47 karma · joined August 11, 2015
My point was to criticise the "Internet Dream" utopian fairy tale advocated by commenter TEMPORAL--where a user gets everything but pays nothing--and to explain that the internet's commercialisation is perfectly OK.
I don't see how there is a need to do this with the internet in the way the "Internet Dream" describes it.
These are not the only players in the game like you believe. Those who advertise more effectively on the web have more of an advantage over those who advertise via other media and those who don't advertise at all. And, as ads are more spammy and in-your-face, the advertised products get bought more whether all competitors are spamming or only some. Advertised products are bought more than they would be if the ads were mild or there were no ads at all.
PS: Thanks for the blog link it looks very interesting, I'll read it later.
What cases are you talking about? If a consumer pays for something, they want it. What is the evil of supplying a consumer with what they want? If they don't want it they don't have to buy it. If they don't like it they don't have to use it. Ultimately, the decision is up to the consumer for what is the for them.
> So far the data seems to indicate that internet.org is comparable to releasing swarms of burrowing parasites upon the poorest of the world.
Haven't a clue what you mean by this analogy.
I don't know what made you think that I have the only right opinion. I'm advocating a view, and actually part of developing a well-rounded view is challenging beliefs you yourself hold--playing devil's advocate.
> That they can only be deprived of their rights through due process of law, as passed by elected legislature. Not a "scientific" book written by people who have no accountability to the population as a whole.
The part of the government that deals with health sets the policy on who should be institutionalised, and they are the ones that give executive power to do so to doctors. Actually, doctors and psychiatrists hold an immense amount of responsibility over the welfare of patients; they may not personally hold accountability, but the hospital or other medical instution does, because of the great potential for lawsuits in the case of mistakes (AFAIK).
> It may well already be true that a malicious individual with enough knowledge could look at your current lifestyle and find a justification for committing you and injecting you with things against your will. I'm sure that such a thing could happen under the rules that you seem to advocate.
This is rather unplausible; there is a mountain of a difference between my behaviour and of an unwashed, malnourished man who fails to communicate even basically with other people, standing for hours at road crossrods like a zombie.
I was referring to patients who lack control over their mental faculties at least to the degree of the man on which the article was written.
> There aren't simple answers, and this person isn't these people.
Yes, this person belongs to the general collective I described above. Clearly when I said "these people" I meant people like the man in the article I was talking about.
> Or was he, as he seemed, competent -- but voluntarily decided to discontinue the medication?
He may have been in the driving seat when he hypothetically decided to stop taking medication, but ultimately he lost control of the wheel. If a person is not taking care of themself and so out of your wits that you stand for hours at road junctions staring blankly forward, they need to be saved. The authorities must assume that though the decision to stop taking medication was voluntary, because the person lost control of their mind, maybe that person's decision was misinformed (or as you suggest, accidental). By analogy, ust because the driver of a car intentionally didn't buckle themselves in (maybe they wanted to die, or like the risk, or were just eccentric), doesn't mean that when they crash and their body flies out, that we shouldn't hospitalise them.
> And that's great, but its a mistake to project what you think you would want onto other people as their preferences.
Actually there is no mistake here: it's a fact that there are other people like me who want this protection from the state.
>And under what mental disorder should someone be institutionalised?
Under those that are responsible for causing a person to suffer and damage their own health and fail to try to recover, or seek help with recovery, as in the example above.
>All you've referred to is the DSM, so it's very unclear which illnesses and disorders you are referring to.
You've taken this comment thread on a totally different tangent. We're arguing a wholly different point now.
> Incidentally, are you aware that there is a difference between a mental disorder and a mental illness?
No, wasn't aware. I use them interchangeably.
Surely not. The "revolving door" concept, as you call it, is the middle-ground between not helping at all, thus letting a mentally ill person reach trauma more severe, and permanently confining those with incurable mental disorders (but those which can be controlled, and the patient able to live healthily outside the ward), which is both wildly expensive and harder to justify overruling the patient's will and freedom.
Just because it had errors before doesn't discredit the document in its current state; it's the product of scientific investigation. By it's very nature it will make mistakes and then update the conclusions as time goes by. Yes, of course it will be different in 10 years, but currently it is our best understanding of mental ailments and the knowledgebase has come a long way.
> main transgression against the rest of society is making us feel uncomfortable when we look at them.
The main transgression is that the victims are trapped in a cycle of suffering because their brains are malfunctioning and are preventing them from recovering or seeking help to recover.
Who is the most competent to make this decision? The medical professional. Of course government (advised by medical professionals) will set the policy which will constrain the possible decisions.
> Can you imagine scenarios where the state, or the family, or the physician are incompetent, selfish, or malicious in determining the competence of a person? I believe there are MANY such scenarios.
This could apply to absolutely everything: evil police officers taking bribes and releasing criminals, doctors not prescribing expensive medicine to save their hospital money, etc. Does that mean we do away with police protection and hospital services entirely? No, as in this case, we have to accept the risk of the person in authority to make the good decision.
I agree this issue is not black and white.
No, until the mental disorder is controlled. After all avenues of curing are exhausted, and it's still not under control, then they can be released, provided there's no significant risk that they'll harm others or themselves.
If you are all there in the head, by all means live on the streets, stay filthy, don't eat and ignore people, but this man has a brain disease that makes him lose control of his mind.
If he was forcefully taken to the hospital, forcefully given medication, and recovered he would exclaim "Thank you for saving me! I had a disease in my brain that lead me to believe in crazy things: to be paranoid of police and even medical personnel. I spent 2 years on the streets suffering like this with no place I believed could help me, but you cured me."
If I had a mental disorder that made me go crazy--so crazy that it doesn't even enter my mind that I need help--I would hope that my government would restore my sanity (as I am unable to do so).
A government has the duty to provide for the welfare of their people. It's every government's goal to make their people healthier.
> How do you force a person to take their medication?
In a psychiatric institution you could for example inject the medicine into them.
> Why should you do it for this particular person but not that particular person?
If a person's mind is gone so haywire that they're destroying their own body, that they don't have adequate control of their mind (as is the case with schizophrenics), that they don't eat or even respond to human communication, and they have been diagnosed with a mental disorder then you should institutionalize them until their mind regains control.
> Who is responsible for the cost of doing so?
Taxpayer
It's already being planned, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10498280
Hey, the militants must've also accepted they were doing the wrong thing, but what can they do? It's their job. /sarcasm
Great job for strengthening the terrorists' position. The good guys in the government and police are trying to combat the insurgency, and these leeches are undermining that effort.
That Rev. Stallman uses their laptop speaks for Lemote's trustfulness.