[ExI] addiction p.s.

[Dan Ust]

My point remains though: there’s nothing special about disagreement in this area save its impact on policy and public attitudes. I mean there are disagreements over what a concept is, what a word is, what matter is, etc.

I agree there’s another problem with behavioral and mental health issues in that social appropriateness and ideology often impinge much more heavily than, say, on things like defining what a concept or what a planet is. But that goes for more concepts than just addiction — as you note.

Regards,

Dan
   Sample my Kindle books at:
http://author.to/DanUst

> On Jan 10, 2020, at 1:58 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> I am quite sure that government agencies, for one, have definitions of addiction they are forced to use. In medical areas one must have a diagnosis before you can assign a treatment.  That doesn't make any of them the only one, the best one, and so on.  You could probably accurately say this about any mental health diagnosis - they change over time.  Not only that, but the words used are changed, like from 'mental retardation' (which itself was a change from 'idiot, imbecile, moron') to 'developmental dysfunction' or something like that.   bill 
> 
>> On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 3:12 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>> I’m not sure that’s so. That there’s contention over an idea doesn’t mean one can’t offer up a working definition or even stipulate one. I hardly think there’s any field where this isn’t some disagreement about concepts, including basic ones. Further, I imagine the bigger problems here arise because “addiction” has policy implications and matters in public debates. And the term has entered common everyday use, which further complicates things. (The definition of esoteric subject matter can be contentious, but most times those debates stay within small circles of interested folks.)
>> 
>> Regards,
>> 
>> Dan
>>    Sample my Kindle books at:
>> http://author.to/DanUst
>> 
>>>> On Jan 10, 2020, at 12:31 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> There is no one definition of any kind of addiction.  If there were, there would be no fights over whether you can be addicted to sex, gambling, shopping, video games, and so on.
>>> 
>>> Certainly some of the those people, maybe all of them, need some form of therapy, but to call it addiction is another thing.
>>> 
>>> bill w
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