Boethius is right about ecological theater. It's similar to the theater of safety performed at airports. Just because recycling one's cans and bottles isn't in itself going to save the world doesn't mean we should stop recycling. We can, we should, we must recycle. — Bitter Crank

Yes, we're in agreement ... sort of.

The theater part is the debate framework of individual initiative and "eco consumerism" being the available actions to make (rather than political organization), and then in a next step ecological programs that are largely beside the point framed as "better than nothing and all that can be done".

In some cases the ecological programs are both beside the point and even counter productive, such as biofuels destroying much more ecosystems than the 5-10% of oil without even including that ethanol is corrosive to motors (though destroying old motors to be replaced with more efficient ones is positive to a point, though of course can be accomplished with regulation in any case).

In the case of recycling, most packaging and plastic is simply unnecessary and could be simply regulated away without much impact on business (other than plastic and packaging suppliers) and what packaging is needed could be largely biodegradable. Not to mention planned obsolescence.

Of course, at each step the "better than nothing" is still a good choice; at face value it's good to recycle if that's available.

The consequences of the theater part, however, are, I believe, very serious and completely intentional. First, for people concerned it provides a palliative action that fulfills a sense of moral responsibility: "don't bother me about the amazon, I recycle!". Second, by theatracizing ecological concern in consumer choices, it drives a wedge between the poor and the wealthy in the environmental debate: a poor person may simply have no practical ecological options on essentially anything and thus feel excluded from the movement.

Most well informed environmentalist will be completely aware of these issues, but I feel are not aware that actively fighting this "pop-culture-environmentalism-theater", that's allowed to be discussed in the mainstream, is critical. By joining in the shouts of "recycle! electric cars! ride a bike!", or even just mild encouragement (i.e. participating in the theater), environmentalists help to cutoff the debate, and when people see that obviously it's insufficient to the actual problems that are mentioned from time to time, the end result is disappointment in realizing actions and enthusiasm were essentially meaningless.

Of course, some environmentalists realize this and systematically re-frame things as political and point out the greenwashing: we're just not allowed to speak on television, is the main difference.

Nah, the carrying capacity changes as technology improves to support more of the same species (humans). A hunter-gatherer lifestyle would not support billions of people. We have billions of people now because modern civilization makes it possible. If the lights went out for good, our population would fall back to medieval times. (There's a fictional series of books that explores this.) — Marchesk

This is not correct. The fact that technology (which I agree is a big factor) can increase carrying capacity, and technology is largely responsible for going from 1 billion to 7 billion people in a bit over a century, we are currently in ecological overshoot.

I agree that we could use technology to be within ecological capacity for 7 to 10 billion people, but simply because we have the technology to do so doesn't imply it's actually the case.

The longer we stay in overshoot, the worse the ecological consequences are and the harder it will be for 7 / 10 billion people to bring things into stability when we decide to make the effort, and at some point it's impossible and a large die-off will result regardless of our knowledge.

Although science and technology is improving all the time, our ecological problems are getting worse all the time.

It's simply ridiculous risk-mitigation strategy to assume technological improvements will outpace our problems.

It's simply bad scientific literacy to place great faith in the science that provides us modern technologies but suddenly have zero faith in the part of our science that demonstrates severe ecosystem risks of our current setup. The choice between our current infrastructure and production cycles and medieval times is of course a false dichotomy: there's all sorts of ways for society to organize with modern scientific knowledge.

If this misconstrues your position, please elaborate on it.

The primary one is the philosophical interpretations of time: presentism and eternalism. The former was always the default until relativity gave equal if not better footing for the latter, but scientifically (empirically), the two are not distinct. SR does not assert a block universe even if the assumption of one makes the calculations simpler. Hence the difference is philosophical. — noAxioms

I agree it's interesting what historical philosophical trends changed moving from Galilean to Einsteinian relativity.

I wouldn't go as far as to say presentism and eternalism are philosophies that are impacted in anyway. Both philosophies predate any mathematical physics at all, and we can view Newtonian physics as a block universe just as easily as SR, just wasn't the habit.

I would agree that lot's of people build philosophies with an (generally completely unfounded) belief SR, GR, QM and/or QFT* supports their ideas. I find it philosophically relevant to refute such arguments (at least the part connecting to modern science).

However, I don't see how SR, or GR and QM for that matter, displacing Newtonian physics had a big impact on presentism and eternalism, the debate pre-existed both and continues.

Though I agree there is impact on historical trends, I don't think anything's resolved. Even for questions such as the start of the universe, we can posit eternal inflation and similar (non-refutable) ideas that provide an eternal universe compatible with GR. Though it was a shock, to Einstein and others, that our universe as we see it isn't stable, in the end every philosophy requires only trivial updating to account for the new sciences.

*Special Relativity, General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Field Theory (for anyone unfamiliar with these abbreviations).

There's a lesson in these comparisons:

Do you know that the GDP of China was equivalent of the Netherlands in the 1990's? It actually was and earlier it was far lower as the Chinese really had to fight off the possibility of famine. — ssu

By "fight off possibility of famine", do you mean the great leap forward?

And now the GDP is second to the US. There is no possibility of famine in China. So what happened? Did Bob Geldof save the Chinese? No? — ssu

At least for now.

As for what happened, the US cut a deal with the Chinese to open up their economy so multi-national corporations could employ wage and environmental arbitrage to move union factory jobs from the West to China and produce at a fraction of the cost. In exchange for a stable political climate (i.e. no unions allowed communist China) to carry out the outsourcing, China can control their currency, never be bothered by the West about human rights, and keep developing world status even with the second largest GDP as you mention.

Another key factor is China has burned large amounts of coal to power their growth. So, to reduce things to trade and capitalism "working" to lift up the Chinese peasantry, is not the full picture.

To measure societal progress to begin with, of only one metric of being less vulnerable to famine (for now), reducible to GDP, I don't think is a very good approach. To compare China before and after economic opening, is also a false dichotomy; trade rules that would have avoided, at least, environmental arbitrage would have been easy to implement (that things must be produced to the same environmental standards as would be in the West).

Also, in terms of global perspective, industries were starting to clean up and become more efficient with all the environmental regulations coming online. Had industry been unable to simply sidestep those regulations by outsourcing to China, there would have been much more pressure on efficiency and alternative energies much sooner, and we'd be in a better position vis-a-vis climate change today with less total emissions and a more efficient industrial system (both in terms how things are produced and what things are produced).

In terms of an example of capitalism succeeding, it's not necessarily straightforward task to argue that Communist China is exemplary. Though, I'm not sure that's your intention.

In our lifetime we have witnessed the largest expansion of wealth and prosperity and the decline of absolute poverty especially with the rapid historical economic growth in China, but also the growth in South East Asia in general. Also India has made rapid progress.

Yet where do we see this in the discourse about global poverty? Usually nowhere. — ssu

Pointing to (dollar measured) poverty decreases as the ultimate sign of progress of validation of the global economic system and neoliberal ideology that has been running things for the last decades, seems to me very much the mainstream.

I'd say the most popular author on these issues in mainstream is Steven Pinker who basically argues that everything is fine and dandy, heavily relying on decreases in dollar measured poverty which has been mostly in China, and the naysayers are wrong because naysayers have been wrong in the past. At least in English media. And I'd say most people offering criticism (allowed to talk) in the mainstream will still accept this general framework, and then offer a few worries about sustainability and human rights and some potential tweaks to address those issues. Serious deviation I don't think you will find in the mainstream, US and British media at least.

Criticism of this framework is more widespread in environmental and development aid circles, where the China model is not a desirable system for either humans or the environment; that permanent normalized WTO trade relations with China was a mistake on all fronts.

Too much of a change, or moving the discussion on? — unenlightened

Though of course a substantive answer from @I like sushi would be welcome, globalizing the debate is I think a natural step.

Some global capitalism issues, such as wage and environmental arbitrage, have been mentioned, but in discussing poverty in sub-Saharan Africa there are strong consequences of colonialism and neo-colonialism, both of which can be discussed in a framework of capitalism.

As for solutions, what's fortunate turn of events today is that renewable energy can be used independently of the global energy-transport infrastructure (of course you need to be connected enough to get the technology to where you are in the first place, but once there the efficiency of your connection does not determine what is economically viable), and, energy being the base of economic activity, I believe this can be truly revolutionary. The technology doesn't guarantee a political outcome, but my view it's a powerful tool in inclusive community based political action against poverty.

Of course, there are many other issues at play in comparing first world and sub-Saharan African energy usages. Do you find this disparity congruent with your expectations of capitalism as it is, incongruent, or do you find other factors more important?

Agreed, but even when we establish an objective we can still have no way to discriminate between strategic options. — VagabondSpectre

Yes, in terms of strategy, two plans can be equal, and a coin flip can be a convenient method to decide.

For instance, if you build a chess program to find and play the best move it can, if there are two moves that seem equal (which is common both at the start of the game due to being unable to calculate every variation, but also at the end of the game it is common that there are several ways to checkmate in the same amount of moves), it takes little thought to just add some random way to make the move.

There's not much philosophical controversy about some options being equivalent.

Some take the existence of such choices, whether in chess or the choice between shirt colours, as indication that all choices resolve to preference, but as soon as we remember that there's always third choices like "jumping out a 10 story window" it's fairly clear that the mere existence of equivalent decisions doesn't somehow imply all choices are equal (if we've decided we need a shirt in our plan, this is already a very constrained set of actions compared to everything we are motor-capable of doing; indeed, our whole framework of talking about "choices" and "decisions" already excludes the vast majority of options that are available but have no coherent description).

This is a tangent to your inquiry, but criticism of preferentialism may be of related interest to you.

If your interest is in resolving what seem like equivalent choices, there is plenty of subject matter. Such as to what extent preferences can justify decisions, on what basis to treat two options as equivalent compared to the potential of further analysis uncovering a difference, as well as just decision making in general.

However, since you state your purpose as comparing, or building up some elements for the purposes of comparison, central planning vs free market then it's required to step back a little.

Free market proponents may not have the same goal, and so talking about efficiency can serve to distract people into a debate framework that has no resolution as no objective has been specified. In particular, free market proponents state that it's each individual following their own interest (after a vaguely defined participation in a common interest to maintain institutions that enforce property rights) is what's best for the people with property (they may say "best for society" but this always reduces to "people with property").

Most importantly, (beyond a vague duty to collectively enforce property rights) free market proponents generally deny that society can have any collective objective, that all objectives are personal. So, in a free market framework, the question of "what best for the island society" is not a recognized question (there is no society, only individuals). So, what matters is the objectives of the individuals; if individuals was to help save family and friends with their property that's their prerogative, and if they want to "get out ahead" either alone or in covert cooperation with the other best abled people and leave everyone else to die, that would be their prerogative too. In both cases, free market proponents would try to argue that the outcome was the most efficient, either people freely providing charity to help others or then the weak and pathetic getting purged and the strong have survived. It's just evolution. Of course, everything that happens is part of evolution, so if our founding principle is some sort of evolutionary social darwanism, then everything in retrospection is effecient because it is the result of an evolutionary process because it happened.

Consider a roulette wheel. Your objective is to walk out of the casino with as much money as possible. Do you bet your only dollar on red/black, or do you bet it on a number? They have the same ratio of risk to return, and you only have enough money for one initial bet. Which option do you choose, and why? — VagabondSpectre

Again, you are missing the third choice available which is to bet the minimum required to fulfill your scenario and then walk out, precisely because the expected returns of all betting strategies for roulette are equivalently bad; therefore, if the objective is to walk out with as much money as possible then simply walking in and walking out with the money you came in with is the best option. The only thing that would change this is if you are in some situation where a negative expected return is the best option for extraneous reasons: for instance gangsters will kill you in half an hour with the money you have or no money, and the best option available is to try to double your money at roulette; in which case flipping a coin for red or black and placing all your money down I think would be recommended by most mathematicians (you'll still have 25 minutes to try and run if you lose).

