[bccdee]

> Imagine someone does a quick survey to estimate that tasers aren't killing people we don't expect

Given that the quote you cited was, "Are the chatbots really driving people crazy, or just catching the attention of people who were crazy already," I'd say the equivalent would be something like, "Are tasers really killing people, or were tasered heart attack victims dying already?"

And yeah, I'd be mad about that framing! The fact that the people who die had a preexisting vulnerability does not mean they were "already dying" or that they were not "really killed."

[anon84873628]

Shoving full implicit context into the analogy, it would be more like "are tasers really killing otherwise physically healthy people, or are the recent notable deaths primarily from people with pre-existing risks?"

I can agree that Alexander might appear flippant or even callous about mental health at times (especially compared to modern liberal social media sensibilities), but I chalk that up to the well-earned desensitization of a professional working in the field for decades.

[bccdee]

There's flippancy that crosses social lines, and there's flippancy that blurs technical distinctions. The difference between someone whose mental disorders are under control vs someone experiencing psychosis is like an oncologist handwaving the difference between terminal cancer and cancer in remission. The difference is enormous, to the point that the whole purpose of the psychiatric field is to move people from the one category to the other. I don't think technical experice justifies glossing over that distinction.