domain:pedestrianobservations.com
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1m ago
LOL Ayn Rand would be hilarious. Would love to see that.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
8m ago
Honestly, three and four don’t work simply because of geography. Israel and Palestine are fighting over pieces of land that in total is the size of New Jersey. Problem being that any missile launched can reach just about anywhere in that land area pretty easily. Which means that if either side ever defects, it’s back to square one. And thus Theres at best the return to form — ceasefire, rearm, and start another war.
The only way to have a permanent peace is to do the suitcase or coffin solution, as nothing less will survive the first defection.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
10m ago
Lacan's cult of personality is bigger than Marx's? What? How are they even in the same order of magnitude?
I feel like you are in a very small bubble if you genuinely think that! Unless maybe you're defining it in a counterintuitive way.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
11m ago
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, etc. Titans of business are often of this mold.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
12m ago
This article by arcove is a great dive into the genetic & cultural markers of the priest caste, which sounds like what you're pointing out here.
I recently stumbled onto a website outlining something called “CAPS” (aka CYP21A2 Mutation Associated NeuroPsychiatric Spectrum), which is a medical theory proposed and advanced by a psychiatrist named Dr. Sharon Meglathery.
Briefly, we know that the RCCX genes are unique in that mutations can be inherited together and they mutate often. There is a collagen matrix/hypermobile gene (TNXB) sitting next to a stress response gene (CYP21A2), sitting next to an autoimmune/CVID/schizophrenia gene. Doctors often see combos of these illnesses in families and individuals at a rate far higher than by chance alone.
It claims that if you have one of the following conditions it is likely you and blood relatives have others:
“Giftedness” (unusual abilities in music, maths, arts or abstract thinking)
5/5 of the “Major Psychiatric diagnosis”: Autism, ADHD, Bipolar, Schizophrenia, and Depression.
Hypermobility/Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (aka double-jointedness)
Hormone disorders
Sensory processing issues
Anxiety, Cutting and Eating disorders
Autoimmune disorders, Asthma, Allergies, Mast cell activation disorder
Gender dysphoria, fluidity, Same-sex attraction
Sleep disorders, Chronic fatigue
Left Handedness
… and loads of other random stuff.
It apparently makes you “wired for danger”, and so overly stressed by the normal world that many have brain wiring identical to PTSD patients despite having lived relatively tame lives. Perhaps there's something to all of this talk about “trauma” after all. People with these qualities seem to be drawn to one another, so you might even find evidence of this lineage on both sides of your family tree.
When the stress accumulates past a certain threshold, something called 21hydroxylase overwhelm is triggered, and it brings about near-death illness, life-changing burnout, and/or psychosis.
Primaprimaprima
Aliquid stat pro aliquo
13m ago
Nietzsche certainly. Kierkegaard too.
Celestial-body-NOS
We are all human beans. Together, we will rice.
14m ago
terroristsfreedom fighters
If crime-fighters fight crime, and firefighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part of it, do they?
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
16m ago
I mean maybe im not into the philosophy scene enough to be in on those conversations but I’ve never seen any other philosophers treated as Marx is. People in the Woke/Marxist movements insist that you aren’t well educated in political theory until you have studied Marx. This isn’t what people claim about Kant, or Shoepenhour or Pascal. Nobody’s passing around Critique of Pure Reason like they do for Communist Manifesto. Some weird libertarians might pass aroun$ Milton Friedman, but it’s pretty rare. The closest I’ve seen to people treating philosophers like prophets is the Neo-Stoic movement that encourages people to read Seneca and Marcus Aurelius.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
20m ago
Hah well we do the Liturgy and such in ancient Greek so, they'd still be disappointed.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
20m ago
For a purely material creature. Because perception and thinking are non-material things.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
29m ago
It depends what qualifies as mass politics. You'll find lots of political movements that are interested in a specific issue (notably, who rules) and are therefore compatible with a lot of ideologies and/or religions and don't necessarily have something to say about the meaning of one's life.
But if you're asking in the largest sense whether Weltanschauungen contain any view of purpose, that's a tautology.
