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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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We wouldn’t need endless medications or miraculous scientific breakthroughs - we could already have the power to end massive amounts of truly pointless suffering.

You think changing culture is easier than making a pill? I'm not sure it's the case. It may be possible to change the culture by the pill (e.g. - oral contraceptives?), but if somebody gave me two options of achieving the same goal - either by inventing the pill or by figuring out how to change the culture - I'd go for the pill. I think semaglutide has a better chance to make the dent in the obesity epidemic than 1000 public awareness campaigns.

Ahh yes, you might like Scott’s older post Society is Fixed, Biology is Mutable.

The problem with this model is that if these illnesses are truly caused from cultural issues, there can’t be a pill that fixes them. Sure we can try to use the placebo affect but doctors already do that by prescribing Gabapentin or other weak drugs for everything.

If it's culture+biology, then we still can attack the biology part. We have a choice then which part to concentrate on, I'm just saying biology may be easier.

P.S. read Scott's post - yeah, he pretty much says all what I meant. Haven't seen it before, thanks for pointing it out.