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The Poison We Pick

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Re: The Poison We Pick

#61

Post by malnourish »

dkural wrote: post #53
tomp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on the other hand, US has been a democracy for by far the longest. Other European countries pale in comparision, with the possible exception of the UK.

If black people don't count, sure. I would argue that the US has not been a full democracy until Civil Rights. Jim Crow laws were in effect until 1965. Also, black people could not exercise their vote, were not allowed to attend university, eat in the same restaurants, or even sit on the same section of the bus. As far as black people were concerned, the US was not a democracy.

Don't forget, the US didn't allow women to vote nationwide until 1920.

Re: The Poison We Pick

#62

Post by gt_ »

meri_dian wrote: post #35

There is sadness in every corner of the world, but that only overlaps with opiate availability in certain places. In America, like every nation, there is sadness. However in America, unlike many other nations, we have widespread opiate availability. This combinations leads to opiate deaths on the scale we see. It's not complex. What is the answer? China knows the evils of opiate addiction, perhaps in the future, afte…

I think this conclusion is premature. Obviously it’s a hard question but I will share a few reasons why I hesitate here:

- The last 2 major drug-use epidemics in the US erupted in communities afflicted by major financial hardship and growing socioeconomic disparities. Both were victims of the poppy. I hesitate to discard the correlation.

-I have taken hydrocodone. Personally, I hate it. I can’t think or function, but yeah other than that nothing seems like it matters. For me, it feels deadening, like suicide, the other epidemic that happens to be afflicting the same communities as the opioid epidemic. There is no recorded rise in suicide availability. I hesitate to discard the correlation.

-Although much of the world has been outlawing opioid availability, opioids are available and prescribed throughout. We do not/cannot know how many people would be using opioids if they lacked availability to them but this drug has a nature worth considering, which I think the article gets at very well.

-Let’s say the pharmaceutical cowboys’ are privy to ‘supply and demand’. No we aren’t talking about a fluid market but let’s also say, hypothetically, that not every society in the world is feening to collapse itself for opioid highs. And let’s assume US pharmaceutical suppliers have ways of identifying and responding to demands with supply despite being a regulated industry. I personally find none of these to be even a stretch, and to conclude, I have no problem imagining how it would play out exactly like we have observed.

Re: The Poison We Pick

#63

Post by scottlegrand2 »

This is bad, really bad, but just wait til our roads are filled with self-driving trucks and the remaining factories with robots then the fentanyl party will really begin unfortunately.

It is fantastic that OpenAI is attempting to address the more dire threats of a rogue AI, but there's a big near term threat already staring us in the face and seemingly zero leadership here in the United States aware of the crisis that will arrive in the next decade or so. And what passes for leadership has absolutely no concrete plan to get us past it.

Re: The Poison We Pick

#64

Post by kerkeslager »

dkural wrote: post #46

The article keeps repeating how America is the "most highly evolved liberal democracy", most advanced / modern country etc. This is simply not true. Many European countries have free / low cost education, including higher education, free healthcare where it is rationed by need as opposed to $, maternal and paternal leave, paid vacations, some have free childcare, access to mental healthcare, decriminalization of drug…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpn0vh2Rj0Y&t=4m39s

Re: The Poison We Pick

#65

Post by gt_ »

gnode wrote: post #50
gt_ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it depends on what you believe is the culprit, but the easy scape goats are long debunked at this point. We will some day realize that the psychological situation of income inequality (or other socioeconomic equivalences) is the root of drug epidemics. The sooner that happens, the better, because neither incarceration or isolated treatment can address this. Everyone grows up with different experiences and I thi…

You argue that the drug epidemic is the result of income inequality, but then go on to say it's loss of hope that's the problem. Are you arguing that income inequality is the cause of this loss of hope, thus drug addiction?

I’m applying a model called a chain reaction whereby one event causes another, which proceeds to cause yet another, and so on.

Re: The Poison We Pick

#66

Post by cptskippy »

dmreedy wrote: post #23

I've been talking with my brother a lot about this recently, especially as a function of the overall decrease of 'meaning' in the world. I think it goes back even further, to the advent of postmodernism in the throes of World War I. They were the first lost generation, but I don't think they were the last. The death of modernism and the accompanying assault on the bastions of objective meaning (as discussed in the ar…

> It's harder and harder to know what moral right and wrong are.