Well yes, but aren't I allowed to have underlying intentions? :)

The final sentences of my OP's paragraph frame the understanding I sought to impart:
"Adherence to socialist or capitalist principles, like choosing a strategy for the survival of you or your tribe, is a gamble (a wager that following X principle will tend to lead to individual or overall success). The best we can do is suppose the statistical likelihood of risks and outcomes, which is always limited by our ability to detect and compute unknown variables, especially given potentially vast circumstantial differences between individual cases (which we seldom have the time or interest to investigate thoroughly). — VagabondSpectre

Yes, this is exactly the mistake I am trying to elucidate. You are assuming market adherents have the objective of the survival of their tribe or humanity as a whole. Free market adherents do not have this goal. If they are cornered and forced to accept scientific evidence that ecosystems are in trouble largely due to market driven consumption, they will retreat to either an assumption that these problems will be solved by the market by future innovations (that there is zero value in any mitigating strategy, not because proper risk-analysis indicated going "all in" with presuming future innovations will solve all problems but because their real goal is maintaining property rights and investor value, in other words the status quo) or they will say future generations don't matter (we need not care about them, they are outside our interests by definition and it's just weak morals to care) or they will say things like "life will survive" (evolution, see below) with an honest belief that proposing we destroy civilization and most complex life is simply a suitable outcome for our endeavors (though really they will simultaneously believe all three, and consider the adoption of three incompatible justifications for the same position is strength in numbers and good thinking).

Their appeals might be loose, but they're damned frequent, especially in the neo-conservative from the camps (absolutely everything would be privatized if they had their way). — VagabondSpectre

By "loose" I am referring to the inconsistency of those appeals. In their propaganda, there is a large stress on personal autonomy, because all the institutions that are needed for their vision of society already exist: police, law, corporations, land and other property rights, integrated transportation networks.

However, if they really believed in devolution and decentralization, they would be for a principle of maximum autonomy of local and municipal government, and would totally fine if a local government banned fracking or any other activity on or crossing their land, and had also the power to appropriate anyone's land for whatever purpose having maximum sovereignty over their purview. Neoconservatives would of course be horrified by such an argument based on devolution of responsibility, and indeed whenever local government do anything that would harm corporate interests (protect small business, protect their environment, etc.) neo-conservatives are the first to propose state or federal laws that ban such local exercise of autonomy.

Knowing this, when discussing with a more sophisticated interlocutor they try to remold their arguments in terms of balance and optimization between these principles. However, they cannot say who they are optimizing for (as they only believe in personal objectives, no social objectives), so their arguments make no sense, but they sounded "intellectual" and so the real objects of their dissertations (people who are unsophisticated enough in their thinking to vote against their own interests) are left non-the-wiser.

However, discuss enough and you will discover their only consistent principle is private property; every other principle they will cast aside as soon as it conflicts with private property. So, the reasonable conclusion is that their objective is to maintain property rights, and, in the pursuit of this objective, it is a good play to claim this will benefit society as a whole always, and if defeated in any of these claims simply fall back to property rights being a moral issue and not a social objective issue (which, again, they can't formulate to begin with because only individuals have goals and they don't know the goals of all individuals, except that everyone supports property rights or at least enough of them and if they don't then they are morally incorrect and whatever their interests are should be ignored).

I think with most things it's a mixture of bottom up and top decision making that produces the most robust results, but depending on the actual circumstances, we may be better off centralizing or decentralizing different aspects of our collective and individual decision-making. — VagabondSpectre

Yes, we agree on the framework, but what I hope I've drawn your attention to is that differences in objectives have very deep consequences.

Intellectuals, who think about the future of humanity, like to assume everyone shares the objective of our collective survival, this is not the case. For instance, you will often hear better defenses of neo-conservative by intellectuals that aren't neo-conservatives due to this erroneous belief that they must truly believe their policy objectives are good for everyone and that if parts make no sense from this point of view it must be an honest or cultural mistake. However, it's easy to verify that this "good for everyone" objective simply isn't there. For instance, when neo-conservatives pass laws privatizing public land, even if it's proven by an economist that it's simply not a good business deal for society, this doesn't change their position in anyway and they will try to avoid any such calculation of what the land is worth to society being made in the first place.

Of course this doesn't cover all libertarians; some like the label, don't see a problem with homosexuals or Hispanics and like weed but don't like pointless wars or taxes and want to support the conservative for this tax reason while being able avoid any questions about de facto supporting all the other conservative positions (and so an ideology that has recast taxes as the devil fulfills this roll of being able to ignore all other implications of voting conservative but still "feeling intellectual" and principled about it).

Libertarians that are intellectually curious and concerned about humanity, in my experience, are generally young men persuaded by "useful idiots" that appear on television and seem intellectually respected (as their television appearances are designed to give this affect), and if they stay libertarian it's for tribal group reasons, but they must make so many exceptions to the TV neo-conservative starting point to deal with all the issues (public institutions cannot be maintained by a system of private greed, people voting for their interests which may conflict with elite property interests, there's no reason to allow costs to be externalized, things like child education and firemen do have a public utility and there's no fundamental reason not to expand such public institutions, market failures, corruption etc.) that making all these exceptions really produces a different theory (social democracy of Scandinavia) but they still don't want "that many taxes" so they stick with libertarianism as at least a slowing force to obvious truths.

And, there are some libertarians trying to be truly intellectually consistent with no exceptions, and they end up in places like "anarcho-capitalism" and "seasteading" and view the state (that cannot exist without taxes) as the devil's master; but, I'm not too interested to debate them as they are politically irrelevant and have no theory of government at all (but it's an easy task when the ocassion arises).

Reductio ad Hitlerum. It may help the discussion to consider that term and have a little chuckle at this: — I like sushi

Help the discussion how? Please elaborate.

Trump won for the same reasons Obama did. The system is shit and people want change. But brought the appeal of novelty to the table. — Merkwurdichliebe

It's not quite a fair comparison, considering Obama won the popular vote by a good margin and Trump lost by a good margin.

But I agree that what you point out is how Trump was able to compete, and what Hillary and the DNC completely miscalculated (especially with things like the bank speeches, and other completely avoidable "look at me, I'm establishment" self-branding).

I strongly supported Bernie over Hillary, and while the Democratic establishment clearly favored Clinton it shouldn't be discounted that Hillary received over 3 million more votes (+28% more votes) than Bernie. — Maw

I think the contention is the vote count would have been different without the democratic establishment heavily supporting Hillary (in particular friends in media, counting the super-delegates as already "for Hillary", not renouncing the super delegate system when it came under scrutiny). Also, even if Hillary would have won anyways, I believe the followup contention is the various unfair ruses lowered Bernie supporters and general voters enthusiasm for the democratic party.

That apologists for the Democrat strategy vis-a-vis Bernie (that they don't like him and wanted him to lose so of course they made things unfair) and vis-a-vis Trump (that losing to Trump is somehow not their fault) has no viable arguments -- which I don't think is what you're saying, but that Hillary got more votes without the super delegates doesn't directly relate to what people's issues are with the DNC of 2016.

However, I agree with your view that Democrats is still a better choice than Trump whatever the candidate, and I also agree that it's unfortunate that Trumps words and behaviour and policies is not enough for a strong uniting of the clans.

It has philosophical implications, but none of them were brought up by anybody. — noAxioms

What are the philosophical implications of relativity? For myself, I don't see any other than the question of whether the universe is somehow a priori logically constrained to be as it is or fits some a priori expectations of simplicity, such as causality, cosmological principle and such. Though, mostly I feel the main philosophical implication is simply to refute unfounded philosophical implications of modern physics (i.e. people widely misinterpreting the theories).

I also find it interesting from a history of philosophy perspective, how world views changed from Galilean to Einsteinian relativity. You disagree that there's anything interesting philosophically there?

Of course. There naturally is a political struggle between the right and the left in every Nordic country. But my emphasis is in that there are broad areas that are left alone also. — ssu

I think we're in agreement on substance, but I think the term "left alone" can be misleading to people who have never been to Scandinavia.

I agree that plenty of things happen due to either market dynamics or personal freedoms, but I think, for our American friends here, it's important to point out that the justifications for these market relations and freedoms are not US style libertarian in nature and there is little belief in free market ideology.

What also can sometimes cause confusion is that Scandinavian's have often never been to the US and never interacted with US libertarian or free-market ideology. So, a Scandinavian may easily present free university, lot's of grants to startups, free retraining, state interventions in industry to make failing industries a less disruptive process as well as help capitalize new future growth industries, universal health care, internalizing environmental and social costs of products and services, strong unions, government monopoly on gambling, state funded news, lot's of public transportation, the very existence of Kela, regulations about everything, long maternity and paternity leaves, long vacations, high aggressively progressive taxes, the state just ordering the telecoms to cut their fees in half or double the bandwidth (since technology has improved, so prices or service much change), as all good ways to run a "free market" and view themselves very close to a "free market" country, relative for instance Stalinism (which is of course is pretty true).

In talking with my Finnish friends about US politics, they are often have a hard time making a clear concept of US libertarianism as well as believing that there are many people who hold this view.

But from afar, there are many similar words being used (market, freed, efficiency) that can be easily be misconstrued on each side as agreement. I.e. Scandinavians are generally surprised that there exists a philosophy that views the above mentioned regulations and programs as incompatible with a free market, or that "free market" and just "market" can mean very different things.

Scandinavians, in my experience, generally view welfare state as preferential based, you might prefer lower taxes in exchange for less of the above social programs. But it is generally outside their concept of politics that the government is not responsible to address those social issues with the power and the taxes it has (i.e. that the government should actually leave the poor alone, and interfering is an immoral act that deprives the poor of the character building exercise of becoming not-poor, and whatever terrible lives the poor might live in realizing why and how-not-to-be-poor is an essential part of their heroes journey).

Scandinavians will also obviously agree that taxes can't be 100% and too high taxes can be counter productive that there is an optimum in which the affects on markets such as private investment and attracting talent need to be considered, but likewise state investments in social programs as well as R&D, infrastructure and business may also need funding and contribute to a competitive economy.

So (usually) I find, Scandinavians believe US conservatives and Libertarians motivated by a preference to have lower taxes but then accepting less social welfare policies as a consequence (that it's a trade off other cultures may decide differently) or then that, on occasion, certain taxes may very well be counterproductive. However, Scandinavians are generally unaware that there is a belief that discussion of taxes can be other than efficiency or preference based, that some people view taxes as fundamentally immoral and that no social programs of the kind listed above would lead to a better society for most people and, even if the market didn't that it would be immoral to put in place those social programs via tax -- that if the market failed to deliver which it won't (if it was truly free) but if it didn't for whatever reason, charity would solve those social issues more effectively than government social programs.

Likewise, the very idea of freedom is only partially understood by Scandinavians in the US libertarian sense of non-interference by the state, the other sense in which freedom is understood is the right to participate in democracy and vote for what you believe in, which can include all the social programs above and more.

To make matter more confusing, even when Scandinavians discuss freedom in the libertarian sense, they may come to very different conclusions: "to ensure a free society we must tightly regulate privacy concerns and make sure business, much less the state, does not invade the privacy of citizens online or elsewhere" (leading to much tighter restrictions on what can be done with data, the right to download all one's data, the right to be deleted from a tech companies database, the right not to be tracked in a store etc. without any ability to get around those regulations with TOS), whereas US libertarians discussing the same issue may likely conclude "to ensure a free society we must not-regulate business and whatever TOS a business and a citizen agrees to is a private matter between the business and the user, and any complaining about being unable to avoid the business in question due to a de facto monopoly in their service area must be ignored because the investors and owners of that business are just exercising their freedom to try and make a monopoly -- and them succeeding is just them being awesome, go make your own business!".

I agree.

It is very important to understand the discourse and it's political environment, the context what is referred to when talking about "socialism" or the right and the left. One example is that I assume that many Trump supporters don't know that Angela Merkel is actually a conservative and a right-winger. — ssu

Well, Merkel would be far left in the US political spectrum, she even "let in the Muslims", so I think it's a valid conclusion when looking from the US perspective, that she is a leftist (maybe even to the left of Bernie Sanders) and that there are parties with significant support even farther left than her.

