A Comment to “A Final Reason to NEVER Try to Change Someones Mind Again, Ever. And Make Peace Doing So" by Delia Mccabe.

Really, I am tired and sick, I put my References in at least two other Posts of mine.

Really, I am tired and sick, I put my References in at least two other Posts of mine. Linked at the bottom of this Post of mine.

A comment to this Post of Delia Mccabe at Delia Mccabe:

a-final-reason-to-never-try-to-change

I do not authorize psychological nor psychiatric formulations, interpretations nor diagnosis, etc. I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, this is not medical advice, nor advice of any kind.

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My comment:

You are wrong in several aspects:

1.- Scientific Research is Objective, Objective in its definition means without any bias.

2.- The Mind is not real, they can call it a construct, a model, but that does not clearly state that it is imaginary, the Mind is not real, it is as imaginary as the Seinfeld Character. Even if Seinfeld, Jerry Seinfeld is the Actor giving the character its name.

3.- Even the Justice Sonia Sotomayor has said, and therefore the US Supreme Court, no Facts can be said of Imaginary Characters, per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Rock_Entertainment%2C_Inc._v._Carol_Publishing_Group_Inc.

"The decision is noteworthy for classifying Seinfeld trivia not as unprotected facts, but as protectable expression." [Protectable for Copyright Purposes]

´When analyzing the quality of the copied material, the court rejected the defendant's position that Seinfeld trivia constituted facts and was therefore not covered by copyright protection. It reasoned that the "facts" portrayed in Seinfeld originated in the fictitious expression by the writers of the show. The court noted that the book did not quiz readers on such facts as the location of the Seinfeld set or the biographies of the actors, but on characters and events springing from the imagination of the show's authors. Normally, the court would have eliminated those elements that did not meet the quality requirements through the subtraction method in misappropriation analysis, but in finding nothing to subtract the court held that the plaintiffs had established a prima facie case." [The procedure described involves subtracting Facts from a text to then see if Copyright protected expressions were used against Copyright Laws by someone not being the Original Author. Facts are not considered as protected for Copyright purposes in US Law, sometimes even in the aggregate as in Phone Books]

I have argued independently and unaware of my Esteemed Sonia, whom I don´t know and with whom I have no other affiliation than esteem, love and appreciation:

Beliefs, Opinions and Facts are Different.

And confusing them leads to Harms.

4.- Believing the Mind out of nowhere without any other intervention can make things happen is in fact a form of Magical Thinking.

5.- Magical Thinking, per Wikipedia does not need Correlations.

6.- No logical correlations are possible studying the Mind, they have no Objective tools to do so, merely subjective and intersubjective ones.

7.- Psychology and Psychiatry are not Sciences, they are Humanities and have a really bad problem with Falsifiability. They are unfalsifiable and therefore are in Fact outside of Scientific Study. They lack Objectiveness too.

8.- Lack of Objectiveness, not Objectivity as a Philosophical Concept, and Unfalsifiability make those fields of expressive Research non-Scientific. Claiming they are Scientific makes them Pseudo-Science. They are not even Empirical ones.

9.- There is no need to know statistics nor which were used in any Psychological/Psychiatric Research to understand they are not talking about Science, they are not talking about Reality, but about Belief, not even Opinions. In fact, it is worse to go directly into statistical validity when in fact Psychology and Psychiatry lack Scientific and Scientific Epistemic Validity. It promotes the erroneous belief there are Scientific and Empiric ways to understand the Mind, when in fact there is no way to do such things.

10.- As far as I know, perhaps erroneously, there are no Universal Principles about being Human, being in the philosophical way of being, not in the legal, nor Scientific meaning of Homo Sapiens. Show me a list with those specific Universal Principles. I´ve never seen one and I´ve seen books narrating the difficulty of doing so.

11.- There are non Psychologizing ways of understanding and explaining stubbornness in one´s beliefs. One is Fundamentalism and Radicalization, another is at the bottom of this Post of mine, vide infra. No need to use Psycholingo when oral history has already shown that quite convincingly: their resemblance looks uncanny to me. And Fundamentalism and Radicalization share all characteristics with Cults, and Cultist Thinking.

