire which one would imagine (perhaps naively) would be easily indulged in prior to its invention in early Greece.

I think its more about gaining control over the the expansion of science. Personally (and I'm not an historian so I could be completely wrong here) it seems non-coincidental that the tradition of philosophy came about around the same time as the first of what we might call serious empirical investigations. I think a way was devised by which knowledge could be claimed in way immune to this new risk of being shown to be demonstrably wrong. It's this immunity which draws people into obscure metaphysical discussion, I think.

Is psychology then a matter of opinion? Nothing much more than a reflection of the society of the time? Then my work here is done. — unenlightened

Ha. No, that's not quite what I meant. I just meant that we're both sensible enough to know that cultural bias influences the sorts of hypotheses that get tested and the way those get interpreted. And that goes for all studies from politics to physics. So the debate here is not whether psychological research is influenced by something other than 'the truth', it's what those factors are, whether they influence psychology more than any other subject, whether they influence academia more than other institutions, and whether they cause more harm in psychology than other disciplines.

It seems to me that the crux of boethius's complaint (and yours to perhaps a lesser extent) is that the state represents the most significant of those factors, that psychology is particularly affected, that academia is particularly affected and that this causes great harms that would otherwise be avoided.

I'm trying to counter that the state is not the most significant factor (it's mechanisms are very weak, broad brush, and indirect). Culture in general is a far greater influence. I'm also trying to argue that psychology is not particularly affected. Medicine, politics, sociology, art and literature are all examples of fields I think more vulnerable to external influences. It's also not true that academia is particularly effected either. Law, corporations an education are all as easily, if not more easily influenced. Finally the harm that bad practices has within psychology shouldn't be ignored, but it's not being ignored. Like most other institutions it's being addressed pretty much in line with the changes that wider culture has adopted.

I just don't think there's much to see here. Psychology has had some fairly shameful moments, as have most institutions, but it's coming along at least averagely at making the sorts of changes that address those problems.

Thanks for the links (I'm not always getting notifications when people mention me so I didn't see them until just now). A couple of well written pieces I think. I want to share a couple more key quotes. This first is for @Baden, who asked (of one of my previous posts), what my mention of Jeff Bezos had to do with it...

The protests have provided a public relations windfall for Bezos and his ilk. Only weeks before George Floyd’s killing, Amazon, Instacart, GrubHub and other delivery-based firms, which became crucial for commodity circulation during the national shelter-in-place, faced mounting pressure from labor activists over their inadequate protections, low wages, lack of health benefits and other working conditions. Corporate anti-racism is the perfect egress from these labor conflicts. Black lives matter to the front office, as long as they don’t demand a living wage, personal protective equipment and quality health care.

Racism alone cannot fully explain the expansive carceral power in our midst, which, as Reed notes, is “the product of an approach to policing that emerges from an imperative to contain and suppress the pockets of economically marginal and sub-employed working-class populations produced by revanchist capitalism.”

The powerful elite will have representatives from every marginalised minority with whom they can associate. There are black CEOs, women judges, gay politicians, transgender popstars... All with one glaring exception - none of them are poor. Contrary to almost every other marginalised group in existence (tribal people are an exception), the poor have no representation at all with the powerful. Any movement that doesn't put them at the heart and centre of the issue can be subsumed into the neoliberal project by just adopting the 'best-and-the-brightest' from whatever is the group-de-jour. Then the remainder only have themselves to blame.

I'm so ignorant I don't know what the Chinese government's position on homosexuality. But with a totalitarian regime, you do what you're told, pissed or not, if you want to practice at all. — unenlightened

Absolutely, but we'd have to assume nothing will ever change in these regimes if we assume that all people always do as they're told, so I prefer to take a more positive view that the scientists in China are, at least in part, doing what small things they can to make progress. Otherwise we're just abandoning it. Even maverick protestors need information from time to time, and if we don't share what we know for fear it might be misused, they'll never know anything about the outside world other than the party-line. It's not easy though.

A-level psychology becomes more commonly offered as a course. It is quite likely to start in those places that anyway have smaller classes - not state schools. Psychology departments might come to like the qualification, but not everyone gets the opportunity. So a class bias is introduced into the intake. — unenlightened

OK, I can see how that could happen (though I don't think it has happened). The first thing that would result from this is a background bias in Psychology intake. There are checks in place for this sort of thing at most universities. We keep an eye on the class, race and gender balance of courses and the university as a whole. As I said, there's quite a spotlight on these issues now. But let's say for know this class bias got past the checks...