Ideologically, the extreme-right in Europe is only in step with the right in the US on topics like immigration and nationalism and maintaining or strengthening whatever racist institutions are around (which Europe certainly has). As far as I know, there is no right wing party with any significant support that has abolishing healthcare and public education and public transport as a core part of their platform. For instance, the True Finns make it a point to say they aren't against the principle of the welfare state; likewise the Front Nationale in France, just that only Finns/French should be benefiting. Even "corporate friendliness" is not an extreme right-wing thing (as EU corporations generally like the existence of the EU and don't like racism and getting tied to Neo-Nazism, directly or indirectly; so I don't see the extreme-right in Europe viewing the very wealthy or multinational corporations as natural or likely allies; which is to say the right in the EU and US style libertarians have very little ideological overlap, but of course there are neo-Nazis in the US too, which I wouldn't expect any US libertarian to be sympathetic with, though I maybe wrong and there could be some bizarre libertarian-neo-Nazi mix happening; basic point being, comparing the right in the EU and the right in the US is a complicated task).

All that you're saying is that corrupt people will use corrupt means to corrupt. That is true regardless of the means. It's irrelevant who or what they use to corrupt, whether that be physicians, psychologists, priests, police officers, judges, military personnel, or whoever. I get that psychologists, as recognized authorities, wield certain power, but so do all sorts of people. I just don't see that psychologists have that much power over policy in today's society or that they are a particular group that needs to singled out as oppressors. — Hanover

You seem to be either arguing against a strawman, or then that the fact there are other means of oppression as well somehow dilutes the ethical implications of any particular means of oppression.

As for the srawman, I don't see @leo or anyone else trying to single out psychologists as necessarily more oppressive than other means of oppression.

As for some sort of "nothing to see here, plenty of oppressive rolls exist or can exist", if this is your argument, please elaborate. What's it's basis?

I don't think anyone here disagrees that there are other means of oppression available.

Nor is anyone saying, as far as I can tell, that psychologists / psychiatrists form as a group the intention to oppress society.

As I mentioned, the (oppressive) state will try to select for psychologists / psychiatrists who see no problem with state mental health policies, either because they genuinely believe the state is not-oppressive or because they see it as a job that needs to be done (mentally ill do exist; participating in an oppressive system is necessary to help the genuinely mentally ill) or because they simply support an oppressive state and its policies and enforcing compliance they view as simply a good thing (that it's needed to have a "strong country" for instance). And, in terms of moral evaluation, because they are selected for these qualities, moral evaluation becomes more problematic (just as if secret police are selected for brutal and sociopathic qualities, moral evaluation is complicated; "just following orders" becomes a viable defense, that a given agent of oppression is too a victims of oppression is very viable, depends on the particulars).

However, if you are not arguing the above points, we seem to be in agreement that as a position of authority, both in a particular form of deciding how the state deals with particular problematic individuals (either dissidents or "maladapted" to productive life in a oppressive state), as well as a social form in participating in appeals to moral and expert authority of psychiatry to justify oppressive state policies (to for instance label enemies of the state as mentally ill: delusional, maladapted, inherently violent, unproductive due to some mental or moral defect, or or what have you), that they are indeed agents of oppression.

So we agree here, but you seem to want to then imply that because there are other means of oppression, that it is not interesting to discuss any particular roll in an oppressive state.

If this is your point, then we disagree. For people wanting to make their society, as well as contribute to analysis that can help others in other societies, less oppressive, understanding how systems of oppression work, what rolls do what to either maintain the status quo or regress further into despotism, is a prerequisite for effective action.

If it is simply uninteresting to you to carry out such analysis as you don't see a problem where you live, I trust you can agree that it is not therefore uninteresting or useful to all?

If you don't quite see what roll psychiatrists / psychologists can play in oppression, though agree in the abstract that they may play a roll, that is one of the main subject of debate here, and I can offer more examples if your skepticism is on the mechanisms that maybe employed through the practice psychology / psychiatry to enforce compliance to government policy.

If you view all the arguments presented as implicitly against the US system, then it's best to qualify your arguments as "perhaps elsewhere, but not in the US of A". If we are in agreement in principle, then it is a constructive extension of the debate to consider the example of the US: in what ways democracy maybe ineffective and to what extent that could impact the practice of psychology / psychiatry as well as it's public perception.

However, if it is only to circle back to an argument that no one could be responsible anyways, or that contributions of psychiatry and psychology to oppressive mechanisms would be insignificant anyways, then we should first discuss these principles.

I'm in favor of deceit in all its multitude of forms, whether it be to obtain undeserved money, a better job, or the fleeting pleasure of a woman. — Hanover

How are you sure others haven't deceived you into having such a belief (i.e. that the philosophy "deception in all it's forms is good" is unfounded, but deception was used to lead you to believe it true), and, if so, would you view such deception as bad if it was?

The strategic dilemma emerges precisely because we have two different strategies but we don't know which one is optimal. — VagabondSpectre

Optimal for what purpose? Optimization requires a specific objective. So, the optimum strategy will depend on what the objective is. If you do not adequately specify the objective, then the term optimum is not applicable. Your example simply shows why optimization is tied to objective, there is no "optimum in a vacuum".

It's like if I hand you a chair and I say "is this optimum? if not, optimize if for me", you cannot achieve any optimization without knowing (or then speculating) as to my objective with the chair.

If the community is trying to ensure survival of the community as a whole, and so weights more favorably a plan that has a higher probability of "everyone surviving".

If you're an individual who wants the best shot at staying alive, then you probably want the big boat. If you're someone who wants to ensure the continuation of the society and culture, then you want the small boats. Most people probably don't know which they would actually choose. — VagabondSpectre

I agree. What is seen as optimum will be determined by what people's objectives are.

For instance, if the sailors just want to maximize their own survival they may decide the optimum strategy is to build an optimum sized boat for themselves in secret (while pretending to do whatever society decided) and just cast off in the night. Obviously, if they wanted to maximize the survival of others they would never consider that plan (unless, they decide it's become the only plan that will potentially save anyone).

The purpose of this thread was to put one of these strategic coin-flips front and center, the strategic dilemma I chose was only meant to facilitate the example (in hindsight, I focused too much on free markets vs central planning). — VagabondSpectre

You were pretty clear your purpose was to discuss the scenario as an analogy of a free market principle vs central planning principle.

If you want to explore the factors you discuss in your latest post, I have zero qualms. It is an interesting situation, and more followup questions could be asked such as "small boats will save at least 5% of people with 95% chance, but the large boat will save everyone with 70% probability". Even someone that values survival of the culture more may have a cutoff point.

However, the organizational principles you are discussing are not free market vs central planning, but decentralization vs centralization in terms of engineering and devolution of responsibility vs hierarchical management in terms of organizational principle.

As other posters have noted, these principles cannot be resolved in the abstract. For instance, already an engineering example was mentioned of rail building; if you want to make a rail line you can't divide your workforce up into small groups who can all design their mile track as they want and built it where they want; there maybe some innovation in this scenario but zero return on investment in this rail line.

An example of devolution vs hierarchy, is that in a jungle war, devolving command to small platoons that can take their own initiative, do things in their own way and often self-organize with spotty coordination with other platoons and the generals hut, can be optimum; but small groups with spotty coordination wandering around an aircraft carrier is probably not what the captain will choose.

Free market proponents only loosely appeal to devolution and decentralization as supporting principles. Although they certainly don't like centralized micro-management of bureaucratic central planning, they don't mind centralization of production and strict command hierarchies used in large corporations (if the shoe fits). If a corporation succeeds pushing the limits of centralization and hierarchy, then obviously it was a good strategy in this case. Likewise, even for government, when trade requires central bureaucracy and planning (laws, standards, finding pirates, trade treaties and international trade organizations like the WTO) free market proponents are generally supportive (of course, any given law, standard or treaty, they may object to on other grounds), and if local structures attempt to assert local control (use wherever devolution of power they have, or try to get more for the purpose) in a way that would obstruct production of good or trade (for instance, banning fracking on the land overseen by this local political body), then free market proponents are usually supportive of using hierarchy to stop application of devolution of responsibility.

However, to have an analogue of a market economy, there must be private property and actors exchanging goods and services; to have a "free market economy" (as usually understood by self-identified free-market proponents, at least in the US), there is usually the principle that failing to compete and gain wealth should not be rewarded by other people's taxes, directly nor through programs like education and healthcare (or there are no taxes to begin with in some schemes), and there is usually a heavy dose of "deregulation" (but I have never seen a formulation of deregulation that does not reduce to "I want to get rid of rules I don't like ... but hold on, don't get rid of the rules I do like!"; but I'd be interested to meet one).

The point of my third strategy is to point out you can have a free market in your scenario: everyone relying on their own wealth and trading and selling to achieve whatever strategy they personally think is best for themselves. If you agree it's absurd to rely on a free market economy to solve the problem in your scenario, to the point it won't even occur to most people, I agree.

I'll concede the tautology. Oppressive governments will be oppressive. I just don't see how that translates into oppressive governments being more likely to use psychologists than they will plumbers to get what they want. Why are you targeting psychologists as the masterminds for the oppressive governments? If you think, for example, that today's America is manipulated by the government (and some surely do), that doesn't mean that this manipulation was orchestrated by a team of dark psychologists. What it means is that the people in power have manipulated people by the rhetoric and whatnot. They've not had their opposition institutionalized into psychiatric hospitals and declared crazy. — Hanover

Yes, this is my central contention, that psychiatry/psychology is a better tool of oppression than plumbing, that there will be more attention paid to who gets to be a psychiatry/psychologists (that their beliefs are compatible with state policy) than who gets to be a plumber. Plumbers are a group I would argue most oppressive states categorize as general population needing to be generally controlled.

For instance, using pharmacology to make bad working conditions more tolerable, I would argue is a mechanism of oppression in an oppressive state; part of the control system. From the perspective of psychiatrists implementing this policy, people feel better at work, they feel they've "done good". This is not to pass moral judgement, as they may not have any information (thanks to control of media) to criticize what they are doing; but from the outside analyzing such a situation we can very much doubt if they are really "doing good".

That view of a democracy is Utopian. There is not any such democracy nor could there be. It's an ideal you've posited. — Hanover

I outline a "cause / effect" relationship. If the conditions I present exist, then I argue my expectations would follow. I do not say "we can achieve perfect democracy, and only in a perfect democracy will psychology and psychiatry be non-oppressive". In other words, I am presenting the features of democracy that I feel mitigate the problem. The more we approach such conditions, the more the problem diminishes.

This complaint is not a universal objection, having no more to do with psychology than any other science, religion, political theory, or common mythology. Bad people use recognized authorities to persuade others to their view. There's no reason to target psychology in this attack over any other group of alleged experts or authorities. — Hanover

I am not targeting "only psychologists", I even mention police and soldiers who also maintain the power structure. In an oppressive society, some people are the oppressors, some the agents of oppression (how else does the system maintain itself?), and some the oppressed.

But it's best viewed as a spectrum, with some rolls very clearly the "oppressor" (dictator, top brass of secret police, and the like), some rolls are clearly agents of oppression (guy who rounds people up for torture), and some rolls are clearly the oppressed (slaves, poor farmer, factory workers); however, many rolls can be in various grey areas, perhaps contributing to oppression one day and undermining it a bit the next (if the activity is not particularly dangerous, the state cannot devote much energy to optimizing it's oppressive effect; i.e. an oppressive state will devote a lot more energy to controlling journalists and micro-managing what they say than to controlling how a plumber goes about his or her day).

My general framework here is that not all jobs are equal in an oppressive society, everyone just "trying to get by"; that, for instance, the torturer or executioner is just "doing a job". There is a moral dimension to what one does in society; now, passing moral judgement requires a lot more information than simply what nominal roll one is doing (and considering the state will select people for oppressive rolls that don't see their roll as oppressive but just a "job that needs doing" just like farming or anything) it makes moral evaluation even more difficult. However, though it's an important element to the discussion (since we must, at least, evaluate our own roll and decision), my main interest here is to argue that psychology/psychiatry is a particularly dangerous tool of oppression (like the police and soldiers are a particularly dangerous tool of oppression; why there was a movement against standing armies during the emergence of modern democracies).

I also mention, that most improvements to conditions in society is not by defeating the agents of oppression but by convincing enough of them to join the cause of justice and democracy of the day. The purpose of such analysis is that anyone wanting more justice and more democracy is more effective if they understand better the current structure of society what different rolls do in relation to existing oppressive features; how to actually go about changing things is another debate.

We don't have to live in a Utopian state in order to allow psychologists (or anyone for that matter) to provide input into the democratic process. Psychologists are but one voice among many, and their power is checked by the multitude of other interests in society. — Hanover

Did I say anything remotely like this: that only in a utopian state can psychologists (or anyone have input) into the democratic process?

