FB user: In some societies, time is not linear as in the West, but cyclical.
Me: Yes, Stephen Jay Gould wrote a book about geological time called "Time's Cycle, Time's Arrow". I think this also applies to the human perception of time. The monotheistic cultures see an arrow, i.e. somewhere to get to in the future, while the animistic / pantheistic see a cycle. i.e. something to preserve for the sake of the future. For example, some cultures only have words for the day before yesterday, yesterday, today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. This is all down to evolutionary social conditioning, one side conserving and one side progressing.
FB user: [Pitches picture below]
Me: So it's... you should be your own authority if you want to be authentic, like whether or not a diamond is authentic = is it really a diamond?, and transitively "are you really you (individually)?"
On the other hand, you could say that the diamond is authentic due to the forces that shaped it, just like the physical and social laws restrict our actions. So "authentic" could also mean it reacted "as it should" to physical and social laws. In a similar manner, transitively it is "are you really you (collectively)?" So authentic is you are your own authority when reacting to other authoritative forces.
Hemispherical. Randolph Nesse. I should read that book. I paid for it...
First, the rest of medicine recognizes symptoms, such as pain and cough, as protective defenses and carefully distinguishes them from the disorders that arouse them. In psychiatry, by contrast, extremes of emotions, such as anxiety and low mood, are categorized as disorders, irrespective of any situation that might be arousing them. This error is so basic and pervasive that it deserves a name: Viewing Symptoms As Diseases (VSAD). Reforming psychiatric diagnosis will require recognizing negative emotions as responses that can be useful in certain situations—at least for our genes. Second, the rest of medicine recognizes many syndromes, such as congestive heart failure, which are defined not by specific causes but by failures of functional systems. Physicians know that heart failure can have a dozen different causes. If schizophrenia and autism result from similar system failures, searching for the specific cause is senseless. Finally, the rest of medicine does not hesitate to diagnose some conditions, such as tinnitus and essential tremor, which have no identifiable specific cause or tissue pathology. Most result from dysregulated control systems. The same may be true for eating disorders and mood disorders. The core problem for psychiatric diagnosis is the lack of a perspective on normal useful functions that physiology provides for the rest of medicine. Internal medicine doctors know the functions of the kidneys. They don’t confuse protective defenses such as cough and pain with diseases such as pneumonia and cancer. Psychiatrists lack a similar framework for the utility of stress, sleep, anxiety, and mood, so psychiatric psychiatric diagnostic categories remain confusing and crude. Carefully distinguishing symptoms from both syndromes and diseases is crucial for making psychiatric diagnosis like diagnosis in the rest of medicine. Like fever and pain, anxiety and low mood are useful normal responses to some situations. It is time to give up the fantasy that each mental disorder has a specific cause. Instead, many mental disorders are, as in the rest of medicine, extremes of symptoms. Others are system failures that can have many different causes. This does not mean we should give up looking for specific brain abnormalities; they will be found, eventually, for some disorders, and the sooner the better. But the search will be sped by adopting a genuinely medical model. (Nesse)
"Diseases themselves do not have evolutionary explanations. They are not adaptations shaped by natural selection. Genes or traits associated with some diseases provide advantages and disadvantages that influence natural selection. However, proposals about the utility of diseases themselves, such as schizophrenia, addiction, autism, and bipolar disorders, are wrong before they start. The correct question is 'Why did natural selection shape traits that make us vulnerable to disease?'"
-- Randolph Nesse
But more generally, the authority is the "author" right?
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