And that leads to a political bias towards conservatism — unenlightened

...does it? Are the middle-class more conservative? I don't think the figures back that up. We're not talking about dedicated psychology courses excluding all but Jacob Rees-Mogg's monstrous offspring, it would (if it managed to have any effect at all) reduce intake to eliminate the poor only - any more than that and the university's going to start losing money as it can't fill its courses. So the bias in research will be to eliminate solutions or topics which might interest the poor. Can you think of any subjects of interest to the poor that the middle class aren't already all over (in their simpering, virtue-signalling, self-castigating efforts)?

also affects on average the kind of assumptions about 'normality' that are made and the kind of questions that are asked. — unenlightened

I can see this being a possibility, Like treating ADHD as 'abnormal' behaviour would be more likely among middle- or upper-classes because they'd more likely expect their kids to behave whereas working-class kids might be a bit more raucous normally and so ADHD is less likely to be seen as abnormal. The trouble with that analysis (apart for the problems of cause/correlation errors) is that we are already trying to treat ADHD as a problem of the school, not the child. Why? Not because we had a sudden influx of working-class, but because culture changed. People started to think less in terms of authoritarian control and more in terms of institutional responsibility. That cultural shift got into psychology departments (in fact a good portion of it started there). No government policy involved.

Again, the mere existence of a possible mechanism is not sufficient evidence that it is used. In this case we don't have any evidence that the government is using its power to manipulate the class intake onto psychology courses to shut down or promote any broad research topics. Nor, more importantly, do we have any evidence that it would even be capable of doing so contrary to cultural shifts in attitude.

So for an example from mainstream psychology, one finds a deal of interest in intelligence tests (because we like measuring stuff) that coincidentally (???) favour white Western-educated middle and upper-class folks and is championed by Eysenck who uses it to promote what turns out to be a fake scientific racism. — unenlightened

But...

The focus is on the child, with...communication of the test results in the context of the child's particular background, behaviors, and approach to the test items as the main goals. Global scores are deemphasized, flexibility and insight on the part of the examiner are demanded, and the test is perceived as a dynamic helping agent rather than an instrument for placement, labeling, or other types of academic oppression. In short, intelligent testing is the key. — Alan Kaufman

..from nearly three decades ago.

So again, how did these radicals decrying the use of the intelligence testing to favour white Western-educated middle and upper-class folks get to such dominant positions in psychology at the same time as Eysenck if his position was delivered and ensured by state apparatus?

Doesn't it sound far more like there was simply a range of opinions in psychology which broadly reflect the range of opinions of society at the time?

you cannot notice how this aligns with the institution of the national curriculum for schools and centralises control of the content of education courses t all levels, and thus of what anyone might be qualified and competent, never mind funded, to research, then I really don't know what anyone might say to you that would start to be "enough". — unenlightened

I really don't, honestly. I'm not trying to be picky here, I really cannot see a mechanism for infusing any meaningful kind of government policy into psychological research. All the mechanisms that you've brought up (and I'm grateful for the fact that you've at least bothered to check yours actually exist) have such broad brush effects I can't see it having any meaningful impact. Not more than, say, television or random cultural shifts.

Removing cheap evening classes was a really shit move, but it lessened the educational opportunities of the less well off. It didn't stop research into glucocortisoid responses to negative stimuli in neonates or something like that. I'm just not getting what government policy could be enacted by these means.

Back in the days you're talking about, with a real sense of revolution in the air, I can see how easy it would be to identify a certain class of anti-establishment intellectual and ensure they were kept out of academia. Now, there's such a spotlight on admissions everyone knows about it if we drop any minority access even by a few points (which is a good thing, mind).

Now schools are another matter. Their curricula are set by government and they are about as designed as you can get to churn out good little consumers, but everyone goes through those. The stiffs, the mavericks and the outcasts. They may do a tremendously good job at churning out traumatised automaton, but they also let the odd maverick through, and virtually nothing stops them at university. As I said before, it's the journals that stop them postgrad, and they have barely any shackles to government (in fact, if you look at the shocking number of journals owned by Robert Maxwell at one point, it's more like the journals telling the government what to do than the other way round).

when psychologists are free to do whatever they like, some of them like to do things that are frankly abhorrent and inhumane. And you are trying to convince us that they are completely out of control. — unenlightened

Not at all, I've mentioned several times that we've still subject to the law, but this comes back to what @Echarmion said. The range of possible activities not restricted by the law is so wide that talking about the law as the primary determinant of behaviour is silly.

mental illness seems to constitute a failure to sufficiently conform to the norms of a social situation. ADHD is a failure to conform to the norms of typically a school type situation. homosexuality is a failure to conform to the sexual norms, Drapetomania is a failure to conform to the norms of enslavement, Hysteria is a failure to conform to the norms of femininity, and so on. So as society changes, mental illness changes. — unenlightened

I broadly agree with this, but

(1) Mental illness is a small fraction of what psychology does. I've repeatedly tried to make the distinction and have repeatedly been told that, no, this is about the whole of psychology.

(2) Societal norms without doubt form a basis from which we judge mental health. I'm not 100% convinced that's even a bad thing, it depends what you then draw from the diagnosis, we have to use some kind of baseline. Or are you suggesting just don't even help the guy who has voices telling him to kill his friends, because hey, who are we to say that's not okay behaviour?