Psychologists are but one voice among many, and their power is checked by the multitude of other interests in society. — Hanover

Yes, we agree. If democracy is working effectively everyone can have a voice; both psychologists/psychiatrists can voice their ethical concerns about mental health policy, as well as anyone else. I go to some lengths to explain why the danger of mental health workers acting as enforcement of oppressive state policies is significantly less dangerous in a an effective democracy.

The questions then boils down to what is effective democracy. I think it's clear most posters here are only thinking about the US; however, I have written here mostly about principles (as well as noting a global perspective where there are places like China with "re-education" camps right now).

If one is not convinced one is living in an effective democracy, then my argument is psychology/psychiatry play an important roll (are a powerful tool) in achieving a wide range of state policy objectives; both in relation to passifying individuals who may otherwise become politically active, a roll in punishing people who become politically active, as well as a roll in forming public discourse (i.e. justifying the policies to begin with, by appeals to "expertise").

Now, as for the US, the question of whether the US is an effective democracy where the power of powerful individuals or groups, like psychiatry or pharmacology interests (not to say they are the "most powerful"), is actually checked by the multitude of other interests, is another debate, one which I am sure is suitable for thrphilosophyforum.

My point here, is that all the issues discussed in this thread very much depend on one's opinion of the government in question. If one finds the government sufficiently just and fair, then it's reasonable to trust that the rules and norms being expressed through psychology/psychiatry ("helping people adapt to society") are just and fair. If one feels one's government is not sufficiently just and fair, then one should expect such a government to use the tools of psychology/psychiatry and mental health sphere to maintain the power relations, where ever possible.

The point is that the psychologists themselves, who you are suggesting are drunk with power to control society. — Hanover

No, this is not my point. No where did I say psychologists are drunk with power to control society. What I say was that an oppressive government is going to have oppressive policy objectives and will train for and select for psychologists and psychiatrists that are effective at achieving those objectives, just as with the police and military (which doesn't imply "all police are bad" or "the science of criminology doesn't exist" or that the only solution is a "utopia, and until we have utopia we must get rid of police, soldiers or psychologists").

The findings of psychologists resulted in turning the system into one more retributive than rehabilitative and therefore reduced their own influence. — Hanover

Again, no where did I say it was psychologists dictating justice system policy. You seemed to present the thesis that there was a link between abandoning the policy of relying heavily on mental health diagnosis in dealing with and "rehabilitating" criminals (that turned out to be based a lot of unrepeatable "science") and the next policy to increase punishment, decrease all methods of rehabilitation, and increase the prison population. The implication seemed to be that "criticism" of psychology/psychiatry roll in the justice system at that time led to a worse system.

My rebuttal is that, first of all, there is no logical link between these events; presented as you did, your argument is a false dichotomy. Whatever problems in the academic literature (what was widely considered fact ... but turns out it wasn't) as well as in the structure of mental health for prisoners could have been solved, improving mental health services for inmates, while employing all sorts of other policy changes that increase rehabilitation rates, as well as policy changes that lower the prison population (i.e. abandoning the "war on drugs").

My secondary point, tangentially related to the main issues of the debate, is that I view a direct link between the civil rights movement, the dissident scientists challenging the status quo of psychiatry (it was certainly not the psychology/psychiatry community as a whole that suddenly abandoned pseudo-scientific theories justifying segregation and other social injustices), and a direct link with features of American society that are part of what I would call effective democracy (freedom of speech, independent press, etc.). However, the struggle against oppression is ongoing; today, I would say a new problem has arisen, in particular in pharmacology, where it is possible to influence the scientific review process (i.e. vast webs of conflicts of interest, revolving door, captured regulators) and also influence society's view of what mental health is and what needs treatment. For instance, in the 70s, a lot of the dissident scientists challenging the status quo could perform very cheap experiments (for instance, walking into an asylum and seeing what happens, is a cheap experiment to do); today, a lot of the studies are extremely expensive to repeat, and so a scientist without conflicts of interest that wants to do repeat studies needs government funding (in an effective democracy, I would expect the government to be like "yes, we definitely want to give a lot of money to those guys trying to keep everything honest and on really firm observational and statistical grounds"; in an oppressive / corrupt system, the government may not like these kinds of people, and may not promote them to positions of influence from which they can direct funding for verification purposes as well as cry foul if they see systemic weaknesses in the process of both validation and implementation of regulation and policy).

In the last sentence lies the crucial point: It's not a path to socialist tyranny. The welfare programs aren't a stepping stone to something larger. The Nordic model starts from the basic understanding that government programs are paid by tax revenue and because it's the private sector's job to create this tax revenue, the private sector and the capitalist system is basically left alone. — ssu

Though we are in fairly good agreement, it would be misleading to say Scandinavia leaves private sector alone in the sense of deregulation. The government doesn't own (much) of the private sector, yes, but everything is very much regulated, so I wouldn't say it "leaves it alone".

True socialism (in my view) starts from the idea that government can and indeed it is it's role to own the industries and hence make the revenues required by itself. — ssu

I don't think the argument of what "the true definition" of something is, is productive. Words are conventions, conventions can change as well as be specified further by other language in a given context.

Marxist socialism essential feature is for the means of production to be owned by the workers; Marx does not specify much how this would be organized or accomplished. However, the world socialism and socialist both pre-date Marx as well as have evolved since. I would say it's not very historically accurate to equate socialism with Marxism.

Very few people today I would guess are using socialism to refer to all industries run by the state, or even just enough industries run by the state to generate the revenue the state needs. For instance, lot's of countries own industries and generate all or most of their revenue with them; some of them consider themselves and are considered to be socialist, some not.

I would argue that the broad usage of socialism in the US today is to refer to social programs; to which the conservatives would cry "that's socialism!", so after trying and failing to educate on the difference of social democracy and social programs and whatever "socialism" is loaded with, Bernie Sanders decided to just own the term, so now it's evolving to mean what Sanders is referring to (in many, certainly not all contexts), which we agree is basically the Scandinavian style social programs.

The best role for The People is to keep the political and corporate feet to the fire -- as the expression goes. In the meantime, The People should start walking, bicycling, and using mass transit. — Bitter Crank

I like your points, but I would change the above to "Advocate for more and use whatever effective walking, bicycling and mass transit systems are available". That trying to do "everything ecologically" is simply impractical (short from building yert and living in isolation), was a central grievance of the OP.

The United States have used race to oppress people. Portugal more specifically King Leopold II used religion (in addition to race) to oppress. — Anaxagoras

And you would say this of all first world nations?

That remains to be seen. I never experienced what effective democracy looks like, and considering that any political system that stems from a human is flawed so I look at your worldview with much skepticism. — Anaxagoras

Please revisit my points. I do not say an effective democracy is without flaws and humans would be perfect within it; I say democracy can solve the issue of dangerous state organs, as with the police and military.

The problem with your view is that you lack understanding to the nature of various psychological illnesses and conditions. Your so-called explanation does not address the generations of psychological/physiological disorders and diseases people of have contracted, nor does it explain how the removal of the systems of oppression will prevent future mental distress and the necessary removal of psychiatrists/psychologists. — Anaxagoras

This is not my view at all. I do not say removing oppression would remove mental illness, nor that removing psychiatrists/psychologists would remove oppression. Where do you get that from?

I also say that even in an oppressive system, successes could be pointed to of effective mental health treatment.

I do not deny mental health is a thing and people can be mentally ill, my point is that under an oppressive state, dissidents, mentally healthy people subject to intolerable conditions (i.e. the oppressed), and the mentally ill, are all grouped together and the state does not employ (or tolerate the employment of such people by others) people interested in distinguishing these categories.

How does effective democracy answer for ADHD, Down Syndrome, Anti-Social Personality Disorders (which research has indicated that some children have experienced behaviors associated with it)? — Anaxagoras

Again, this is not my position and I don't see which of my statements would lead you to believe I am advocating that under an effective democracy all mental illness would disappear.

However, the difference with a oppressive state is that an effective democracy would consider and debate all aspects of these issues and try to tease out ethical nuances as well as allow different opinions from both professionals and laypersons to be voiced as to the causes due to environment and social organization that better government policy can do something about.

A fully totalitarian oppressive state will not allow for any discussion that challenges state policy, much less have people vote on anything, and will likely (being oppressive) have terrible conditions contributing immensely to genuine mental health issues as well as, mentioned above, group all dissidents and "disruptive elements" into the same mentally ill category. If treatments reduce disruption then they are successful and there is good empirical evidence that the "treatments work".

Of course, there's a large spectrum between complete totalitarianism and what I call an effective democracy, and a mix of democratic elements and oppressive elements can exist in which case things can be more complicated than the above examples.

You, me, Dr. Israelstam, and the head psychiatrist at UW. — Noah Te Stroete

Yes, I am interested in what principles, if any, would be true in all circumstances.

I am not so interested in morally evaluating you, Dr. Israelstam, or the head psychiatrist at UW. As I mention in a post above, morally evaluating the actions of specific individuals is a very lengthy task.

I am of course interested in evaluating my own actions; though I would agree I am highly unlikely to single handedly change the world and vanquish all the oppressors out there, I believe I am able to make a contribution to a community that may, some day, if not eliminate, at least significantly reduce oppressive circumstances in the world.

I’m talking about individuals. You’re talking about generalities. — Noah Te Stroete

Which individuals? Please point them out.

[Edit] to make my point perfectly clear: are you referring to individuals such as you and me specifically, or individuals in the general sense?

You can say that about any powerful first world society. — Anaxagoras

How so?

Which is what I've done during my residency yet according to you, psychiatrists/psychologists are agents of oppression. — Anaxagoras

Please read my comments, I am pretty clear that my view is psychiatrists/psychologists are agents of oppression in an oppressive state, and that my view is effective democracy solves the problems of the dangers of behavioral sciences used to manipulate society; just as effective democracy solves the problem of the dangers of police and military institutions.

If you want to argue no states on earth are oppressive that would be another debate; if true (that there are no oppressive states) then my points here would be hypothetical. If you want to argue your particular government is not oppressive, that would be another debate. Both debates would be relevant, but it is not the issue I am addressing here.

I am not arguing a just society should not have police or soldiers or psychiatrists/psychologists, and that these would not be agents of justice in a just society.

pray tell what system do you refer? — Anaxagoras

My arguments are on the level of principle. If we agreed in principle then it would make sense to start discussing particulars. The principle I am arguing in the instance you cite is "even in a system that does more harm than good, an individual psychiatrist can be doing more good than harm". I'm not referring to a particular system.

It seems like you think you can have an impact on societal affairs. If so, that sounds an awful lot like delusions of grandeur. — Noah Te Stroete

Really? That's what you understood from my comments.

I say "But even if your statement is true for you and for me [that we cannot change the world at all], I am largely an adherent to stoic formulation of ethics where the intention and "giving a good ol' try" is what matters." And you deduce I have delusions of grandeur?

State oppression? Welcome to the world as it’s been since the formation of communities. No one will ever change that. — Noah Te Stroete

Democracy doesn't exist? The transatlantic slave trade is still humming along? Segregation never ended? Or are none of these things changes to the oppressive nature of all human communities?

Now, if you live in Saudi Arabia, then it does very well need drastic changes. Just don’t stick your neck out too far lest your head get cut off. — Noah Te Stroete

So trying to make the world a better place would be reasonable in Saudi Arabia in your view, as long as you don't get caught? But elsewhere your recommendation is to just feel as good as you can about the world and let it evolve as it wont to do? Or are you also recommending that to people in Saudi Arabia, just pointing out they got a bad lot?

Do you live in the United States? Is this an oppressive society? It certainly is if you are a young black man living in poverty, for example. — Noah Te Stroete

This is another issue, certainly warranting debate. However, in this discussion I'm only interested in establishing that an oppressive state will naturally use mental health sciences as a tool to further oppression. And evaluating whether a state is oppressive or not is outside the domain of psychiatry.

That we should expect to find psychiatrists, on the whole, agents of and beneficiaries of state oppression, rather than other jobs like agriculture and factory work where we would expect to find the oppressed (assuming an oppressive state, of course). Now to what extent is each psychiatrists personally morally responsible and to what extent "just plodding along and following orders" is again another debate.

