I have always maintained that if a person won't follow the professional's advice then the person should at least not waste said professionals time and just leave them alone. — Book273

I hope you are not talking about me, as this does not apply to me.

But I did notice that those who don't follow doctors' advice are not prone to going to doctors. They have their own theories: "You only get sick in the hospital. I'll never go to a hospital. Remember uncle Fred? He went to the hospital just once, and he died there. Stay out of the place." Some people don't even take a pain pill, because they don't want to mess up their own body chemistry. Some people reduce their life-saving medication for a chronic ailment, weaning themselves off, as if it were an addictive therapy.

However, I will not say those people should be barred from visiting doctors for advice. Yes, they can stay away on their own volition, but society ought not to punish them for being blockheads.

They came home for sleep and supper, and we had to keep them in when the hunters were out looking for wild boar. The forest is a better place than the pen. — unenlightened

With the same token, forests are better for humans too. We go out, trekking, walking, enjoying the air, the ambience, the beauty of the wonder... shooting wild boar... then come home, eat, and go to sleep in our warm, comfy beds.

We are basically pigs. Domesticated pigs.

You'll find those forest rich with no food in no time given how many of them are in pig pens. — Shawn

There are no hunters in the house, either... and the domesticated pigs are not witnessing or experiencing their brethren or themselves being torn to pieces while alive by wild and untamed coyotes, wolves, bears, goats and gnats don't taunt them either.

So, if I have an extreme hate toward fat people, is this unethical? Or is this hate "good" because being fat is unhealthy?

Or, say, if Mike says, "I hate women" as a result to trauma, should this be cause of concern? And should he be labelled a "misogynist".

What I mean is, hate seems to lose significance often, but it's not exactly clear what is determining the degree of significance, even following analysis.

Ex;

"Mike says he hates women, because his mother abused him."

But it seems to be devoid of anything requiring immediate moral action, yet, if Mike was placed in a government position of power, and said, "I hate women," suddenly there is some significance to this, and he will be labelled a misogynist, but not in the former example. — Cobra

Thank you for agreeing with me.

I go with Dingo Jones, inasmuch as "hate" and "hatred" have been diluted heavily for meaning. Lots of equivocation is possible, and the circumstances are not reflected by the word by itself, yet the circumstances are the essence that make hate meaningful and subject to analysis.

Even if a medical expert knows 100% of the clinical information necessary to render a decision, it does not mean that they know your situation, and this is often THE most important part of the puzzle
— synthesis

True. You really need to be your own advocate. But if your doctor isn't able to help you, you should keep looking. Somebody out there might know how to help.

It's hard to stay optimistic, but the people who do are more likely to find the right expert. — frank

Sometimes the answer or the treatment or cure is not found, by a practitioner, and also by the patient, because it does not exist in present day knowledge.

I often wondered why doctors don't address some of the issues I raise to them, and I learnt over time that they don't because either the issue is not a matter of their scrutiny, or else because the scrutiny has not found a treatment.

Doctors are not gods. Patients are not doctors.

In fact, my cardiologist friend tells me what everyone knows: most people are not getting better, due entirely to their not taking their doctors' instructions. This is is beyond "educate yourself" or "be your own advocate". it is a matter of laziness, conspiracy tales trickle down effect, religious intolerance against treatment, or which is the majority, a lack of insight to know the patient needs to adhere to treatment.

You know nothing about socialist countries of the twentieth century, other than your state-fed arbitrary propaganda.

I am not denying that those states had oppressive regimes. But you discount the systems that they had grown out of. In the great depression most western countries in Europe had a horrible life for the common man. In the industrial upheaval in around the late nineteenth century, and early twentieth century, people literally worked themselves to death due to starvation, sickness (c.f. present day health care systems!!!), and bloody-handed treatment by police if organized resistance was suspected.

Those systems made people really look to communism, and in Russia the socialist revolution wouldn't have won, but it had the support of the people, because in those years their only hope of a decent life was via communist rule.

So... Stalin killed 30 million, Lenin... well, Lenin had to contend with the invading armies of foreign powers so his "killing" is not really directly oppression-related. In my country maybe 1000-5000 people died due to political reasons in the communist times. I don't have exact figures, because I went to school there in the sixties, and the curriculum did not cover that. Whether Stalin killed those thirty million was due to design, or due to a huge crop failure in consecutive years, is debatable. Mostly Ukranians died, and they did because the food that was very scarce was given to ethnic Russians. I admit, there were politically induced murders, everyone read the Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenyitsin. Most of those oppressed, be they eventually murdered or not, were not punished due to the regime, but due to the paranoia and madness of Stalin. He was worse than Hitler; he killed due to his paranoia, much like Nero and Caligula, not due to some evil political idealism, like Hitler.