(3) Things are way better than they used to be in terms of diagnosis. Criteria (particularly in Britain) are transparent and trend away from 'illness' towards identify those who might need to be treated differently. Particularly with something like autism (my wife's specialty) the emphasis is on how the institutions around them need to change to accommodate, not how the children need to change to cope.

I wonder,... what the morality is of sharing the results of such research, with other countries where it is perhaps still considered a mental illness and a crime. One might not want to share the gay recognition software that might be developed, for example. — unenlightened

An interesting point. I think on the whole I'd plump for sharing, but it's a very difficult moral decision. I'd base it on the fact that, in my limited experience of Chinese students and professors I've not found them particularly 'state tools' they're mostly pissed at the restrictions the government place on them. Whatever mechanisms the state there are using to fill universities with government shills it doesn't seem to be working. All of which means exposing these students and researchers to evidence which contradicts the party-line is, I think, more important than the risk of research being used nefariously...but I'm not sure. Luckily my research is of no use to anyone so I don't have to worry about it.

Indeed the whole curriculum is now measured in a ghastly points system derived from the Open University, where each module counts so many points at this or that level, and so many points get you a degree. A national system about as independent of state control as something that is totally controlled by the state. — unenlightened

I'm not getting the link here. How does the government's cackhanded attempt to make degrees into quantifiable commodities actually make any difference to the research (which is the point that's trying to be made here). It's not enough to point to some bungled government intervention in the grading system and just insinuate the rest.

In order for this level of intervention to have had anything like the effect boethius is claiming, it would have to select (maybe grade higher) individual modules which support current government policy (there isn't even a mechanism for them to do this, but let's presume there is for a minute). This slight change would have to be sufficient to put off any would-be mavericks from even bothering to apply (why a maverick would care about points is beyond me, but we'll leave that too). Any maverick who dared the terrifying fate of 'not getting quite as many points as they might otherwise' (a true James Dean of their time) would only have to publish a single paper on their anti-establishment research and everyone would know. The government would have to install a whole host of shills to counter it (persuaded to go against the very science they love by...we're presuming 'points' right?). And all this effort to what? Make people think that depression's not the government's fault, so they can carry on their consumerist project. Make people think ADHD is a disease so they can keep kids in schools. Well they don't need psychologists to do either, they have pop stars and parents, who already do a completely adequate job of making people feel like shit if they don't have the latest stuff and insisting that everyone and their dog is to blame for the school not handing little Tommy's violent outbursts.

Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to for something that literally every corporation and mindless consumer in the country is already delivering in spades.

But even a completely accurate picture of Britain's colonial past will be nothing more than a weak gesture if we're carrying on with exactly the same practices without so much as bad word said about it, right? So the whole argument hinges on (4). That's not a critique on its own, so much as checking we're on the same page.

It's not the slaver's statutes that need to come down first, it's Nike's display at SportsDirect, it's Apple's storefront, it's Gap's billboards... Why aren't these the targets? We should worry about correcting historical inaccuracies about slavery when the 40 million modern slaves have been freed. The current problem is obviously vastly more important.

So why do you think we need to take this circuitous route? Why not just attack modern colonialism head on. Why 'open up a space for dialogue about it' using some sideling, proxy gesture and not just have the conversation at Nike's front door where it belongs? The actual kids actually dying right now are actually dying because of Nike's actual supply chain decisions. Why the dance? They're only trainers, we're not talking about doing without bread.

So, the problem I see with "momentum here leads to progress there" types of argument is they leave a massive sociological question unanswered. Why here and not there? Why this problem and not that one?

If the answer is just chance - whatever spark happens to ignite - then we're fine, your theory probably works and we just have to wait for the sympathetic discourse to have its effect. But if the answer were chance, one would have to explain the otherwise significant way in which the popular movements focus on first world problems caused by authority or historic agents, and third world problems caused by our own insatiable need for stuff don't ever seem to be where the spark lands.

If there's a reason for this disparity, and I obviously think there is, then it is not just a matter of time, not just a matter piggybacking off related movements. Some substantial cause of the problem is not being dealt with.

And I'm not going shy away from the risk of being belittling. The problems we're talking about that are not being addressed are orders of magnitude bigger than the ones people are actually protesting about. Ten thousand times more women are abused because of abject poverty than were protected by the 'global' metoo movement. Ten thousand times more minorities are killed by unhealthy working conditions in our supply chains than will be saved by defunding the MPD. So if there is some sociological barrier, some reason why it's never these issues that gain such enthusiastic momentum, it really matters and I think it's not right, given the gravity, to just hope it crops up as a result of these related issues in the face of good historical evidence to suggest it really won't.

Psychologists are selected because they already agree with state policy (there is a large state apparatus one needs to navigate to become a psychologist with lot's of filtering at lot's of steps), — boethius

No there isn't. Universities are mostly private institutions and the state plays no part in their curriculum nor their decision about who to award doctorates to.

