Re: Rejection (seen elsewhere) Now with link

Countess-Palatine Blackberry the Perplexed of Divine Intervention said:
On 11 Sep 2007 00:00:30 GMT, Richard Robinson <richardR@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Which is not to say it can't be harmful. Or that it is. I just don't see
how much of any of this takes me towards knowing. And the only answer
would be to chase the metastudies, go to the sources and read them for
myself. Does any of this increase our knowledge ? But it increases the
number of people who've "heard" there might be this and that wrong with
...
It's all down to statistics, I'm afraid but I think they're pretty sure
that cannabis hfr in adolescence may, in some cases, lead to mental
ilnesses, of which schizophrenia is one. As schizophrenia sometimes
runs in families, that means that a child may have predispositions to it
which cannabis use may activate and they may become ill where they might
have escaped, or the become ill earlier and worse than they might have.
done.

But this is exactly what I'm questioning. Smoking dope leads to mental
illness, schizophrenia is a mental illness, therefore smoking dope leads to
schizophrenia.

The common cold virus makes people less healthy, athlete's foot is a form of
ill-health, therefore the cold virus gives you Fungus.

See what I mean ? It's only true if "the common-cold" and "athlete's foot"
are different words for the same thing, if they can't be told apart from
each other. Otherwise it just doesn't follow. [1]

At which point, yes, it's down to statistics. Exactly what sort of problems
is there evidence for ? But, details, not big wide concepts that include all
kinds of things way beyond anything anyone claims to have seen happening; or
we end up with lots of people thinking there's evidence they should be
worrying, in cases where there isn't. Which could only be sorted out, in
individual cases, by chasing the reports of the evidence, looking at the
technical words for the symptoms they think it might be linked with, and
then trying to work out how well those words match with the techy terms of
whatever diagnosis has been given for that individual.

Er, no, I dasagree with myself. "Statistics" would be about how much you
trust the conclusions from the evidence, which is a separate question. It's
just Basic Pedantry, paying attention to the meanings of the words.



The complete change in his personality is not, I think, totally
explained by adolescence, and that change seems to have led to his
terrible depression and anxiety. I thought his anxiety was a lot
better, but when the police had occasion to visit me recently and he was
alone in the house, it threw him completely and took several days for
him to get over it. He used to be so happy-go-lucky and enjoyed life so
much, that it's very sad to see him in this state.

It must be horrible, yes, and I are very sorry that you all have to deal
with it, it's a shame.



[1] Logicians have spent hundreds of years picking this one apart, and given
it various Bad Names, which I can't find any snappy ones for just now (2
minutes with Wikipedia suggests that The Middle Term Is Undistributed. Er, I
think I'll back out of that one. "Syllogism" was the search term I started
with). Basic point is, it's well-known to be not a helpful way to think
because it just doesn't lead to conclusions that can be trusted.

--
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem

My email address is at http://www.qualmograph.org.uk/contact.html
.

Relevant Pages

  • nutritional deficiency and schizophrenia
    ... associated with an increased incidence of schizophrenia in adulthood, according to evidence generated during a famine between 1959 and 1961 in China. ... A link between severe maternal nutritional deficiency and schizophrenia was first reported in 1992, based on studies of the 1944-1945 "Dutch Hunger Winter," senior author Dr. Lin He and colleagues note in the August 3rd issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. ... He, from the Shanghai Institute of Biological Sciences, and associates evaluated data from the Wuhu region of Anhui province, which was affected by the 1959-1961 Chinese famine. ... "Using a much larger sample size with clear evidence of exposure, our findings are internally consistent and almost exactly replicate the Dutch findings," the authors note. ...
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  • Re: Smoking pot? It causes you to go schizo...
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