Marxism is different precisely because it is a worldview, not merely an interest group.
functor
35m ago
TK-421
47m ago
If this sounds a lot like a religion, then that's because it should. Marxism undoubtedly shares many structural features with traditional religions in its fundamentals.
Are there many other mass political / economic systems that don't share structural features with traditional religions like offering meaning and purpose to varying degrees? Is Marxism a significant outlier?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
55m ago
I suppose it's going to appear differently on different feeds, true enough.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
56m ago
charlesf
58m ago
I think they should just be honest. Record the records, slap an * on it and explain in the notes. Assuming strong evidence; I've no idea what a sufficient level of suspicion would be to noteworthy though.
I’ve been thinking about a very similar topic to this one recently; the actual % of frauds in cheaters in every field, not just sports.
A man near me made a career in a certain field, climbing the ranks until he got to the top of the local version of this institution. It’s a public profession, and he was briefly in the news, so I want to stay vague to not compound his problems. His profession requires a 4 year degree and some professional certs, and advancing up the ranks generally demanded a masters, then a doctorate at the top. Not always, some get away with a master’s, but most of the people in the role around the nation have one. Turns out he didn’t actually have a phd, or a masters. He just self-studied the material while pretending to be in a program for the amount of time it would have normally taken. He’d worked in the doctorate level roll for over a decade before someone hired a PI to investigate the guy for some reason, and it all fell apart.
It seems like it was a lot easier to fake it in the past, before the internet. There were also fewer examples to make people suspicious. I wonder just how many people have to one extent or another “faked it”: PEDs in sports, fake degrees, fake job histories/references etc. Fake martial arts history or military claims were one of the first ones to really get exposed by the internet. I know more than one person who financed the launch of their successful, life-defining business with the profits of criminal enterprise, usually selling drugs. Is this even the same category? There’s also the currently hot trend of getting real advanced degrees and positions using fake (or plagiarized) scholarship.
Who knows how many skeletons are out there in how many closets. I think we are alive in a particularly fruitful time for discovering these stories.
yunyun333
1hr ago
That's right below a headline about the hostages on my page.
'You're my life, my hero': Hostages reunite with families after two years
Corvos
1hr ago
The Oxford Handbook of Psychiatry, 4th edition
An interesting read, as long as it's not compulsory. I find it interesting that it has a new section 'to reflect changing cultural attitudes around gender dysphoria' but once you get into the more usual boring disorders it will tell you the gender incidence and relative ratio with bracing honesty.
Pathological fire-setting/pyromania: Multiple episodes of deliberate, purposeful fire-setting, leading to property damage, legal consequences, and injury or loss of life. Rare in children; more common in male adolescents, particularly those with poor social skills and learning difficulties
Kleptomania: Failure to resist impulses to steal items that are not needed for their personal use or monetary value. Usually women, mean age 36yrs, mean duration of illness 16yrs (often childhood onset). ~5% of stealing in the United States (USA).
chooky
1hr ago
Wake me up if Israel/Palestine stop killing each other for more than a few months! I think this is a case where Trump's approach of steamrolling Israel into accepting his terms worked well and good for him, but it also seems way too easy to be real. Also, it is somewhat difficult to evaluate Israel outside of the context of Ukraine, on which there has been no progress toward a peace that doesnt just reward Russia's initial invasion.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1hr ago
Thanks for looking at the numbers. I guess I was extrapolating from Zimbabwe, which actually did see like 90% of the white population emigrate. Although the most recent stats I've seen actually show growth within the last couple years.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1hr ago
I found it odd (perhaps naïvely so) to see headlines, notably the BBC, focused not on the release Israeli hostages, but on the Palestinians: "Palestinians celebrate return of detainees freed by Israel"
Another doctor here? Good, please unlurk yourself! That's a genuine request. We're up to 5 and change, depending on how you count med students who may or may not be hiking naked in Alaska.