Psychologists need permission from the state to carry out research or then to "cure people" — boethius

No they don't. I have never in my entire career applied to the state for permission to carry out my research, neither has my wife nor any of my colleagues.

Psychologists receive state subsidy (directly or from state proxies) to get the resources to do research (vast majority of the time). — boethius

No they do not, funding comes from all sorts of sources, companies, charities, government or direct from the university.

I've already mentioned legitimate sates also maintains policy through these mechanisms, — boethius

No they don't. You've made up a load of mechanisms and then when asked to prove they exist have just resorted to childish insults.

Psychologists do not need a degree (which is a license from the state) to be a "psychologist"...? , — boethius

Degrees are awarded by universities which are private institutions.

nor "generally" work in institutions that contain a large network of people and state licenses for those people and institution as a whole...? , — boethius

No. No state licenses at all are required to carry out psychology research. I don't know how many times I'm going to have to repeat this. You are just absolutely fundamentally wrong here.

nor get permission from various oversight boards (which are specific license to perform specific actions) to conduct human experiments on a case by case basis? — boethius

Oversight boards are made up of a range of people connected to the profession, and from outside the profession. None of them are government officials, none of them negotiate with the government, there are no government policies directing the choices they make other than the exact same laws which bind all of us equally (against murder, physical abuse etc).

Psychologists do not "generally need" state subsidy directly, or through proxies, to perform their research? — boethius

No psychologists do not generally need state subsidy (or proxies) to carry out their work. Some is funded by the state, some by charities, some by private companies, some by private investors, some by the institutions of psychology themselves. All data is then freely disseminated so any restriction the government funded elements placed on research could easily be undone by other funding sources. The biggest restriction on psychological research comes from the journals, which are private companies.

We all know they need lot's of licenses to interact with research subjects — boethius

No they don't. I do not need a single license to interact with the people in my study groups. I could design and publish a questionnaire tomorrow, write a paper based on the results and have it published without having to ask a single person for permission. You are just outright wrong about this point.

You may have already seen it (it might even have been linked already), but the MPD150 report provides an outline of what defunding means in terms of the effect on police departments and the replacement services they think will serve the community better. It covers a remarkably similar range of issues about the range of services police are required to attend (without proper training) to the ones you raise. It also gives a very good overview of the alternatives.

Of course, Minneapolis have only promised to defund the police as things stand, so the well-thought out recommendations of MPD150 and the the political reality of what happens to the left-over money, where the cuts are actually made etc remains to be seen.

You're key operative claim here is "oppressive regimes - which we all know are bad places". — boethius

"Oppressive regimes - which we all know are bad places" is not a claim, it's a qualifier. Not the set {oppressive regimes}, but the subset {oppressive regimes which we all know are bad places}.

The OP is literally entitled "Mental health under an illegitimate state".

So, either your complaint is "you're just analyzing the OP, what's up with that?".

Or, then you're trying to say something less transparently bad faith, relating "we all know" to "oppressive regimes", — boethius

No, I've written perfectly clearly in my previous post what my complaint is. I'll try one last time.

You claimed that psychogists were agents of the state because they required state permission to carry out their research. Forget the title of the thread, you made a claim within it and I'm disputing that claim.

The only evidence you have provided to substantiate your claim is that such coercion happens in China.

I countered that something happening in China was not applicable to other states because China is very different (we would all agree it is an oppressive, we would not all agree such a thing about, say, France). So my claim is really simple..

Contrary to your claim that

Psychologists are agents of the state because they need state license to practice psychology (whether clinical or research) and therefore must conform to state policy to get and maintain such license. They represent state authority when dealing with individual patients or research subjects (far more so, when doing so with state and/or state proxi corporate subsidy). — boethius

My claim is that they are not generally agents of the state because they do not generally need a licence to practice psychological research, they do not have to conform to state policy to do research. The only influence of the state is the trivial requirement to abide by the law, none of which dictates what can and cannot be researched in any way other than basic humanity (we cannot beat people just to see how they react, but really, who the hell would want to do that?).

Global exchange of scientific information (even with China) means that data gathered in the UK will reach scientists in China.

So your entire premise is utterly wrong when it comes to psychology as a science. It is virtually unhindered by government in most countries, it can reach whatever conclusions it feels the evidence supports, and it can freely disseminate that information to nations whose research might be more constrained.

None of this is true of the practice of psychiatry, with which you seem determined to confuse psychology.

Probably not the place for a long discussion on this, but I tend to think the social acceptability of exploitation is the elephant in the room of most discussions about strategies to address it. I really wouldn't be seen dead with an Apple phone, not because of the actual suffering involved in their manufacture (as you say, that can be avoided by buying second hand, end-of-line etc), but because they, as a company, knowingly exploited 6 year old children for profit, I don't want to be associated with them.

