[ExI] A Small Request

[Lee Corbin]

Stathis writes

> Lee... wrote:
>> Stathis writes
>>
>> > If you develop a brain tumour one of the effects of which is that you
>> > don't believe there is anything wrong with you, would you (i.e. the
>> > present, healthy you) want to be forced to have treatment?
>>
>> Ideally, only if I had signed up for such a circumstance arising.
>> [That is, if I had signed a contract stating that a certain company
>> could legally way-lay me and forcibly apply treatment under
>> specified circumstances of definite and attested-to infirmity
>> on my part]
> 
> Most people would not sign such a contract, because they don't think
> it will happen to them.

Really, then, that is THEIR problem.  Not mine, not even yours.
People make all sorts of dumb, or not-so-dumb decisions. Our
engineering mentality that wants to have the government take
care of every possible contingency will sooner or later focus
on every possible mistake anyone might make, that could be
"detrimental" to their own lives.  And usually, "detrimental"
will happen not by chance to relate to greater applications of
government force, and greater expansion of existing and new
bureaucracies.

> You see, if you sign such a contract you are effectively allowing that
> *right now* you might be delusional.

Is this the sort of thing people complain about as "logic-chopping"?  :-)
Well, here is a counter-chop:  If we replace the individual volition of 
me deciding what should happen to me, with a government inflicted
"one-size-fits-all" arrangement, then we are presuming that right now
the government *isn't* delusional.  But I think that it is!

> You certainly feel confident that you could prove that you are
> Lee Corbin, but there are patients in the psychiatric ward who
> are just as confident that they are Jesus Christ.

Well, then.  So we're all on the same footing, are we? Insanity lies
in the eye of the beholder?

Oh, I forgot.  The AUTHORITIES decide who is insane and who
is not.  They leave it in the hands of professionals who even 
unconsciously are without the slightest self-interest in expanding
the scope of their activities.

> It isn't a delusion if you know it's a delusion! And it won't help to
> specify that certain trusted family and friends must be consulted
> before the contractors drag you off for treatment if those family and
> friends have been corrupted or replaced by alien shape-shifters.

:-)   Of course, you really leave yourself open here to attack, but
being the gentleman I am, I will refrain.  Heh, heh, I do know what
you are driving at, namely, indeed, only professionals such as 
yourself are capable of determining actual aberrant behavior,
and that family or friends might simply be mistaken.

If they exist!  As we must account for all possibilities, naturally
we must suppose that no one knows a particular suspected
"deviant", and that these people have no familiies or friends
(does indeed happen, though rarely).

No offense, but I do think that you may be a bit blinded by the
trees when it comes to assessing the forest.  Working with 
delusional or mentally incompetant people day in and day out
could generate at least unconsciously a feeling that it's a much
more common phenomenon than it actually is, and other
disturbed semantic relations,.

Lee