Game Theory, self interest, and praxeology

[MMMark]

Tues. 12/06/19 17:20 EDT
.post #174
[url=http://www.suppressiveperson.org/sp/archives/1371]

@Steve Wiseman

[/url]In Szasz’s world, hypertension is not an illness.

[url=http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/thomas-szasz-speaks-part-1-of-2/3142206]

@Thomas Szasz

[/url]It’s used in metaphoric ways also - well life is complicated, but the fact is if you are an average person and you decide you should have a check up, you know you’re 55 and your family history is not so good and you decide to make an appointment with a good doctor. The chances are that you will be sent two or three weeks before the appointment to a laboratory where they will take four or five tubes of blood and all kinds of routine tests are done. Possibly you will be sent to a radiologist to have your chest X-ray taken. Only then will the doctor see you. Now what is he looking for? He’s looking for whether you have tuberculosis, or do you have AIDS, or syphilis, or hypertension, diabetes and so on. He is examining your body, your body fluids. But this is not what psychiatrists do.

Wiseman is clearly flat-out wrong here. As this easy-to-find quote makes manifest, Szasz most assuredly does consider hypertension to be illness. But I knew that before even looking up the quote. Why? Because, unlike Wiseman, I understand the difference between a literal disease and a metaphor.

[url=http://www.suppressiveperson.org/sp/archives/1371]

@Steve Wiseman

/url also has nothing to say about pain.

“Nothing to say”? Szasz wrote an entire book on pain, in 1957: Pain And Pleasure.
Wiseman didn’t have to read the book to know this; all he had to do was look at Szasz’s bibliography.
Did he even do that much? Evidently not.

[url=http://www.suppressiveperson.org/sp/archives/1371]

@Steve Wiseman

[/url]We haven’t talked about Dr. Thomas Szasz’s hypocrisy, however, and that, in my opinion, is probably the most egregious issue against him that is coming up as we look at this topic. … he’s merely stated in public that he is not a Scientologist, … So we would, getting back to Dr. Szasz, we would challenge Dr. Thomas Szasz right now to identify any meaningful way that the Introspection Rundown of Scientology differs morally from traditional coercive psychiatric practice. We would ask him why he has given his support, legitimacy and sustenance to this organization for over forty years when this policy has been on the book, this IR policy has been on the books and has been very publicly practiced by Scientology for many, many years.

Wiseman is really reaching here. He wants us to think Szasz, who Wiseman admits “is not a Scientologist,” has nevertheless “… given his support, legitimacy and sustenance to this organization for over forty years.” Maybe Wiseman knows something about Szasz the rest of us don’t? What “support, legitimacy and sustenance” is Wiseman talking about? He doesn’t say.

Wiseman also “… challenge(s) Dr. Thomas Szasz right now to identify any meaningful way that the Introspection Rundown of Scientology differs morally from traditional coercive psychiatric practice.” I think the difference between something that’s voluntary (religion) and something that’s coercive and non-voluntary (psychiatry) is pretty “meaningful.”

[url=http://www.suppressiveperson.org/sp/archives/1371]

@Steve Wiseman

[/url]We finally call on Dr. Szasz, before his death, to renounce [sic] Scientology institutional practices, …

This is rich. Wiseman, the tax-funded advocate of psychiatric/state coercion and aggression against innocent persons, calls on Szasz to “renounce” some voluntary Scientological practice. But how can Szasz “renounce” a policy he’s never in the first place embraced? Szasz has already stated he’s not a Scientologist, so there is nothing to “renounce.” Does Wiseman mean denounce? I would call on Wiseman to renounce his love of psychiatric coercion.

I love how Wiseman throws in the gratuitous, superfluous “before his death.”
Does Wiseman think this “renunciation” could occur after Szasz dies?