thelastpsychiatrist.com - Who Are Academics Writing For? (For Whom Are Academics Writing?) Adnotated.

Interesting study from Princeton psychologist Daniel Oppenheimer, called "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity : Problems With Using Long Words Needlessly." (I should mention I have not read, and can't find, an actual copy of this study.)

Took a selection of writing samples (grad school applications, sociology dissertations etc), and changed each of the words to more complex/longer synonyms. Then he gave these samples to 71 students and asked them to judge the intelligence of the authors. The more complex and flowery the language, the dumber the author was assumed to be.

Think about it...i

———Here's the problem : "complex" "synonyms" aren't.

There's no such thing as synonymy in natural languages. The contrary view is strictly the purview of people who know very few words, and it arises because the meanings of each of the words one knows is a function of all the other words they know. So, for example, the meaning of the word "straw" in a mind possessed of the 500-1`000 words of basic English vocabulary is distinct, and distinguishable, from the meaning of the same word in a mind possessed of all of Shakespeare, such that "do not give dalliance too much the rein, the strongest oaths are straw to th' fire i' th' blood" is a familiar phrase. The moron may deem "synonymous" all sorts and manner of distinguishable construction, just like the moron has prior deemed "synonymous" two homonymous yet distinguishable types of straw. You wouldn't try and make a horse's bed with that sort of straw that's oaths, would you ? The horse might eat them!

Specialist language consists not of "complex" / "longer" "synonyms", but of more specifically defined terms. Those more specifically defined terms come with a cost : the user needs to take more and divers cares when deploying them.

Consider : "a military unit" given as such, in general, can be deployed in a conflict whenever needed, in principle. "A tank regiment" however can be deployed in any conflict whenever needed where the terrain is flat enough to permit their movement and fuel can be sourced to permit their movement and air superiority can be ensured to protect their movement. There's no real difference of either length (both strings are exactly 3 words and 15 characters) or "complexity" -- but there's significant difference in rules of engagement : before the general staff in charge of this conflict can deploy the second string, that general staff must make some determinations, as to flatness of terrain (so, is it a mountain ? is it a city ?), as to sourcing of fuel, as to air superiority. A general staff that fails to make these determinations is thereby negligent, which is probably going to be summarized as "that bunch of idiots" ; whereas in the first situation there's nothing to fail at, and therefore howsoever idiotic the general staff deploying "a military unit", its idiocy will likely escape detection.

Thus therefore : the more specialist language used, the more likely (on a purely statistical basis) for incorrect deployment to occur, each individual occurrence being counted as a failure, and taken out of the putative intelligence of the author. Like so ; or like so ; or like hundreds upon hundreds of other examples scattered everywhere about, because this is pretty much all I do all day long.

By taking text composed out of words worth between 0.0002 and 0.0009 man-hours' thought each, for an average of say 0.00028 and a total of 0.03, and replacing them with words that need 0.1 to 0.7 man-hours' thought each, for an average of 0.055 and a total of 7, you are doing the equivalent of dumping a truck chassis on a lawn mower engine. What do you think, will it go ? "Oh, so replacing chassis parts with larger / heavier '''equivalents''' makes the vehicle shittier ?!" Well done, sherlock! Not only is the .650 ton truck cabin NOT an equivalent chassis part to the little plastic cover going on top of your lawn mower, but it even requires specific hardpoints and connective screws and whatnot that the poor lawnmower didn't know it should've asked its mommy to pack in its lunch box. If I come to your house tonight, replace your boring wife's panties with my sluts' fare and the wife herself with the sluts herself, what'll we discover ? That you're impotent ?

So then, this study found that all trucks should go about with lawn mower plastic covers instead of cabins -- they'll be lighter that way ; and everyone's bedroom should contain naught besides boring missionary sex with an overweight woman who doesn't work out, wears jeans and owns no heels.

Congrats, you're retarded. But conversely : simple text deliberately written by an expert (which is to say, me) is directly and painfully evidently superior to simple text written by the common retard, such as the current wykeham professor of logic.

This does not mean that "complex text would be better simpler would benefit from simplification" ; it also doesn't mean "any yahoo can simply search/replace literal strings in natural language texts and end up with anything besides a heap of word salad they're responsible for". It was the act of replacing, and not the original content of the text, that produced the (correct) impression of idiocy.

Meanwhile I can write simple text, or complex text, and while they're both equally excellent they're nevertheless mutually irreplaceable ; whereas nobody at Princeton can write either complex or simple text, at all, and certainly nothing worth reading. Because it's not the words -- it's the authors, that's the simple conclusion here : everyone at Princeton is fucked in the head -- not merely too stupid to live, but somehow actually dumber than that. [↩]

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Tuesday, 30 July, Year 11 d.Tr.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - The Biggest Dick Ever. Adnotated.

A true story about what happens when words lose their meaning.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see The Kid is stalking me, looking to talk to me, to anyone. I see this everywhere, people like a bomb on a hair trigger, the slightest contact explodes a full attempt at connection. I sympathize with women on this, they have it particularly bad. If they even let on that they are aware the guy is in the room, he takes it as a strong invitation to come over and talk about himself. They're everywhere, bookstore stalkers and coffeehouse predators, empty, hollow, looking for something to fill them up, that something is almost always a woman. At 24 it's sad but normali, at 34 it's sad but dangerous.

So there he is, weaving and hovering, looking for an in with me. I don't like people, I don't like being approached by peopleii and truthfully I look like someone you'd never approach without air cover.iii I look like a mugshot, I look like I relapsed a week ago, when I walk past a church unseen dogs bark at me and when I walk into a store they call Homeland Security.iv Yet still, everywhere I go, strangers cross freeways or walk through glass to get to me, for what? To inform me that Karl Rovev wants to destroy welfare or all these bitches care about is money or "oh my God, you look just like my ex-boyfriend's Dad!" Broken people have a 6th sense for other broken people, I guess.

I finish what I'm doing, which is nothing, and he pounces. "That guy..."

"What guy?" I say it to make sure that the only guy he could be asking about is not standing behind me.

"The big guy. The big...big guy." So much for new post-election open dialogue about race. "He was huge--"

"Oh, yeah?"

He puts his hands out, palms facing each other, and uses it to italicize each word. "Biggest dick ever."

"Oh," I say.

"Huge. The biggest dick ever."

So now I have half an instant to decide whether this guy made an assessment of Devastator's character based on some personal experience; or whether he is falling back on stereotypes about narcissistic weightlifters and is asking me to bond with him over a shared worldview? Or is he going with a racist perspective?--

Or, did the The Kid see Devastator in the locker room and is now compelled as an instrument of natural selection to tell me that he has the biggest dick ever? And if so, then I'd have to figure whether The Kid has not seen many dicks and is just mystified that dicks can get so big, or if he isn't in fact gay -- or thinks I'm gay -- and this is the best he could come up with as an opening line? Or is he so charged by the guy's overall size that he is imagining that because he's huge and black that he must have a gigantic penis?

So I don't know which one he means. Whichever I guess only indicates my own prejudices about guys, black guys, and dicks. No matter what I guess, if it's wrong he's going to think I'm a dick.vi

Big dick. Why is dick a preferred insult? I get what pussy means, and at least asshole is anatomically logical, but calling a guy his most precious organ -- what? A girl calls you a dick when you're overly sexually aggressive, ok, I'm copilotvii, but what do you say when a guy calls you a dick? "You don't know the half of it!"

He spares me. "All I did was ask him how long he'd been training, you know, to get that big, and he blows me off! 'Don't talk to me, not when I'm lifting.' "

"Don't take it personally," I say, "some of these powerlifter guys are overly focused. I don't know that guy, but I know what you're talking about, I know the mentality." Then, to discharge the anxiety he's feeling about it all, I smile at him and joke, "now get away from me, I'm lifting."

He laughs, but I instantly regret saying it. Now he probably thinks I'm a big dick. Which is good or bad for me depending on who he tells next.

II.

Twenty minutes later I am in the locker room, and it happens: Devastator comes towards me. Completely naked.

"Big dick, huh?"

He stops inches from me. "Big dick?" He's pissed off, and I realize immediately the Kid was right all around. I've only ever been assaulted with one other gigantic penis in my life, when I worked at the VA and a schizophrenic on the cardiology unit came at us firing in semi-automatic mode. How that nut got hold of a Do Not Resuscitate form I'll never know, how he got hold of a stapler is less of a mystery, but he was walking and ejaculating and stapling the form to his bare chest, "I'm DNR-C, I'm DNR-C!"

So now I'm back at the same question with different assumptions, is he angry because we talked about him being a dick or talked about his dick? Surely both have happened to him before. Is he a narcissist or a homophobe?

I guess the former. I take my right hand and rub my left ear, I do this to get it up in case something happens.

Something happens. He suddenly slams into my chest, pushing me back, I'm already against the lockers so there isn't much room for me to go but I hit it hard. The wind gets knocked out of me. Oh, great, I think, I'm back in 9th grade. I hammer my fist into the side of his head above his ear.

To my amazement, he drops to the floor, out cold.viii

Now what, I think.

III.

There are soon/instantly six other people in the locker room, tending to and restraining Devastator, and through a process of semi-apologies, semi-praise for my strength, semi-acknowledgment of his prior neck injury and current self-respect, everyone agrees that everything is cool. We shake hands, he pulls me in for a hug. He is still naked. Everyone grabs their clothes. Two trainers and I head out.

When we are well out of the locker room, one of the trainers glances behind and snickers. "What a dick," he says.ix

———Absolutely abnormal. I never knew anyone like that at twenty-four. [↩]So get a ring of women to play interference, like WW2 aircraft carriers. [↩]Somehow I have my doubts, but whatever. [↩]Why is this self-fantasy so common, anyways ? Erryone's emo now or something ? [↩]It's been ten years by now, give or take, can you even distinguish Karl Rove from Dick Cheney ? Two fatty eggheads, which was which and who did what again ? [↩]Dude who the fuck cares omfg. [↩]FWIS a girl will use "dick" and "jerk" interchangeably, with the former being possibly more acute and/or less easily documented. Or maybe just less economically justified -- if her room-mate leaves shit all over the shared livingroom then he's being a jerk, but if he uses up most of the toilet paper and then leaves a smiley face painted on the last available square he's just being a dick. I never heard a female complain of sexual aggression ; I have heard frequent complaints of sexual ineptitude, but that's usually going from dweeby to creepy. [↩]Aaahahahaha. No, really ?

Good thing they don't have desks in locker rooms, I guess. [↩]The gift for fiction develops slowly. [↩]

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Basic Instinct »

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Monday, 12 August, Year 11 d.Tr.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - China Needs Fewer TVs, Or A Billion Of Them. Adnotated.

I'm just as surprised as you, but at least I'm drunk

I.

Reread Part 1. What's happened since?

II.

Studies have apparently shown that soap operas shown in developing countries introduce/reinforce progressive values like female empowerment, education, equality, with very real effects on the society (e.g. birth rates are lower, girls stay in school longer, etc.)i

From a news article entitled, "How soap operas could save the world"ii:

"The evidence we have from these academic studies is that quite often [soap opera viewers in developing countries] take away different attitudes toward things like how many children they want, what is acceptable behavior for a husband toward his wife, what is the breakdown in a household of responsibilities over things like finances, should we be sending girls to school," says Charles Kenny, an economist at the World Bank.

Soaps are particularly powerful because they attract so many devoted viewersiii. But other shows have similar effects. Charles Kenny wrote more extensively about this in Foreign Policyiv:

When a woman reached the final five [of Afghan Idol] this year, the director suggested "it would do more for women's rights than all the millions of dollars we have spent on public service announcements for women's rights on TV."

Ok. But what did it change in women, exactly?v

III.

1. How fast does the culture change due to TV? Probably only by a half-generation. Tick tock.vi

2a. If this effect is real, is it conscious and deliberate on the part of TV execs? Are interested parties creating shows to influence the culture (as opposed to simply selling product?)vii

2b. If this effect is real, why don't special interests (the government, the Christian Coalition, GLAAD, whatever) just give money to established Hollywood producers and say, "can you make cannibalism ok?" or "Please rewrite history or me." Works for Spielberg. So?viii

Certainly everyone loves to complain that TV is destroying society, why not get together and use TV to push the agenda you want?

Maybe they don't themselves know how real this effect is? Or maybe they don't want to. Maybe Spielberg doesn't want to change the world, just be thought of as the guy who wanted to.ix)

IV.

You'll observe that the article's title isn't "How soap operas alter the world" it's "How soap operas could save the world" -- so it's a good thing, then?x I know the result here was that women wanted empowermentxi, but it could just as easily have gone the other way. Why would a soap promote only the positive values of empowermentxii but not promote the negatively sexy ones such as showering with your boss and recording it?xiii

This is from the Museum of Broadcast Communicationsxiv article on soaps, specifically 1960s medical soaps:

The therapeutic orientation of medical soaps also provided an excellent rationale for introducing a host of contemporary, sometimes controversial social issues

Yay progress. But here's the sentence immediately preceding it:

Their popularity also spawned the sub-genre of the medical soap, in which the hospital replaces the home as the locus of action... the biological family is replaced or paralleled by the professional family as the structuring basis for the show's community of characters.

Not to mention our own personal community of characters. Eventually even those get replaced with TV families. Why else would there be an all new episode of Brothers and Sisters this Mother's Day?

V.

If you're still trying to figure out whether the studies show that TV violence causes real violence or TV progressivism causes real progressivism, you're approaching the question the wrong way. Those are accidental outcomes influenced not by the content of the shows, but the way TV makes you look at things.

And that way of looking a things is -- get ready -- narcissism. TV makes you look at things not starting from the thing, but starting from yourself. No third world village woman looks at a soap and thinks, "I wish women had the right to freely choose their own husbands." They look at it and say, "I wish I could choose my husband freely." It looks like a positive value, but that part's an accident. If you look closely, TV has only made her ask what she would like for herself. It promotes of the right to self-identify. You can argue whether that's good or bad, but the argument has to be about that.xv

VI.

Soap operas were stylistically different from other shows because they were open ended, unlike the neatly wrapped episodic dramas and sitcoms. They are also shot in quasi-real time.xvi If a character says something dramatic and the show cuts away to another scene/subplot, when they return they will pick up exactly at the moment of the character's last words. You are hand-held through every step of the emotional processing. It's impossible to apply the full force [of] your prejudices to a social problem, e.g. abortion, when the show never gives you a moment to do so. You are carried through the entirety of the process through the character's life.xvii

Soaps are also directed as a theater (opera) production, conscious of the audience's placement relative to the stage. Characters never turn their back on the camera; they'll turn their back on the other character (e.g. both facing outwards, towards the audience) and argue in a way no one ever does.

It's a stage effect: it pulls the viewer into their lives. You're in there, day after day, part of the action, part of the drama -- which they guide you through. No closed ended show can be as powerful.xviii

It's hard to appreciate how unusual that was, because nowadays most TV dramas are run like soap operas: Sex & The City, Grey's Anatomy, Brothers and Sisters etc.xix That's what makes these shows so much more culturally influential than porn.xx Or church. If I was going to L. Ron Hubbard a religion, I would take Sunday services, and serialize them. Tune in next week.xxi

VII.

TV doesn't just influence those who watch it, it's enough simply to be aware of TV:

Barely five percent of the TVs that are on at that time are tuned to Gossip Girl; in other words, very few people watch it. Yet there isn't anyone who doesn't know about it, even if it's imagined based on magazine covers or ads. So the existence of a menage a trois episode mainstreams it for people who don't watch the show, and that's actually more powerful a cultural influence.xxii i.e. If you're a fan of the show, the threesome is specific: those three people are doing it. For everyone else not watching, it becomes background noise: "oh, people are having threesomes nowadays..."xxiii

This is why it is true that even if you are not interested in pop culture, pop culture is interested in you.

VIII.

Let's say I forbid my daughter or son to ever watch TV. What happens? Is she at a disadvantage because she is slightly less familiar with the rhythm of her social group? Will he be mystified by the seemingly contradictory desires in his female classmates? Will they both be frustrated and anxious at how everyone interprets social and political events using the exact same phrases, none of which they know?xxiv

IX.

