New Mexico: Psychologists to dress up as wizards when providing expert testimony
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Does it really sound like the most likely explanation to you? Because I can think about several others.
I mean, it's certainly true that lots of gigantic, complicated bills don't get read properly by politicians before voting on them. But this is about a paragraph and written in clear English, so you'd imagine it would have a good chance of getting read.
prior.... so they knew it was satire.
Maybe 100 years ago this would work, but the modern state is really complex, and the problems are really complex, because if they were easy they would be solved.
The amount of money that state and federal legislatures control is huge, My hunch is that if they spent more on extra staff, the increase in quality of legislation would provide enough economic benefits to cover the cost.
Specifically, this staff:
https://www.reliks.com/lord-of-rings-hobbit/staff-of-gandalf...
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Research_Servi... and https://crsreports.congress.gov/search/#/?termsToSearch=&ord...
CRS reports are a phenomenal source of information.
Until then, hereby I vote for them to wear wizard hats in public!
That really sounds like you're implying that modern day astrology is better.
It's shocking how popular astrology still is.
I think at some point we'll have to acknowledge that pscyhology is a fuzzy field and it doesn't always have the correct answers and somehow balance that with but sometimes the experts are right.
Our society (well, the US and increasingly Europe where I’m from) has put a lot of resources and effort into mental health, largely by following “expert” recommendations.
Tons of people are being treated for mental health, children are medicalised, employers offer mental health courses and insurance, people sharing experiences about burnout, language being changed to avoid offending people, …
Yet the problems keep getting worse.
Maybe the experts are the problem?
Or more likely, the current approach just doesn’t work very well.
If everyone with a disease starts taking a medicine, and nobody gets better, it doesn’t mean the medicine causes the disease, despite the correlation. It just means the medicine doesn’t work.
With other treatments for diseases we always expect the incidence rate to decline — because the treatment works. If it stayed static or went up slightly, then the treatment doesn’t work (and you’re might have slightly higher rates due to new interest in the diagnosis). But huge increases…that’d not be good.
But it's not hard to come up with actual causal reasons why experts are actively making things worse:
1. if people have confidence in experts, they'll seek treatment from them, and forego other, potentially more effective, treatments (in this particular case: making and talking to friends, not therapists; prioritizing family, not shunning them; prioritizing community, not isolating; etc.)
2. experts make a living selling advice to patients, so it's in their implicit interest to keep having patients (either individually, not curing them, or society-wise, making more patients) (there's a lot of anecdata about "I asked a therapist how many patients they actually cured, and they looked at me bewildered")
3. I've seen some opinions, which echo mine, that experts seeking, reaffirming, and reminding patients of their "traumatic experiences" might hurt more than it helps (e.g. talking to therapist every week makes you re-live your traumatic experience; narrowing the definition of "consent" and convincing women they've been raped; convincing children they're trans (they used to be called "tomboys!"); in general marking fairly normal life experiences - job loss, job stress, death in family, etc. - as "traumatic" and "requiring therapy")
probably more
But, that gets the order reversed. People seek mental health treatment after they already have a problem, not before.
It's much more likely that widespread effects are the cause: pollution, social media, poverty, capitalism, racism, etc.
> Maybe the experts are the problem?
I'm not sure I follow your logic. What do you hypothesise to be the causal factor linking these things?
I think we could look to any number of things that could exacerbate mental health issues. Climate disasters, social alienation, rapid inflation, political disillusionment, patriarchy etc.
Hypothetically? It's common for an industry to want to expand their market.
Imagine you're a big drug company, and you make decent profits selling drugs to treat shell-shocked soldiers returning from the front lines after losing limbs and seeing their buddies die right in front of them.
You look for ways to increase your sales and add to your profits. What if you could also sell your drugs to people who've been in bad car accidents? And to rape survivors? And to refugees fleeing from war? And to mothers who had particularly difficult births? And teens subject to severe bullying? What about cancer survivors, or people who've struggled following the death of a grandparent?