So, yes, I decided that it is best not to rock the boat too much because I was a target of the authorities at one time. I decided that I cannot change the world. Most psychiatrists are no different, and the good ones want to help people out of compassion. I decided I want to feel better as the world is. I suggest you give up your idealism and just let society evolve as it is wont to do. — Noah Te Stroete

To answer your first question, I don't live in the US; I moved to a country (from a country other than the US) where I have even less fear of "rocking the boat" and becoming "a target of the authorities" then from whence I came.

I decided that I cannot change the world. — Noah Te Stroete

Not even a little?

But even if your statement is true for you and for me, I am largely an adherent to stoic formulation of ethics where the intention and "giving a good ol' try" is what matters.

Most psychiatrists are no different, and the good ones want to help people out of compassion. — Noah Te Stroete

Because most people are like you? Or because psychiatrists are selected based on having a similar outlook? Though, at no point did I morally condemn any psychiatrist; for me it's largely irrelevant part of the debate. Just like condemning individual police or soldiers for their roll in state oppression. However, there are exceptions to this general rule, but simply being in the category is not such an exception in my view; more particulars would be needed about what someone knows, what actions were participated in, opportunity to do otherwise, degree of coercion etc. I have pointed out twice now that an individual psychiatrist can still be doing more good than harm even in a system that does more harm than good.

I decided I want to feel better as the world is. I suggest you give up your idealism and just let society evolve as it is wont to do. — Noah Te Stroete

Society's evolution is not independent of my actions, so what you say is simply not logically coherent: it is not an exterior system I can choose to leave alone. If I choose to maintain the status quo, I would be contributing to that evolution not letting it "evolve as it is wont to do".

Boethius gets the Godwin Prize for being the first in the discussion to play the Nazi card. Yet another confirmation of Godwin's Law. — andrewk

Great attempt at deflection, but in this conversation your point isn't even factually correct. I cited Leo's mention of Nazism and explained why it had good points that merited a response. The entire purpose of my post was to recast what I viewed as salient philosophical points into less extreme circumstances.

How could I be first, if I'm citing someone else and trying to explain the philosophical merits of their comment?

Perhaps it should be a rule that any thread gets automatically closed after one hundred posts, to head off the inevitable Nazi comparisons. — andrewk

No one here is calling anyone else a Nazi, so you're not even using Godwin's law correctly to begin with. Furthermore, any academic course of medical ethics will bring up the Nazi's, but you seem to think it's irrelevant, is my understanding of your comment correct? Should we just ignore this period in history or at least cut off any attempt to learn from the evils and mistakes committed at 100 posts?

Is it the job of psychiatrists to change society into a more just one? — Noah Te Stroete

At least as much as anyone else.

Or is it there job to help individuals who are struggling to feel better? — Noah Te Stroete

This is one of the central issues. To what extent is "feeling bad" a mental health issue, and to what extent it is a good reaction to bad circumstances (that can be changed through political action). In what circumstances is government intervention in how people "feel" about society, morally justifiable, to what extent it a tool of oppression.

Furthermore, there are good psychiatrists and bad psychiatrists. When I was at the UW psych ward, I was told by the head psychiatrist that he couldn’t change the world, but he could help me feel better. In my opinion, he was a good psychiatrist.

Dr. Israelstam of Madison, Wisconsin, told me after I told him that I was suicidal that he hoped he’d never see me again after he suggested that I might want to try heroin. He ended up going to prison on child pornography charges. He was a bad psychiatrist. — Noah Te Stroete

In my responses, I pointed out that even in a oppressive system, a given psychiatrist could be helping more than harming. The general issues here are not reducible to "bad psychiatrists and good ones", and so the only ethical issue is "bad apples" that are progressively being removed with best practices discovered over time.

I also point out that I believe mental health does exist and a valid science can exist addressing it, and the practice of psychiatry today, under most if not all systems in the world, can point to successes.

But pointing to some successes, this does not establish that more good than harm is taking place, neither in a given system nor if we consider psychiatrists as a global community.

My intention here is not to prove this is the case, and to what degree, but to discuss the relevant principles.

To offer a simplification that can synthesize my points so far and where I am going with them, mental health professionals become the agents of state oppression in an oppressive state, simply because an oppressive state will set things up to achieve it's oppressive policies. So, mental health becomes in the same category as the police and military. Of course, policemen and soldiers of an oppressive state can too point to instances where they are "helping people", but ultimately they are enforcing oppressive control that does more harm than good. The roll of psychology and psychiatrists is less obvious in the maintenance of control but, I would argue today is actually more effective. Keep in mind that an oppressive state uses an excess of propaganda and educates people from a young age with that propaganda, and so if and when an individual starts to "feel something is wrong" they have not been provided the opportunity to study the history of philosophy and so cannot immediately articulate "why they feel things are wrong". In an oppressive state, mental health practitioners main function in the state system is to intervene in this process of become socially conscious and convince the would-be-political-active person that they have a mental health issue, that they are not adapted to society and they will feel better if they are fixed and able to adapt. Adaptability of presupposes it is a worthwhile objective to adapt to society as it is. The claim psychiatry is helping people more than harming them, is thus reducible to the claim that society is justly organized, and so people that "don't feel good" have a mental health issue and they should be convinced, and in some cases forced, to adapt to government mandated expectations of behaviour. If society is not justly organized but oppressive, then people who "don't feel good" are having, most of the time, a healthy reaction to intolerable social conditions. Now, what is "a just organization of society" is of course the central question, one discussed on this forum tirelessly, but if my argument follows, the point is that psychiatry cannot refer to a scientific standard to justify it's roll in society.

Now, if all this is established, I of course don't expect many psychiatrists in an oppressive system to care or do anything; they are selected for training and elevated to positions of authority precisely because they either agree with the social engineering program of the state or don't view it as their business to care or comment on. The purpose of my argument is first to simply to establish the truth of what basis psychiatry can be be said to doing more good than bad, and, a second less important point, that understanding the roll of psychiatry and psychology in state oppression is essential to resisting it, just as understanding the roll of police and the military are prerequisites to resisting oppressive power. Now, in such a struggle against oppression, the agents of oppression are both an obstacle and a potential ally; most large political changes occur when the agents of the state abandon state propaganda and side with the resistance.

Of course, in an effective democratic society where everyone has equal say and neither the political process nor social organization in general cannot be argued to be lowering the say or marginalizing any would-be-oppressed group, there is no need for "resistance" but simply participating in the political process if one has concerns about government mental health policies.

Now, the practice of psychiatry in the West today is not as extreme as in Nazism, but there are parallels.
— boethius

This is all I need to know.... — Anaxagoras

Since you're continuing to participate, I'll assume you're serious about your proposed moral standard of "not as extreme as the Nazi's".

Please educate me, is this a mainstream view in psychiatry that the moral standard to clear is Nazism? Are there papers, from which you derive the content of your expertise, that explain how this ethical standard follows from sound scientific principles in understanding reality and how it is to be applied in psychiatry practice?

To be clear, the point of my comments is to point out that US libertarian or conservative proponents can't in one context claim Scandinavia is an example of capitalism succeeding, and in another context argue that things like universal health care, free university, strong social net, large and powerful unions, that are features of Scandinavian government, are a path to socialist tyranny.

I wanted to be clear we agree on that before continuing the discussion, as if people disagree, I'd be interested to hear how that works.

If we do agree, then I'd move on to pointing out the word "socialism" also has many different meanings depending on context as does capitalism. With many definitions, Scandinavia has strong socialist component. Even in the Marxist sense: strong unions that de facto share in the ownership of the means of production, perhaps not equally but more than zero, government regulation of industry which is also de facto voter, whom are mostly workers, share of ownership of the means of production. In the sense that socialism is used to refer to strong social safety nets, again a strong socialist component with this definition. In the sense socialism is used to represent the idea that government should advance the "public interest" over "private interests, based on a moral system of property rights defined by those interests", again a strong component of this definition of socialism in Scandinavia.

Likewise, if socialism is used to mean tyrannical micro management by a centralized bureaucracy with zero democratic oversight, then Scandinavia has little of this socialism. If socialism is used to mean a complete absence of a market economy, this also doesn't describe Scandinavia.

These programs are completely compatible with capitalism as it is understood by US conservatives?
— boethius

Actually yes. — ssu

This is your starting point ...

And your end point is:

Hence the argument has to be taken to a country that actually Americans don't know in order to create this idea that the Bernie type socialism is bad and that social welfare programs are incompatible with an economy based on free market capitalism. Yes, Europe is doomed. — ssu

So ... in other words, Scandinavian social programs are incompatible with US conservatives understanding of the term capitalism (due to propaganda? if so, I agree) and are an example of socialism (from their point of view)?

And furthermore, what you call "Bernie type socialism" is actually correctly labeled capitalism?

I don't see how your argument functions.

You place a tremendous amount of responsibility on the mental health community for the enforcement of community values and propaganda on the citizens. — Hanover

No and yes.

No, I avoided using the term "community values", because an oppressive state generally doesn't reflect "community values. I'm sure you're aware that every oppressive and/or totalitarian state claims to be representing "community values".

If community values are indeed reflected in an effective democratic system where no one is disenfranchised and everyone has equal say and political dialogue is open without parties with disproportional external or internal manipulative or obstructionist force, then I would expect mental health professionals to be in constructive dialogue with society to manage the issues outlined above without any fear of career repercussions of criticizing current policies as potentially unethical.

Yes, if mental health professionals are engaged in creating and/or enforcing state propaganda, directly or through all sorts of subtle ways their profession in organized, I place a tremendous amount of moral responsibility on them for their participation.

Mengele was a physician I suppose, but I can't blame medical science for the horrible experiments on human beings, often children, that the Nazis performed. — Hanover

This is exactly my point. There was no incompatibility between the Nazi value system and the science of mental or physical health. Being an expert in mental health therefore is not grounds to argue "we're helping more people than we're harming: trust me, I'm an expert"; Nazi scientists who participated could successfully argue they were top experts in their field. Nazi scientific expertise has no relation to the moral argument of what purpose it served in Nazi society. The point of this is to show that more evidence than "10 years of academic study in psychiatry" is required to argue the function of psychiatry in a given society is doing more good than harm.

As another historical fact (which is why I cited that quote of you above) the 1970s marked a departure from using psychiatric diagnosis and psychiatric treatment on inmates, leading to a far more punitive approach to corrections than previously. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3762476/ — Hanover

This is deflection without any relation to the points I bring up.

First, it's a false dichotomy, "punitive" measures, longer sentences, and worse conditions for inmates known to damage mental health, isn't the only alternative to relying on over diagnosis of the terrible psychiatric framework of the 70s. If you are accepting the premise that the US justice system is oppressive, then and now (something I'm not arguing here, but what principles would apply if it was; so substitute China or Saudi Arabia or then if no oppressive state exists, imagine one hypothetical), then government deciding to make it even more oppressive isn't a good argument for a previous "less bad" oppressive system.

Second, the "departure from using psychiatric diagnosis and psychiatric treatment on inmates" was precisely because the profession entered the exact moral-political crisis that people in this thread are referring to. The state was happy when psychiatry as a whole would diagnose anyone making problems for the state as "mentally ill"; whether it be "all the blacks" are prone to more violence (especially in the sight of beautiful white women) and segregation is scientifically sound, that marijuana leads to mania and should be illegal, why homosexuality is a deviance and thus a crime and a disease, or to just paint any disruptive political behavior as mental illness whenever the need arises; it's a convenient synergy where the state doesn't even have to pretend there's an ethical argument for any given policy and psychiatrists and pharmacology producers make bank and can power-trip without state interfering with nuanced ethical questions: the opposition are all mentally ill! and questioning the profession is the worst mental illness of all (they are "experts in reality" after all, they should therefore know their profession is good in reality).

The policy change from relying on diagnosis and psychiatric treatment of criminals was not because "we might be criticized for enforcing compliance, let's err on the side of safety" but because the discipline couldn't withstand scientific scrutiny. Experts couldn't come to the same diagnosis for the same people, and, famously, a healthy scientists pretending to be "a bit weird" was misdiagnosed and their explanation that it's an experiment to test accuracy of mental diagnosis was itself categorized as even worse mental illness (the scientist couldn't escape, no one knew where he was, and he had to pretend to accept the prescribed "reality" and pretend to get better in order to eventually get released and publish his findings).