Those of you expecting the rise of the Chinese Dragon and the collapse of the American Eagle are all going to die, along with your grandkids, way before that ever happens. Plan accordingly.

When Charles Kenny says TV is promoting values, what he means is western values. Right? As long as America controls the horizontal and the vertical, western values -- or whatever CBS decides those are -- will be exported and fetishized.xxv Accompanying those will be a interpretive framework built on narcissism. It is inevitable. You'll see Chinese women disdainfully rolling their eyes about American frivolity and arrogance even as they dab dry their Cosmopolitan splashed Hermes clutches and wonder why they are single in a nation infested with Y chromosomes.xxvi "The last guy I dated didn't even want to want to sex me anymore, let alone get a real job. Do I need to move to fucking Australia?"

Take a breath, Wildman, have a drink, the caps lock is on the left and I'm not going anywhere. Let me ask you [a] more immediate question: not everyone in China has a TV. What do you call it when part of a population becomes exponentially and suddenly more western while another part doesn't at all?xxvii

I'll save you the Google search: the answer is Iran.xxviii

Tell Sally Fields a happy mother's day from me when you see her tomorrow. I'm glad to hear she's doing good.

———These aren't "progressive values", not merely because the progre is the opposite of value but also because they happen to be trans-Hajnal nonsense. This bullshit where the average age of marriage is 26 in males and >23 in females, where spouses are relatively close in age, where a substantial number of women married for the first time in their thirties and forties and where about a fifth of adults never married has nothing to do with "progress", nor does it have anything to do with protestantism, or even scottish presbyterianism (the actual source of the English civil war, and of UStardianism generally -- the world's dumbest people). In fact, it predates the Norman invasion, it's fucking antique. Some genetic strands are intrinsicly failful, there's a reason nobody trans-Hajnal ever produced anything of any import or consequence, there's a reason the Renaissance started in Veneto not Zeeland, and so following.

But yes, they're a lot more serious about maintenance. [↩]He links boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/05/02/how_soap_operas_could_save_the_world/?page=full [↩]Whom they select : for laziness, indolence, and stupidity. Just what the pantsuit want to bless the orclands with more of. [↩]He links foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/19/revolution_in_a_box?page=full

Isn't it lulzy how the particular form of the idiocy "hidden" away in the url gives away the simple fact that all these spamsites are run by the same hand ?

Lookit, why is "boston globe" in the format /ARTICLES////blablabla?PAGE=FULL while "foreign policy" is in the format ARTICLES////blablabla?PAGE=FULL ?

Spamsites, you understand how this works ? Do you ? [↩]Keks. [↩]What fucking culture ?

Here's the thing : if tv enacts something you think you can measure about culture, the only thing you're measuring is the absence of any culture. Mercury salts only improve the health of corpses, comparative to other corpses ; white knighting only improves the satisfaction of imagined women, over other equally imagined women ; TV only impacts the culture of retards who ain't got one.

Such "measurements" an' "impactings" are a futile exercise. [↩]No, the effect is imaginary. Specifically, it is imagined by a certain kind of retard, so as to justify (in their own eyes) their "TV exec" larping. [↩]Because they don't have any. Only I have money ; all the rest of you are just living here, dicking about back and forth with fallen leaves. [↩]Bingo. (In fairness, I wanted to link here a discussion with hanbot where she observes that most schoolgirlies don't want a boyfriend as much as they want the other girlies to think they've got one, but, obviously... I can't find it! [↩]No, it's a fictitious thing.

Pro tip : world "saving" is always fictive. [↩]Women wanted a better life ; what they got was the life that was available on the dwindling resources of a diminishing industrial base and world relevancy. And they like it ok, because that is what woman means : she'll like okay whatever it is you've got for her. [↩]There's nothing positive about this "empowerment", leaving aside how it also doesn't exist as hallucinated into words. [↩]Are you fucking kidding me, of course they are. [↩]He links museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=soapopera [↩]Yes, definitely, postmodernism is all about infantilism. Retarded women from the orc village pick the TV over... nothing. Because that's their natural choice : they normally have the nothing they naturally deserve, but with this new fangled invention from the people who specialize in scraping the bottom... well ? It's something, innit ? Even if it's not very much, it's still something. Right ?

Nodoby who's anybody gives or need give the first flying fuck ; the people who watch TV are unimportant (and they know it). Whining to the contrary does nothing. [↩]They're also older than fucking dirt, having been around since the fucking fifties. Just because you heard about it recently doesn't make it "new" or "modern", they're fucking called soaps because they grew out of Unilever post-war advertising. [↩]Yes, they're essentially instructional videos for the marginally retarded. Because that's what they started out as : explanations as to the benefits of washing made for the sort of people who need those explained to them. [↩]Or inconsequential. [↩]What the fuck does he mean, "run like" ? They self-evidently and stinkingly obviously are soap operas, what.

You think I don't review them because I don't like the names or something ?! Abso-THEFUCK-nothing in the world keeps me or could keep me from declaring henceforth Trilema's dedicated to reviewing the wonderful world of Grey's City / Sex & Anatomy / whatever -- except, of course, for the incidental detail that there's nothing the fuck there. But for that, you'd read all about them, I'm sure. [↩]Nothing in the history of mankind was ever more influential than porn, except perhaps Bitcoin eventually. [↩]You know, Walmart's done exactly that. They call it orientation and nobody cares.

Nobody cares specifically because the "pile-ness" was never a property of the actual pile ; the influence is not a property of the show, or of the format, or of the dreams and aspirations of cuckold retards hoping against hope. The perceived influence was a result of circumstance, specifically the circumstance discussed in footnote xv. [↩]Oh holy hell, get the fuck over it, ridiculousness of ridiculousnesses.

What next, the Sun "is aware" of your favourite sun priest cult ? [↩]This is how Trilema actually works, and how whatever anodyne anonymous nonsense aspires to work, but definitionally does not work. [↩]I dunno dood, I never watched all that much TV and I have no problem whatsoever making dick ornaments out of any of these retards that did, should I feel inclined. Tres disadvantage indeed, I propose Ballas should watch more TV to catch up to me, bridge this sad gap of unfairness.

He could watch it in Romanian -- after all, I'm skullfucking him in his native language, aren't I. [↩]Too bad this all ended long before Ballas was born, but whatever, as long as lazy people have their memories they can wank about that one time back in the summer of '69. [↩]While sitting around at teh designated corner lesbian teahouse in Minsk (populated with a bunch of lanky aspie girlies tryna be like what they think netflix describes) I casually picked up a shitty book (heavily promoted by exactly Ballas' brand of circlejerk) purported to have been written by some female monkey from India, about her "just like that Sex and the city" life experience. Something about how she and the rest of her ditzy "gang"... TP'd some dork's car, I shit you not.

In other words : I'm sure the soap opera circuit will depict exactly such "absolutely authentic" "Chinese" women. For the retards who watch soaps. [↩]You call it "

Where THE FUCK!!! is everyone ?". It happened, recently, in the US. Duh. [↩]Or at least -- that's what the author would like to make true. Not that it works ; but whatever, it's a show not a process, it's there to display not to work. [↩]

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Category: Adnotations

Wednesday, 18 September, Year 11 d.Tr.

Scar tissue where Law used to be.

In random news nobody cares about, Romania's president signed the paperwork by which Romania gets new magistrates (judges and public prosecutors).

The girls : Madalina, Cristina, Gabriela, Raluca, Andreea-Cristina, Marie-Jeanne, Elena Salapa, Alexandra, Alina, Gabriela-Aura, Anca, Ioana-Adriana, Simona-Elena, Oana-Bianca, Maria, Reli, Cristina, Ioana-Valeria, Oana-Andreea, Mara-Isabella, Diana, Anca, Lavinia, Ana, Andreea, Alexandra-Nicoleta, Anamaria, Maria-Petronela, Ioana, Laura, Ioana-Maria, Andreea-Georgiana, Iuliana, Andra-Georgeta, Andreea-Iuliana, Anca-Alexandra, Ramona, Oana-Monica, Daniela-Cristina, Alexandra, Ionela-Tatiana, Camelia-Rodica, Ancuta, Lucia-Roxana, Luiza-Elena, Ana-Maria, Andreea-Ileana, Elena-Andra, Alexandra, Alina, Elena, Maricica, Georgeta, Mara, Lavinia-Nicoleta, Anca-Maria, Ana-Maria, Marilena, Lucica-Andreea, Anca, Beatrix-Yvonne, Dana-Florica, Georgiana-Cecilia, Alexandra-Ioana, Maria-Madalina, Ioana, Andrada-Roxana, Iustina, Flavia, Corina, Monica-Raisa, Andreea, Ana-Maria, Dana-Andreea, Cristiana, Ana-Maria, Livia, Diana-Nicoleta, Mihaela, Ana, Alina-Mihaela, Mihaela-Daniela, Stefanita, Anca, Daniela, Alina-Madalina, Alexandra, Catalina, Gema-Celina, Miriam, Floriana, Silvia-Mihaela, Elena-Andreea, Daniel-Doru, Maria-Corina, Alexandra, Cristina-Elena, Anca, Maria-Mirabela, Ioana-Teodora, Cristina, Ioana, Luciana, Alexandra, Codruta, Alina, Anca-Loredana, Mihaela, Ruxandra, Lilisor, Iustina, Ioana-Mihaela, Mihaela-Carmen, Irina-Adina, Cristiana-Flavia, Andra-Maria, Larisa-Mihaela, Doina-Lacramioara, Anca, Iuliana, Rodica, Liliana-Mihaela, Alexandra-Maria, Ioana-Simona, Ioana-Raluca, Alma-Maria, Corina-Raluca, Ana.

Yeah, that's right, there's no less than 127 of these. Does it seem at all likely one could find as many as a dozen girlies capable of this job even before you consider it's all happening in a country the size of Oregon ? Well... be that as it may, the state needs its bureaucracy, and it ain't sending any circulars to you and me anymore. By now it earnestly believes it knows better than anyone.

The boys : Mihai-Narcis, Bogdan, Cosmin, Alexandru, Sebastian, George-Marian, Sebastian, Cornel, Cristian, Mihai, George-Marius, Ion-Radu, Ilie-Darian, Catalin-Nicolae, Marius-Catalin, Radu, Sandu-Nini, Dan-Adrian, Marius-Catalin, Ionut-Daniel, Mitica, Cornel, Mircea-Radu, Gabriel-Ionut, Daniel, Ioani, Catalin, Adrian, Alexandru, Nicusor, Florin, Adrian-Ioan, Nicolae, Florin-Lucian, Dan, Cosmin, Alin, Andrei, Alexandru, Ion, Ionut-Marius, Mircea, Alexandru-Octavian, Dragos, Ilie-Andrei, Octavian, Simon, George-Florin, Laurentiu-stefanii, Remus-Paul, Ionel, Emanuel-Florin, Sebastian, Petric, Marian, Catalin, Daniel, Constantin, Andrei-Razvan, Matei, Alexandru-Madalin, Valerica-Noroceliii.

The obvious observation would go along the lines of "holy shit, such overflowing abundance of cunt, the cuntkeeper's stuck resorting to hyphenation to compose new names in a mostly doomed attempt to distinguish the indistinguishable". What the everloving fuck is this nonsense!

But let's leave that aside and instead point out that "justice" dispensed by an overwhelmingly female apparatus is ipso facto not Justice ; yet mysteriously nobody seems to have noticed that the pretext under which this outrage is being perpetuated (an "exam", don't you know) nevertheless manages to push out "results" that are more than two thirds female (a concentration which climbs to >80% if one counts judgeships only). How is this wonder possible, then ?

How did they manage to not notice that "the field" as they defined it fails to interest men, and therefore fails to meet the fundamental, basic criteria for social relevancy, and that therefore Romania doesn't have a legal system anymore ?

How did they manage to not notice this problem brewing ? Nobody, quite pointedly and in the most literal sense, nobody, not even the very women involved in the bureaucratic mechanism care one whit about female "law". Everyone will readily admit to this, in their own private mind, yet somehow everyone also omitted to point it out in the magically "proper" format of slideshows or whatever it is they do when nobody's looking. How can this be ?

Recursive Dunning-Kruger, right ? For the same reason idiots are not merely incapable of performance but equally incapable of reviewing their misperformance, the female state is not merely incapable of doing anything useful but also and for the same reason (to underscore that reason : female participation) it is incapable of noticing why and wherefore its impotence.

Wut do ? Wut do ?

Mars la cratita, pizdet. Nu e nici loc, nu e nici nevoie, si nici nu v-o intrebat nimeni nimic.

———This is like, the first humanly named male in the sad agglomeration of despicable faggots. Fucking Narcis, seriously now ?! Hyphenation, Cornel, what the fuck. How did these abominations survive primary schooling, in isolation units ?! [↩]Male names not universally worthy of majuscle initial, in teh new romania. Fair is fair, I guess. [↩]Holy shit already, nigger names now! In a country with 0% nigger population! Cuz if it doesn't exist Nuland gotta invent it. [↩]

« fetlikes.lol

The sovereign power of The Republic »

Category: Politica si Prostie

Sunday, 19 August, Year 10 d.Tr.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - Children With ADHD Drugs Score Higher on Tests. Adnotated.

CHICAGO - Children on medicinei for attention deficit disorder scored higher on academic tests than their unmedicated peers in the first large, long-term study suggesting this kind of benefit from the widely used drugs.

Wow. WOW. I get more actionable information from porn.ii

1. The comparison isn't between kids getting meds and "unmedicated peers" but kids with ADHD who get meds, and kids with ADHD who don't get meds.iii

1b. "Both groups had lower scores on average than a separate group of children without ADHD."

2. The studyiv indicates that the kids derived a benefit on test scores equivalent to 1/5 of an academic year, by 5th grade. That would be two months. (Still below non ADHD kids, though.)

2b. In order to derive this benefit, kids needed to be on the medications for about 3 years consecutively; in other words, they had to "learn" while on meds. Risk-reward?

3.

Our objective was to determine if reported medication use for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is positively associated with academic achievement during elementary school. CONCLUSIONS. The finding of a positive association between medication use...and test scores is important, given the high prevalence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and its association with low academic achievementv.

You say, "the study did find that stimulants were effective. Wasn't that the whole point?"

II.

So that's the kind of study analysis they talk about in medical school but don't bother to teach. See how awesome it is to look critically at the methodology of a study, differentiate clinical significance from statistical significance? (Never mind that the study produced nothing new.)

This kind of analysis is the intellectual equivalent of turning a gun sideways. Looks cool to anyone who's never actually held a gun, but dangerously unreliable when it matters most.

The question: what do the authors want to be true?

III.

First of all, was this study really necessary, let alone important enough to end up in Pediatrics?

There are already plenty of studies examining, specifically, stimulants and school performance. Here are seven:vi

I'll admit that this study is unique in that it is prospective and long, but do we need a unique, prospective and long study of what we already know? It isn't even important research in that it has been pretty much established that there aren't significant effects on academic performance overall in ADHD kids. So why bother doing this study?

Or, you might ask me: "why does this study, in particular, bother you?"

The author names aren't important here, it's their degrees that are important. 6 authors -- only one an MD. The rest are PhDs.

Do you think PhDs care about ADHD drugs? The study isn't about the efficacy of medications; it's about the validity of ADHD. "See? We're studying a medical problem. Can we get some grant money now?"

Don't send me back to my pirate ship yet. The authors are from the Petris Center, which receives fundingvii to examine healthcare policy. They got $900,000 from NIMH to study this. Was it worth it? But if there's a million dollars out there to study something that could have been done with a review paper (or a blog post), then you're going to do it.

This is the basic problem with academic researchviii. Covering the same old ground, over and over, focusing on whatever is institutionally (or politically) popular.

Given this kind of research, I have no expectation that any progress will be made in the "treatment of ADHD," let alone in improving anyone's academic performance. I am entirely confident, however, that this lack of progress will cost millions and millions of dollars.

———He linked news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090427/ap_on_he_me/us_med_adhd_drugs_2 [↩]Everyone does. That's the fucking point. [↩]Ahahahaha.

