| > But that is exactly my point. All over this thread you have people suggesting that this is a completely solved issue, the science is settled, and the experts agree. Therefore, shut up and think as you’re told. Ah yes, I see what you mean, I am definitely not one to agree with that. For one to say that a science as vague and muddy as psychiatry can be so “solved” is quite an audacious statement, — much of it is indeed semantics, classification, and social perception changing over time and how much the psychiatrist likes the patient on a personal level will no doubt play a significant influence in how much he will recommend that the latter transition or not. > Whether or not the claims are true is irrelevant. The fact that we’re now in a position where voicing the tiniest bit of dissent over this issue is enough to relegate you to the “clueless bigot” bin, or maybe even qualify as “hate speech”, is where the real problem lies. Imagine if we did that back when lobotomy was settled science and had expert consensus. I have not seen any such responses in this particular train of discussion, however. Amazon would perhaps be so inclined, yes. > Nothing, no single human idea, is above criticism and pushback. I find that formally verified mathematical proofs are rather hard to disprove in practice. If a man claim he has found an error in one of them, I would dismiss it out of hand, unless it come with a show of a bug in the proof assistant or hardware. |
> I have not seen any such responses in this particular train of discussion, however.
Thankfully, neither have I, but it’s a particularly sensitive issue for me as just today I found out that one of these “hate speech” laws was passed in the country I currently reside in, Scotland. I find this, and other recent attempts at authoritarianism, deeply troubling.
> formal proofs
In a way I agree, but in another, even mathematics isn’t on as sound footing as one might first imagine. For instance, we know of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem (which says that NO system of mathematics can be both consistent and complete), and then there is the fact that none of us can agree on what mathematics even is, from a philosophical point of view.
Truly, I’m often astonished at both how much, and how little, we actually truly know as a species.