When I was a first year in med school, staring at the sheer amount of knowledge I was supposed to cram into my brain, I would get too anxious and stressed out to even concentrate enough to study. So my girlfriend suggested I take some of her Xanax, which calmed me down enough that I could hit the books. The next day though I would have forgotten everything because as you know (and I had not yet learned at the time) benzos fuck with your hippocampus and it's harder to form memories. I did this three times before I recognized the pattern enough to bother googling it. So uh, don't do that.
Evidence that pharmacology should be shoved into the first year syllabus haha. You'd have been better off drinking alcohol to steady your nerves, since (paradoxically) alcohol increases reteograde memory retention, while hampering it anterograde (at reasonable doses).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06305-w
For anyone else reading: don't do this.
What ended up working out for me was getting plenty of daily exercise. I was basically trying to study for 14 hours a day, then I'd watch a movie to unwind, then go to bed. Cutting that back to 13 hours of trying to study and one hour of exercise in the morning made me a lot less stressed out.
I'm in awe. I couldn't study for 12 hours a day if my life depended on it, even on medication. I feel utterly burnt out after 4-6 hours of actual study (not just sitting there with the book open, or procrastinating, as I'm doing now). This was true even before I had a job. Well, apparently that has been enough so far, and I try to keep up the habit.
The worst thing you can do is not talk to your friends and colleagues about this.
I did. I still feel bad about it, my dad is always stressed when he hears of such episodes, and he's the old-fashioned type of doctor who believes I don't need stimulants because ADHD isn't a real condition. He loves me, so I look past that. They know, they care, but they're a continent away.
Friends? They get it, sometimes. I had a good buddy who was a bit older and burdened with kids, he passed the exam during the previous window, so I suppose I have no excuse.
Now, the thing that tends to stress me out the most is parenting. I am fully confident at times that I am fucking up my kids and they're going to need a lot of therapy in their mid-20s when they realize how much damaged my wife and I caused. But, and maybe this makes me look silly, I find the sycophantic nature of ChatGPT as well as its always available-ness is perfect for stopping me from spiraling.
I suppose it's my turn to reassure you, though I have no kids of my own. Donald Winnicot was on to something when he came up with the concept of the "good enough mother" (and father).
Once you're past levels of effort above outright neglect, the returns to additional parental effort decline steeply or become outright flat. Parenting is not a video game where grinding extra hours levels your kid up faster. When it comes to variance in life outcomes, heredity is king, non-parental environment is queen, and “parenting” (once you’ve cleared the bar of “not abuse or neglect”) is a minor courtier at best.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ng.3285
I have seen a full writeup somewhere, but I've lost it. I can look harder later.
In other words, you don't have to worry too hard. You've done the important things, like giving them your genes, amassing wealth, not abusing them (I hope, but feel free to disabuse me if you disagree) etc.
They're good genes! You're a doctor, hardworking, and probably more conscientious than is good for you. In all fairness, so were my parents, but you can't help some things. I turned out okay. I love my parents despite their minor failings, and I'm sure your kids will love you too. If you’re worried you’re messing up, that’s actually evidence you’re not the type who would really mess up.
Anyway: physician, heal thyself and so forth.
Thank you, I mean it. I've been through worse, both in terms of academic load and blindness. I'll live, and if I ever become a consultant, I will dedicate my life to involuntarily commiting some of the exam-designers. Oh, and if your kids end up needing therapy, I'll offer a steep discount as a professional courtesy.
I think they'll eventually succeed at taking over the West Bank. In part because they want it (it's good land and it's right there for the taking, not to mention the religious motivation to control jeruselum), and in part because they've found a way to successfully "salami slice" it, taking little bits at a time. The rest of the world expresses outrage and indignation but does nothing, and the Palestinian authority can't fight back. There seems to be no shortage of Israeli's volunteering to move in there, and not just soldiers but normal middle-class families. This might take multiple generations, but it'll happen.
I do not think they'll take over the Gaza strip that way, because the situation is totally different. Nobody really wants it, because it's an ultra-dense ghett of bomb-blasted buildings and unexploded ordnance. The people living there are highly motivated to fight back, and there's a ton of world attention that would make a huge outcry if Israel tried to adjust the borders even slightly. There's also no holy city there, no natural resources, limited water... it's not a place any sane person would want to live.
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