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Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

madinamerica.com

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Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#201

Post by coolj »

gdsimoes wrote: post #22
tokenadult wrote: post #6

I don't like this article's groundless speculation about Albert Einstein, who is used as an unwilling poster child for dozens of causes without support in Einstein's actual biography. I have carefully read Einstein's longest autobiographical writing, and cite it on my personal website, http://learninfreedom.org/Nobel_hates_school.html and while it is indisputable that Einstein blew off some of his school homework, it…

I read two Einstein's biographies and I have come to the conclusion that if he was born today he would probably be a college drop out. Some people say that geniuses always survives life hardships, but the fact that there are no new Einsteins (or Maxwells, Plancks...) seems to show this isn't true.

Look at how fast and wide the field of physics has grown in the past 70 years. The proliferation of new theories, discoveries, inventions, and solutions, across such vast practical and theoretical disciplines in physics, almost makes me think the "Einsteins" of our generation are not individuals, but groups of people working together. With the ability to share data quickly and effectively, we have become able to have multiple persons working on the same problems at the same time, which has allowed us to accomplish some unbelievable things. We've built particle detectors to observe elementary particles that are fundamental to the Standard Model. We've discovered carbon nanotubes and graphene. We've potentially discovered dark matter. We have our geniuses too, and some are famous (e.g., Hawking), but maybe they are not as famous as their predecessors because their contributions seem to blend with the overall march of science and our expectation of radical advance (jetpacks and all)?

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#202

Post by jcrites »

clicks wrote: post #71
rayiner wrote: post #56

So in a species that depends on pack/tribe behavior for survival, how is an inability to follow authority not a mental illness?

Okay, so let's go down that line a little bit more. In a species (alongside a whole host of other species) that depended on rape for survival, how is an inability to rape not a mental illness? [1] In a species that depended on rigidly defined gender roles of women child rearing and men being hunters, how is aberrant behavior not a mental illness? I think what's happening is you're falling prey to appeal to nature fal…

> Researchers Thornhill and Palmer say rape is an evolved reproductive strategy and not a crime of violence

Can't it be both, by modern standards?

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#203

Post by westicle »

thecoffman wrote: post #77
alan_cx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Many people want to keep firearms to keep the power of the government in check," Really? Are you sure its not just a case of guns being ingrained in American culture and make the owners feel all macho and strong, and that any old excuse is good enough to argue that they should be allowed to keep huge pointless arsenals of weaponry? I mean, from what I can tell, such people are generally on the right of politics, and…

It is sad that the sort of bigoted opinions you're espousing here are what us firearms enthusiasts have to endure. It has nothing to do with machismo, nothing to do with Obama, and nothing to do with birther garbage. The right to bear arms is a right of last resort. Its the right that protects all others and, as such, it is the _most_ essential right. As for naming incidents in the last 100 years where armed resistan…

Not sure I understand your point here...

Are you suggesting that on a national scale things would have turned out for the better if Japanese Americans started shooting anyone who tried to intern them? Or if Black Panthers started shooting cops in the street?

It seems to me both those scenarios end up in a bloodbath. One which both minority groups would have little chance of surviving. And when the massacre is over, the government will say "Look - we were right all along! They were violent terrorists and we had no choice.".

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#204

Post by cema »

ucee054 wrote: post #110
thecoffman wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is sad that the sort of bigoted opinions you're espousing here are what us firearms enthusiasts have to endure. It has nothing to do with machismo, nothing to do with Obama, and nothing to do with birther garbage. The right to bear arms is a right of last resort. Its the right that protects all others and, as such, it is the _most_ essential right. As for naming incidents in the last 100 years where armed resistan…

Note: That is essentially what the Boston Bombers were doing. If Robin Hood were alive in Nottingham today, I'm sure he'd be called a cop-killer.

Regarding Boston Bombers: I do not see how this is true. Explain?

Regarding Robin Hood: he was a cop-killer and a bandit, but when we read a fiction novel, this can be overlooked for a better literary presentation.

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#205

Post by cema »

purplelobster wrote: post #134
dxhdr wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"when in the last, say, 100 years has the US government posed a threat to American citizens" I'll name one -- Japanese internment camps during WWII. Forcibly imprisoned over a hundred thousand citizens against their will, depriving them of their liberty and property. But I suppose in your world view the government has final say over your life and property, so being able to deter or resist attacks like this is unneces…

So in your mind, it would be better then if a hundred thousand armed Japanese would have started fighting back on mainland US? How about, instead of permanently distrusting the government, try to make it more democratic. There shouldn't have to be rebellions in a democratic country, then you talk it out and try to convince everybody else. If you can't, then touch luck, you're in the minority. That doesn't mean you ha…

  How about, instead of permanently distrusting the government, 
  try to make it more democratic.
One does not preclude the other. Helps it, in fact.

Note: while I disagree with the parent, I gave it an upvote, because the parent was grayed out and I did not find anything in it that would be a good cause for a downvote.

