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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32405 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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If they're not responsible for their own actions, we are obliged to accommodate them, but they should be treated as mentally ill.

Sure, but remember that suicidal ideation usually comes and goes, it can be possible that people who commit suicide "while the balance of their mind was disturbed" were fine the previous three days. The question is whether the treatment helps or not and the costs of the treatment compared to the benefits. Those things are independent of whether there are some people making abusive demands.

If you measure it and the suicide rate does increase when denied treatment, then whether some people are threatening it abusively doesn't really matter, because the ones that actually did kill themselves were not, they really were disturbed. Those that use the threat to coerce people either don't go through with it or if they do were again actually disturbed.

Which again still doesn't mean you MUST provide that treatment, we make trade offs all the time and that is ok. In the UK we limit funding to various NHS treatments knowing that will mean some people will likely die as a result. Insurance companies do the same. If it is too expensive either financially or socially we can still say no.

If you measure it and the suicide rate does increase when denied treatment, then whether some people are threatening it abusively doesn't really matter, because the ones that actually did kill themselves were not, they really were disturbed.

This reasoning implies that if you have some abusive people who can flawlessly hide among the legitimate ones, you have to treat them all as if they are legitimate.

I think that we have no choice to say "yes, it does matter". Saying that it doesn't matter how many abusive people hide among the legitimate ones creates very bad incentives, and it's a pattern that can be seen in other areas. Believing apparently suicidal people unconditionally is like believing #believewomen unconditionally.

Remember this is at a population level, if the population is indeed commiting suicide at a greater rate then that is happening regardless of what percentage of liars there are.

You don't have to believe any particular individuals claims, you are looking at the actuality. You are specifically NOT believing A suicidal persons claims because as you point out they can be lying, you believe the numbers of people who actually commit suicide.

You are cutting out the need to believe or disbelieve any individual. That's why its more useful.

Just like if you try to guage how fat your populace is you can't trust any individual to accurately report their calorie intake but you can still measure it by weight of patients and numbers of diseases associated with obesity and so on.

If they are all lying you will find that out, when despite everyone saying they eat healthily and exercise, half your population needs lap bands and keeps getting diabetes.

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