It's easy to see how higher diagnosis rates could go hand in hand with higher sales and higher profits.
I can see some logic in you're hypothetical but there are numerous other causal factors which seem much more likely.
Maybe, but I wouldn't dismiss hypochondria or mild hysteria that quickly. If you keep hearing people talk about skin infections, you'll notice yourself itching more...
PS Apart from psychiatrists and priests. Probs they should all wear magic hats when pulling out their expert opinion in court.
If the correlation between increased attention on mental health and increased mental health diagnoses is sufficient to show causality, why not with oncologists?
And employers will pay for some cheap benefits to minimize chances of employees being able to win a lawsuit against them.
Does therapy help some people. It sure does.
Recall, the "reproducibility crisis" came to everyone's attention because of how bad the papers from these two camps were. Nothing really changed, no one got fired, and the situation, seems to have not only not improved but the quality has gone DOWN.
Maybe the law should be they have to wear the hats till they un fuck the last 30 years of publishing...
However, I move that the hat should have "Wizzard" written on it.
Can we get a bill going? I can’t decide between “Webmancer” and “www.izard.com”
- Terry Pratchett
Was surprised this was from 1995, I thought it was current.
Note: Psychology is a real science. It replicates as well as a lot of other 'sciences', studying the mind is not worthless just because it is complicated.
I wish psychologists and neuroscientists all the best and really hope the fields progress, but we'll never achieve a level of understanding of individual brains and how they respond comparable to say, how heart health can vary with diet. I think it's just the nature of the beast that psychology in particular will remain more art than science.
Every science has gone through something like this.
Neuroscientist have now been able to scan a brain and re-produce the image the person was thinking of. In 2000 that would be called magic, what about in 2040, will they be able to scan and find out what you are feeling, and then apply some magnetic fields and change your mood. It's now in reach, real studies, real science, the mind is being untangled.
I do know it's ridiculous and hypocritical to mock psychology as "wizardry" in a culture where ersatz wizards and the people who believe in them still wield far too much influence.
Too bad, I was looking forward to seeing female psychiatrists with an 18 inch white beard and a wizard hat on the stand.
But seriously, that this proposal got unanimous support in the state senate is deeply disturbing.
It was an ammendment tacked onto a Bill that had wide support.
The majority who voted likely never read it, those that did rightly figured that it would not pass all the way through and complete, like so many other ammendments on Bills.
Even had it actually passed through it still would not be "solid real law" until it survived being called out for being bullshit and challenged in court.
Seriously, as someone who owes his life to psychologist help, my blood is boiling while reading this.
It was a satirical proposal from 95 that, while it got surprising approval, was never signed into law.
There's a reason why civil courts and judges are often given leeway to decide against the reception of expert testimony - because not all experts really are so. Especially in something like psychology - which isn't really science per se - you'd expect the courts to be more guarded against possible quacks.
Just because you owe your life to psychologist help, doesn't mean that psychologists are all acceptable.
You also didn't read between the fine lines - a satirical document had passed the senate as possible law by "unanimous approval". Which means that the lawmakers who voted in favour didn't really read or consider what was being passed. That's even more embarassing.
Therapist is a meaningless word, because it's not a protected title. Anyone can call themselves a therapist without third party certification of any kind.
That seems to be a movie plot? "Congratulations on your swearing-in, congressman. Now we'll put on the guillotine collar around your neck."
1) who or what controls the guillotine collars?
2) if you say something in an interview and your head doesnt leave your body. It must be true, right? RIGHT?!
3) at some point a few adversaries that are questioning the guillotine suddenly tell a lie or pass a bad law and get "Sepped" (the slang for head and body SEParation, i.e. your head gets chopped.).
4) going against the party is "objectively" a lie and all people who dont fall in line of "truth" get "Sepped"
5) a law gets passed where everybody wears a mandatory guillotine collar. "We are a Republic of truth! Do you have things to hide? Are you a liar? Then you must fear this law. Only the morally corrupt will fear this law! All true citizens of the Republic will welcome this law."