Comments on: More Links For December

By: antoine

antoine — Mon, 23 Jun 2014 00:57:36 +0000

There are no conclusions to be made, because you do not know the original.nationality of the african test subjects. How.many somalis, nigerians, sudanese etc. took.part in the survey?

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By: BPD | Skytalker

BPD | Skytalker — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 14:56:27 +0000

[…] “I remember once managing to impress someone with my creepy psychiatrist powers. I mentioned I was a psychiatrist, and he said he thought his ex-girlfriend might have had a psychiatric disorder. I interrupted “Let me guess – borderline personality?” and he was pretty freaked out that I got it right first try without knowing him or his ex. The “secret” is that everyone diagnoses their ex-girlfriend with borderline personality disorder because it fits a lot of stereotypical complaints about the way women behave in relationships [emphasis mine]. As such, this article is a good one to read and useful. My only qualm about it is that, while it accurately points out that laymen just reading through a list of DSM criteria for an illness and seeing which ones seem to fit the subject doesn’t always work that well, it then implies that real psychiatrists have a much better way of doing things. If that’s true, I haven’t learned it yet. And the first time I suspected one of my patients might have borderline personality disorder, I asked my attending what I should do and she said “Go through the DSM criteria, see if she fits, and if she does, diagnose her”. I think the appropriate semantic stopsign here is “clinical experience”, but goodness only knows how much that helps.” (source) […]

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By: Aaron Brown

Aaron Brown — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 16:23:12 +0000

I wouldn’t mind seeing your comments on this:

[FDA] issued a proposed rule on Dec. 16, 2013 that would require manufacturers to provide more substantial data to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of antibacterial soaps [with triclosan and similar ingredients].

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By: Douglas Knight

Douglas Knight — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 01:52:55 +0000

It is confusing GDP and increase. The number it gives, 4.8%, is the Texas GDP growth in 2012, which is indeed #2 behind North Dakota. Praising that number is less stupid than praising ND’s 12.8% growth, but you should not trust anything in that article. And since you do trust everything you read, you should not look at the article.

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By: Michael Dickens

Michael Dickens — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 00:41:12 +0000

Note: The Business Insider article claims that North Dakota has the highest GDP of any US state. California is #1. North Dakota is #49, and #20 per capita.

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By: Douglas Knight

Douglas Knight — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 18:01:17 +0000

Speaking of borderline, what do you think of what the Last Psychiatrist says about it, here and here? And what do you think about Alone in general?

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By: Nestor

Nestor — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 17:36:58 +0000

My dad’s class had a variant of that first anecdote, in that the hated teacher had a heart attack (Or apoplexy or stroke or what have you) in front of the class and all the kids stood there and watched him die. One eventually did break ranks and run for help, but it took a while.

The 1950s Irish educational system really knew how to bring out the best in people.

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By: Scott Alexander

Scott Alexander — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 00:34:09 +0000

The depression example is pretty clear-cut, but with BPD it’s like subtle hard-to-describe personality characteristics. I bet if you gave me five random people and said they all had a mental illness, I could pick up some subtle hard-to-describe personality similarity among them.

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By: Kaj Sotala

Kaj Sotala — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 21:44:40 +0000

BenSix’s link describes an event where people died in a sweat lodge… after they had first fasted for 36 hours and been two days without water. *Any* physical exertion would have been dangerous after that. As long as you know your limits and don’t have any serious conditions, saunas are pretty much completely safe.

(Indeed, as a Finn, my first reaction to Wesley’s question was, “uhh, what’s so weird about it”? 😀 70 C is actually considered relatively cool for a sauna…)

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By: Douglas Knight

Douglas Knight — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 21:16:33 +0000

Your third paragraph expressions skepticism that extensional learning occurs. But doesn’t your first paragraph say that it happened to you? Are the first and second paragraphs supposed to be in contrast?

Many forms of clinical experience seems very plausible to me. It’s just annoying that people don’t come out the end and admit that they aren’t really diagnosing by the book. My point was to suggest a mechanism by which they were diagnosing by the book and that laymen just don’t realize how extreme the conditions in the book are meant to be. But I think it’s more plausible that you are learning to do something real but completely different.

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