But the oppression by governments in Eastern Europe was still a system that provided a heavenly existence to the largest segment of the population IN COMPARISON with the pre-war and turn-of the century conditions. They did not drive cars like people in America in the sixties, they did not have colour tvs like Germans in the seventies, they did not own property like anyone could in the west in the eighties, but they had food, clothing, transportation, all affordable, and free schooling and free HEALTHCARE. None of that was enjoyed by the great majority of the peoples of those countries before the communist takeover.

The official and ARBITRARY definition for random numbers given in texts of probability math is the numbers that come up on subsequent rolls of a fair die. This definition recognizes that the numbers may not be random, recognizes also that its randomness can't be tested, so it gives the operational categorical definition while recognizing those features. Few things work this way in math, but this one does.

I said "Most" healthcare systems, not all. I don't even know your system... are you located in Zimbabwe, or in Rwanda-Burundi?

I read your objection re: prediction. Please see the post I made just before this one.

Yes, after the fact. The point is, not before. — tim wood

It's impossible with any sequence of numbers what comes next. The psychological / IQ tests that rely on this are all flawed.

What comes after 1, 2, 3, 4, 5??? Not six. I mean, it could be six, 8, 194, 539430. Any number. There are fuctions in the magnitude of infinity, that will make the next number not six, but any desired number. To know what number the next number must be, you need to know the function that the test writer has in mind, and that involves actual mind-reading. That is not math, and it can't be cited in the proof.

Can't establish it if you don't know what it is. What (do you say) it is? — tim wood

It.

introduce sugar tax — Jack Cummins

How can you have a tea party without sugar? It's time the Britons threw their own selves over.

What could be more oppressive than a government system? — synthesis

- religious systems
- evangelistic religions
- your father
- your Father
- your torturer at Quantanimo bay
- jails and prisons
- sadistic nurses and orderlies
- your big brother
- your big sister
- your husband
- your wife
- your aunt who controls the family wealth
- your five-year old angel of a grandson
- neighbourhood dogs
- coyotes and wolves
- lions and tigers
- Hepatitis C
- Sex maniac wife
- oxidization
- the call of the devil
- temptation
- extreme hunger
- extreme thirst
- mad Kohn, the sohn of that ganef Shlomo
- KKK
- Parish priests over altar boys
- coaches of all kinds
- life
- the third law of thermodynamics
- the music of Richard Wagner
- yourself

The healthcare system works in almost all countries.
— god must be atheist

And you base this on what information? — synthesis

My bases for my opinion are that:

1. Your idea of a working medical system is different from mine and vice versa; and

2. I can't but help feeling that you have a preconceived strong and unchangeable opinion which basically says that healthcare systems are doomed, that people are not responsible for themselves, and that doom, defeat and destruction is the impending future of all healthcare systems. This is an opinion of mine, not stating this as facts or as a charge; this is my impression only.

That question doesn't make any sense. How do my higher priorities -- things like keeping myself alive -- "match how things really are"? What does that even mean? — Pfhorrest

It's easy. Some of your priorities are fulfilled to expectation, some are not. The bloke is asking you how your expected priorities compare to the actual actualization of those priorities. Obviously you're alive. But do you eat the foods you want, and do you date the babes you want? do you earn the money you want, do you see the movies you want, do you laugh at the jokes you want? "For want of the price, a tea and a slice, the old man died..."

So we can all agree that present system, be it private insurance or a national health model, is clearly not working (as is the case for all Western institutions). Is the answer to do more of the same? — synthesis

So I don't agree to this.

The healthcare system works in almost all countries. There is no system -- healthcare or other -- that is completely void of glitches. Just because a system has glitches, it does not mean it is not working. It is working just fine.

I reject your initial premis that the healthcare system, whether it be privately or collectively (nationally) funded, does not work.

A test would be whether the next numbers in the series could be predicted - if the series proved to be an oracle for its own successive members. — tim wood

Any sequence of numbers can be described as a sequence of a polynomial function. Not only by one precise, exact and fitting polynomial function, but actually an infinite number of them.

So the next successive number can always be predicted. Or else explained.

This test you propose is not the one that's going to work in establishing randomness of a sequence of numbers.