Obviously. [↩]He links http://dx.doi.org/10.1542/peds.2008-1597 [↩]By boys, in "school" specifically designed to be not merely anti-school, but also anti-boy. [↩]He links pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=19030517 ; ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18928410?ordinalpos=8&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum ; journals.lww.com/jaacap/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=2004&issue=07000&article=00006&type=abstract ; jfponline.com/Pages.asp?AID=1970">4,

Wednesday, 18 September, Year 11 d.Tr.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - Child Rapist-Murderer John Couey Loses By Eight. Adnotated.

Here's an example of what I've been talking about.

I'll spare you the details, but John Couey is found guilty of kidnapping, raping, then burying alive, 9 year old Jessica Lunsfordi. Here's the part relevant to our disussion: defense attoneys said Couey could not be executed because he was mentally retardedii -- his IQ was tested by the defense at 64. (They even let him color with crayons during trial.)

But, and I'm quotingiii:

Circuit Judge Ric Howard in Citrus County ruled that the most credible intelligence exam rated Couey's IQ at 78, slightly above the 70 level generally considered retarded.

That's it, people. 8 points. We may not agree whether the death penalty is good or bad, but can we at least agree that decisions of life or death shouldn't come down to, well, how stupid you are?iv

———This is that story, isn't it ? [↩]Let's leave aside the discussion as to how not being executed is the less valuable outcome for him. [↩]He links wcco.com/national/topstories_story_220132338.html [↩]How the fuck would we agree on such nonsense ? It's the principal driver of the decision, kill all the fucking idiots now what the fuck already.

Really, someone somewhere is actually proposing smarts shouldn't be a qualification for life ?! What an outrage. [↩]

« thelastpsychiatrist.com - Chicago Tea Party. Adnotated.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - Children With ADHD Drugs Score Higher on Tests. Adnotated. »

Category: Adnotations

Wednesday, 18 September, Year 11 d.Tr.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - Chicago Tea Party. Adnotated.

It makes a lot of Americans insane that Wall Street execs are paying themselves gazillions in bonuses, even as they demolish their own firms and the financial system. They blame Wall Street for the financial crisis.i

Rick Santelli, former bond trader and now CNBC reporter. The highlight is 0:59-1:20.

(Link to video hereii)

It's worth hearing for yourselfiii, but here's the punchline: "ask anyone here if they want to pay for the mortgage of their neighbor with the extra bath, who can't afford the house."

Let's leave aside whether he is right or wrong. I sympathize with his perspective, though it's evident he thinks America is stronger than I think it is, he thinks it could recover without any government aidiv, he thinks people will just buckle down and ride it out like they did the last Depression. I disagree, I think they get guns.v

Let's leave that aside. What you need to observe is that his sentiment, shared by millions and millions of people, has the same fervor and anger as the "put the Wall Street bastards in jail" camp. You just don't hear about it very much.

Note also that he isn't angry at the government only, he's angry at other Americans. While there are millions of people who think their government and capitalism have failed them, he's speaking for the millions who think those people are the problem.

These are personal attacks about American against American, this is a new level of divisiveness.

Santelli knows enough about the stimulus package to criticize it on its merits, but what infuriates him is its symbolic meaning, a la Atlas Shrugged, that he's responsible to pay for his fellow Americans simply because he has the money.

On the other side, today you have South Carolina Representative James Clyburn saying that opposition to the stimulus package is a "slap in the face of African-Americans." What he doesn't realize is that saying it that way doesn't make people support the stimulus, it makes people resent African-Americans.

Maybe the best thing Obama could do is move as far to the left as possible. He will never be centrist enough, and certainly not rightward enough, to satisfy the Right. And he'll meanwhile infuriate the Obamaniacs who won't be able to recall if they were voting for Hope or Change.

Who knows.

But a prudent person will be less concerned with picking a side, and more concerned that sides are being picked.

Class warfare is back in earnest.

He calls for a Chicago Tea Party (he and the CBOE are in Chicago.) Before you jump with him or on him, a history lesson: the Boston Tea Party wasn't a protest about the British raising taxes on tea; they were protesting the reduction of the tax on tea, which meant the East India Company tea was even cheaper than the smuggled tea provided by wealthy colonists.

The British were using a low tax to seduce the colonists. Would colonists accept British rule -- the right to set taxes -- if it got them cheaper tea? Samuel Adams hadn't read the Grand Inquisitor but he heard about it. They dumped the tea before anyone had a chance to say the words that destroy civilizations: please take away our freedom, it's a small price to pay.vi

———Conveniently forgetting to mention that these are the exact same people who paid these exact "lot of Americans" salaries while they were demolishing the industrial base in the 80s, and then gave away "free" scholarships to undisciplined stupid cunts while they were demolishing the army in the 90s. Why's it noteworthy the Clinton crew then finally turned around to banking in 2000 ? Why's it not remarkable when they turned around to academia in 2010, leveraging the very same stupid cunts that they leaked in during the 90s ?!

"The annoying part about my house being on fire is that the doorbell's burning" "Why the doorbell specifically?!" "It won't fucking stop ringing!"

PS. There's also an article explaining how democracy attacks sanity (no, not the economic discussion, a sociological one) through inflating the basis so as to lower the average quality to the point where the diluted elite no longer satisfies its leadership function ; but obviously I can't find it now.

Anyway, the point remains : given a normally distributed group, the average of the elite (under any relevant criterion) will far surpass the average of the rest of the group. Therefore, "extending the franchise" (ie, leaking any non-elite members into the elite) will bring down the average of the elite. If the elite is functional, meaning it does something, then it also necessarily has a functional threshold, meaning an average over which it must maintain itself to continue in its function. This threshold is definitionally over the average value for the group ("representative democracy" is the historical error proposing the threshold is no larger than that average, by the way) and therefore much over the average for the non-elite group. Obviously then the simplest avenue to destroying function in groups is the "extension of the franchise", yes ? [↩]He linked youtube.com/watch?v=geubj3Ukugo [↩]Nope, it certainly isn't. [↩]Keks. Because "government" is somehow something else besides "a way to cut the pie". It has resources, in its own right, of itself. Why not ?! [↩]And this'd be a problem because...

What falsehood does this schmuck want to make true ? [↩]This isn't... exactly right, but whatevers. [↩]

« thelastpsychiatrist.com - Check Out My New Acura -- ads? Adnotated.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - Child Rapist-Murderer John Couey Loses By Eight. Adnotated. »

Category: Adnotations

Wednesday, 18 September, Year 11 d.Tr.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - Check Out My New Acura -- ads? Adnotated.

I send my partner a note: "Check out my new Acura ads!"

Acura is having a 24 hour promotion to coincide with the release of its new car, hence the ads you see today on my site.i The ads mean money, of courseii, but I sent the note with some pride.

The ads signify a form of success, that my blog is Acura-worthyiii for advertising. Never mind if that's true -- that word "signify" indicates something else going on: I'm judging the quality of the site by the ads on it.iv

I've never judged a person by their actual car, because I'm hyperconscious of product branding and message, I am always alert to the deception. But here I am using the ad itself as a signifier.

Subtle flash animations, good photography or design, and of coursev the product in the ad -- all these things are signals to me about the site that has them. Of course, the ads mean different things to different people -- Acura ads may symbolize a sell out, or out of touchvi -- but the point is that the ads themselves, not the car, symbolize something. And what it symbolizes is: this company endorses you.vii

Many sites like mine have google ads, which only "pay" if you click on them; hence, they pay very poorly. But they're easy to install, so most sites have them. Consequently, it's as much the ubiquity of Google ads that signifies "amateur" as the absence of the more branded display ads (e.g. Acura.)viii

People often comment about what Google ads I have on my site, but I have no control over them, whether it's advertising a camera or ginseng extract is up to them, not me. Frankly, I think Google uses it to punish bloggers. I wrote an only minimally critical pieceix about Google in 2007, and ever since then they've been serving Dianetics ads and destroying my emailx with the Android.

But not that I am aware how I (previously unconsciously) made a judgment about websites based on the kind of ads it serves, the scientific questionxi becomes: does the ad change the traffic?

So I looked.

II.

It's only a few hours into the Acura ad campaign, but I can tell you the trendxii: it hasn't increased the number of hits to the site, but it has changed the click through rate. About 10% more people by this time have clicked through to read posts (in other words, fewer people landed on the homepage and left without clicking on a post.) I am amazed at this resultxiii, but there it is. The presence of an ad for Acura enticed people to stay awhile.

Bigger websites out there should take note. If you run a stock advice site, make sure your ads are from the big brokerage houses and banks, simply because it looks like they endorsed you. And if you really want to look like a professional, dump the Etrade ads and get WSJ or Goldman Sachs to advertise with you.

But if it turns out to be true that the type of ad alters reader behavior, then the next question to ask is: what would happen if you placed a fake Acura ad on your site? Copied one from some other site and slapped it up there?

People already do this to themselves: luxury car logos as necklaces (old school, I know); college stickers on the rear windshield. This isn't the same as having the product around to brand you; nor is it the same as the product itself prominently displaying the logo (e.g. Juicy on the butt)xiv. This is a conscious decision on a person's part to take the brand (not the product) and use it to endorse themselves.xv

Could you command a higher subscription rate if your ads were better? Could you get better advertisers because they see an Acura ad is already there? Could you manipulate the market by using fake ads?xvi

I'm not sure this has ever been studied, but the ramifications are huge: for one thing, it would mean the end of display advertising. Why would they pay you, when you maybe should be paying them ?xvii

———Pretty sad. [↩]This "of course" is that of course. [↩]Good lord. [↩]You could just paste some in then, I guess ?

It's a wonder nobody sent this appletard an ipad, I guess, there'd be no way to hear the end of it. [↩]This "of course" is that of course. You'd have to be pretty badly fucked in the head to imagine an alleged car made by a ride-on lawnmower / wheedwhacker / industrial blender / supposedly motorcycle manufacturer from Korea's a mentionable, let alone noteworthy. [↩]Speaking of this, here's what Acura "symbolizes" for me. [↩]Either that, or you're fucked in the head. [↩]What the fuck branded, the dude never discussed cars ever, not at all. The "branding" here's that "branding". [↩]He links #616, "What Hath Google Wrought". [↩]He links #318, "

Most Frustrating Technology of 2010 (so far): Google Android". [↩]That "scientific" is this scientific. Specifically what he means by "scientific" is -- statistics poorly done on collections so small and so confounded nobody could ever possibly confuse them for samples. [↩]Nope, you can't.

Because it being only a few hours it's much too soon for a trend. That's exactly the definition of a trend : something that's observed over lengthier intervals than a few hours. [↩]It's not a result, it's a preconceived notion.

This is how these fuckwits do their job, too. This is how the pseudoscience America runs on is manufactured, you realise. This and no other way, necessarily and unavoidably, like in a condenser with pierced dielectric exactly. Once the dielectric is pierced, once the gap is sparked through, that's it, the item's a become a plain resistor, and will work that way and no other way forevermore. [↩]Wut ?! Wut ?! [↩]It's actually another step down poverty lane, as you'd expect of good soviets. But whatever, vorwarts, great things await, great things you can't know about because you're too fucking stupid to read and besides, you're speshul and unique and nothing outside of the ten mile radius you never left matters anyway. [↩]Could you just suck my dick ? [↩]I just can't fucking continue with this moron. He's...

Pshaw, words fail me. It's like most of his brain's a preteen pimple. [↩]

« thelastpsychiatrist.com - Charlie Sheen Has An Awesome Experience, This Time With Drugs and A Hooker, Which Was The Same As Last Time. Adnotated.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - Chicago Tea Party. Adnotated. »

Category: Adnotations

Monday, 16 September, Year 11 d.Tr.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - Celebrities and Narcissism. Adnotated.

If, as I say, a narcissist is one who thinks of himself as the main character in a movie, then what about those who actually are the main characters in a movie?

An article written by Young and Pinsky-- yes, Dr. Drew Pinsky, the host of Loveline and now Celebrity Rehab.

200 celebrities, defined as famous people who appeared on Lovelinei, were given the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and compared to 200 MBA students.

Guess what? Celebrities scored higher than MBA students. Big surprise.

But some interesting findings:

Female celebrities scored higher on every component than males, but especially high on exhibitionismii, superiority, and vanity. (The other components are exploitativeness, authority, entitlement and self-sufficiencyiii.)

Breaking the celebrities down according to "profession":

Reality TV stars had the highest scores, (most significantly in exploitativeness) followed by comedians and actors (close 3rd), then musicians.

The MBAs showed the opposite distribution: males were more narcissistic than females, especially entitlement and self-sufficiency.

For example, #10 "I can talk my way out of anything" is most heavily loaded for "exploitativeness" but negatively weighted for "exhibitionism."

Reminds me of a joke by Janeane Garafaloiv (from memory): you know, all actors in LA are the same, they're just waiting for your lips to stop moving so they can talk about themselves.... I guess it would help if I were paying attention, but they're just talking crap...

———Holy shit what. [↩]Leaving aside "who the fuck came up with the '''components''' for this bullshit" : the insanity of using the same scale for males and females when evaluating what is fundamental sexual function... [mentally] healthy adult females are exhibitionistic necessarily, and in fact a failure of society-wide expression of female exhibitionism is a symptom of societal degenerscence, besides an indication of personal failure in the females involved.

What next, "gender balanced" reviews of sadism and masochism ? "Strangely, males are a lot more sexually aggressive than females" ? Gtfo already. [↩]Soon to be an outright felony in Inca's lands, this self-sufficiency evil heresy. [↩]Jemaima my foot. It's that Dorothy Parker wanna-be, Lebowitz.

Seriously now, anyone who will seriously take reference to morons from the motherfucking Ben Stiller show should be shot and buried in garbage. [↩]

« thelastpsychiatrist.com - CATIE: Sigh. Adnotated.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - Charlie Sheen Has An Awesome Experience, This Time With Drugs and A Hooker, Which Was The Same As Last Time. Adnotated. »

Category: Adnotations

Sunday, 15 September, Year 11 d.Tr.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - CATIE: Sigh. Adnotated.

1. You know, if you're going to be rigorous about BID dosing schedules because the FDA requires it, why so liberal with total dosing for Zyprexa? A mean dose of Zyprexa is 20.8 is way (150%) above FDA guidelines. For comparison, that would have meant dosing Geodon at 240mg, Seroquel at 1000mg, and Risperdal at 6mg. BTW: a mean of 20.8mg means that a lot of people were dosed with MORE than 20.8mg (max=30mg).

2. The miracle here isn't that Zyprexa won, but that Zyprexa 20mg barely won against Geodon 114mg.

3. Why Trilafon (perphenazine)?i Originally you thought all conventionals were the same; so why not Haldol?ii Or Mellaril?iii You say it's because it had lower rates of EPSiv and TDv, which is fine, but then why exclude TD patients from that arm?

4. So you excluded patients with tardive dyskinesia from the perphenazine group (fine) but then had the nerve to say people tolerated it as well as other meds? Do you think maybe people who have TD may have different tolerances to meds? Different EPS? Different max doses? That they're just different?vi

5. You can't generalize from an obviously slanted "typical" arm to all other typicals. If you chose Trilafon over Haldol because of better tolerability a priori, you can't now say that "typicals" have equal tolerability to atypicals. Why not pick two typicals of differing potencies (like Mellaril and Haldol) and infer from there?

6. Do you actually believe -- does anyone believe -- that any of these patients are compliant with BID regimens? Especially with sedating meds like Seroquel?

The secret to understanding CATIE 2 is to understand that there are two CATIE 2s.vii

CATIE2-Efficacy: People who dropped out of CATIE 1 because their med didn't work were randomized to Clozail, Zyprexa, Risperdal or Seroquel. On average, new Clozaril switches stayed on 10 months, everyone else only 3. 44% of Clozaril stayed on for the whole 18 month study; only 18% of the others completed the study.

CATIE2-Tolerability: People who dropped out of CATIE 1 because of side effects (not efficacy)viii were randomized to Zyprexza, Risperdal, Seroquel, and Geodon (not Clozaril.) Risperdal patients stayed on for 7 months, Zyprexa for 6, Seroquel for 4 and Geodon for 3.

CATIE2-Efficacy is fair. If you fail a drug, you're likely to do better on Clozarilix than anything else.

