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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   22205 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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It's still shocking to me that it won the nobel prize. I understand the harsh experiences and conditions of the instutionalized and that people genuinely did 'improve' in the sense that they didn't express wild emotions any more, but the null hypothesis for any such change, especially when it came with cognitive impairment, would obviously be that you've butchered them and something about their internal experience has been seriously degraded. I wonder at times whether the lobotomy was a product of behaviorism, or of the medical neglect of the mentally ill. Probably both.

I think personal interaction with a severely decompensated schizophrenic would help make it clear that lobotomy was a fantastic option when we had no other options.

You've probably seen street people - when your choice for your family member is let them live like that, during a time when that was mostly a quick death sentence, or sending them to an asylum to be locked up for the rest of their life....excising part of them while leaving as much as they could behind looks like a good idea.

This is what we do for cancer after all.

Thank god we have other options now, but before...

I think personal interaction with a severely decompensated schizophrenic would help make it clear that lobotomy was a fantastic option when we had no other options.

I bet it's fantastic for people who had to take care of them, but executing them would yield a similar effect in terms of taking a burden off their shoulder.

I mean poor quality of life or poor quality of life that drains on society less...

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