51–60 of 421 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because they can and want to. Why are you on HN?
Because I want to comment. But if someone replies to my comments with the equivalent of hate mail, I won't say that they are "silencing" me. If I go to that scientist's profile I can read his tweets just fine. Someone quoting him and saying he's an idiot is not "silencing" him.
Another field where science is on a collision course with online (and offline) activists is genetics. As we decode and understand more of the genome, it is possible that our genes affect more of our behavior than what the partisans of tabula rasa hold for truth. And unless the political climate evolves, in a power struggle between activists and science, I wouldn't bet on the scientists.
> As we decode and understand more of the genome, it is possible that our genes affect more of our behavior than what the partisans of the tabula rasa hold for truth What “partisans of the tabula rasa”? Activists of both the left and right seem more likely to be partisans of genetic determinism, though of which aspects of intellect, identity, and behavior varies between them.
Over the next 20 or so years, expect a lot of syndromes/conditions to be reclassified, as Michael Sharpe puts in the article, as "biological condition[s] that can be perpetuated by social and psychological factors.". I struggled with RSI for a couple of years until I read John Sarno's "The Mind-Body Connection" on the recommendation of someone from HN. Sarno's thesis is that many chronic pain conditions (those withou…
> the pain is real, it's just caused by processes in your brain, I don't find this particular statement very revolutionary. We have known for a long time that physical pain is manufactured by the brain as an evolutionary tactic to help us prevent further harm to ourselves. If we didn't "feel pain" when we were on fire, we would burn to death.
Over the next 20 or so years, expect a lot of syndromes/conditions to be reclassified, as Michael Sharpe puts in the article, as "biological condition[s] that can be perpetuated by social and psychological factors.". I struggled with RSI for a couple of years until I read John Sarno's "The Mind-Body Connection" on the recommendation of someone from HN. Sarno's thesis is that many chronic pain conditions (those withou…
> the pain is real, it's just caused by processes in your brain, I don't find this particular statement very revolutionary. We have known for a long time that physical pain is manufactured by the brain as an evolutionary tactic to help us prevent further harm to ourselves. If we didn't "feel pain" when we were on fire, we would burn to death.
OC is saying that the pain can originate in the brain itself without any external force on the body.
Over the next 20 or so years, expect a lot of syndromes/conditions to be reclassified, as Michael Sharpe puts in the article, as "biological condition[s] that can be perpetuated by social and psychological factors.". I struggled with RSI for a couple of years until I read John Sarno's "The Mind-Body Connection" on the recommendation of someone from HN. Sarno's thesis is that many chronic pain conditions (those withou…
I think this applies to all the diseases that are diagnosed as a bucket of symptoms. For example headaches...someday when we understand the mechanisms behind migraines, cluster headaches, tension headaches, etc... we'll probably find that we drew the buckets in the wrong spot.
> Yet some patients and their advocates say this amounts to a suggestion that the syndrome might be a mental illness or psychosomatic, a notion that enrages them. They would prefer that research efforts focus on identifying a biological cause or diagnosis. The underlying stance (i.e. "psychosomatic and mental illness are no real illnesses") is so utterly moronic I am surprised they even found the tweet button.
This is what people are told by medical professionals who are refusing to help them.
This is sad. Unfortunately we have some people who put their beliefs and politics above science and will actively act against investigation only because a line of inquiry could result in evidence against their view. It comes from both the left and right depending on the topic. It’s not simply dissent it also is about pressuring institutions to not fund certain areas of investigation which is a very detrimental conseq…
Unfortunately we have some people who put their beliefs and politics above science and will actively act against investigation only because a line of inquiry could result in evidence against their view. You say that's people putting beliefs and politics above science, but while that's a rational thing to suggest there are two problems with it. Firstly, a lot of issues don't and can't have any scientific rationale beh…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the pain is real, it's just caused by processes in your brain, I don't find this particular statement very revolutionary. We have known for a long time that physical pain is manufactured by the brain as an evolutionary tactic to help us prevent further harm to ourselves. If we didn't "feel pain" when we were on fire, we would burn to death.
I completely agree with you, but our society has such a stigma around mental illness that if you tell someone their back pain is caused by repressed emotions, you get what happens in the article.
I think that ME/CFS will go the same way as MS. Once upon a time, not long ago, MS sufferers were deemed "hysteric", "crazy" etc, until there was technology that could show physical evidence of the damage caused by MS.