Obviously the cost of the alternatives is part of the decision and many options will be out reach, but we'd be foolish to think that fact is the main determinant of people's purchasing choices. The second-hand Nike's are still chosen above the second-hand Ethletic because they are considered much cooler. Why is a brand which exploits children considered cool? That's the problem, I think, basic human decency seems to take second place to group identity.

I'm not sure it's selfish. I doubt most people know about it — Benkei

Which is exactly what I'm talking about. Who doesn't know about the riots in Minneapolis. Air time matters.

the really poor can't afford either the Pixel 3 or the fairphone 3. — Benkei

True, I should be clear that I'm talking mainly about the people responsible for the prevailing discourse, most of whom could probably afford both. The actual poor might well buy second hand which doesn't harm anyone, but even there, social group pressure pushes for new crap rather than second-hand quality. There's still a small amount of responsibility (even a second hand Nike t-shirt does their advertising for them) but I don't think the extent to which the choices of the really poor might exacerbate their own situation is really a fair discussion, so I'm not going to go there.

From what I understand, the poor are so consumed with money problems that they actually don't have time to think about much else. Which is why they are often notoriously bad in making decision that will benefit them in the long run. — Benkei

Have you read a book called Scarcity by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir? If not I highly recommend it. It talks about this exact thing, plus goes into all the limited bandwidth stuff I've been talking about.

Fair enough. I'll be the Lenin to your Trotsky. — StreetlightX

They don't have an emoji of someone nodding with resigned assent and an ice pick in their head, just imagine one for me!

I think we've reached a point where we might just have to agree to disagree. I completely agree with what you say about the mainstream media, but I don't think that in any way proves there are no filters on what cannot be trashed. The media doesn't get together and plan in advance how it's going to suppress news of injustices. Some will trash it all, some will focus on one injustice to detract from a worse one. The existence of one tactic doesn't disprove the existence of the other.

Again, I'm a big tent person - let's get children out of mines and defund the police and refund public goods. — StreetlightX

And again, I think the evidence shows that we simply do not do both, the police will get defunded and the children will stay in the mines because there's virtually no social group pressure either way regarding the details of police funding, there's massive social group pressure to have the latest phone. Until we change that, the children will stay in the mines.

No.

I have no idea where you're getting all that from. My claim is that I think you, I and anyone else taking part in this discussion would agree that China and North Korea are 'obviously' oppressive regimes. That's it. None of the other crap you've bizarrely ascribed to me.

Please note the bolded terms. I'm referring to us, the current participants in the discussion, not everyone in the world. I'm suggesting we would agree on North Korea and China, not that we would know for sure having exhausted all lines of enquiry.

The claim above, exactly as it is worded, is a sufficient counter-argument to your claim that Chinese state control over psychological research is good evidence that states in general control psychological research.

It is a sufficient counter-argument because it demonstrates that China is not a typical example of the types of state we are talking about as we agree them to be.

So according to you, there's evidence this happens in China. — boethius

Yes.

You're refusal to provide the rest of your "list" — boethius

I've just supplied the rest of my list, China and North Korea.

You're claim in it's formal form is: "there's only evidence where there's obviously evidence! Ha! Show me the evidence!". — boethius

No, that's not my claim in formal form, it's not any claim in formal form, its a completely different claim in the same colloquial form all the other arguments have been presented in.

When I inquire about "the obvious nature of the evidence" you are unable to follow through and complete your list of "bad place" that you "already know" — boethius

No, I've done so, China and North Korea. What you haven't explained yet is why you think the completion of my list is so important. It is only relevant to my claim that we agree on countries which are not on any such list. I've suggested using the European countries.

Your claim is that psychological research is largely constrained by states. Your evidence is that this is the case in China. My counter-argument is that China is especially oppressive and doesn't represent the state of affairs in most other countries. I'm waiting for you to demonstrate that this counter-argument is wrong (ie show evidence that it is the case in other countries). Otherwise all you've proven is that psychological research is contrsined to agree with state policy in those states which regularly control citizens in line with state policy.. Since psychologists are citizens, this is nothing but a truism.

Isn't that what you're trying to do? What about this injustice? And that injustice? It's precisely because we 'cannot maintain outrage at every injustice' that one needs to work with momentum where one finds it. — StreetlightX

Possibly. The fact that the momentum is with issue A might be a reason to let it dominate discourse. I'm saying that it isn't a very good reason. We should choose the issue where the degree of progress we can expect will have most impact, that's not necessarily the one that currently has momentum.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say its almost certainly not going to be. The issue currently with momentum has had to get through a lot of filters, none of which have anything to do with the injustices it's opposing. It has to gain media time and media are influenced by big businesses. It has to be popular, and popularity is tightly controlled by big businesses.

I'm not saying the current waves of protest are fake, I'm saying they've been 'let through' the filters in place to control public discourse and we shouldn't take that as a means of deciding which injustice to work with.