I think that if England lost the NHS it would be the biggest misfortune for England. — Jack Cummins

We have a similar system here in Canada. And all, or most Canadians think that if we lost the NHL, we'd be much poorer for it.

I live in a small town. 400 thousand denizens or so. There are not enough doctors here. The doctors stay in the megapolis 130 miles away.

Consequently if you get a family practitioner, you stick with him or her, because there is no way you can shop around. A lot of people rely on walk-in-clinics to get family medical help.

My doctor is good. He listens to me, and he does consider my input. However, he gets angry and he gets verbally hurtful. He does not trust that I say my symptoms right, or accurately, he's convinced that I exaggerate.

I state my problems as precisely as possible. My doctor listens, and I don't know what goes on in his mind. He gives me proper treatment, with a hurtful tone of voice and with hurtful remarks.

dr. Synthesis, what should I do? "Take two aspirins and I'll not see you in the morning."

There is no test for randomness.

That's why they say god thorws dice. Nobody can generate random numbers, not because it's impossible, but because it is not possible to test for it being truly random.

Okay. The labour-value theory is actually the labour-price theory. Price of a product can't be lower than its inherent cost, which is determined fully by human work. This is the theory by Marx.

If robots produce all the goods, and humans need not work, then the price will be zilch. Indeed, people will take what they want or need, and don't have to pay for it. (Eventually.)

Thus the value will be still the inherent utility of the product; but the price will still remain at the Marxian definition: zero human time spent with producing the goods, zero price paid for it. Notwithstanding the good's utility value.

By-the-by, Marx's vision of ultimate communism depends on robotism.

My addition to this is that robotism also renders the hierarchy of people null and void. Marx declared that it is the proletariat that ought to own the production machinery and factories. They did in my home country back 40-80 years ago, when I defected. But the impression was never, NEVER in the people that they owned the factories. They had to go in and work and get paid and do what the boss told them.

This was the ultimate problem with socialist systems, who openly pursued the ideal of communism. Sang ever so eloquently by the rock group, The Who:

"Meet the new boss!
Same as the old boss!"

To be completely frank, it was more screamed than sung.

But anyway, the lesson is that complex production needs complex work arrangements, which necessitates a hierarchy of work-related duties including planning and slotting people into doing their jobs. This was the crux that made people throw away communist rule: they worked just like their counterparts in the free west (free? ha!), and yet they lived in abject poverty compared to the same, and had to listen to the same bullshit at work.

Robotism will do away with all that.

That's funny what I just wrote to Sir2U.

Because we are immortalized, if not for all eternity, then for a time, which is presumably much longer than our biological life expectancy.

And we're all immortalized incognito.

Much like the mosaic figures of nobleman and noblewomen are preserved, nameless, on the walls of the ruins of Pompeii. Nobody knows their names... but is that all that necessary to know their... essence, so to speak? The essence that remains of them (and of us, participants on this board)?

which two did I find here? Let me quote from B-52 (an 80s band):
"Planet Claire, Planet Claire,
No-one ever dies here
No-one has a head"

We are all preserved on silicone, or on magnetized material, Sir2u; we're immortalized as long as those media don't perish. And as a person in love, no one has a head (because we've lost it, as all humans do when in love.)

That's a profound insight for the simple reason that these two - the first, failing to discover truth/falsity and the second, spewing silly nonsense - are the stuff of philosophers' nightmares. — TheMadFool

True, but it's not quite as bad when you can hang it on some other philosopher.

It is actually frighteningly rare that any one particular philosopher realizes the self-application procedure of this phenomenon.

Socrates did. At least he claimed he had.

Of course I don't deny that Science has produced great things. But one can hold that Science (at least the Science that we know can't be used for evil) is useful, without having to believe that it is true in an epistemological sense (think scientific instrumentalism). — Amalac

I think we are converging on a common understanding. Science does not fall victim to the Munchhausen effect, because:
1. Only those things fall victims to it, that attempt to prove something; science does not prove anything
2. 2.1., 2.2., 2.3., and 2.4., things that Pfhorrest said, which is beyond my pay grade and finally
3. You assert that science does not relate to epistemology, instead, it is a pragmatic scrutinizer. As a pragmatic scrutinizer, it is exempt from needing to show causality beyond the scope of what is necessarily and sufficiently needed to explain relationships in movements in the physical (and mental/emotional) worlds.