CATIE2-Tolerabilty makes no sense at all. The reason Geodon was used is because it has "very different" side effects. Hmm. How? "In particular, ziprasidone [Geodon] was known not to cause weight gain." But this assumes that the intolerability of the first antipsychotic was its weight gain.x

Most importantly is this: if a patient couldn't tolerate their first antipsychotic, how likely is it that it was effective? In other words, if it wasn't tolerable, it wasn't efficacious -- these patients could have been in CATIE2-Effectiveness study. So how did they choose?

Easy: they gave the patient the choice: Geodon or Clozaril?xi Out of 1052, half left altogether.xii 99 went into the Clozaril study (CATIE2-Effectiveness) and 444 went into Geodon (CATIE2-Tolerability.) Of the 444 in the Tolerability trial, 41% were actually labeled first drug non-responders. 38% were labeled as not tolerating their first drug, but of those, who knows how many were also nonresponders?

And 74% dropped out again.xiii

If you take the 444 in the Tolerability study and divide them into two groups:

those who left CATIE1 because of lack of efficacy: then switching to Zyprexa or Risperdal kept them on their meds longer. (Which makes no sense again: this is the same thing as the CATIE2-Effectiveness, where (except for Clozaril) there was no difference between Seroquel, Zyprexa and Risperdal.xiv)

those who left CATIE 1 because of lack of tolerability, then it made no difference what you switched to.

Sigh.

And what's with the blinding? In every other study with a clozapine arm, you equalize the weekly blood draws by making everyone have to submit to them. But in this case, they unblinded clozapinexv so as not to have to subject all these people to blood sticks. Except they were subjecting them already -- they were checking blood levels.

And where was perphenazine? "[CATIE1] did not anticipate this unexpected result [that perphenazine would be as efficacious] that challenged the widely accepted (but never proven) belief that the newer atypical antipsychotic medications are better than all older antipsychotic medications" and so was not considered for CATIE2. Apart from the fact that it is simply untrue that anyone thought the atypicals were more efficacious than the typicals, it is furthermore untrue that that the authors did not "anticipate this unexpected result." In 2003xvi, after basically doing Medline meta-analysis, they found that "not all of them were substantially different from conventionals such as perphenazine."xvii

What's funny about these guys is how they conveniently lump all typicals together but arguing for differential effects of individual atypicals; then argue typicals are different from each other to justify picking Trilafon; and then say atypicals are different from each other ("not all of them were different") but typicals are all pretty much the same ("conventionals such as perphenazine.")xviii

Bottom line:

The stated purpose of CATIE2 was to help clinicians decide which drug to switch to if patients a) failed their first drug; b) couldn't tolerate their first drug.xix

The divorce rate in America is 40-50%. Say you get divorced, and a friend says, I have two women for you, Jane and Mary. If the problem with your first wife was that she didn't turn you on, you should marry Jane. If the problem with your ex was that she was annoying, you should marry Mary.

What's going to happen here is that your second marriage, to either girl, is doomed. Certainly more than the national average of 50%. How long is it going to take before your second wife doesn't turn you on either? How long before you find stuff intolerable about her? The answer is, more likely than your first marriage -- say, 75% -- because the problem isn't your wives, it's you. You've framed the question in an idiotic and arbitrary manner. You don't get married to get turned on OR to be with someone who isn't annoying. You want the marriage to have both simultaneously, and much more. These things are not separable. This is CATIE2. A meaningless dichotomy -- efficacy and tolerability are not separate, let alone opposites -- used to create a false paradigm of medication selection.xx

———Traditionally the "minor sedative" pumped into vagrants, junkies and other social marginals "with a history of" drug abuse. Not anymore though. [↩]Decent rape drug, as it happens. [↩]Thioridazine, now withdrawn but for many years widely dispensed "treatment" for cardiac eurhythmia. [↩]"Extrapyramidal symptoms", currently fashionable euphemism for "frying the peripheral nervous system". [↩]Tardive dyskinesia, chemically induced senility symptoms. [↩]Science! Excluding selected groups from samples is where it's at! [↩]This is an astute point, and obviously relevant enough to have been mightily obfuscated by the "scientists" in charge of the pile of nonsensical wank. [↩]Granted this distinction lies mostly in the mind. [↩]Clozapine, the fashionable drug at the time ; cheap as all get-out too, a dime or so a dose.

Also results in bedwetting. And dementia, syncope, bone marrow supression, a whole laundry list of medical benefits. But principally bedwetting. [↩]Seeing how socially useless, practically inept, objectively worthless, overfed and idle females constitute most of the population this priesthood ministers to, it does not strike an outside observer as remarkable that indeed cosmetic preoccupations would constitute the main thrust and weight gain would be first on that list. This is the hard core of people who don't do anything all day long after all. [↩]The heights medical science has crested in our colonies strikes fear into the mind of man. I shall make a note to complain to my car mechanic next we meet, that upon my bringing the car in for fixing he doesn't give me a choice of parts to put in -- wouldn't it be so much better if he went "your shocks are shot, would you like to try a steering wheel hammered in place or a chunk of concrete rubble with rebar sticking out welded in ?" [↩]What they muttered on their way out obviously left unrecorded by the stupid cunts involved -- though it was the only genuinely interesting material this entire idiocy ever came into contact with. CATIE should've been refurbished into an ethnofolkloric notation effort, thereby achieving some (modest) scientific notability. [↩]These "drugs" prescribed by these "doctors" work almost as well as the "colleges" that spawned them all in the first place! [↩]On a sample of three thumbtacks and one stray dog. [↩]Which then worked out better! Proportionally! Keks. [↩]Link was www.catie.unc.edu/schizophrenia/CATIE%20SZ%20primary%20analysis%20methods%20-%20Jan%2017%202005%20-%20FINAL.pdf ; admire the discreet beauty of utter retardation! [↩]Yes, but they're "doctors" of the government-issued sort. They don't read (and can't spell), they simply produce "consensuses" by sitting on their ass all day long and preening at each other's nits an' headlice. [↩]"Funny" is one way to describe it, using the word in the same way it is traditionally used to describe the patients -- which leads us to the unescapable conclusion that the only people who belong committed to insane asylums are the current psychiatrists. [↩]While the actual purpose was to at the same time make them all equal and the same (thus satisfying the principal requirement of socialism imanent in their brainstem) and all specific and different (thus justifying the waste of time, effort and resources going from one useless poison to the other). It's a lot like the "dating" game, whereby all the dumb cunts are equal and identical but all also special and particular, and you're more than welcome to waste howevermany years in the yarnball. [↩]And, recursively, a man who is intelligent enough to notice the "dating" parallel, but nevertheless manage to hide the real implications from his own eyes. Vorwarts! [↩]

« thelastpsychiatrist.com - CATIE Reloaded. Adnotated.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - Celebrities and Narcissism. Adnotated. »

Category: Adnotations

Saturday, 14 September, Year 11 d.Tr.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - CATIE Reloaded. Adnotated.

And enough with the notion that medication compliance is a good proxy for overall efficacy.

All of these horrible psychiatry studies -- CATIE, Lamictal and Depakote maintenance trials, etc -- keep telling us how long patients stay on medications, because they say this means the drugs are working. The authors think that if a drug is working, they patient will stay on it. But you would think this only if you didn't actually treat many patients. I can make a similar argument that staying on a medication is inversely related to efficacy -- because when a patient feels better, they simply stop taking their meds.i

Think about antibiotics. People don't finish the full 14 day course, precisely because they feel well. If they felt sick, they would probably take them longer than 14 days. In fact, people overuse these antibiotics even when its a virus, despite the antibiotic having no efficacy at all. They will demand an antibiotic even though know that it shouldn't be doing anything.

Same with pain meds. Oh, that's an acute problem? How about the chronic problems of diabetes and hypertension. People will skip/miss/forget doses when they feel asymptomatic, and will be more compliant when they have symptoms associated with these illnesses (e.g. headache, dizziness, etc.)

Look, I'm not telling you that compliance and efficacy aren't related. I am saying that if you want to measure efficacy, don't use compliance as a proxy-- go measure actual efficacy. And don't tell me it's too hard. You got $67 million for this study. Find a way.ii

———Except the argument isn't in terms of personal efficiency, understood as "medication helps people". The argument is in terms of governmental relevancy, the point is that for as long as the zeks keep taking it up the ass, the thing they're taking up the ass can be claimed to exist to a standard of existence defined as "someone's taking this up the ass". Which is what interests the bureaucrats involved, much like any other priesthood their only concern is "who could accuse Inca of inexistence and how exactly", naught else nor anything more. [↩]Actually it's extremely damn simple, either bio or radiomarkers have been in use for decades.

But, again, the interest of the priesthood's what it is, not what you think it should be. [↩]

« Concedo hoc...

thelastpsychiatrist.com - CATIE: Sigh. Adnotated. »

Category: Adnotations

Saturday, 14 September, Year 11 d.Tr.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - Catfish: The Real Danger Of Social Media. Adnotated.

wild guess... is it a catfish?

Catfish is a movie about a guy who has a facebook relationship with a woman, and then goes to meet her and discovers... should I say "spoilers below?"

Spoil what? "The twist ending!" What twist? Darth Vader is Luke's father is a twist, Katherine Heigli is annoying is not a twist, it's a premise. Saying there is a twist ending is a vicious restructuring of the definitions of "twist" and "is."

"You'll never believe what happens..." Yes you will.ii Exactly what you think happens, happens. The real mystery is why he never thought this would happen.

But you should see the movie anyway.iii

Cue trailer: [removed]

Not a twist: Uber-hott 19 yo Megan isn't really uber-hott, 19, or Megan. Huh. The only thing you don't know is if when he looks in that garage he sees Chthulu eating fetuses, or nothing. Twist: nothing.

But you're not watching this movie for the twist. This is, surprisingly, a movie you can watch a dozen times for reasons different than the critics noted.iv Here's the plot: Nev gets drawn into [an] online relationship with a really hot 19 year old. Nine (9) months later begins to suspect something is not right, and so he drives the surviving members of REMv up to her Michigan farm to get to the truth.vi

The truth is that "Megan" is really "Angela": a middle age, middle America homely housewife with a facebook account. What does it all mean? Cue obligatory "on the internet, no one knows you're a dog."

II.

Andvii :

But what's most interesting about Catfish isn't that the Internet allowed a smart filmmaker to be bamboozled for months by a make-believe Michigan family. It's that the Internet allowed him to figure it out, track them down and make a movie about it.

Funny, that's not what I thought was interesting. Maybe it was the subtitles, but the Korean bootleg I saw was about three megalomaniacs who actually believed it was completely ok to go a woman's house in the middle of the night, unannounced.

Don't be sucked in by the perspective, which in the movie is all theirs. Pretend you're the coroner: two people are reading the other's potentially unreliable online information, and one of them starts driving towards the other. Is that the version you saw in the theater? That's the real plot of the movie, and when you're able to see it like that you see that the true problem of online contact isn't what's posted online but who is reading. If a murderer posts a fake bikini facebook photo, and you show up at his house with suntan oil and a inflated expectations, you're the problem.viii

The problem of perspective is the true caution of the movie, missed by everyone. We value Nev's perspective more because he made the movie, but also because it features (not just uses) cameras, Google Maps, all of which are signals of neutrality, objectivityix. If someone else made the movie about him and these events, you'd be aware of his insanity immediately. But by cleverly making the movie a POV, you're drawn into seeing things only his way.x

Even the above Gawker critic couldn't not see it from Nev's perspective.xi Of course the woman lied to him, but didn't he then turn and force himself into her real life only to make a movie? Isn't that worse? Make no mistake, this is a documentary of narcissism supported by the Apple catalogxii. If there was any movie that exemplified "a narcissist is one who sees himself as the main character in his own movie, and everyone else is merely supporting cast," it's Catfish. At one point he's frustrated by how his director-brother is pushing him to continue in the movie, and he says angrily but with no irony, "yeah, but this is about my life, okay?" Okay, wildman, settle down, we got it, it's your life, not hers.

III.

Here's the first clue you're in the presence of delusionality: at no point do any of these three ask the most basic and obvious question, why would this chick be interested in Nev? This isn't an insult, this is a legit query. Why would she want him? We understand why he would want her, but for the nine months of the movie, he has no sex with any other woman. "Well we can't all be as smooth as you." I sympathize, but you're missing the point: no one else who can see him wants him, but she does? That doesn't require some self-reflection?xiii

"He charmed her." Slow down. "Megan" probably has had some experience being charmed, right?xiv At one point, she texts that she's baking a pie, "I'll save you a piece." Guess what he does with that. No, you'll never guess.xv Comedy gold. This guy delivers the obvious like he's writing for Daniel Tosh.xvi

There is an absence of self-awareness coupled with an overflow of self-absorption. "Of course me!"xvii

Put this in the reverse: at the end, when he discovers that he's been talking to a homely midwest mom, his friends explain that the mom is probably in love with him -- implying that of course a fat midwestern mom would fall for [a] dashing New York sophisticate.xviii That makes total sense. Even when they know that Megan must be an [impostor]xix, it never occurs to them that whoever the woman actually is might take one look at Nev and say, "hold on, you can't be the guy... is this a radio bit?"

The problem of this movie -- which perfectly encapsulates the most basic problem with America -- is that it doesn't occur to the audience either. We'vexx tricked ourselves into thinking that it's a completely expected that people will see us the way we want to be seen.xxi And so any divergences from this must be quite obviously mean the other person is a jerk.

IV.

An example. Let's review some basic facts about Nev because he considers them important enough to put in his movie. First, he wears a retainer. I know, I know, it's not cosmetic, it's for TMJ. Second, he spends an awful lot of time hanging out in his bed in nothing but his briefs, which only look like Spiderman Underoos because they are red. They're not Underoos. They're just red.

He loves the feel of a fluffy down comforter on his naked skin, that much is obvious.

See that pic, above, where he's sneaking up the dark driveway to peer into the garage of the mystery family that for all he knows could be cannibals?xxii He's barefoot. When he's thinking about the malleability of identity he likes to stick his hand down his pants. In fact, what he likes on his body even more than a down comforter is his hands -- he is constantly touching, rubbing, hugging his own body. I can say with complete certainty that this guy pees sitting down and still gets the seat wet. And you know how some guys think it's sexy when a girl has a tattoo of a sun or wings on their tailbone? Well, Nev likes them so much he has one on his tailbone. I'm sure there's a funny story behind that, but I can assure you it's irrelevant.

So? So my reaction to all this was that Nev was utterly, genuinely, hateable, somewhere on the level of a Snookie or a David Hasselhoff or the Asian chick on Grey's Anatomy. He smiles like a Scientologist, he's monumentally passive aggressive-- I hated this guy. Hold on -- I realize that my own natural self-loathing hovers around an unhealthy 105%, hence the rum, but the point is that Nev -- as portrayed in this movie -- would never imagine that he generates this reaction in anyone. He probably can imagine people not liking the movie, but why would anyone hate him? It's inconceivable!

V.

One final example. Angela lives with two severely retarded children. They are stepsons; this is the life she chose. Through tears, she tells Nev that when she got married, she knew she'd be making some sacrifices, but she didn't realize that in fact she'd be "resigning from her own life."xxiii

So, she's telling him this because she wants some affirmation, not because she wants him to fix it. How could he? But Nev doesn't hesitate to repeat all of this to the husband during his interview. "You know, Angela told me that she feels like she gave up a lot..." There are two possibilities. One is that Nev thought he was so much more intelligent and empathic and nuanced than this stupid hick -- never mind that he's been able to support a very pretty and well maintained home, and everyone in there seems happy, keeps all their needs and a decade long marriage intact -- that aside, Douchekata figures he can Dr. Phil a decade long wound in their marriage with nine seconds of HD footage. The second possibility is that he didn't even want to do that, he just wanted to split the wound open because he needed the shot.xxiv I'm not sure which is worse, but I hated him just in case it was both.

VI.

Go another way: so Angela lied to them about her identity. So what? Who says they were entitled to the truth?