I'm not convinced that I want - or anyone should want - 'changes in consumer choices'. — StreetlightX

Needless to say I disagree with this analysis, but it's probably off-topic here to debate the extent to which 'green' choices are simply another niche for capitalists to exploit. Broadly, I think they are, but I think we'd be dangerously unpragmatic to say that just because an organisation is profiting from the new niche for living-wage clothing, that hasn't made a massive difference to real lives of the workers now being paid twice what they were. It would take a special kind of inhumanity to put one's ideological objection to capitalist opportunism in the way of any method of getting children out of mines. Yes we can do so by legal action, but consumer action is quicker and, if it can be culturally integrated, more sustainable.

I don't understand why you feel to need to turn violence into a competition. — StreetlightX

I thought I'd explained that, but I'll try again. There is limited space in public discourse. We cannot maintain outrage at every injustice. There's only one front page and it carries only one story. Celebrities only jump on one bandwagon at a time...

I get what you're saying about using this momentum to carry forward arguments about other issues of systemic rasicm, but such a principle is premised on the fact that this issue is being driven by the same concerns that would drive changes in consumer choices. I'm making the argument that the very history of public discourse around these issues is proof that they're not.

Do you even understand your own claim here? That "I am not serving up anything new" because "there is not a shred of evidence this actually happens". — boethius

Yes, that's exactly what I'm claiming. There's no evidence that the state significantly dictates the direction of psychological research in countries other than the ones we'd generally agree are oppressive (like China). You could add North Korea if you're obsessed about the fact that I used a plural.

Now, if I'm poor. That 60 EUR makes a large difference and I probably wouldn't be willing to part with 60 euros to give some abstract Chinese worker a bit more money. It's too much. — Benkei

Well there is your problem. If people are not willing to spend another 60 euro to avoid supporting the use of children as young as 6 years old down a mine then what's the point? We live in a democracy. If people are so unbelievably selfish that they think 60 euros is worth a kid being sent down a mine for then any policy aimed at reducing poverty will be undone or voted out the moment it yields a net loss of 60 euros or more.

If not-buying from non-conflict zones or not having manufacturers that pay their employees well wouldn't cause prices to rise, everybody would be doing it. — Benkei

You're missing the point of much of the cost of goods. A large part of Google's phone costs go on development and advertising. Google spend nearly 15% of their expenditure on product development and a similar amount on advertising. So your 60 euros is almost entirely the cost of making the phone look cool. And Fairphone are a social enterprise company, so they don't need to make 15% profit for their shareholders.

Similarly about 15% of the cost of a pair of Nike trainers is to cover the cost of paying some sports star to wear them, and then another 15% paying the executives shareholders etc. Another chunk (though I can't find the amount) goes adding new features that aren't even needed (again, just to make them seem more cool than the competition). Not paying all these extras frees up money to spend on paying workers properly.

The main reason Google phones are still cheaper is mostly economies of scale. It takes more people to commit to ethical choices to undermine that.

For a good example, take a look at Rapanui (I won't link in case it counts as advertising). They've manged to build up a social enterprise, renewable-energy powered garment supply chain with zero exploitation, all living wage employees and their t-shirts are cheaper than Nike.

Once out of poverty people will have the time and luxury to worry about the climate impact of their purchases or the effective slavery that exists in those countries to which we've outsourced manufacturing of goods. — Benkei

This is kind of offensive to people in poverty. I know you didn't mean to be. A few years ago I had the great privelidge to work with a local co-op in an area of my country so poverty stricken it was on the European Objective 1 zone. They were struggling to afford good food, so they set up a worker's co-op, met with local farmers and wholesalers, organised distribution, negotiated deals and ended up with a supply network of organic locally grown vegetables (and even a few wholesale items). The idea that poor people cannot help but support oppressive or environmentally damaging practices because they can't afford otherwise is really just a way of perpetuating them as a market for large corporations to profit from selling cheap crap to.

why not articulate the two together? — StreetlightX

Because apparently...

It's no good playing the agonized more-progressive-than-thou when frankly, many people simply don't care — StreetlightX

This is the central issue, and I know I'll get pilloried for putting it in such crude terms, I hope there's some degree of understanding that I'm not talking in absolute terms here, but... Supporting the protests against the police is cool. Talking about more ethical consumer choices is not cool. Your own characterisation of my attempts to do so demonstrates this as well as any. Shut down the boring guy talking about phone brands, we've got riot to flag-waive over.

I think using what we can get disenfranchises those who cannot get a space in the realm of public discourse. If we use what we can get, when is it going to be the turn of the 35,000 children working for less than 50 cents a day down mines to make mobile phones. Are we just to wait until they have a riot big enough to get in the papers? Will we only back them once they've shown themselves sufficiently camera-worthy to make the front page?

How do you propose to change consumer preferences in such a way that people will be willing to spend more on a product because they know the product is sourced more fairly? — Benkei

Firstly, they're not even more expensive, just less cool. It's partly a matter of generating social norms which requires a change in the way people think about tokens of social identity. As usual, the mechanism for doing that is behavioural change and ostracisation, the more influencial in society you happen to be the better.