At the heart of the problem, there was no scientific basis for evaluating states of mind, but all diagnosis was based on the psychiatrist imagining the state of mind of the patient.

So I don't see what you're suggesting, that it was some voluntary shift of a system that "worked" (to avoid uncomfortable but ultimately unfounded criticism?) to the sad only alternative of increasing punishment, decreasing all forms of rehabilitation (which, again, is a false equivalence with psychiatry and mental health to begin with), and increasing the prison population as a whole?

... Or, was increasing the prison population and increasing punishments a response from embattled institutions to turn the oppressive nobs up where they could on the black community, since the moral justification of the time honored tradition of segregation was falling apart?

But whatever your answer, I don't see the link with the topic at hand.

As for psychiatry, the whole crisis in the 70s emerged precisely because American society was resisting oppression and psychiatry was correctly identified as an integral part of justifying and enforcing those oppressive policies (segregation, homosexuality, female opportunity-gap and "female hysteria", etc.), so dissident scientists set out to test these claims using the scientific method rather than just "some expert said so". In some cases, best practices, under scientific scrutiny, turned out to be literally torture to maintain a disincentive for bad behaviour. In other-words, the entire "science of mind" was under the mass psychosis of believing they could imagine correctly what other people thought and perceived and could predict correctly how their interventions corrected the thoughts and perceptions, and a further mass-psychosis of believing that actual science, starting with basic scientific principles, could and did support this belief. There may have been a period that followed the crisis of more caution, more discussion of the difficult ethical and political questions, but I would say that period has ended since a while now: there's too much money to be had in making society believe it's normal to be mentally ill, which is more or less the point we're at. There's an even larger portion of money to be had making society believe false things are true. Everyone involved has been selected for efficiency in attaining these goals, and benign parts of the profession are selected based on not asking uncomfortable questions. The danger to society, as I mentioned, is mentally healthy people believing that poor performance in adverse conditions are a "you problem" and not a "how society is organized problem" and that luckily you can be fixes! or at least feel less bad about being broken; the other danger is a large portion of people believing total nonsense is fact.

Scandinavian countries aren't socialist, they are capitalist. Period. — ssu

So when conservatives in the US characterize universal health care, free education, and other state run social programs as "socialism", this is just propaganda? These programs are completely compatible with capitalism as it is understood by US conservatives?

My question is: "Is the modern day interpretation of Special Relativity correct?" — MrCypress

Yes. The predictions of special and general relativity come true at the scale of a space ship that goes anywhere in the universe other than inside a black whole (...in which, if a prediction goes wrong, conveniently for relativity the occupants can't come back and tell us about it), according to every experiment we have so far.

If you want to know how special and general relativity works and the experimental evidence for them, there's plenty of resources.

What might be more suitable for a philosophy forum is a short discussion of what general principles are preserved in Einsteinium relativity from Galilean relativity and which change, and sort of the general epistemological questions we can discuss.

In Galilean relativity, velocities commute. If you through anything, a ball or light particles/waves, from a moving train, what you through will move at the velocity of the train plus how hard you threw it. This is how things behave in our everyday experiences. This simple rule as developed further by Newton, leads to what's called universal time. What universal time means is that all observers will be able to agree on when two events happen simultaneously (they may need to wait for signals, but everyone can work out and will agree that two events A and B happened simultaneously or not). If we lived in a Newtonian universe, we'd also all agree on what speed something is going.

The philosophical relevance of this is first that there's no really good reason we couldn't live in a Newtonian universe, as far as I know. Not only is it consistent theoretical, it's consistent with what we experience in our part of the universe (on a planet with weak gravity where nothing goes terribly fast), and, I'd say for both these reasons, is easy to imagine. Everything that happens, happens at the same time, and the universe progresses from one instant to another like a giant film.

However, there's also a deeper relativity principle that Newtonian mechanics obeys, which is that all observers can agree on causation (what events caused other events) and what laws governed that causation (if observer A calculates a given force moved object B, observer C will calculate the same force from any other perspective). If we didn't agree on what causes what and / or we didn't agree on what laws of physics are at play in a event ... we'd be in an epistemological place that would be difficult to deal with.

We don't live in the universal time and simple velocity addition version of relativity, but we do live in a universe where observers will agree on what causes what (that A caused B, and no one will calculate B caused A) and why (that the caused event makes sense to everyone employing the same rules). What we lose from Galilean and Newtonian relativity is universal time (observers don't generally what is happening simultaneously, and if they try they end up in paradoxes) and we also lose simple velocity addition relativity (if you're on a train at 90% the speed of light relative point A, or any speed, and you shine a flash-light forward, you'll see the speed difference between you and the train as the speed of light ... but someone at point A will not see a speed of light difference, but only the 10% difference).

This is extremely difficult to imagine and no one was even pondering such a possibility until experiments started making problems for Newtonian physics. Electro-magnetic experiments and Maxwell's equations led to paradoxes. Basically 2 big ones: that light is a wave and not a particle, and so from this we predict there is a medium for the wave to vibrate in (they didn't have quantum mechanics of wave-particle duality, just electromagnetic fields where light oscillates in); this medium must be "fixed in space" and so we should expect results of experiments to change depending on how fast we're going with respect to the electromagnetic medium. For instance, if two magnets are going through the medium faster, then we'd expect the force they communicate to each other to start to miss, just like two boats side by side don't hit each other with waves if they are going fast enough (they cannot tell the other boat is there, by observing the water, after a certain speed), and so fast magnets should lose force and at some point no longer repel or attract as they can't "see" the other magnet is there. And especially the waves in this medium will be going at different speeds, relative oneself, depending on how fast one is travelling, just like a surfer can catch-up to a wave on the ocean.

It turns out magnets don't behave differently between themselves no matter how fast they go, and even more bizarre, you will always measure light at the same speed regardless of how fast you are moving or from which direction you measure.

This is bizarre, but, thinking fairly deeply, Einstein realized that it's only a really big problem if causality and physical laws don't make sense from different reference frames, and that maybe there's a way to maintain causality in this bizarre setup (this wasn't obvious, other physicists were trying to develop "fixes" to light and magnets and Maxwell's equations that would make everything work out; for instance, in my boat analogy, maybe a different kind of medium than water will have some sort of compensation effect with speed to keep the force the same, so the boats are always affecting each other the same way regardless of speed; maybe they "get less force" but going faster happens to make the affects of waves greater, so it stays the same, these sorts of ideas; for the speed of light, the experimental evidence that it went the same speed in all directions wasn't super strong, most physicists assumed it was experimental error or some similar compensation scheme would work it out).

So, keeping in mind that simple mass-particles don't have any of these wave problems, so this problem doesn't arise in Newtonian mechanics equations, and even adding fields there's no a priori reason that the electromagnetic field wouldn't be like a big fixed fabric through space and we could easily tell when we are moving or stationary to the electromagnetic fabric by observing how our magnets change.

What I find philosophically interesting is that the above Newtonian + Electromagnetic fabric is conceptually simple, but would make physics way more complicated. For instance, as your rocket ship goes faster it may just fall apart, or (even before) that your bio-chemical reactions would stop working properly. Results of experiments would change depending on what direction the earth is moving relative the medium, which would depend the earths rotation, the season as well as the sun's direction in the galaxy and the galaxy's momentum relative the medium. Astrophysics would be ridiculously more complicated as we'd need to take into account how fusion changes depending on the rotational and current velocity of gas in the start, velocity of a star in the medium etc.

So, what I find really interesting, philosophically, is that conceptually Einstein relativity is harder to grasp ... but it describes a universe in which it is far easier to understand what's happening since electromagnetic and nuclear forces don't change with speed relative a fixed frame of reference.

All throughout school I was taught the importance of recycling, turning lights off when you leave the room; in the second grade I wrote a short story about a personified horse who has a dream about an apocalyptic future, and upon waking, realized a new personal commitment to recycling, not littering ect. — Grre

There is a thesis (that I find correct) that what you're referring to is "ecological theater" which puts on stage ecological principles without solving anything. This serves two purposes. First, the government and companies can point to the theatrics and say "look, we're doing something", whether it is to get votes or marketing or things that reduce costs and framing it as ecological action is simply a free win. Second, these theatrics shift the responsibility for the ecological crisis to individual action, not policies; the framework that people can consume what they want is not challenged.

This has a tertiary affect, that I feel your post is a good example of, which is that the people that are ecologically conscious are forced to live as hypocrites in this system and this reduces both internal motivation as well as external legitimacy. For, living fully ecologically as an individual is essentially impossible and, just as importantly, making even a half-decent attempt takes so much time and effort that there is little available for political effort. Now, "leading by example" is a thing and does add value whenever it's possible in life choices, but engaging politically to solve what is fundamentally a political problem (and not consumer choice problem), is also leading by a much better example.

This is the point that people fail to understand. The ecological crisis does not consist of merely pretty forests being cut down. Boo hoo. — Grre

This is another win by the propagandists behind the above points. Preserving nature probably entails valuing nature, and trees vs people is a false dichotomy to begin with as we depend on trees for survival. However, by accepting the paradigm that people are fundamentally more valuable than nature rather than dependent on and a subset of nature (that we cannot rationally value humans, a part, without valuing nature as much or equally, the whole), it more-or-less transfers to legitimizing what any group of humans seem to value and so setting up logical impasses. Some people wanting to continue to drive large vehicles as a single occupant becomes as important in this framework as the safety of the entire planet (to say otherwise is to be a crybaby hippy that values trees over people).

I have a career to attend to, a life, my identity is necessarily built around consumerism and productivity. — Grre

Your identity is not necessarily built around consumerism and productivity. Your identity is contingent on your upbringing, which I agree tries to enforce conforming to consumerism and producing consumer products directly or indirectly, as well as your own choices since becoming conscious of this processes.

Your false dilemma isn't yert vs consumerism, it's yert (isolationism, that can be good for some people who feel politically effective from that position) vs political action.

For instance, if you want to go around arguing in favour of better public transportation... you're probably going to have to use a car, given that's society's system of getting around effectively at the moment.

As to your questions:

-To what extent will we (my generation thereabouts) be morally culpable for our complacency with regards to the ecological crisis? — Grre

As much as every other generation since the issue became alarming (at the latest, around the time of driving the passenger pigeons to extinction).

Which generation is more responsible is a fairly useless question in my opinion. Every generation is responsible, if they are responsible for anything, to meet an existential threat.

-To what extent can we enact change, dispel this disinterest regarding the ecological crisis? What is philosophy's role? Should there be more emphasis on environmental philosophy?? Why waste time debating the role of logic when, likely, the human race a hundred-years from now will be in a very different position? — Grre

I agree a lot of people use philosophical material for escapism (directing the mind to unimportant issues to crowd out the important and uncomfortable ones); and participating in that is of no use. However, if that's not the motivation, every philosophical area is relevant to the ecological crisis. Why exactly do we value humanity or the earth? What ethical conditions should we place, if any, on solving the ecological crisis? What are the correct philosophical frameworks to evaluating fundamentally uncertain scientific studies of future climate in terms of credibility and, most importantly, risk analysis (which is an application of ethically determined risk-toleration levels)? What political institutions and economic systems are integral to the ecological crisis and must be solved in parallel for a good chance of ecological success (i.e. what's the political scope of the ecological crisis)? Should people be manipulated into being "good ecological actors" or are the "would-be-manipulators" counter-productive at best and evil at worst and general good-faith must be assumed: and so non-manipulative information sharing is the morally sound and/or only effective strategy available?

-Is this disinterest from younger generations proof of the inevitability of such a crisis, are we really doomed? — Grre

There are two answers to this question. First, interest of youngsters is very context determined. Countries that have implemented a lot ecological policies don't have much "forced hypocrisy", focus the debate on policy and so don't have the framework that leads to much "forced hypocrisy", and are often actively trying to enable more political engagement of young people on the ecological issue. If you feel that you'd only be effective in a pushing best practices forward even further, it's probably best to just move to one of these places (i.e. places like Scandinavia, which is what I did, but there are other places as well). Where propaganda has been effective in creating scientific denial or a maze of false-dilemmas that render most people that aren't in denial politically ineffective, then it's reasonable to stay if you feel your most effective resisting this propaganda in a very harsh environment (it is mentally very difficult to live in a society that you judge to be a mix of immoral and insane; hence why I moved to Scandinavia, because I viewed myself more effective in pushing forward best practices and policy debate, and that's only really feasible to do "where it's happening", akin to moving to Silicon Valley if you want to make a startup, or New Orleans if your interested in Jazz, or New York if you want to do contemporary art; not necessary, not even effective for everyone, but there's a big "where it's happening" advantage for any activity).