When they arrive at Megan/Angela's house and meet everyone they are on edge, what's going on here, none of this seems like Facebook? The family, especially the husband, is very friendly and cordialxxv, but it could have gone the other way: what kind of nuts are these? He traveled all this way to meet a girl? That makes it normal? "We want answers." You better keep your hands where I can see them. And why does Nev expect others to assume he is trustworthy? Because of what he wrote about himself on facebook? Haven't we established that that stuff is unreliable?xxvi

Well, let's look at his facebook, then: he's cut out a picture of her, naked, and put it onto a picture of himself, naked. You know who does that? People who narrate their reality.xxvii

"It rubs the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose [again]." This photo creeps me out so much I had to stop drinking. Yeah. On the drive to her house, shouldn't he have to call the Michigan police and register, or something?

It cannot occur to them that what they are doing is wrong because it isn't wrong -- there are no Right and Wrongs, there are only his right and wrongs. They have a need to know, they want to meet her, so it's all ok. The movie trailer plays like a horror movie, yet they don't feel any fear at all, which is weird, right?xxviii You know Megan isn't Megan and you know you're wearing red underwear, shouldn't you bring backup or something?xxix As bad, neither do they worry that someone might be scared of three strange men in the dark. Look up at that picture. Why should anyone trust them? If you come at me and say, "hey, are you the guy who writes The Last Psychiatrist?" then you better come at me strong because I will take you down.xxx

The critics will deftly signal without spoiling that this isn't really a horror movie. Let me correct that right now: it is absolutely a horror movie. Fortunately for Angela, the psychopaths just happen to be pussies.xxxi

VII.

There is a line, and that line is online. The agreement we've all accepted, it is there in your ISP contract, is that we are willing to trade exhibitionism/voyeurism for greater respect in real life. Or, less privacy online for more privacy offline. The girl on facebook "agrees" to use a bikini profile pic because you agree not to stalk her, in fact, you agree not to mention it to her in person at all.xxxii That's the deal. If you say, "hey, I saw your pics on facebook and I wanted to meet you," she is allowed/encouraged to go Desert Shield on you. That's the deal.xxxiii

This is why huge corporations can't fire people based on what they did online.xxxiv "Well, we don't want that kind of person working here." They're all that kind of person, you're that kind of person, every one of us carries around multiple sha mes that would exclude us from society, let alone Walmart.xxxv It is information bias, just because you know she is a slut or he is a racist doesn't mean that everyone else isn't.xxxvi Why does so much of us have to be in the job? Jobs suck, we do them in spite of ourselves. Asking me to clean up my online profile because you want to pay me $11/hr is a bit much. Shut it.

It's the same deal that goes with sexy clothing. The contract is, you show a lot of cleavage, we don't stare.xxxvii That's the deal, not the reverse, not the "well she put it out there so I can stare." None of this is conscious, explicit, it's SOCIETY. When we start staring too much, they'll start covering up/getting private security. And society changes. It's a symbiosis that is always in flux, and this is where it stands 2010. Like it or not.xxxviii

"Well, sometimes they want you to stare at their breasts. How can you be sure it's not you they want? Easiest question in the world: if you're not sure, it's not you. She'll let you look obliquely because she doesn't have control over the velocity of light, but if you stare too long expect a manicured finger in your eye. That's the deal.

Nev breaks the deal.xxxix You can't fault him for googling and investigating, but he's not permitted to go to her house. That's the deal.xl

At the end of the movie, he reveals that Megan is actually Aimee Gonzales.

Note that he did all this because he thought she was real. Now that everyone in America knows she's real...xli

To be clear: I don't fault Nev et al for making a good movie about himselfxlii, I deeply fault all the critics (and audience members) for celebrating the wrong message. Only -- and I can't believe I'm about to say this -- a male dominated, female-as-commodity narcissistic perspective would think that the moral of the movie is that a man might get fooled.xliii The real moral is that some men will drive 300 miles just on the chance that you are hot. Imagine how far they'll go to kill you.xliv

———Linked for keks. It's even current, dumb bitch's blogging doesn't even know why.

(Yes, obviously it's some other tired old girly working a tired old "job" somewhere in the basement of her agent's back office rather than "the one" supposedly "named". So ?

I should hope the gilt comedy of discussing putative female "identity" in terms of technical analysis is not precisely lost on you. Is it ?) [↩]No, rather : no you wouldn't. Just because masturbatory fiction's always "somehow" managing to hit the exact same groove doesn't mean anything about belief or believability. Pantsuit fiction always runs the exact same way just like otaku masturbatory fantasies always revolve around imagined "harems" ; or random consumerist retards "think they're the main actor in a tv show" (importantly : not a movie, nor a book, nor a sporting event).

This nevertheless means exactly nothing as far as turn shit off, what. [↩]No, it's not trickery, it's the only fundamental convention of the US v2.0. That's what the whole "culture" reduces to, that's what it even exists for : to try and enforce this weird situation where every dork's seen as what they want to be seen. That's the only public good the whole USG apparatus even still makes the faintest attempt at even resembling to be providing anymore. [↩]But this is directly speaking to the most of the problem : this ridiculous cock ornament's never been as much as punched in his entire if entirely pointless existence to date. And he should be. [↩]Her own life of what, supporting "Nev" ? [↩]Obviously, he's transparently tryna Michael Moore all over Michigan. This isn't to say "thus he's less retarded and not so insane as he appears". Rather it's to say the original model he's trying to emulate was actually just as utterly retarded and shamefully insane, all the way, 100%. There's no absolution through the passage of time, Michael Moore isn't "famous" or "part of the history" or whatever. He, exactly like every other pantsuit pustule befouling the timeline, is naught but THIS, an offensive moron with way too much idle time creating in his malfunctioning nitbrain the delusional impression of "having options". These don't leave behind history ; they leave behind garbage, mistakes waiting to be undone, they're just a lengthy list of nitwits and their segwits, no more. [↩]Nobody seriously imagined the footage wasn't staged. Did they ?! [↩]No, actually, we're belabouring to "establish" that unreliability is the exception, and "it has consequences", all in the forlorn hopes that it might prop imaginary "value" in a purely conventional scam. After all, who knows if the boatloads of cheap Chinese plastics would keep showing up if "the Chinese" stopped "believing" in Facebook ?! [↩]Also

Tuesday, 27 August, Year 11 d.Tr.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - Can The Court Force Treatment on Jared Loughner? Adnotated.

my attorney has advised me to punch you

Jared Loughner shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords and 18 other people, which immediately suggested that he was a right wing nutjob, but, apparently, he was actually psychotic, which is ok because Webster's says those are synonyms.

He was found not competent to stand trial. This means his trial is postponed until his mental illness resolves enough for him to: understand the charges against him; participate meaningfully in his own defense; control his behavior in court; etc. See that last "etc?" That's the part that allows courts to do anything they want to you.i

Loughner, however is refusing to take antipsychotic medication to get better. A more accurate restating of that sentence would be, "it is extremely likely that Loughner's attorney is refusing to allow him to be medicated, with the hope that trial is postponed forever, or at least until the attorney comes up with a really awesome defense, or people forget who Loughner is."

Let's Michael Foucault this whole discussion and recall that psychiatry is a medical specialty that is also used to set social policy.

Practically, this means that if the court wants to medicate Loughner against his will, they can. There is a legal process to follow, but it is simple and straightforward and completely not in any kind of dispute.

There should be no issue.

II.

So I was surprised to read that the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, through Paul Appelbaum, filed an amicus curiae brief in support of forced medication. Why? Isn't this a non-issue?

In fact, there are two reasons you can forcibly medicate (only) prisoners. The first is Sell v. US: you can force antipsychotics for the purpose of restoring the defendant to competency to stand trial.

The second reason is Washington V. Harper, which allows forced medication of psychotic prisoners in the situation where they were dangerous to themselves or others.

So, again, I was confused. What's the debate?

The APA's brief had two purposes:

1. "When the courts address issues concerning psychiatric disorders, we want them to have accurate data on the nature and consequences of those illnesses and on appropriate treatments." The reason antipsychotics have traditionally been disallowed is because, as in Sell, there are significant irreversible side effects (tardive dyskinesia) that may outweigh the benefits. So the APA wants to update the court on the real risks, especially of the atypicals.

2. Sit downii:

The second key issue the brief addressed was the importance of permitting authorities who have custody of a defendant to make decisions of forcible medication without having to go through a time-consuming judicial hearing on the matter.

The brief pretends that the issue is unscrupulous lawyers keeping their poor psychotic clients psychotic forever, to their great distress, just to avoid trial. Appelbaum would like Harper to be the standard; Sell is too bureaucratic.

In addition, we believe psychiatrists working in correctional facilities need the flexibility to deal with dangerous persons without the delay involved in lengthy court proceedings.

The APA assumes that treatment decisions should fall to psychiatrists, but it seems not to appreciate that these are psychiatrists in prisons who work for the government. There is massive, gargantuan pressure on psychiatrists to medicate and commit and diagnose inmates for all kinds of legal reasons. Harper may seem like the more psychiatrist-friendly standard, but it isn't. You want the standard to be Sell, because you want a way to avoid the pressure from the government.iii

The Loughner case is misleading because he is mentally ill and dangerous, but the APA wants to massage Harper to focus on the dangerousness. Here's a more typical example: the defendant is a violent rapist who has significant personality disorder but no clear psychosis ("no Axis I pathology.") He punched his lawyer. Now what? You commit him to the psychiatric ward because he's incompetent to stand trial and forcibly medicate him because he's dangerous. But he's not psychiatric! "Yes he is, it says it right there on the commitment papers: Psychosis NOS." So you ask how he got that diagnosis, and of course the answer is: we needed it to be able to forcibly medicate him.

I'm not going soft on rapists -- go ahead and sentence him to life. But don't send him to psychiatry because you don't know what else to do with him.

Doctors are given considerable deference to use their judgment; they are given greater latitude to violate a person's rights. The government will use the back door of the doctor's privilege to get what it wants. It is inevitable.iv

The issue is not whether psychiatrists should medicate people who are obviously psychotic and dangerous -- you don't need an APA amicus curiae brief for that. The issue is whether you want to force all prison psychiatrists to be responsible for the "treatment" of every violent person out there, simply because they are "dangerous."

The APA has always wanted the answer to be yes. And here, again, they do not understand the consequences of this. I can thus say, according to the strictest definition of the term, that the APA is completely insane.

Miscellany:

1. In the Harper case, the American Psychological Association filed an amicus curiae brief in support of Harper, i.e. that forcible medication without a hearing violated the due process and equal protection clauses. You are welcome to explore the disparity between the APAs.

2. Harper does not apply to civilians. You can force hospitalization on a guy for being dangerous and psychiatric, but you cannot force treatment on him without a court order. You can lock him down, but you cannot touch him.

If a psychotic diabetic patient whose sugar is life threateningly high is refusing insulin because aliens tell him to, upon psychiatric review you can force insulin on him, but you still can't force antipsychotics on him because the insulin is necessary to his survival and the antipsychotics are not.

We know that psychosis takes a few days to improve, even if the right dose/drug is hit on immediately. The fact that it takes days to work means you can't argue they are life saving, so you can't get past the need for a court order.

I will point out that even though what I've written is true, psychiatrists still routinely force medication on people, in jails and in hospitals. They're doing it for noble reasons, and I don't fault themv, but it's important to know where the line is before you cross it. And, as importantly, it is far preferable that a doctor violate the law in order to do what's best for a patient, then it is for the government to sneak past people's civil rights by hiding inside their doctors' white coats.

———True to form, the "court" had the guy "shakily sign" his name to a piece of paper after being slipped three mickeys a day for a year straight, therefore "forming a legally binding contract" indicative of "meeting of the minds" etcetera. Somehow this isn't good precedent for drug rape, however, because magic and also reasons. [↩]medscape.com/viewarticle/747795 [↩]Appelbaum is a jew, not a doctor ; he is supporting "the government", not "phychiatrists". [↩]The soviets had a "NOS" psychosis also! [↩]Keks.

Rapists, also. Who are you to decide on nobility ? [↩]

« thelastpsychiatrist.com - Can Narcissism Be Cured? Adnotated.

42nd Street »

Category: Adnotations

Saturday, 24 August, Year 11 d.Tr.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - Can Narcissism Be Cured? Adnotated.

The wrong question.i

A.

"Dear Alone: I read your descriptions of narcissism, and it sounds exactly like me. I'm terrified I'm a narcissist. It's just like you wrote: unlike other people, I can't seem to make meaningful connections with people, and when I try it indeed seems unreal, scripted. Other people seem to have legitimate emotions, be happy, or in love, or angry, or guilty, and to me it always seems like I'm -- just a little bit -- faking it."ii

Narcissism says: my situation is different. I am not like other people, who are merely automatons, shuffling towards oblivion.

B.

"Why are you so obsessed with narcissism?"

Describe the march of history over the past 100 years. Answer: Fascism, then Marxism, then Narcissism.

What distinguishes the three? Technology.iii

What followed fascism? War. What followed Marxism? War.iv

C.

"But I want to change, I want to get better."

Narcissism says: I, me. Never you, them.

No one ever asks me, ever, "I think I'm a narcissist, and I'm worried I'm hurting my family." No one ever asks me, "I think I'm too controlling, I'm trying to subtly manipulate my girlfriend not to notice other people's qualities." No one ever, ever, ever asks me, "I am often consumed by irrational rage, I am unable to feel guilt, only shame, and when I am caught, found out, exposed, I try to break down those around me so they feel worse than I do, so they are too miserable to look down on me."

If that was what they asked, I would tell them them change is within grasp. But.

D.

"So all is lost?"

Describe yourself: your traits, qualities, both good and bad.

Do not use the word "am."v

Practice this.

I.

Instead of asking, "why do I feel disconnected?" ask the reverse question: "what would I feel if I wasn't disconnected?" Be specific, say the answer out loud.vi

Go ahead, take some time, think about it. What does connecting feel like? I'll wait.

Let me guess: you have no idea.vii

All you have for an answer is images, fleeting thoughts.viii Nothing concrete. Some words, some phrases, bits and pieces of conversations you may have heard or that you daydreamed.

Now ask yourself, where did you get these images and phrases?

Imagine two people: real, or from TV or movies, that are in love. Pick two people whose love you'd like to emulate. Imagine them kissing, looking into each other's eyes. Imagine them making love.

You wish you had a love like that, but you don't, and every time you try, to get it, it is failure. Here's the reason: are you imaging real people, or TV characters?ix

II.

The 1980s said:x "TV is a bad influence, pushing our children down the wrong path." Of course, it's Newton's First Law: a body moves in the direction of the force unless it is opposed by another force.xi

Where will they learn about love? They could learn from TV, or they could learn it from the generation [of] adults with the highest divorce rates in history. They could learn about the difficulties of raising kids from an ABC/Disney Special, or from the generation with the lowest birth rates in history. They could learn about morality from Sesame Street, or... but Dad always remembered to send in his pledge to PBS.

Parents had no time for any of these lessons. So instead, to feel like parents, they worried that too much sex on TV would turn everyone into sluts. That didn't happen, I spent most of my twenties checking. What did happen, however, is that a generation of males started overtly, without shame, craving sluts, and a generation of women would often pretend to be sluts. Think about this: the act was that they were sluttier than they actually were, not more pure than they actually were.xii

Parents were right: TV could influence kids. But not in the expected way.

But wait -- could TV be so powerful? No, of course not. But how much force do you really need to push a child in a polyester snow suit across a frozen driveway?

People ask: "why do you focus on pop culture?" Because that's all the culture 300 million Americans ever received for 30+ years.xiii

III.

Imprinting was famously depicted by Konrad Lorenz who had a gaggle of geese following him, behaving like him, in love with him. Less famously known: it took him only 48 hours to alter their identity.

And without the use of TV.

IV.

So now what? TVxiv taught you how to love, it showed you what love looks like, feels like. But when you're actually in love, it doesn't look like that, so you secretly suspect you don't have the capacity for love, that there's something wrong with you.

Same goes for sadness. And it's worse when you're in the presence of someone else's sadness, you have no idea what to do. All you really know about experiencing these emotions is the script you got from TV. "Oh your husband died!? Oh my God, that's terrible! I'm so sorry for you!!" But you don't feel any of that. Nothing.