What actions, other than what companies are already doing and have dedicated PR departments for, should you and I be doing to get more people on board? — Benkei

Talking about it. Which, difficult though it is, involves not talking about issues which detract from it. And here I don't mean literally say nothing else, I mean simply to ensure the discourse is balanced in favour of those interventions which can have the most impact.

I mean, look at what you're already doing to highlight the injustices done to black communities in America by their brutal police forces. Did you have the same trouble working out what more you or I could do there?

I could carry on in this discussion making no empirical investigation at all — boethius

Well then I'll leave you to it. If you've no interest in what actually is the case but would rather waste time discussing what might be the case when the evidence is right there to be seen by anyone interested, then I've absolutely no interest in continuing.

Raise as many speculative accusations of complicity as you like, I will continue to point out that you have no justification at all for doing so, but don't try to dignify it as a 'discussion'.

Please write a simple list from memory of all the countries and which are oppressive and bad places and which not, since you know this information. — boethius

I said 'oppressive regimes which we all know are bad' and I've already provided my list. China. The only place you've drawn any modern examples from. Hence the point that you can't extrapolate to the whole world state activities which you can only prove occur in known oppressive states.

The key point of contention here is not that in known oppressive states the government controls psychological research, it's your contention that in states whose legitimacy is in question this occurs.

Every European state is one in which the legitimacy of their government is in question (by which I mean they are not ones where we would all already agree are illegitimate). It is my claim that in those states, regardless of the fact that their legitimacy has not been established, there are little to no mechanisms by which the state can control the direction of psychological research and practice. Thus the question of their legitimacy is moot, it doesn't matter, psychological research will carry on in much the same direction regardless as it is not dictated by the state.

In order to disprove this claim you'd have to provide evidence that states whose legitimacy is still in question (ie not China and the like) have mechanisms in place by which they control the direction of psychological research. You've failed to do so.

As to your trivial contention that...

insofar as a community of psychologists conceive of themselves as part of a global community that includes China and derives their expert legitimacy, in part, from the global nature of the community — boethius

...this applies equally to absolutely every person in the world and so is a useless truism. We all have some connection to oppressive states which in some way lends legitimacy to their activities. As I said to unenlightened, the important thing to talk about is which connection can be leveraged to have the most impact. It certainly isn't sharing an academic field of study.

while the momentum is here, I say use it - I haven't seen so much interesting and fruitful discussion about the role of police (in general)... maybe ever. If they have to bear the weight of all injustices so be it. All the better even, until actual change happens. — StreetlightX

No, I don't think this is right at all. Its either naive or obfuscatory. There's only one front page, and it's full of outcry over the police. There's limited room in public discourse and limited bandwidth in people's thoughts. It matters tremendously that we use that limited space to discuss the issues which will have most positive impact on people's lives.

I think it's discraceful that the newspapers and socialist discussion groups are dominted by outcry over the deaths of a thousand blacks at the hands of their police when nearly a thousand times that amount of children (virtually all of whom are black) die from poverty in the same period due directly to our consumer choices. Why? Because 'make poverty history' was last year's headline, its boring now and none of the cool kids are talking about it anymore.

And it's absolutely evident that it's not enough to say "we can have that discussion too, it doesn't have to be one or the other" because we are absolutely not having that discussion. It is nowhere in the papers, it is the subject of no protests, it is being discussed by no city councils, hell even my attempts to discuss it here have been met with stony silence.

We have limits to the scope of public discourse. It really does matter what we choose to fill it with.

So you're saying that the difference between an illegitimate and legitimate state, a "bad place" and "oppressive regimes", is obvious? — boethius

No, I'm saying that the only modern example you've provided so far of state control over the direction of psychological research is China (and even then you've failed to provide concrete examples, but I don't doubt your ability to to do so). I'm asking for evidence of state control over the direction of psychological research in states which we do not already all agree are bad.

Everything is important, everything matters for its own sake and as a part of the whole. To look for benefits is to be a consequentialist and consequentialism fails because consequences are infinite and unknowable. I do a lot of things in a lifetime, and who knows, one post I make here just might change the mind of the next crazy tyrant, or persuade someone to stop beating their wife, or whatever. Or it might in a thousand years become incorporated into a book of aphorisms that guide a million people. So I try to get it right. — unenlightened

I agree with you in principle here, but in practice there are a limited number of narratives and we each have a limited bandwidth. We cannot talk about and deal with an infinite number of topics. We might all be responsible in some small way for every atrocity on the planet, be that through our shared membership of groups, our suffrage, our purchasing choices... So given this plethora of ways we might be responsible, and the limited bandwidth and discourse space we have to explore those ways, I think it matters a lot that we choose to discuss, and think about, those which can have the most positive impact.

Getting it right I completely agree with, dominating the discourse (as boethius is trying to do here) does more harm than good by taking attention away from areas where acting on our global responsibilities can be way more effective.