The second answer, is that young people maybe inactive now, but only because conditions are relatively stable. When I was growing up (around a decade and half before you) there was near complete belief among people accepting climate change is a problem that consequences are "a hundred years away" and governments "are on a good enough track to solve the problem" (leading up to and after Kyoto, most people thought it was a watershed moment, as it followed the same pattern as other global issues ... you had to be particular discerning to realize it was basically meaningless, fossil industries weren't "going down without a fight" and they were just getting started).

This 100 years away belief was because the political organs behind reporting on climate science were largely influenced by the oil lobby as well as the media, so discussion of any legitimate risk-analysis (that it could be 100 years away ... but it could be a lot sooner: reasonable to err on the side of caution) was labelled as alarmist. This alarmism paradigm was so effective that people in the climate movement itself started doing the job of propagandist journalist in labeling experts discussing the risks as counter productive (due to the alarmism finger pointing the whole movement will receive from the propagandists).

Fast forward to today and no one believes consequences are 100 years away, and the correct risk-analysis paradigm is coming into view in the media (that to be clear, essentially every expert did know and most tried to present in both alarmist and non-alarmist tones; the media just refused present any risk discussion as anything more than alarmism and kept insisting on "where's the proof").

However, consequences are still no evidently harmful to most people, fires, floods and storms are still either only affecting a minority or are not too damaging as to warrant real alarm. This will change. The reason climate change is so dangerous is because it will keep getting worse and worse. At some point -- when infrastructure fails on larger scales for more time and more frequently, when crop failures lead to food shortages and rationing even in Western countries and disaster scales that exceed even the "disaster fatigue thresholds" that have been built up to that point -- it becomes impossible to project oneself in consumer society. Since young people haven't drunk much the denialist coolaid, when it's no longer possible to pretend life can just "go on as normal" there's only one option available which is to act on the problem. In my view, ecological policy strategy is both "what's the best we can do now" as well as "what material can we prepare for when the crisis becomes intolerable".

I'm disappointed that no one is arguing for the free-market solution I propose to the problem: of letting people act with their own wealth, as it is my understanding the point of this thread was to contrast free market principles and central planning principles in this example.

There's clearly the conditions of a market with specialization of at least shipbuilding and sea fairing skills. By allowing people to use their existing wealth to meet this problem the way they see fit, this no only creates a diversity of solutions but also ensures survival is heavily weighted towards the "wealth creators", which, we can presume based on no evidence, are the kinds of people that can best reboot their society wherever they land. Now, of course there will be less people on boats overall compared to one of the central planning options proposed by the OP, But, private property will be respected in the free market scenario and thus more moral if we assume private property is moral bedrock of society, so what would be hypothetically more effective doesn't matter if we take this view.

However, as alluded to in my previous post, people who will be left to die may get angry. My question is what is the optimum way to deal with such anger to ensure the market runs efficiently and doesn't interfere with the efficient boat building of those with wealth?

I started a thread here, so some of you can continue to bitch a moan under a proper subject. I say "bitch and moan" because apparently a couple of you perceive to act like you know more about the realm of mental health, and considering that I've spent almost ten years of my academic life in its study not to mention this is what my current profession entails. — Anaxagoras

If you review this thread, please consider the possibility that you are cherry picking (selection bias) engagement with only the most extreme anti-psychiatry position, which I am not even sure are as extreme as you think.

As a "mental health professional" your usage of the words "bitch and moan" to minimize your opposition is incredibly typical of people in positions of authority who have no real argument justifying that authority.

Your responses are on par for abrasiveness and some areas I would say exceed, for instance in the category of deflection, your opponents in this debate. In the vernacular, I would say you have been "triggered", far more than your counter-parties that openly admit to a history of mental illness whereas you claim to be, of one degree or another, an authority on mental illness.

You also seem to have problems perceiving the reality here. No one has claimed to "know more about the realm of mental health, and considering that I've spent almost ten years of my academic life in its study not to mention this is what my current profession entails".

Your interlocutors have pointed out philosophical problems in the construction of what "mental health" is, that it is as much a social construction as a scientific construction. The component that is a socio-political construction cannot by definition be professionalized, and naming experts of the socio-political component of mental health is for the purpose of imposing order ... an order that can be challenged on political grounds.

Now, I will admit there is also a scientific component to mental health and that the various mental health professions do help people in this category.

However, the socio-political component is incredibly dangerous to society, and not simply people misdiagnosed or "had bad service" that one can claim are bad apples the profession is always working to remove.

Leo has provided a really good thought experiment that puts this issue in to perspective ... that you dismissed off hand in a thread entitled "Psychiatry’s Incurable Hubris".

If you were a psychiatrist trained in a system where you are taught that concentration camps are normal, and that mentally healthy people are well-adapted to concentration camps, if your career and social status depended on you accepting that concentration camps are normal, would you look at the concentration camp itself as an external factor that could contribute to a person's dysfunction, or would you see the concentration camp as an essential part of reality that the person ought to adapt to? Would you then look for other causes behind the person's dysfunction, such as hypothesized brain defects, and then attempt to treat them by making the person ingest some drugs? If these drugs made the person's behavior appear less dysfunctional in the concentration camp, would you then consider these drugs to be an effective medication to treat the mentally ill? — leo

Your reply was:

You're using a play on words and hypotheticals here because this would be utterly ridiculous. If you expect a serious answer can you use a less ridiculous hypothetical example? — Anaxagoras

Leo's example is not a play on words, I don't see where you get that from. It's also not a hypothetical. The concentration camps actually happened, psychiatrists managed inmates with chemicals to increase compliance, and psychologists and psychiatrists made and applied criteria of what mental illnesses are "undesirable" and weakening German society.

The German psychiatrists and psychologists had all sorts of "science based" theories on why some people needed to be put in concentration camps, developed the criteria for putting people in camps and, once in camps, criteria for distinguishing "good laborers" from the bad. They also experimented on and found chemicals to help people adapt to the conditions in the camp without challenging authority as much.

Now, a lot of this is just bad science (some science specific to Naziism and some more or less global beliefs of the discipline at the time) and if you claim "well, we've learned since then", I'll accept that answer on the science component of mental health (in this debate).

However, part of this practice stemmed from the values of Nazi society and was an entirely logical follow through of those values. "Getting rid of undesirables" is a logically consistent value system and many societies have shared this value, and "deficiencies in mental health" is a logical category of "undesirable". In this case, psychiatrists are charged with identifying, trying to "fix" and if that fails labeling "for extermination" mentally ill people. (They also had theories for why entire ethnicities were mentally ill and performed experiments to see if anything could be done to fix these people and concluded that no; however, to simplify the discussion I want to focus on the Germans identified as mentally ill).

So considering this actually happened and as a university student of the subject for 10 years you are certainly aware, claiming it is a "hypothetical" is deflection at best and disingenuous at worst.

Now, the practice of psychiatry in the West today is not as extreme as in Nazism, but there are parallels.

The danger today (in the West) is not exterminating people, but a displacement of ethical and political dialogue, society must engage in to resolve new political challenges, to psychiatric expertise. For instance, in the past if working conditions became intolerable, the reaction to these conditions was political action; this is how 40 hour work week, for instance, came into being. Today, there is another option available: working conditions are fine, it's individual people who have problems that are "maladapted". So, if the truth is that working conditions are not fine, then the situation is a direct analogue of the concentration camp example: society as a whole is the (granted not as bad) concentration camp and psychiatrists direct their efforts to the people who find conditions intolerable and improve their adaptability; and this can be tracked by science (even if we disregard self-reporting of moods, we can track "people getting back to work" and other objective behavioral metrics; and conclude that psychiatry is "helping people and society").

However, the justification of mental health interventions rests on the justification of the government policies, both in the specific systems that deploy mental health but also in the general good governing sense. If government is oppressive, then the natural reaction is to be angry, anxious, depressed about it (if you are in an oppressed class, of course) and it is these feelings that motivate political change. To lower these feelings with chemicals is to participate not in the assistance of the individual, but in the sedation of society as a whole for adaptation to further oppression.

An extreme example today is the Chinese "re-education camps" of Muslims. Professionally trained to a western standard, psychiatrists and psychologists help build the systems to identify who needs "re-education" and how to "re-educate" them to be adapted to Chinese state management of their land, economy and culture.

Yet the mental health profession in the West has nothing to say about this, and any professional from China involved in the above system could easily move to the West, have degrees recognized and complete any remaining licensing condition, and practice professionally in the West. If they were an effective technician at enforcing state policies in China, there is no reason to question their effectiveness would change in the West. There has been little to no discussion (by the mental health professional community in the West) about the abuse of the science of mind to enforce compliance of an entire culture using large integrated AI systems, re-education camps, manipulating children to give information on their parents, and every other method available, all informed by the behavioral sciences. For instance, there has been no attempt to identify and blacklist participants in this oppressive system.

It's not as extreme in the West, but is there really no analogous issues? And as Leo points out, would you be able to know just in virtue of having a psychiatrist degree?

In the West, psychiatrists and psychologist are an integral part of the enforcement of compliance in school, the work force, public spaces, prisons and the home.

Take school for example. Western schools are to a significant, but a lesser degree than China, also filled with propaganda. Lot's of things in textbooks are verifiably false, misleading or simply absent (for propaganda purposes and not simply time constraint purposes). On top of this, teachers can be prejudiced themselves. If a student evaluates the direction of society as "bad" and so makes the logical conclusion of needing to resist conditioning and "wakeup" his or her peers, what will be the result? An arms-wide welcoming of a critical thinker out to improve society, and a sit down with the student body to put on trial alleged state propaganda? ... Or, will that student be labeled a trouble maker and enter various pipelines to be "fixed", and after the failure of a few disciplinary measures, will find themselves quickly diagnosed with a mental health issue.

Now, if the reality is there is not state propaganda in curriculum, no teacher prejudices in this student's case, and the general direction of society is morally justified, then indeed the student is living either "outside reality" or then the agitation, anxiety and disruptive behavior is due to brain chemical and wiring and the rational of "resisting conditioning" is simply a childish excuse to retroactively justify inappropriate behavior due to an unfortunate underlying physiological and mental condition the student does not have the skills to identify. If chemicals fix the emotions and disruption, it can be considered a win.

However, if the evaluation of the student is correct, then the resistance is justified and diagnosis of a the reasonable response of the student becomes not medicine but an organ of state oppression, to fix the problem at the behavioral level: whether it means sedating political actions or as a form of mental harm to increase the cost of resistance beyond what the student is willing to accept, both mechanisms will have the desired behavioural outcome and contribute to the statistics showing the treatment is effective.

Likewise, if legal working conditions are simply not acceptable, a psychiatrist employed by a company or even sought out by the worker to increase productivity by suppressing natural mental reactions to intolerable living and working conditions, is again a tool of state oppression. If working conditions are fine, then it's just helping the outliers have a normal and productive life. Again, a big difference as to the nature of what's happening.

If a justice and prison system is maintaining oppressive and racist policies and the conditions in prison are inhumane and closer to a concentration camp of forced labour than to anything resembling justice and rehabilitation, then it is justified to resist such conditions. Again, any mental health intervention to enforce compliance of prisoners with prison conditions is a tool of state oppression. If the justice system is great, rehabilitation as effective as it can be, then helping prisoners with mental health issues is part of a good rehabilitation system. Again, big difference.

Now, in all these cases, genuine mental health problems will be mixed in with reasonable methods to resist oppression, so the practitioners will always have clear cases of a mental problem to point at and say: look, no one can deny this persons hallucinating or can't function at a basic level. But this is a red herring used to justify and enable state oppression as whole, which is far more dangerous and damaging to society as a whole than fixing the genuinely mentally ill along with the politically disruptive.