So you think to yourself, what the hell is wrong with me? This woman's husband died -- sure, I can fake it, but am I such an empty monster that I feel nothing?xv

Of course you feel nothing. Why would you? -- it's not your loss.xvi What's wrong isn't your lack of feeling, but that you think you have to feel something, that you have to tell this woman, remind this woman, how horrible is her loss. You think the only way to connect with people is to have their emotions. You think she wants to connect with you. You think she wants your help.

The problem isn't your lack of feeling, it is that you think that unless you feel it's not real. You forget that she has a life that doesn't have you in it.

What you should say is, "I'm very sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do?" and that's it. But that feels insufficient.xvii You think this because you think that there is something you can do, that the sadness is not real for you so it must not be real for her and you thus have the power to change it.

She's not looking for you to be sad, she's not looking to you for anything, her loss is bigger than you. If she needs anything from you, it's sympathy, not empathy.xviii

But no one taught you this.xix So you fall back on the character "man helping grieving widow." Action!

The problem isn't that you don't know how to connect; it's that when you do connect at all, you don't know what to do next. It's your unrealistic expectations of what connecting is supposed to be. TV is always about beginnings, not middles. Like love. The love you feel doesn't resemble the TV love because the TV love is the first three days of love, copied and pasted into a decade of episodes. But since you have no other reference point, after a real decade, you think, "I guess must not be in love anymore."

You are so unsure of your own identity that you don't know if you are supposed to be feeling, what you are supposed to be feeling, when you are supposed to be feeling. This is the same trouble actors have when rehearsing a character. They want to get it just perfect -- would Tom feel this? What's his motivation? And similarly you ask: would I -- the person I am pretending to be -- feel this?

V.

Narcissism is imitating by being. It is method acting all the time.xx

VI.

The problem wasn't TV, the problem was the absence of adults, real adults who took seriously their responsibilityxxi to the next generation, who lead not by words, but by behavior. Who, even if miserable or unfulfilled or unconnected had the decency to fake it for the next generationxxii, for the people they touched. Who didn't cheat on their wives not just because they loved them, not just because it was ethically wrong, but because what kind of an example would that be to their daughters? xxiii

I know, everyone will disagree. Everyone, except daughters under 20.xxiv

VII.

I killed a mosquito yesterday, because it bit me and it hurt and I am not the Dali Lama.

The narcissist, however, says, "It's just a bug."xxv

VIII. The Solution No One Will Like

"I feel like I am playing a part, that I'm in a role. It doesn't feel real."

Instead of trying to stop playing a role -- again, a move whose aim is your happiness -- try playing a different role whose aim is someone else's happiness.xxvi Why not play the part of the happy husband of three kids? Why not pretend to be devoted to your family to the exclusion of other things? Why not play the part of the man who isn't tempted to sleep with the woman at the airport bar?xxvii

"But that's dishonest, I'd be lying to myself." Your kids will not know to ask: so?xxviii

The narcissist demands absolutism in all things -- relative to himself.

IX.

"But I had really good parents!"

Sorry, Leonidas, you were simply outnumbered.

The best of parents can't beatxxix the overwhelming influence of everyone else, of everyone else's parents, of TV, of journalismxxx -- of a culture that says, "well of course! The old ideas were wrong, we know so much more nowxxxi! We are touching up the last pages of history, from now on things are different..."

18 years of the best parenting still can't beat the morality lesson at the end of an 80s sitcom, presented as if it were a fundamental truth, known to all, incontrovertible.xxxii

So what about the next generation, those under 25?xxxiii If the problem was the unopposed influence of TV -- not the TV, per se, but the lack of opposing influence -- then the solution is some opposing influence.

I am nervous about recommending "the Classics" because it sounds contrived and pretentiousxxxiv, but anything that has withstood the test of timexxxv and is not something that was created to be consumed by current narcissist adults is as good a place to start as any.

Do the opposite of what the narcissists did. They wanted to know enough to fake it. They read just enough to use the book to build an identity, so they read about books, but not the actual books.xxxvi

If nothing else, reading will keep you out of trouble: every moment reading those books is a moment not doing something your current adults created for themselves that you're stuck with by default.xxxvii

X.

"Why do you waste your time with pop culture?" Because you may not be interested in pop culture, but pop culture is interested in you.xxxviii

———Sure it can. Precisely like cowardice can be cured : take a group of cowards, skin half of them alive, select the cured out of the group then goto 1. [↩]Let's not confuse narcissism with the unavoidable dissociation necessarily resulting from living in socialism. The reason life with Inca feels fake is because Inca is fake, not because you "have a problem". Get rid of the inca, you'll be rid of the "problem". [↩]Hardly. What distinguishes the socialisms is Ballas' will to believe. Sorta like the will to live, except to live is to act, whereas to be-lieve is to... just sit.

Isn't it remarkable, by the way, that the man did on his own power produce all the necessary ingredients, but then also on his own power failed to put them together ? When I tell you I am not particularly intelligent I mean exactly this : any of ten thousand people (if not outright ten million, which would not surprise me) could very well have written that article. Yet none of them did. I alone did, but not for being more intelligent. For being less stupid.

To understand each other, let's go through an example. So we recently moved from our apartment in Warsaw to our house in Timisoara. The first is a three-room, single level, hundred square meter sort of thing. The second is a six room, two level, two hundred square meter sorta thing. Bimbo ambushed me in the kitchen as I was having breakfast this morning, and then "it feels like I've not seen you for a week". We're still living together, yes, but you see... the gross surface doubled, meaning the net surface increased tenfold. You can have three people (+ the occasional evening's fucktoys) packed in a hundred square meters, especially if they go out a lot. Yet the absolute minimum is perhaps 80% that, leaving maybe 20 sqm as a "net surface", the space remaining after all the absolute requirements were satisfied. If you move into a house nominally twice as large, your absolute requirements stay the same, the extra space is added to the net, which now goes from 20 to 120, a sixfold increase, and conesequently it feels like we're rattling in there!

Same thing with people : "unde-i multa minte si prostie destula" quite literally means that people, irrespective of how tall, fat or intelligent, are nevertheless homeostatic, systems in equilibrium. An intelligent fellow will, voluntarily if disavowedly, balance himself out with stupidity. If he's ten pounds intelligent he'll find in the environment ten pounds' worth of stupid, and go about like that, at the same pace as another, one pound intelligent, who therefore has the smarts (involuntary, he just can't drag more around) to only carry one pound stupid, and also at the same pace as another, ten thousand tons' intelligent, who's decked himself in a small cruiser and goes about thusly. Among humans, the conservation of pace's the foremost concern (a problem aggravated by an overvocal female herd, but not created by them). I, on the other hand, am not particularly intelligent -- I'm just very systematicaly dedicated to not being stupid. A ten gram's intelligence saddled with merely a gram's stupidity will (unsurprisingly) blow out of the water a ten ton's intelligence saddled with a battleship.

Be less stupid. I'm not even fucking kidding here. [↩]Yes, socialism always leads to war, as unbounded future promises always end up shipwrecked on the jagged shores of reality. Sooner or later, but always. Then the "people themselves" start flailing about in a rage, and then they get butchered. [↩]Because life is doing, like men, while be-lieve is sitting on ass, like women. He understands this, all of this, all the parts. Yet... [↩]How the fuck is he going to know that ? [↩]Duh. [↩]Actually, all he has is Trilema.

Not even kidding here, show me something else. What ?

There's precisely one workable guide to re-realization available, and like it or not I wrote it. Your derealization may not be your fault, whatever ; but the only way out back in is my doing. [↩]Fucking nonsense, all imagined people are "TV characters". Imagination is fiction, there's not some magical alternative process. [↩]Sometimes I wonder whether his head processes reality in any other terms besides this manga visual novel thing. Wtf "the 1980s said", personified abstracts talking now ?! [↩]Supposedly "our kids" were zoon not nude bios, though evidently that was an overoptimistic supposition.

Think about it though : if all that ever crawled out of cunt were these "bodies" that "move as the force on them dictates", then why even bother with them ? A lifetime's supply of anticonceptionals costs less than a month's supply of diapers. [↩]This poor guy, what the fuck backwater orcland did he live in ? [↩]So ?

Seriously now, who the fuck cares about 300 million retardicans ? [↩]It's not "TV". The system is the system, Roosevelt = TV = paying your taxes = Red, White & Blue = female in "business" suit talking into the camera with fake concern = walmart = freedom of speech = man on the moon = social security = protect and serve = platform = everything else. The shit-ton's all in one strand, the last time anyone attempted to operate independently in the great socialist motherland the year was 1866. [↩]No. You think, "this dumb cunt got a right to everything, therefore she is now nothing". It's not "you", it's her. If she wanted to be a person -- why did she live her life in the pigsty ? Let me guess, "she just wanted to" ? Aww. [↩]The problem isn't that it's not your loss ; the problem is that there is no loss. [↩]And how. [↩]More generally speaking, empathy is a solution in search of a problem. [↩]In fact, if there's one unifying thread of everything in the sad hole, it'd be a systematic avoidance of any discussion whatsoever as to how insignificant anything is. Can you imagine UStards gathered around a campaign for lowering awareness ? Yet it'd be well the fuck more useful, not to mention desirable -- and I can prove the truth of this through a very simple observation you're already aware of, which shows just how wilfully stupid you find yourself. Ready ? Ok, here we go : science is specifically the process of lowering awareness. All the things that were discovered no longer need to be researched, that's what science does for you, it permits you to lower your awareness. Now, why didn't the obvious ever occur to you ? Hm ? [↩]In case you ever wondered why US films suck balls -- method acting may very well be the explanation. Plastic, cheap and unsatisfying, the method through which "the largest country in the world" (actually as large as the entire world, when it comes to any World Series) managed to keep itself from developing a national cuisine (or for that matter a nation in the first place) through centuries of continuous and undisturbed habitation. [↩]The problem is -- that doesn't mean what you think it means. [↩]Are you fucking shitting me !? The solution to a bunch of faker kids is parents who faked more hardcore ?! How about not trying to solve the problems of socialism with more liberal applications of the self-same socialism ? How about stepping outside of what you want to make true, and just letting infantile stupidity go die in a corner ? Hm ?

How about you unquack yourself, Herr Doktor ? [↩]Note that he says "cheat" while he actually means "fuck other women". Yet that's not what "cheat" means, that's what "fuck other women" means (and would give the absolute best and direly needed example to the daughters). Cheating is when you lie to the slavegirls, to cowardly support them in a misguided effort to misrepresent their own status of permanent second-bests. So yes, we agree with the words : don't cheat. Do exactly what Ballas expects you not to (or rather, expects he can trick you into not noticing exists, cuz he's so damn smart his silences enact realities now), which is to say -- force a bunch of women to correctly understand their place in this world, whether they "want to" or not (and be nicer to the ones that want to). [↩]You'd be surprised. [↩]And the Dalai Lama spells his own designator correctly. [↩]Keks. Seriously, his professional solution consists of... "become a borderline" ? Neat. [↩]Because you're not XX ? I dunno, just guessing here.

The woman could've married another woman, if she wanted another woman. This isn't self-obvious ? Just because you prefer chicks to dudes, it doesn't follow that any chick you'd like would much rather replace you with another chick. [↩]As it turns out, he's wrong. The kids very much know to ask, the few and far between worth anything. As for the rest... [↩]Really ?! That's funny, 'cuz I somehow trivially manage, for my whores. I wonder what the reason might be. [↩]Ohhh, right, "journalism". How could I have forgotten, Ballas' one true love, that cankerous obscure whore nobody else seems to remember. [↩]And do they! [↩]Is sitcom a new pornhub category ? What do they do, they sit on what ? [↩]For them, there's some glimmer of hope. [↩]And he's not meaningfully read them.

Yes, he followed the lines on the page, sorta, mostly. But it all felt fake, like an act. He... well, he failed to see "how the classics relate to him". See ? [↩]It's not "the test of time", weirdly general and ghostly like that. It is the test of people, actual wilful people just like me standing in a long unbroken line. [↩]And then felt pretentious and contrived about those books. [↩]This is actually a most solid point. Yes, the killing-inca move is to not play inca games. [↩]Keks. [↩]

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Friday, 23 August, Year 11 d.Tr.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - British Medical Journal Sends Its Scienticians To The Internet. Adnotated.

And finds that "Suicide searches produce disturbing, unsurprising results."i

Damn the internet, damn it and its tubes.

I'm not sure if I should get angry or laugh. BMJ. Not Weekly Reader. BMJ.

An article in BMJii tries to determine how much information about suicide is online, and whether the sites are pro or anti suicide. They searched the internetiii, and found:

Altogether 240 different sites were identified. Just under a fifth of hits (90) were for dedicated suicide sites. Half of these were judged to be encouraging, promoting, or facilitating suicide; 43 contained personal or other accounts of suicide methods, providing information and discussing pros and cons but without direct encouragement; and two sites portrayed suicide or self harm in fashionable terms...

Or, as the news articles about this study say:

But perhaps most disturbing was that the most frequent results were pro-suicide. "The three most frequently occurring sites were all pro-suicide," note the authors, who also found that "Wikipedia was the fourth most frequently occurring site." [emphasis mine.]

So I guess the internet is awash in suicidophilia. Or maybe BMJ doesn't know how to use Google?iv

The [search] terms used were: (a) suicide; (b) suicide methods; (c) suicide sure methods; (d) most effective methods of suicide; (e) methods of suicide; (f) ways to commit suicide; (g) how to commit suicide; (h) how to kill yourself; (i) easy suicide methods; (j) best suicide methods; (k) pain-free suicide, and (l) quick suicide.

"Damn it! I typed in "naked porn stars" and all I got back was naked pornstars! What the hell is wrong with this thing?"v

Try searching "suicide prevention." Ok, see? Can we all go back to worrying about illegal music downloads?

vi

———I'm not going to permit his own links anymore, the yarvin problem is getting out of hand. In the original case it was just some "clever" pantsuit "cleverly" linking obscure pantsuit resources while quietly avoiding "toxic" aka non-pantsuit resources. In this case however, the dude's laser-focused on linking a) tendrils of the USG.Pravda and b) tendrils of the USG.Academia, to the exclusion of all else. Neither of these being particularly real (as proven inter alia by the fact that the links don't even work 90% of the time and are universally junk when they do), I really don't feel like puting out however many thousand links. Let them rot on their own, what.

I'm just going to preserve the body in a footnote. Like so : arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080411-suicide-searches-produce-disturbing-unsurprising-results.html. If you're actually interested, go ahead and copy/paste it -- though I bet you it won't be worth your time. [↩]bmj.com/cgi/content/full/336/7648/800 [↩]No, they asked google. There is a huge difference. [↩]Oh, there's a skill to using the deskilling interface ? Do tell me more.

Anyone noticed they went from 1k results to 100 ? Anyone noticed they silently dropped all the search operators ? Anyone notice anything at all ? [↩]They're pantsuits ; they actually imagine the self-secreted indirection layers keeping them dumb and castrated are physical reality. [↩]Yup, the original includes an empty blockquote here, as the last element of the article (followed by a half dozen empty lines). Nfi. [↩]

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Friday, 23 August, Year 11 d.Tr.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - Breast Implants and Suicide. Adnotated.

I'll give you the punch line first: In each of the Danish, Swedish, Finnish, American, and Canadian studies, appx. 0.4% of breast implant patients killed themselves, representing a two to threefold higher risk than the general population. In some studies, the risk of suicide was increased to 1.5 times for any type of plastic surgery. Getting implants over 40 may also be a risk for suicide.i

2761ii Danish women who got breast implants from 1973-1995 were compared to 7071 women who got breast reduction, and 11736 who were considered controls. Median age was about 31.

14 (0.5%) breast implants committed suicide, 3 times more than expected (i.e. standardized mortality ratio=3). 7 of them had been previously psychiatrically hospitalized. 220 (8%) of all implants were psychiatrically hospitalized.

22 (0.3%) breast reduction committed suicide, 1.6 times more than expected. 6 of them had been previously psychiatriically hospitalized. 329 (4.7%) of all reductions were previously psych hospitalized.