Morality isn't about what is right or wrong. You need to get past that. There are plenty of situations where there is no right answer and an individual is forced to choose between two wrongs.

Morality is what an individual ascribes to be proper or improper and it is very fluid. An individual's morality is influenced by everything from the situation to the people around them. They may inherit their sense of morality of another person or group but morality is still a personal choice.

We tend to think that everyone shares the same morality and so it becomes confusing when we encounter situations where our moral beliefs are at odds with others and we're in the minority. It doesn't help that the moral code ascribed to by a community might be completely different from the one the next town over.

Re: The Poison We Pick

#67

Post by refurb »

dkural wrote: post #46

The article keeps repeating how America is the "most highly evolved liberal democracy", most advanced / modern country etc. This is simply not true. Many European countries have free / low cost education, including higher education, free healthcare where it is rationed by need as opposed to $, maternal and paternal leave, paid vacations, some have free childcare, access to mental healthcare, decriminalization of drug…

Their effective tax rate is lower too, since once you don't need to pay as much for education and healthcare, your take-home pay is higher.

Based on what I've seen this is certainly not true baring a few exceptions.

Re: The Poison We Pick

#68

Post by refurb »

dkural wrote: post #53
tomp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on the other hand, US has been a democracy for by far the longest. Other European countries pale in comparision, with the possible exception of the UK.

If black people don't count, sure. I would argue that the US has not been a full democracy until Civil Rights. Jim Crow laws were in effect until 1965. Also, black people could not exercise their vote, were not allowed to attend university, eat in the same restaurants, or even sit on the same section of the bus. As far as black people were concerned, the US was not a democracy.

I can play this game.

You don't have freedom of speech in Germany because there are hate language laws. Thus, it's not a democracy.

See how silly that is?

Re: The Poison We Pick

#69

Post by dnomad »

dmreedy wrote: post #23

I've been talking with my brother a lot about this recently, especially as a function of the overall decrease of 'meaning' in the world. I think it goes back even further, to the advent of postmodernism in the throes of World War I. They were the first lost generation, but I don't think they were the last. The death of modernism and the accompanying assault on the bastions of objective meaning (as discussed in the ar…

Only a very disingenuous reading of history would lead to the conclusion that our society is less "objective" than the past.

What has been lost is widespread confidence and faith in those institutions that previously served as the pillars of society -- the church, the king and the nobility. Now people are completely on their own for their worldview. What's become abundantly clear is that people are very, very bad at constructing useful or reliable models of the world. Left to their own devices the people will readily embrace all sorts of nonsense, the more extreme the better. Some will turn to drugs and some will turn to ranting about crisis actors and some will turn to video games.

None of this is a cause for concern. These people's lives are still orders of magnitude better than those enjoyed by people just a century ago. A life wasted playing video games for 12 hours a day still beats one wasted slaving away for 12 hours a day on the farm.

What is disconcerting is that the "poison" is seeping into the vital and core institutions and systems that contribute to our extraordinary quality of life. The author is concerned about the suicide rate (which impressively continues to break new records every year) but what should really be frightening is the extraordinary poor governance that Americans have enjoyed for the past 20 years. (Seriously, trillions of dollars flushed down the drain on completely pointless wars.) When the real engine of American prosperity sputters out we will have much more significant and difficult problems than a bunch of dumb, bored kids getting high on dope.

Re: The Poison We Pick

#70

Post by seren »

meri_dian wrote: post #41
pwaivers wrote: post #36

> "And so we wait to see what amount of death will be tolerable in America as the price of retaining prohibition. Is it 100,000 deaths a year? More? At what point does a medical emergency actually provoke a government response that takes mass death seriously? Imagine a terror attack that killed over 40,000 people. Imagine a new virus that threatened to kill 52,000 Americans this year. Wouldn’t any government make it…

It's actually a foolish quote. What can the government do in the face of tens of thousands of people essentially choosing to kill themselves? It could jail them, but our culture is moving towards one where doing that to drug users is frowned upon. So what option does it have? Putting the onus on the government to solve this problem goes against the very essence of this piece. If social fragmentation is truly the caus…

What do you think should be done and by who ? If anyone should do something to resolve the crisis ?

(This is not a trick question I am genuinely interested by your response)

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