12.- Using Psycholingo, Psychobabble to pretend to explain the World leads to ways of behaving and believing that are Alegal, Asocial, Amoral and Areligious. Therefore, Psycholingo, Psychobabble, in its effects is pernicious. And it leads to irrational ways of thinking and behaving outside Law, Social Norms, Morality and Religion.

13.- At a fundamental level, behavior might have evolved to be unpredictable and not understandable. Such Hypothesis is Unfalsifiable, that´s one reason why studying behavior can´t be strictly speaking part of Science: there is no reason why behavior should be understandable nor predictable. No one can´t prove such is not the case, hence it is Unfalsifiable!.

14.- Part of behavior´s irrationality, its inability to be understood and explained rationally, syllogistically, is the non-transitivity of Human Preference. Political preference was one of the first things showing non-transitivity in human preference and choice. It is a classical behavioral economics finding. Questioned, yes, but probably such non-transitivity is more general than Political Preference. And such non-transitivity scales as in trying to explain and predict Markets as in the Invisible Hand making Economics close to be Scientific but not achieving it.

15.- Truth as Facts are something beyond doubt. Feeling has nothing to do with Objective Truth.

16.- Using Psycholingo disables people. It removes the ability to understand, explain and predict Reality as it is, not as one believes it is. Soothing as it might feel, we live in a Rational and Secular Legal World, for the most of us. It might be acceptable to live or to try to live in another sort of World, or go back and forth, part in part out, but I don´t think it should be done areflectively, without thinking, irrationally. Otherwise it is not a Rational Choice. And as such, not considered as Human even if a Humane Choice.

17.- It is true not all explanations have predicting power, but those that do not are such, non predictive, because of the lack of information at the moment to make them predictive. Not because of some abstract quality lacking in those explanations, but because of lacking information, lacking data, to use as input to turn explanations into predictions. One terrific example of such phenomena is Markets: the Mythical Irrational Exuberance and the Invisible Hand, in the short term.

Others lack predictive power on account of Complexity, in part the difficulty in Choosing a Small Set of Parameters and overfitting, among other issues/problems with such predictive and explanatory Models.

And/or the presence of changing rules of behavior as time goes by, because they are Dynamical Systems whose rules change in a time dependent manner. The Quintessential example is Climate and the Weather.

Some are partial in their predicting and explanatory power, they are incomplete explanations. As Markets, Climate and Weather explanations sometimes are, specially a posteriori: they explain in part how things went down, for example, but not with enough detail how. The typical bring me a one handed Economist dictum of Harry Truman: on the one hand, on the other hand.

I think even Yogi Berra saw that, not minimizing him, but pointing out he was probably not a Scientist, and that is quite an accomplishment of him, actually if he said or saw that: Predictions are difficult to make, specially about the Past.

Maybe I am wrong, and Yogi said something else more consistent with Niels Bohr´s sayings about Predicting the Future :)

But according to some Physical real Models and Theories, ironically inconsistent somehow, not Psycho ones that are not really, really not true Theories at all, time can flow similarly enough back and forth, perhaps in there are partially my confusions about predicting the past and the future.

And some really accurate predictive Models, like those used by Renaissance Technologies to make outside the norm profits from predicting Financial/Stock Markets for Decades have some unexplainable correlations in them. And they are heavily Mathematical in form, unlike Psychobabble ones…

Markets in the long run probably also have changing rules, making difficult to predict future Markets in the long run: reliable indicators of Market movements, significant Market changes, typically loose their predictive value when made Public, hence the secrecy of Renaissance Technologies to say anything Publicly about how they do what they do so well, for Decades. The typical Economists predicted the last Nine out of Five Recessions, in the short run: lots of false positives when trying to predict all.

Some, like the Mind are just plain flatly demonstrably wrong: they are Nebitch, Moonshine, not even Wrong.

18.- Non-transitivity makes something irrational because ranking cannot be done without contradictions, cannot be done in a consistent manner, as Logic always demand. Logics without consistency, without contradictions is no Logic. Logic is used for Consistency!. Starting from True beyond doubt and arriving at True beyond doubt, and probably for nothing else. Some People find it fun, but hey, we are probably in the minority.