Athena's position in life was dramatically changed when Athens became a democracy. — Athena

So... you knew Julius Caesar personally?

And who was Miltiades? I mean, the REAL Miltiades?

Hehe. I did not think of it that way, but I guess that's what that is.

True in an epistemological sense: Can be rationally justified by a chain of reasoning.

True in a pragmatic sense: Is useful for achieving certain ends we consider valuable.

Didn't we already make it clear that we don't disagree about this? — Amalac

Thank you, Amalac. May I make just one tiny change in the second definition, to inlcude that pragmatic sense also involves a chain of reasoning? For instance, it is pragmatic to feed chicken, if you eat chicken, because feeding the chicken will achieve a culinary end which you consider valuable.

Or it is pragmatically sensible to go to school, learn how to read and write, learn psychology and chemistry and math, and physics, and learn how to manipulate chemicals, and learn the math that underlines theory of chemistry, and then become able to concoct chemicals so you can make Aspirin, which is useful in treating pain, which people buy for money, which someone else has invented, and used chemicals to produce paper from rags, and someone had learned how to make rags, etc etc.

In modern times it was Martin Luther who first had the insight.

The three things you say that you don't understand in my previous post neatly cancels out the post by you that I don't understand.

This could be viewed as a happy event.

Let's celebrate.

:party: :cheer: :100: :sparkle: :cheer: :party:

“True in an epistemological sense” as opposed to “true in a pragmatic sense”. — Amalac

"True in a kitchen faucet sense" is also the opposite to "true in a pragmatic sense." In other words, you gave no guidance how to understand "true in an epistemological sense", because "true in a pragmatic sense" has precisely infinite number of opposites (limited in number only by the bounds of language and by the number of the meanings carried by the language).

I asked how do you "know that it is possible for X to exist" without knowing anything about X. Well? — 180 Proof

(1) I don't know that it is possible for X to exist without knowing anything about X.

The above is the negation of my assertion, (2) "I know that it is possible for X to exist without knowing anything about X. According to you, you deny that (2) is true, at least you question its validity.

With the same reasoning, (3) I also don't know that it is impossible for X to exist without knowing anything about X.

If you deny the statement in the subject and the predicate, that is, you negate both the subject and the predicate of a sentence, then you are not changing the truth value of the sentence. Therefore (3) becomes (4) without changing its truth value.

(4) I know that it is possible for X to exist without knowing anything about X.

If science employed rational justification beyond what is enough for its own purpose, then it would fall victim to the Munchausen effect. But science stops its reasoning in answering questions from going on BEYOND what is immediately needed for an explanation.

I think Science is true in a pragmatic sense, is that significant enough for you? — Amalac

Again: Science won't explain to you whether god created the world or not. This may, for you, take some significance away from science, but there is enough left in it still. Like explaining what lightning is, and helping to discard the belief that lightning is thrown by god at people who sin.

Of course I don't deny that Science has produced great things. But one can hold that Science (at least the Science that we know can't be used for evil) is useful, without having to believe that it is true in an epistemological sense (think scientific instrumentalism). — Amalac

I don't know the definition of scientific instrumentalism or what you mean by "true in an epistemological sense", but maybe you got it now. Science observes and reports. There is no room in scientific investigation to answer questions such as "Why is gravity wrong?" or "why does time go in one direction only?", or "who created the idea to have negatively, positively, and neutrally charged atomic particles?"

You see, there is epistemological sense, and epistemological sense. One answers the "why", and the other, the "how". Science is the "why". Religion and spirituality attempts at the "how", but most (if not all) sacred religious texts, on which most of the religious humanity relies for answers to their questions, were not only not god-inspired, but also written by imbecilic philosophical dilettante, so they are full of holes.

A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street. — tim wood

With a little luck, the first man (or woman) on the street you meet is a seven-times Field Prize award winner.

The perfect math problem is complicated enough to challenge us, but easy enough so we can find its solution. The reward is an inner satisfaction. Nobody can give you inner satisfaction but yourself.(*)

(*) Theists are, as usual, exempt from believing this maxim.

I am not sure what it means to be a philosopher. Once I found out what it means to love, and what women (and/or men, or gender bias-free beings, or transgenders, or gay, bi- or hetero-omnisexuals, or else non-diploid creatures that divide and multiply by being diligent, or celibates) want, I think I can commit then.

I've come here to find true love, a pot of gold, and the elixir of eternal youth.

Well, guess what. I'm still here.

Two out of three ain't bad, but I'm going for broke.