Medications that change who we are

If paracetamol use in mid-to-late pregnancy has an adverse effect on child neurocognitive outcome, it appears to mainly relate to the pre-school period. It is important that these results be tested using other datasets or methodologies before assuming that they are causal.

translation: "we studied it and no, tylenol doesn't cause autism; calm your pants."

The problem for you is that you still fail to draw a distinction between 2 highly correlated phenomena: the chemical cascade & the perception of red. You even get close to admitting the distinction yourself. E.g.:

> People who have the chemical cascade experience red. People who don't, don't--even if red light is there (i.e. if they are colorblind). Do you have any reason for believing these are different phenomena?

So yes, many reasons - some of which have already been explained and inadequately responded to, but here's another example that should prove it to you: We can put someone under anesthesia, shine red light into their eyes & they will still have the chemical cascade, but will not experience or perceive red. How do you square this circle? I suspect you'll insist they must also experience it and simply not know, but I'll be interested in hearing your mental gymnastics.

> It's also in the brain, because the mind is just the brain.

> This isn't hypothetical. We can read (very) fuzzy images from people's brains using neural-imaging[2]. I'm not aware of any experiments that specifically has read a red triangle, but I don't see any reason to believe that this image is uniquely in the mind and not the brain.

I've looked at brains under the microscope... never once have I seen a red triangle, or green square, or blue circle, yet here they are in my mind. Again your confusing correlation for the thing itself.

Yes I'm sure we'll get to the point where if I imagine a red triangle, then we'll be able to "read" it from my brain, but this doesn't mean that the red triangle is in my brain, just that a certain activity of neurons in the brain is correlated with a red triangle... those neural imaging techniques are all largely about correlation, which is my point exactly.

> If it's qualitatively different, what are the qualitative differences?

The brain is made of traditional matter we're familiar with (e.g. atoms and their constituent parts, amongst others), but the mind is made up of things like sense-perceptions (e.g. the colour red or the smell of lemons, which are fundamentally irreducible - by which I mean you cannot say the perception of a red triangle is made up of traditional matter. Instead a red triangle is simply made up of red; in essence, if a red triangle is made up of atoms, those atoms would have the quality red, which is a property traditional matter does not possess, hence the mind being made up of qualitatively different matter than the brain.

I know it's probably hard for someone who refuses to believe consciousness exists to admit that consciousness does in fact exist as a separate distinct phenomenon, so I won't try too hard to convince you. I'm sure with time you'll make that distinction too.

Very small samples of and affected medicated population being used to push an agenda? Sure I realise the brain and body are deeply interconnected, but until we invest time and money in valid studies, how can we possibly know the outcomes of prescribing statins, paracetamol etc in terms of human behaviour.

For the vast majority of the population taking these drugs are generally safe (yes I know about drug allergies, which is a different thing), but I imagine there will be in a minuscule percentage of a population, long term, there may be side effects. I think this should be researched, but this sounds like a scare story.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield

Confirmation bias much?

> a lot of people are transphobic and are offended that trans people are allowed access to gender-affirming medical care.

Again, stats please, ideally by country so we might have a proper discussion.

> Besides, nobody's asking for statistics on how many people are satisfied with surgery to remove cancer, or other "obviously" good surgeries.

Sorry, but that does actually happen, they're called survival statistic, most, if not all health care systems record them. People who survive cancer are generally happy they're alive.

> gender-affirming surgeries

There's no such thing as "gender-affirming surgeries", they're called sex changes. Gender is a role unlike biological sex.