Now, to be clear, this is not a personal attack on you. I don't know what system you are in, and, even in a bad system, being aware of these issues, an individual psychiatrist could try to do more help than harm by allying with the oppressed and either minimizing harm or helping them to "get through the cracks" and advance their cause without being caught by the mental health machine.

However, based on your responses you seem to believe there is no issue, that psychiatry deals with "reality" and never dabbles in enforcing compliance of government policies.

To be doubly clear, I am not asking for a justification of your system visavis the above issues, but response on the principles level. Are the Chinese mental health professional that are helping to track and predict using integrated surveillance and AI systems to minimize disruptive Muslim behaviour doing good work (are they potential terrorists with the mental culturally wide health conditions the Chinese government claims, or legitimate political actors seeking self-determination, as most other nations did at some point)? If they aren't doing good work, are they bad behavioral scientists, or just bad people? If they are bad people, would behavioral science tell them this, if, so, what papers and studies? If there's nothing in behavioral science that would point to an ethical problem, are they not then good behavioral scientist but simply with ethical and political beliefs you disagree with? Likewise, are the examples of the student, worker and prisoner simply impossible? If they are possible would you argue that psychiatrists are trained to identify and "leave alone" legitimate political grievances in the situations I described, in, for instance, the US?

To preempt one potential response, I am aware that these issues have been written about and some professionals maybe aware of them; however, my rebuttal would be only a just society trains to understand and employs people who apply such considerations: an oppressive state will train for and select for effectiveness in achieving the policies.

With the high taxes, crippling regulations, need to build 37 bathrooms (one for each gender) and designated “safe spaces” on each deck of the ship, etc etc, the lava would be knee high before the socialists could launch even one ship. — praxis

What elements of the scenario do you base these conclusions?

The scenario seems to be constructed that each have an equal "expected return" of people surviving, but a different expected return on anyone at all / the culture surviving. The scenario then posits the people discuss the two options but without relation to what their collective goal is.

A better free market analogy is that the choice is between the two centrally planned decisions (when Cesar had his men build a bunch of ships to cross the Adriadic instead of one big ship, this was still centrally planned, just so happens a certain size ship was considered optimum), on the one hand, and on the other a truly free market where people can only use their existing wealth to build ships for themselves or for sale, and that the people that do not own an ax nor any land and cannot build any ships are kindly requested to labour in return for food (or the market rate, if it's slightly more then some, if they labour enough, may even afford a little raft of their own some day) if offered by the people that do have wealth and are also kindly requested not to make a fuss about likely being left out entirely of any benefits society may generate with this approach. The people with wealth would then more effectively allocate those resources to try and save themselves, than some central planner simply mandating a given number of ships be built, regardless of whether it is 1 or several, and appropriating Private Land and Privately Owned Trees to fulfill that mandate. However, if the poor people do make a fuss and cause conflict, then this would lower the odds of surviving for those that do have the resources to build ships. The poor are just moral degenerates if they do that and will need to be dealt with for their attempt to overthrow the social order and steal resources from those that have worked hard to accumulate them prior to the disaster for the benefit, among other things, of being more able to survive in a disaster.

Your analogy is self contradictory.

Allowing everyone to build their own boat will almost certainly result in some death, but it has a much higher chance of saving at least some lives. — VagabondSpectre

Contradicts:

Without knowing something more about the situation, there's no good way decide which strategy is superior — VagabondSpectre

We do have information, which is some small boats have a much higher chance of some people surviving.

Predicting which strategy is superior is impossible without knowing more about the circumstances of the situation and environment. — VagabondSpectre

If the goal is to make sure at least some people survive (to carry on the culture, tell the story) then we already do know that the small boats strategy is best, since you have specified that some small boats have a much higher probability of some to survive: strategy done.

The only reason to change strategies is if the goal is different: for instance people want to "survive as a group or sink as a group", in which case the big boat is the only choice in your scenario, as you also specify that some people in the small boats would certainly die.

In the real world, we wouldn't know if some small boats would be essentially guaranteed to survive. It could be all the small boats sink, and the big boat (more stable, more hands, more volume and resources per person) has a better chance of surviving even compared to a single boat of the flotilla. It would depend on their sailing skills and experience, which you postulate they do have; beyond that, depends on the goal.

If they value "the idea surviving" as Bret assumes they do, then it's whatever results in the highest probability of anyone surviving, which you simply specify the small boats have a better survival chance; so problem solved. If they have little concept of a "wider humanity" for their idea to contribute to, they may not see any value in a single boat surviving but only the community as a whole.

I'm sorry, but it seems to me that this debate is officially no longer productive. All we'd be doing from now is re-asserting points we've already made. — Kenshi

You realize that "what seems to you" is fairly incompatible with "officialness".

What's your standard for deciding a debate is no longer productive?

And productive for whom?

You think that I don't understand your position — Kenshi

Yes, I don't think you understand many of my points. You have yet to respond on what other variable than "being black" affects job prospects for black teenagers. You did not understand by "public vouchers" I meant "public vouchers", a public education system where the rich subsidize the poor.

I don't think you understand mine. — Kenshi

Yes, many of your positions I do not understand your supporting arguments or how you resolve apparent contradictions, that is why I have asked many questions.

You're claiming that I'm accusing you of saying things that you didn't. — Kenshi

I didn't use the word accuse. My claim, for instance vis-a-vis education, was that I was pretty clear that in referring to public education, a public paid voucher based system is still a public system and not a free market system. So by responding about tax-rebate voucher system where the "money is your own" you were not responding to the question. If a free market system is more efficient, then zero education subsidies for the poor would be more efficient (people competing freely for education services): if not, then it is not a free market system.

So this is one example. If you did respond to the actual question, please cite where you do so.

You're accusing me of saying AND thinking things that I didn't/don't — Kenshi

Where do I accuse you of thinking things that you don't. I even say things like "I don't know if you identify as Libertarian", but since it's a argument libertarians often make I think it is useful to present that context for the benefit of other forum participants. Precisely to avoid accusing you of thinking or saying anything you haven't, I ask many questions and specify when I am unsure if a counter-argument applies to your position, which is very unclear to me so I ask questions.

and I reiterate my final statement from my first response: That neither of us are likely to budge on these issues. I thank you for your thoughts. — Kenshi

How do you know if I am likely to budge or not? If your position is simply true and you have good evidence, shouldn't you be confident of persuading anyone seeking the truth of matters? Do you have evidence I am not seeking the truth? Do you have epistemological grounds to know our positions are simply unbridgeable regardless of facts or truth seeking or debate? Or, are you simply not confident your arguments hold up to scrutiny?

Now, if you don't have time, what time constraint is there? Perhaps in this case simply say you don't have time but you may return when you do? Or then that you must pace out your responses.

If you don't have answers to the above questions, you may be confused as to what goes on here. On a philosophy forum, participants generally do not expect to persuade each other in a couple of comments and generally do not even place a requirement of confidence in persuading other interlocutors to there positions as condition for continuing debates.

If it is necessary for you, then speak for yourself, but don't imply that it is a mutual belief that we will not budge from our position or that it is a mutual sentiment that we should therefore not discuss further. Both conditions I would view as irrelevant to continuing to debate. And for my own part, I feel it is actually quite likely that your position will budge, perhaps not today, but based on your comments there is plenty of potential triggers for aporic doubts to flood your entire world view; generally, it is some personal experience, not debate on a forum, that leads to such reflections, but, if I was a betting man required to place a wager on scant information (as most gambling entails), then I would wager events will eventually emerge in your personal life (whether yourself or someone you know) that leads to a re-evaluation of the issue of public health care, education and other social programs. On that day, I will be smiling ... but only because I tend to smile everyday, it's a likely coincidence. For, if free market capitalism turns out not to be the most efficient system, it should be manifest in many practical scenarios.

My issue with them is that they're unsustainable. The market would be better at handling these things because competition drives quality up and costs down. Private/Charter schools in the U.S. are objectively better than public schools. There is also the issue of morality: What if I don't want to go to college? It's still my financial concern that other people get to go? On what grounds do you or anyone else claim the fruits of MY labor? Why should anyone be forced to pay for something that doesn't benefit them? Also, a voucher system is NOT the same as free schooling. It just means that you get to decide where your money goes. — Kenshi

This is I think the core issue, and deserves more unpacking and critique than the erroneous understanding of voucher systems vs actual free markets (where no money of parents to pay for school would equal no schooling).

I want to address here, your question "On what grounds do you or anyone else claim the fruits of MY labor?"

This is the usual contention of libertarians (I'm not sure you identify yourself as that or not, but it's a principle they often bring up). The general pattern is first arguing that a public system is actually worse for the poor somehow, but if that fails due to actual evidence out there in the world that social safety system help the poor, then the real belief comes out which is "taxes are theft".

So, "On what grounds do you or anyone else claim the fruits of MY labor?"

First, on what grounds to you claim the fruits of other people labour to pay for the US military? Or police, or court houses? You seem to be supportive of the US military as well as against corruption. These things are paid by taxes; you are supporting policies which are funded by the government "claiming the fruits of people's labour" to fund.

There's only two places to go for libertarians from here. First, is to say "oh yeah, taxes are theft, the military and police and legal system are paid by taxes, so, yes, these systems need to be also privatized". I don't think this is your case, but I have argued with many libertarians who advance this; that paying for military and police protection should be "opt in". Of course, the break-down of law-and-order in society has actually happened, and people do seek to pay for protection; that's where the term mafia comes from, private justice groups in Southern Italy that emerged to protect people from crime when the tax-funded government became ineffective. Somehow, this form of libertarian can manage to believe the outcomes of the exact conditions they are advocating for actually coming to pass many times in human history, isn't relevant to their argument: free market justice would be more efficient and more moral than public funded justice.

So, the other alternative is to bite the bullet as it were and accept some public institutions are required and need to be paid by a tax system where the rich pay more (as the lowest common denominator can't pay for the system). However, this system of argument becomes just "taxes aren't stealing if it supports policies I support, but it is stealing if it pays for policies I don't support"; libertarians of this group believe that "oh, it's obvious" is some sort of argument, and there need not be any criteria to determine what services should be public and what should be a free market. Obviously, it's not obvious, otherwise there wouldn't be the first group of libertarians claiming that those institutions too should be free market, nor would there be people claiming those and additional institutions should be publicly funded. The only criteria available is of course "it's good for society to have a military, police, and justice system"; notice that it is not "good for everyone", as such systems aren't good for the leaders of criminal gangs that benefit from lawlessness.

So, if taxes are stealing, "fruits of labour appropriation", then this principle doesn't actually matter if you are in this second line of reasoning. And I would agree that taxes are labour and value appropriation, and under certain definitions of stealing I would even say "yes, it's theft of the majority on minority groups using violence"; the state (when functioning) is a monopoly on violence in a region; taking things using violence is the simple definition of theft, unless we basically add taxes as an exemption (which is how society actually uses the term; it's theft if it's not through the justice system, if it is through the justice system, and no corruption occurred that an effective justice system would try to correct, then it's by definition just and we call it taxes instead).

Now, there's a third group of libertarians that are aware the above lines of reasoning go nowhere; making everything free market and nothing paid for would mean not having the conditions of what is meant by a free market (protection of private property, both internal and external, contract enforcement, and a hodgepodge of other regulations of the market, such as consumer or investor protections, that a given libertarian supports), and as soon as we say "taxes are fine for A, because it benefits society as a whole" then it is open season to debate what other things can be supported with the exact same argument: such as universal health care, education, worker protections and safety nets, as well as limits to monopoly formation and wealth accumulation whenever it is more dangerous than beneficial to society.

So, this third group, though often using the "taxes are theft" when dealing with less sophisticated opponents or potential converts, argues in the presence of more sophisticated opponents that yes there is a criteria, which is whatever maximizes personal liberties on the whole. So the state can in fact infringe on your liberties, such as exacting a tax, if it on the whole maintains more people's liberties than not.

Since you are in the second camp, that taxes are theft, we should for now stay on that topic, but I wanted to foreshadow the two places to go from there: either everything is free market, including defense and justice, and there is no tax (state enforced theft) at all, or then, regardless of whether we call it theft or not, taxes are fine under some conditions, if it maximizes personal liberties overall. Now, there's a fatal flaw to this third argument as well, but it's only relevant if you are abandoning the "On what grounds do you or anyone else claim the fruits of MY labor?" position. I don't want to assume that is a foregone conclusion.