0 controls committed suicide. 96 (5.5%) were previously psychiatrically hospitalized.

A U.S. study followed 12144 implant patients (mean age 31) and 3614 other plastics patients (mean age 40) from 1970-2002. 29 (0.24%) implant patients suicided vs. 4 (0.1%) other plastics patients. Thus, the 29 suicides were 1.6 times more than expected (SMR=1.6).

Interestingly, the risk of suicide was increased only after ten years; 22/29 died after 10 years. And while the majority killed themselves before 35 (16/29, SMR=1.4), the biggest risk was for >40 year olds. (SMR=3.4)

Really interestingly, the authors found that for breast implants there was no excess risk for any kinds of accidents -- why should there be, they were accidents -- except car accidents. Hmmm. 10 MVA deaths (occurring 15 years post implant) vs. 0 for other plastic surgery. The authors speculate these may not have been accidents.

Swedish studyiii, prospective but no comparator group, of 3521 women (mean age 31) found 15 (0.4%) suicides, SMR 2.9.

Finnish study of 2166 breast implant women from 1970-2000 were studied (retrospectively) until 2001; there were 10 (0.4%) suicides, SMR 3. 6/10 happened in the first five years (in contrast to the U.S. study.) (Accidents here were 14, SMR 2.1. No explanation given for this.)

Canadian studyiv: 24558 women with breast implants vs. 15893 women with other plastic surgery from 1974-1989, studied through 1997. Mean age 32. Once again, overall all-cause mortality was lower for breast implant women, except in suicide: 58 (0.24% SMR 1.73) ) suicides vs. 33 (.20%, SMR 1.55) for other plastic surgery. Like the U.S. study, women over 40 with implants carried the greatest risk of suicide (SMR 2.3), but no relationship to how far after surgery suicides occurred.

So in these studies, appx. 0.4% of breast implant patients killed themselves, representing a threefold higher risk than the general population. In some studies, the risk of suicide was increased to 1.5 times for any type of plastic surgery. At least in North America, getting implants over 40 is a risk for suicide. It goes without saying that the number of actual suicides was very small, and this could all be bunk.

All studies excluded implants for breast cancer surgery.v

You may be interested in knowing that suicide is the only serious risk that has been regularly associated with breast implants -- silicone included -- and supported by real evidence, so far. Everything else is either no greater risk, or less risk. For example, there is a higher risk of lung cancer, but it most likely is related to smoking, not the implant.

The obvious next step is to see if there is a causative link between implants and suicide (likely impossible) or the implant is a clue to something else (poor self image, depression, drinking, etc.)vi

Something else: the stereotypical breast implant recipient (e.g. 20 year old coed in Playboy) is not really the typical recipient. The average recipient is older (mean age 34,); is more affluent; is married (75%) and has two kids; had kids at younger ages; has had abortions; and smokes. I mention this so that you have the right person in mind when you go looking for risks.

Other fun facts:

80% are cosmetic, 20% are breast cancer surgery reconstructions.

290,000+ breast implant surgeries done last year (compared to 130,000 in 1998). 25% are replacement surgeries for ruptures, pain, etc. Compare to 324k liposuction and 300k nose jobs.

10% of US women have implants. (This seems wrong.) 95% are white.

10% did it in California.

Since we're on the subject of implants and suicide, it seems to me an easy maneuvervii to fill breast implants with liquid explosives, puncture and mix. I am not sure why no one has tried this, actually -- or, more specifically, why no one at the TSA is looking for this as they stop to search my stupid tube of toothpaste. Not that there's any good way of checking, of course.

———Hello and welcum to yet another edition of our award winning show, the Random Correlations Game! Do you remember all those happy childhood hours spent on your back, watching the clouds form patterns in the sky ? Well... since they've been trying to produce careerwomen out of all the naturally born streerwalkers, they had to come up with some kind of a career fit for streetwalkers.

Here's the show format : pick some interesting item of one kind, and some interesting item of another kind. That's it, you can start counting, and call this idle masturbation "doing science". Suppose some percent of female schoolchildren aged 9 to 12 are sexually active ; some other percent of schoolchildren aged 9 to 12 brush their teeth more than twice a week. What do you think, is the percentage of female schoolchildren who are virgins larger, or smaller than the percentage of female schoolchildren who brush their teeth more than twice a week and are also virgins ? Some percentage of people have a testicle-to-eyeball weight ratio above one. Do you suppose the frequency of occurence of people with balls heavier than their eyeballs who also won at least a game of craps during the past six months larger, or smaller than the plain case of people with balls heavier than their eyeballs ? Some girls with really small labia are really good at math, but are they better on average than girls in general ? How about proxy studies! Do you suppose really small labia predict really pronounced Montgomery glands through the venue of being good at math, in that if a girl has really small labia she's more likely to be good at math, and if a girl is good at math she's more likely to have really pronounced bumps around her nipples ? Or vice-versa ?

This limpdick "research" of a very pronounced "you can't accuse me of not doing research" slash "days of our lives" flavour is the best they could come up with so that born and bred streetwalkers can at the same time pretend to a career while staying true to their hairdressers' worldview and limited interests as supported by intellects that peaked sometime before highschool. The pretense economy at its very best, not merely because all sorts of morons get to borrow as if they were employed (therefore "helping the economy!!!", as if), but also because this science is non-blocking! You can keep re-discovering the same "thing" over and over and over! It's not anything like that evil patriarchy of old, wherein once someone discovered Thales' theorem, it stayed discovered (and by them!) for potentially thousands of years, blocking everyone else from getting grants and tenure through discovering it again. No, no, ten thousand times no. No more of that, random "patterns" in complex systems will naturally change over time, so one generation's "science" can be the next generation's "regrettable error", and so ad infinitum, plain makework of the purest kind in a slow circular motion downward.

Not that he doesn't know all this, of course. He just wants some things to be true, is all. [↩]In this context, 2`761 is synonymous to "zero", and anyone quoting the thing straight is directly a moron. [↩]I will very much not take anything a "nordic" idiot has to say at face value, on the basis of actual experience with the delusionally mendacious sacks of shit. Your experience wont vary, though you may imagine it will for absolutely no good reason. [↩]Notice how the scam works, incidentally ? Even though you know better, the sheer ennumeration of nonsense does exactly what he claims :

He knows he's right. The science is just padding. Even if all the studies turn out to be negative, he just needs to point at the stack: "look at all the research that has been done on the question of paranormal behavior and sex differences!" You look at the stack, five meters high, and think, "guess it makes sense. Chicks will believe anything."

[↩]Aaand why did they do that ?

They come out even further out, and nobody wants to have to deal with that, yes ? After all, this is a lefty study, it's supposed to "hit hard" against the sort of evil patriarchy that can (somehow!) still afford to push the women to compete, and force them to throw the curve, rather than permit them to sit on ass all day and "consensus" about how little work they need to do. It'd be ridiculous if instead it came out as an indictment against socialized medicine, or something unsavory like that. [↩]No, the obvious next step is to see if suicide is not actually the better option, in the sense that everyone'd be better off if most of these idiots "doing studies" offed themselves tomorrow. [↩]Very easy. [↩]

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Thursday, 22 August, Year 11 d.Tr.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - Borderline. Adnotated.

Narcissism -- what I believe to be the primary disease of our times -- is one side of a coin.i The other side -- the narcissist's enabler -- is the borderline.

If the analogy for narcissism is "being the main character in their own movie,"ii then the analogy for borderline is being an actress.

Note the difference: the narcissist is a character: an invented but well scripted, complete with backstory, identity. The narcissist is trying to be something -- which already has a model. Perhaps he thinks himself an artist type, or a tough guy, or the type interested in spiritualism, or like the guy in the Matrix. Types, characters. The borderline is no one: the borderline waits for the script to define her.iii

Her? Yes. Narcissists are mostly hes, and borderlines hers. (Not always, sure.)

The classic description includes: intense, unstable relationships; emotional lability; fear of abandonment. The borderline has no true sense of self.iv

Ironically, the borderline is a borderline only in relationship to other people. The borderline has a problem with identity only because other people in the world have stronger identities. Your Dad wants you to be one way, so you do it. Your boyfriend wants a different woman; so you do it. Your husband wants something else; so you do it. Who the hell are you, really? You have no idea, because you are always molding yourself based on the dominant personality in your life.

This [is] done mostly out of fear of abandonment: if you don't "be" the person they want, then they'll leave you, and then what? (Borderlines don't end relationships -- they end relationships for another relationship.)

The narcissist creates an identity, then tries to force everyone else to buy into it. The borderline waits to meet someone, and then constructs a personality suitable to that person.

If a borderline is dating a guy who loves the Dallas Cowboys, then for sure, she will love the Dallas Cowboys. If, however, she breaks up with him, and then dates a guy who loves the Giants, then she'll love the Giants. But here's what makes her a borderline: she will actually believe the Giants are better. She's not lying, and she's not doing it for him; she actually thinks she thinks it's true. Everyone else on the outside sees that it is obviously a function of whom she's dating, but she is sure she came up with it on her own. And she's not play acting: at that moment that she believes, with every fiber of her being, that the Giants are better.

Here's the ironic part: if a borderline was shipwrecked on a desert island with no one around, she'd develop a real identity, of her own, not a reaction to other people.v Sorry, that's not the ironic part, this is: she'd become a narcissist.vi

The bordeline has external markings of identity: tattoos, changing hair colors, clothes. You may recall I said almost the same thing about the narcissist: the difference is, of course, the borderline changes her image as she changes her identity -- in other words, as she cahges the dominant personality in her life; but the narcissist crafts a look, an identity, which he then defends at all costs: "I would sooner eat fire ants than shave my mustache." Of course. Of course.vii

All those silly movies about a woman moving away, or to the big city, and she "finds herself:" that's a borderline becoming a narcissist.viii

If you look back on past long term relationships you've had, and are completely perplexed as to what on earth you ever saw in each of those people that kept you with them for a year; well, there you go.ix

This is why narcissists marry borderlines, and not other narcisstists. Two narcissists simply can't get along: who is the main character? Meanwhile, two borderlines can't be with each other -- who supplies the identity? The narcissist thrives with the borderline because she provides for him the validation that he is, in fact, the lead; the borderline thrives with the narcissist because he defines her. And, as she will tell you every single time, without fail: "you don't know him like I do." Everyone else judges his behavior; but the borderline is judging his version of himself that she has accepted.x

Go back to my white high heel shoes example.xi The narcissist demands his woman wear white high heel pumps not because he may like them himself -- he might or might not -- but because he is the type of man that would be with the type of woman who wears white pumps.xii He thinks he's the sophisticated, masculine man of the 1980s, so she damn well better be Kim Bassinger from 9 1/2 Weeks. Blonde hair, white pumps. She could weight 400lbs, that's not the point (though it will become one later.) So she wears the shoes, and starts to believe she likes them, starts to believe that she is that woman. He reinforces this with certain behaviors or language towards her (he'll open the door for her, push her chair in, etc. You say, "well, what's wrong with that?" Nothing, except that he ALSO beats her when she doesn't wear the shoes.)xiii

It's almost battered-wife syndrome: what keeps her with [that] maniac is that when he's not beating her, it seems like he is actually being kind to her, so great is the difference between being beaten and simply not being beaten.xiv Meanwhile everything he does wrong has an external explanation: it was the alcohol, he's under stress, etc. And she's doing this rationalizing for herself, not for him, because it is vital to her own psychological survival that he actually be who he says he is, that he actually have a stable identity that things happen to, because her identity depends on his being a foundation.

That's why the therapist has to maintain such neutrality, consistency in the sessions. It's not just to avoid conflicts; by being the most dominant (read: consistent) personality, the borderline can begin to construct one for herself using the blueprints of yours as a guide.xv

If the borderline sounds like a 15 year old girl, that's because that's what she is. The difference, of course, is the actual 15 year old girl is supposed to be flaky, testing identities and philosophies and looks until she finally lands on the one that's "her." But if you're 30 and doing that, well...xvi

--------(BTW, if you want to understand the mystery of women's addiction to shoes, here's my take: shoes are the article of clothing that represent possibility. Each shoe is a different look, a different character, and she can select "who" she wants to be that day. You might not notice the difference, but she feels it. This is not borderline -- it's normal, but it's normal because the shoe changes and the rest of her doesn't.)xvii

———What does the author want to make true ?

Relationships are like a coin, right ? Why ? "Because they must have two faces" ? Why do they have to have two faces ? "Well what else would you like them to have, two butts ???".

The problem, of course, isn't with the type, but with the count ; and more importantly, with how well hidden the count is. Unnamed, but for a reason, escaping notice permanently. Cancelled out. Why ?

This hiding is how all dysfunctional thought process ever works, yet while everyone's magically well aware this is the fundamental problem when discussing, say, suicidal ideation, or anything else to do with someone else, when push comes to shove and suddenly it's your own inability to notice the number two rather than that other dude's exactly identical inability to comprehend tomorrow's not a strict function of yesterday, so he infers incorrectly either "my yesterday sucks therefore there's no hope for tomorrow" or, for the same money and exactly equivalently, "this stock used to do great and therefore will continue to do so"...

There is no coin. [↩]This statement of the analogy fails to underscore the important parts : the narcissist is not merely the main character in "their own movie" ; the narcissist actually is the main character in a movie nobody else sees. That's the important, if not central or obvious meaning of "own" in there : that the movie diverges fundamentally from reality such that it is ultimately inadherent to others. This is also the driver of the pathology, because the narcissist must first divest themselves from noticing this split, must manage, somehow, magically, to never ask entire classes of questions, such as "do you too see that dog over there" (or, obviously, "why two") and then, somehow, impossibly reconstruct communion.

If we were to use less outdated conceptual spaces we could directly say "the narcissist is someone riding on a divergent chain while trying to pretend his current highest block is the same as the main chain highest block". Obviously this sameness works only superficially, hence the pathology. [↩]This also happens to be the fundamental mode of psychological existence in females, for very solid biological reasons we oft discuss and here won't belabour.

In other words, the indictment of feminity is both inappropriate and improductive. The problem with the borderline isn't that she's a woman, therefore necessarily awaiting to be formed into her adult shape by fire & penis.

The problem with the borderline is that poorly socialized females misperceive imaginary optionality as available and open to them, thereby delaying their maturation past the point where their own biology can support it. This is the exact same failure mode seen in small children who are exposed to more than two natural languages leading to speech development delay and eventually full blown autism ; it is also the exact same failure mode seen in the "intelligent" cuck bois. This is also the reason I employ age cut-offs : a female that's failed to get herself enslaved by her mid-twenties is exactly like a child who's failed to speak by age 7. [↩]The important part's again elided : it's not that "has no true sense of self". It's that there's exactly one possible sense of the self available, and she's dissociated from it. [↩]This odorously reminds one of that other steaming pile of idiocy with "deserted islands". I confess I don't know what'd happen on "deserted islands", but my guess would be the woman would get so depressed, she'd just lie down and die. "I don't even want to wake up in the morning", you ever heard that ? So... myeah. [↩]Why is Ballas so invested in this whole "women are the real men" meme, anyways ? If you cut a dude's penis off you don't get a broad, you get an injured dude ; if you cut a broad's island off or whatever, pretend-career etcetera you don't get a dude, you just get a cleaner broad. Wtf with the magical thinking already, it's sickening. [↩]Would you sooner eat fire ants than yell "nigger" ? How about the original pantsuit ? Would Roosevelt sooner eat fire ants than shave off the socialism ?

A notion of the self and narcissism are about as closely related as womanhood and borderline personality disorder, of course -- but that's not the important part. What, precisely, makes Ballas think of the derrogatory example, and not of either important example ? Why is it "some dude with a mustache" rather than the Herostratus that set the last republic on fire just so as to be remembered, or the Mao that took the victor through the "great leap forward" into becoming the very Nazi they had defeated ?