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#206

Post by cema »

6cxs2hd6 wrote: post #76
chris_mahan wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. I see the main problem as this: Many people want to keep firearms to keep the power of the government in check, and the government wants to write the rules on who can keep arms. This causes a friction. Either the people give up the right to bear arms and trust the government fully, or the government should not be allowed to make rules on who can keep arms. Anything short of that will continue to cau…

Well the 2nd amendment was written in a time of muskets and militias. If the spirit/intent were fully what some people say, why don't we each have a 2nd amendment right to an attack helicopter, nukes, chems, bios, and UAVs? (Because assault rifles instead of muskets doesn't add much to the equation.) Since that would be clearly insane, reductio ad absurdum. Right?

I think the usual rebuttal by analogy is that the 1st amendment was written before the internet and most other electronic means of communication and therefore, analogically, should not be applicable there.

(A better rebuttal, from the substance, has already been offered in the rest of the thread.)

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#207

Post by jbooth »

chris_mahan wrote: post #157
jbooth wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there was in fact a war during the revolutionary war, but very few if any of the founding fathers were at Bunker Hill, and you'd be hard-pressed to prove the overwhelming majority of soldiers were doing it out of pathological anti-authority problems. They had plenty of non-pathological, reasonable complaints. Sometimes things happen within the normal human spectrum. You're conflating behavior with a category in…

Ah, but the British authorities would have definitely seen their action as that of mentally deranged people. Had there been modern psychology then, they might have found them violently anti-authoritarianistic. They might have claimed that these people, instead of harboring true grievances against the King and His Officers, had a mental disease which made them unfit to live among the civilized ones. They might have cl…

Take it a step further:

How do you get from

A) At least one person, somewhere in history, has been falsely accused of being crazy because he was inconvenient to authorities.

To:

B) Johnny over here is telling me that the illuminati are conspiring to destroy the world through mind-control agents in flouridated water and he needs to take violent action to protect our vital essences. He should have the right to buy a gun.

I think you're operating under the assumption that actual mental illness doesn't exist.

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#208

Post by ucee054 »

cema wrote: post #204
ucee054 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: That is essentially what the Boston Bombers were doing. If Robin Hood were alive in Nottingham today, I'm sure he'd be called a cop-killer.

Regarding Boston Bombers: I do not see how this is true. Explain? Regarding Robin Hood: he was a cop-killer and a bandit, but when we read a fiction novel, this can be overlooked for a better literary presentation.

When somebody says "The right to bear arms is ... the _most_ essential right.", he or she is repeating that claim from the US Founding Fathers.

If America were being ruled by some sort of King George and the Founding Fathers had their revolt today, the Founding Fathers would be called "terrorists", just like the Boston Bombers are.

Americans have had this stuff drummed into their heads as a result of nationalist propaganda for over 200 years, because history is written by the victors.

If history were different and King George had won, they'd instead have been hearing about how gun control was the foundation of their liberty and how it protected loyal subjects of the Crown from those nefarious pro-French traitors.

The same goes for Robin Hood: he isn't given a better presentation because we are reading fiction but because King John lost. And John was a tyrant, by the way, who was made to submit to Magna Carta by force.

According to media accounts of the Boston Bombers that I have seen, they claimed to be fighting America because of America's injustice to Islam.

Apart from its increased plausibility, how is this different from the claims of American gun-nut militias who are worried about being forced to give up their liberty and their Christianity because of plots by the United Nations, an organization led by the anti-Christ?

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#209

Post by csense »

Stratoscope wrote: post #108
csense wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "poem" is depressing. Off topic: It's never made sense to me why people call things that don't rhyme "poems." As far as I'm concerned, this is an essay, not a poem.

It's a type of poetry called "free verse". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_verse http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-free-verse-po... Here is the classic story of a Real Programmer, written in free verse: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html This story was originally written in prose, and it apparently got converted to free verse more or less by accident as it was bounced around mailing lis…

Free verse seems silly and pointless. So I wrote a trivial program to turn prose into free verse:

    import random

    def poem(text, p_break=0.5, seed=1234):
        rand = random.Random(seed)
        result = []
        for w in text.split():
            result.append(w)
            if rand.uniform(0.0, 1.0)
Here's the output:

    This is a
    poem written by a program.
    It is not
    really a poem because it does not rhyme,
    it is some
    weird thing called free
    verse, which is a poem that does not rhyme.

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#210

Post by eevilspock »

saraid216 wrote: post #104
gdsimoes wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read two Einstein's biographies and I have come to the conclusion that if he was born today he would probably be a college drop out. Some people say that geniuses always survives life hardships, but the fact that there are no new Einsteins (or Maxwells, Plancks...) seems to show this isn't true.

Yeah. I've never heard of Feynman or Hawking or anyone either.

I'm pretty sure both of them are anti-authoritarian.
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