The framework of this discussion is that state have policies, and the primary mechanism for selecting agents to carry out state policy is ensuring, state agents already believe in state policy when they are selected, and furthermore the primary mechanism of deciding on the vast majority of research that happens is through state subsidy. — boethius

And yet, despite repeated requests you've given not one shred of evidence to demonstrate that this actually happens (outside of your fevered imagination) in anywhere other than oppressive regimes - which we all know already are bad places, so you're not serving up anything new here.

Take the UK for example. What is the exact mechanism the UK government uses to ensure psychologists believe in state policy? What is the mechanism they use to decide on the vast majority of research? Then give me some examples where research opposed to state policy has been shut down or suppressed in recent psychology. If you can't even demonstrate having done any research into the topic how do expect anyone to take you seriously?

I did not say there is no negotiation that happens in such processes, nor that such mechanisms are perfect. — boethius

You said...

Psychologists are agents of the state — boethius

Not 'some...', not 'at times...', no qualification at all, so the point that @Echarmion makes about the limits og government is extremely relevant. In fact the extent of those limits will determine the very question we're seeking to answer here. If the government is very limited in its reach then psychologists will be hardly agents of the state at all, most of their activities will be free of state interference. If the state has a substantial reach the psychologists might be strong agents of the state, spending most of their time carrying out state policy. So resolving the extent of the states reach into a field determines the extent to which that field can be said to carry out state policy. and you how we determine the reach of a particular government into a particular field - evidence, not whatever you reckon might happen after having a bit of a think about it from your executive armchair.

Edward Snowden did not remain a contractor for the NSA. — boethius

The NSA is not an academic discipline, it's an organisation. Edward Snowden did remain a data scientist. Arguably he even remained a spy - disseminating sensitive information to agencies other than your government. He just recognised he was working for the wrong organisation. I'm almost certain there'd be a fairly substantial walk-out if my university decided it was going to help the government torture suspects. What you're trying to claim here though is that the entire field of study is somehow complicit.

The OP is about "Mental health under an illegitimate state". — boethius

I don't care what topic you claim the thread is about. I'm disputing the actual written claims you make within it. If I were to make overtly racist comments in a thread about housing I don't get to deflect the indignation by saying "that's not what the thread is about". You have made claims about the specific complicity of all psychologists in the actions of illegitimate states and claimed that even in legitimate ones they act as agents of the state. It is those two claims I'm disputing. You can bleat on about the thread title all you want, if you don't want it derailed elsewhere then I suggest you don't make outrageous claims that you can't support.

If we agree here more-or-less, you are simply adding weight to my "ludicrous point that psychology prevents new mental structures toward truth while philosophy encourages them". — boethius

No, because you've not presented a shred of evidence for your claim that 'philosophy encourages them', not that psychology currently prevents them. all you've done is present a single episode where psychology (in common with every other institution in the country at the time) hampered the acceptance of homosexuality.

When psychologists believe a state they represent (for instance to "understand and cure homosexuality") is legitimate when it is not (more so if they believe it is not even up for debate), they are delusional and the entire practice of psychology becomes the maintenance of this central delusion. — boethius

1. The idea that homosexuality can be cured is not 'the state's' idea, it is the idea of the society the state represents.

2. Psychologists do not act in unison as one legion. Different psychologist have different opinions.

3. You've not provided any arguments at all to show how some psychologicist's delusions somehow make the entire practice of psychology become the maintenance of this central delusion. What is the mechanism which forces the whole of psychology to act in step with the delusions of some? And I'll add now to save time later - I'm not asking what the mechanism is in your little fantasy world, I'm asking what it is in the real world, which means you will be able to provide modern examples of it happening.

perhaps somewhere in the BPS, if there isn't, there should be, a department of international relations that makes relationships with its foreign counterparts, and if the occasion arises remonstrates publicly with them. No? — unenlightened

I'm not sure about a department, but did you read the quote I gave Fishfry to their particular rant (about the APA covering up psychologist's involvement in torture)? When the BPS found out about the APA's complicity in the torture of suspects for the US Government they uncompromisingly condemned them in the press and in their guidelines. I don't know if anything's been said about China, but I think the BPS's influence is not quite so strong there so it would have been little more than shouting at the wind if they had. As I said in my previous post, there's only any point in loudly condemning behaviour if your voice carries any weight, otherwise it's just virtue signalling (which I'm guessing is what you might mean by "if the occasion arises").

I'm still not sure I'm seeing the benefit of the 'responsibility' thing here though. Let's take Chinese 're-education' camps for example. They are a disgrace and need to be stopped. Pressure on the Chinese government might make them stop. Which is going to be most effective in doing that - a boycott of Chinese goods until they stop; a voluntary psychology society in another country condemning those who carry it out? Unless you've got some insight I'm missing, it's pretty obviously the former. So where's the advantage in this quest (the OP, not you) to lay the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of some group of people who can do very little about it?