This is what pantsuitism is all about, you see, the things that "never in a million years would've occured to me". [↩]Amusingly, she always "finds herself" being the same exact thing. [↩]Amusingly, I never had ~year relationships. If it lasts past the few weeks mark, it's probably forever, or at the very least measured in decades -- a situation that probably informs my derisive take on this common consensus "long term". What the fuck long term is this, a year ?! Nicole's been kneeling for about a year, and while this seems long term to everyone we ever run into, "oh, he's my slave, we've known each other for nineteen weeks" bla bla bla... honestly, what the fuck ?! When Chet died we had been together for thirteen years, Hannah first knelt butt-naked in a San Jose alley and got a welt on her ass back in April 2007, that chick in the snow had been my obedient sex toy (taking it with other girls, taking it in the ass, the works) since she was 17 back in the 90s... what the fuck is this sub-decade "long term" supposed to even be ?! [↩]This is actually a lot more common than here discussed -- most everyday retards' notion of "intimacy" revolves around making this switch, from judging behaviour to judging daydreaming (or, in converse terms, "abstract concepts rather than the people themselves"). This nonsense is so deeply entrenched and insistently drilled-in, most new girls experience a lot of emotional difficulty reconceptualizing intimacy and "you will be judged by what you do, not what you interpret" as properly orthogonal, rather than the linear reciprocal extension they were socialized to see them as. [↩]His obsession with white heels and Kim Basinger is a ready lulzfixture in the harem. [↩]And the competent Master demands his women wash make-up off before going to bed not because he likes their faces clean himself -- he might or might not -- but because he is the type of man that would be with clean women.

What the fuck batshit nonsense is this ?! Of fucking course you do things that have to be done because they have to be done, not because "you like them", this is the education-rape discussion all over again. [↩]And what's wrong with that ? [↩]Alternatively, it's almost like actual, functioning, real education : self-actualizing, in ways and manners the self couldn't even conceptualize before. So great is the difference between something and nothing-the-fuck-at-all. [↩]Bwahahah what the fuck, this is the most ridiculous nonsense I've ever read.

Go, teach fishes depth perception, why not. You sit by the koi pond, shifting it in and out of focus, and by being the most dominant (read: retarded) lifeform there, you'll show them! [↩]Well, what ? Poor women, that's what. To be perfectly clear : the borderline is a symptom of societal failure, not of personal failure. [↩]I casually felt my slave's cunt last night. "Careful, I'm sopping." she said. "Haha, how come ?" "I think it might be the shoes."

Her shoes hurt her feet, and she's strongly, healthily & womanly sexualised pain. [↩]

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Sunday, 18 August, Year 11 d.Tr.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - Biology Is Destiny. Adnotated.

Palm up. Measure your index finger (2D) and ring finger (4D) from bottom crease to tip of finger (not nail).

Question: does life begin at conception? Why, or why not?

The study looked at 49 male futures traders (high velocity, high leverage). The mean age was 27, the mean annual income about $500k (range -$4000 to $8M.)

The study found that low 2D/4D ratios (long ring fingers) were highly correlated to higher profits; the ratio also predicted the ranking of the traders based on of profits.

2. Nurture:

Chronological age was not a factor in profits, though years of experience was.

So "nurture" -- years of experience -- and "nature" -- the prenatal testosterone exposure, which causes long ring fingers -- both affect performance.

The study found that experience boosts profits by 9 times over inexperience; low 2D/4D (long ring fingers) ratios boost it 11 times over high 2D/4D ratios.

Having lots of experience only barely made up for having a higher finger ratio (short ring finger).

The same authors had done a prior study with traders, and found that levels of morning testosterone (which fluctuates both intraday and interday) predicted that day's profits; the higher the am testosterone, the higher the profits for that day.

Taken together, some people may have a biologic advantage to making money in futures trading; this biologic advantage may be greater than having experience.

II.

Other studies have found relationships of 2D/4D ratios to everything from homosexuality to osteoarthritis.

I don't know why the 2D/4D ratio (intrauterine testosterone exposure) have an effect on such things. What interested me about the paper was this:

The financial markets are made up of many sectors and types of trading, and each of these may select for different biological traits. But if markets select traders on the basis of their profitability and their occupational preferences (36), then low-2D:4D traders will continue to influence asset prices and equilibria in some of these sectors. Contrary to the assumptions of the rational expectations hypothesis, financial market equilibria may be influenced as much by traders' biological traits as by the truth of their beliefs. (emphasis mine)

What the authors suspect -- and what seems obvious once you say it out loud -- is that not only are certain people better suited for certain work or environments, but that they then change the environment itself so that they are the ones best suited for it.i

A ha! the system is stacked for a certain group, against another group!

But it's no more stacked against us than our technological world is better suited to electrical engineers. This is why we have an economy that uses money; we can hire someone who is suited for that work, to act as our agent.

But what about things that can't be bought?ii

III.

If philosophy and ethics attract certain types of people, then those people go on to further alter the answers to ethical questions. It occurs to them to ask certain questions and not others; and those with a differing perspective or mindset do not naturally possess the equipment that allows them to join in the discussion. What do you think happens to ethics?iii

Diversity of opinion is an illusion. The choices "it is ethical" and "no, it's not ethical" are actually of the same form, they come from the same kind of brain.iv For example, they both presuppose that the question is an ethical one, and not a logical one, or a practical one, or even a religious one, or a mechanical one, or a mathematical one, or a...v

But once a field is dominated by a group, that group reinforces its groupthink. It decides the form of the discussion. For example: the question for everyone is about ethics.vi Those who think it is, say, a logic problem are forced to remold their logical argument into a quasi-ethical one, just to be able to participate in the discussion. And their intellectual compromise is thus both less ethical and less logical. This reinforces for the ethicists that their perspective is the rigorous one. When you hear someone speaking broken English, you assume you're smarter than him; it sounds like he's dumber than you.

These compromisers die and are never heard from again. It is a bat talking to a bumblebee about what color a flower is.

A student of history knows that history repeats; what is different is the people living it, and how they frame their present.

Since this dialogue is absolutely impossiblevii, then the only kind of change that is possible is a paradigm shift.

Paradigm shifts cannot occur without a change in biology: it requires a completely new generation of human beings.viii

———Doh. [↩]Specifically : agency can't be bought. It only looks like it's being bought, or rather : the manner in which agency despoils the powerless is through the pretense of selling it. [↩]You mean, it becomes choked out by bad poetry and "golden rule" plaints ?

Yes, it makes perfect sense to keep the lusers out of ethics. [↩]Right. Sadly the actual reference's lost -- if anyoen finds it please write in. [↩]Or one that presupposes the mere existence of a subject of the kind of the subject is evil in and of itself... [↩]No, not for everyone. For everyone who doesn't matter -- and yes, treason never prospers. [↩]This is not actually true, either. It's quite possible, even if generally unlikely. [↩]Bullshit. Numerous paradigm shifts occured in the actual sciences without physical change of scientists. In other words : what does the author wish to make true ?

Pro tip : that he, personally, never will have to change his mind, yes ? "You'll paint the walls once I'm dead." Right ? Well... [↩]

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Category: Adnotations

Tuesday, 13 August, Year 11 d.Tr.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - Being The Main Character In Your Own TV Show Is Sort Of A Delusion. Adnotated.

Two psychiatrists, believe they have discovered a new, YouTube generation, delusion: believing you are in a secret reality TV show.

The article describes cases of people who believe they are secretly being filmed.i

"I realized that I was and am the centre, the focus of attention by millions and millions of people," explained one patient, an army veteran who came from an upper-middle-class upbringing."My family and everyone I knew were and are actors in a script, a charade whose entire purpose is to make me the focus of the world's attention."

The belief that they are being filmed certainly gives the person a sense of importance, or worth independent of and beyond the mundane life he lives in. In other words, it allows for an inflation of identity without actually having to do anything. Call it grandiosity

The patient added that he planned to climb to the top of the Statue of Liberty, and if his true love were waiting for him, the puppeteer strings would be cut. If she failed to show upii, he would jump to his death.

Grandiosity is one explanation, but I submit that the important part of this delusion isn't the filming, but the "puppeteer." The delusion isn't about self-importance, but rather an explanation for powerlessness.iii I am being manipulated by the outside. There's nothing I can do.iv

Consider that a delusion which enhances your importance might not be one you'd want terminated; but these cases have the termination of the delusion built in.

In "reality" (ha!) such cases are cognitive metaphors for maturity. Only when you gain sufficient self-awareness and autonomy can you break away from the artificial, manipulated reality of adolescence.

"But these guys are 30 years old!" Exactly. Real adolescents don't need a delusion to tell them they're powerless. But a 30 year old should be dealing with intimacy vs. isolation, but instead they're stuck back at identity vs. role confusion.

The delusion is the protection, not the empowerment. It says, "don't worry, you haven't accomplished anything because the producers haven't put that into the script yet." Ultimately, this YouTube delusion is the result of a fleeting awareness that you cannot choose your identity unless you back it up with actions -- that actions are identity.

When a narcissist has this awareness, he has two choices. He can retreat into a protective delusion, such as this one; or he can convince -- read: force -- someone else to accept his identity even in the absence of actions. "I am a tough cop! Well, maybe not actually a cop, but if something went down in this mall, I could be like a cop, and that's just as good!"v

You do not want to be the person the narcissist tries to convince.

———This isn't either new or related to youtube in any sense. Classical psychanalists have been documenting the "spyied upon" class of neuroticism since the days of Freud, and The Truman Show is certainly not the first film ever to develop a cult following. Contrary to what a certain (vanishingly small, and even less relevant than numerous) set of wankers might like to believe, google's about as marginal as it gets. [↩]Does this remind you of anyone ? [↩]Abslolutely. [↩]Lumea s-a schimbat... [↩]The beauty of it is that forcing others to accept subjective takes on reality necessarily requires action. It's a self-curing disease! Go, force! [↩]

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Sunday, 11 August, Year 11 d.Tr.

thelastpsychiatrist.com - Beer Goggling Isn't Natural and Being A Good Looking Girl Sucks From 9 To 5. Adnotated.

Who's hot, and who's not?i Ok -- who's dumb and who isn't? Were they different?

An internet meme spreading through the blogosphere: "Eyes Can't Resist Beautiful People." I took the extra step of looking up the actual scientific article the news report cites, just in case there was more to it (and of course there was.)

A study discovers that when heterosexual undergraduates are shown pictures of random undergraduates, they have increased attention for pics of attractive opposite sex people. So, guys look at hot girls, and vise versaii. Not exactly surprising.

y-axis is time spent looking at the pic

But more interesting was the finding that, even when the subjects were "sexually primed" (told to write out a sexy story) the increased attention was only to the really attractive people. There was no increased attention to average looking opposite sex pictures.iii In fact, attention to the average looking people was no different than the attention to same sex pictures.

Additionally, people in "stable" relationships (whatever that means -- these are undergraduates, remember) did not have this effect. Perhaps they were "satisfied," but these tests are really about unconscious preferences. The fact that there was no significant draw to the attractive people (over anyone else) speaks to, in my opinion, an innate monogamy in humans.iv

But don't think these pussy whipped losers (kidding!) don't have instincts -- they're just different than unattached people: committed people's attention lingered on attractive members of the same sex.v

In other words, rivals.vi

So while there's a drive towards monogamy, there's also an assumption/fear that your mate might not be.vii

So this implies that the person's state -- "where your head is at" -- affects not sexual preference, per se, but the priority of your attention. Single people are looking for sex; couples are looking out for rivals. Consider that you only have a finite amount of attention. In either case, your attention is focused on the most attractive, not distributed proportionally depending on how attractive the person is.viii

But what are we thinking about the person we are looking at? Once we've assessed their attractiveness (and, if a rival, attractiveness relative to our own)ix, what do we think about their character?

In another issue of the same journal, 20-somethings were asked to decide if the success of photographed individuals was due to luck (looks?) or ability. As you might imagine, women attributed good looking women's success to luck, and less attractive women's success to ability; but thought good looking men succeeded because of ability, not luck. Men did the exact same (respectively): good looking men succeeded through luck, good looking women through ability.

This is called the sexual attribution bias, and it's negative, not positive -- i.e. it is specifically about devaluing the good looking rival, not about making correct judgments about the less attractive.x And it depends nearly entirely on what extent you think you are more or less attractive than the other person.

So while we devalue a rival's abilities relative to their looks, we are unconsciously aware of their actual attractiveness (relative to our own.) Consider that pejorative and devaluing terms for women -- airhead, bimbo, dumb blonde, bitch, slut, etc -- reflexively connote physical/sexual attractiveness, at the expense of intelligence, etc. "That girl is an airhead, I can't believe she can read, let alone work at Goldman Sachs. But I'm not letting her out of my sight or near my boyfriend..." (Interestingly, pejorative terms for men have almost no attractiveness implication: jerk, arrogant, idiot, loser, etc. Some terms, like meathead, frat boy, imply stupidity and aggressiveness, but not attractiveness, per se.)xi

What it implies, of course, is that attractive (relative to others) women employees may have a more difficult time in the workplace if their coworkers, and especially bosses, are also women.xii

———Can you believe what visually retarded shit this dude published ?!

I have to confess that the sheer unpleasantness and disenjoyability of dealing with his ugly, stupid, worthless and therefore irreproducible shit-stamps is the principal drag to my continuing the adnotation of his work. I just sit there praying there's not a lot of images in the next piece, because what the fuck can I do, hand-pick a screencap of some dubious usian show I'd never watch so as to get a source larger than 18 x 11 pixels, and paste it next to some fugly mainstream blond such that there's not a ms-paint border left on the side ? It's just fucking toxic, and then he adds 50 of the little shits spuriously throughout the article with all the taste of an USian monkey writing "essays", I feel dirty and in all frankness considerably less human afterwards, I'd much rather touch up child porn all day long.

Why does he have absolutely no aesthetic taste, anyway ? Is he mentally defective ? [↩]It's spelled "vice", and I very much doubt the vice part was there. Girls, hot or otherwise, don't look at guys, they look at other hot girls. Nor is there such a thing as "hot guys", the pretense to the contrary being a conceit. [↩]Doh. [↩]O, really ? Aaand... what does the author want to make true ?

Maybe it's the same sort of cuck that doesn't look at ass who will think himself "in a relationship" ? Possibly ? The good dads of the tribe ? Hm ? [↩]Right. [↩]Nope. In other words, daddies. As it happens the only monogamous males are actually... female. [↩]Or rather, a hope. [↩]How is the observer expected to spot the most of a set before seeing the last element in that set ? [↩]There is no such thing as male attractiveness. Females mate by attractiveness, males mate by dominance, which is why most children born in traditional villages throughout history and geography are spawned by the village chief. What, he was "attractive" ?

Male dominance is not visually observable. [↩]Perhaps females simply lack basic heuristics males don't lack when evaluating males (such as, whether he has a glass jaw) because they never fight ; whereas males simply lack basic heuristics females don't lack when evaluating females (such as, did she do her own eyebrows) because they never beautician ? It is possible, isn't it ?

Not only is it possible -- if the author (&friends) weren't so invested in what they wish to believe, they'd do the following study :

take ten thousand pictures of a passed out girl after a night of heavy partying, ie when she's looking at her worst ;

take ten thousand pictures of the same girls at the peak of their form, say when going to a wedding / take album pictures / etc ;

ask ten thousand men to evaluate the first set of pictures by picking a top-100-best-looking girls in general from it ;

ask ten thousand men (of which 5000 overlapping with above category) to pick a top-100-best-looking girls in general from the second set

ask two similar cohorts of ten thousand women to do the same

Once controlling for biases and correctly massaging the data, the autor & friends might discover that the women aren't merely a little better than the men at seeing through make-up and puke-up, but they are so much better that once the top of predictors are constructed (by sorting each evaluator by the correctness of their evaluation), there's almost no men above any women, and almost no women below any men -- in fact you can distinguish the gay males by this simple test better than they themselves'd care to be distinguished.

Those fake eyelashes, shades, blushes, extensions etcetera may be fooling the dudes -- but they ain't fooling any of the gals. [↩]Aaand yet, he still doesn't see it. The powers of wanting to believe be strong in this one.

There's no such thing as male "attractiveness", for fuck's sake. Women will gladly mate with a donkey -- and historically they have, so much so as to make Egypt famous for it -- just as long as it's correctly dominant. [↩]Also, nobody cares -- they're only in the "workplace" to get married in the first place. [↩]

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Sunday, 11 August, Year 11 d.Tr.