Hacker News Reader

Comment by mansoon | Hacker News Reader

You assume death is better than life for the "mad".

This is non-obvious, as one of them.

I assume no such thing. Quite the opposite, actually. I'm pointing out that the author makes this assumption, implicitly, by suggesting that vision quests and other traditional shamanic interpretations of psychosis are a better, more holistic way of dealing with "mad" people than modern medicine.

Yes, going out into the desert without supplies to perform a vision quest is certainly more romantic than a stint in a mental hospital. But it's certainly not safer.

It's not about safe.

It's about:

utility_positive_outcome * probability_postitive_outcome + utility_negative_outcome * probability_negative_outcome

You've made these two smaller in absolute magnitude, but also biased things toward negative (look up the side effects of neuroleptics).

You've also conveniently deprived those affected of their agency to have an opinion about this.

Speaking as someone whose survival to $CURRENT_AGE was once so poor a bet that a couple of life insurance underwriters you've heard of refused to take it at any price, I feel okay about saying that, if life were otherwise reliably safe, your argument here would weigh more than it does.

How many of your relatives have died from bacterial infections? From getting kicked in the head by a horse? From being stabbed in a dispute? From drowning? From war? How often have you faced starvation?

If you're arguing that the modern world is anywhere close to the same level of danger as the ancient world, then you're sadly mistaken.

All of those things continue to be very relevant dangers in the modern world, too (well, except for the part about horses, but cars have certainly surpassed them as a substitute).

You can still die from those, but the odds of dying from bacterial infection have gone down dramatically.

Depends on what part of the world you're in.

It's interesting that you seem to assume I could honestly answer "none" or "never" to all of those questions, but also beside the point, because the argument you're answering is not the one I made.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com