19.- It is true some Scientific Truths are acquired inductively, unfortunately they are used Deductively, Syllogistically, to create, to make Hypotheses. Scientific Hypotheses are Conclusions of Scientific Arguments, they are Conclusions of Scientific Syllogisms. They are not Beliefs nor Opinions, they are not Premises, strictly speaking, but Syllogistic Scientific Conclusions to be tested Empirically against reality for corroboration, for Empirical Corroboration.

20.- Just because most Scientists proceed unlike Science and its Methods Command, unlike Science and its Methods dictate they should do, does not mean anything goes. Just because Scientists are human, does not mean they get a pass on their Ascientific or AntiScientific Behavior.

21.- Just because a lot of People, and I mean a lot, even Encyclopedias claim so, believe Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology and Legal Doctrine, among others, are Sciences does not mean such Idea is a true one. It is not, it is right damn patently demonstrably a false one. And such was known since around a hundred years ago.

My gratitude to the Justice Sonia Sotomayor for independently stating what I already knew so many decades ago, but not elaborated until recently. She beat me to it, dang!, still, my Gratitude to at least Her. And in full disclosure: I am sure neither she nor me said it first, but she was the First to do so Commandingly, perhaps.

It corroborates independently at least in part my way of thinking and some of my claims. And with such Authority nonetheless. If I understood correctly, of course…

At least I was following at least the writings of: Jacques Marie Émile Lacan, Karl Raimund Popper, Imre Lakatos and Thomas Stephen Szasz.

22.- NeuroScience is not the explanatory level of Human Behavior except in its most simple expressions, like reflexes and sometimes perception, the real senses stuff, not the imaginary senses as veracity, awareness and the like. Using Neurophysiology to explain behavior is like using Quantum Mechanics to explain Enzyme Catalysis. Sometimes it can like in tunneling, but it is not the idoneous way to do so. And it leads to False Assurances and Beliefs because at such level cannot explain Behavior in most cases. And the most interesting ones at that.

Therefore appeals to NeuroSciences to pretend to explain Behavior in many cases, looks to me a Fallacy of Wrong Explanatory Level. As I think can be seen as obvious extending, going the mile, from Ilya Prigogine´s Nobel Award Winning Work in Chemistry and the presence of Sciences and Humanities with different Levels of Explanations: if there was only one to explain the whole Enchilada there would be one Science and one Humanity, such is not the case!.

23.- Drugs are not considered Physiological Agents, they are considered Pharmacological Agents. Their actions on the Human Body are expressed as Pharmacodynamical not Physiological. Therapeutical agents are considered such, not strictly speaking Physiological. Even Vitamins when used as treatment are considered Pharmacological Agents in such cases. They even have their own specific chapters in Pharmacology books because of that. And have their own chapters as Physiological/Nutritional agents in the corresponding books: Biochemistry, Physiology and Nutrition.

24.- As to then how to understand, explain and predict behavior?. Beats me, I graduated Summa Cum Lauda from Kindergarten. It worked for me. And for me it is not something I can verbalize nor write explicitly and clearly about other People´s behavior. Sometimes not even mine, and I had no problem living with myself, and for the most part among and with others. When I had problems with others and my own behavior I had for the most part the Law to understand what was correct, what was wrong, good and bad of my own behavior and of others. And for how I should behave when interacting with other People, Psychology and Psychiatry as I already argued is a hinderance and a disabling one to such Commanding Ways of behaving to other People: Legally, Socially, Morally and Religiously. It is a minus, not a plus, and a really big minus at that!, and therefore I think their guidelines should not be used by anyone, not even as mere Explainers…

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My starting point in simple language for what Science is, what Science does, and what Science actually in Fact Studies, Predicts and Explains. What it can and cannot do, in short.

My own reading list on anything mental, literally.

A different narrative of what I wrote here in non-bullet format, starting from a different narrative of someone else´s, but expressing many of the same objections to all things Mental, and complementing how Psychologizing needs to be addressed and why it is pernicious for many People different from what I put in my Post titled “Last”. A different and complementary summary of sorts.

Hey!, I did got to put the references to my own work!, but I still can see clearly enough that repeating and reformulating what was already known for around 100 years ago is exhausting and not really productive.

And I can also see People can´t change their thinking on anything Mental not because of some abstract Magical Thinking thing, as all Mental Things and Explainers are, but because a lot make a living promoting and using false ideas, erroneous and pernicious. And no amount of proof can change their behavior if they can´t do anything else to make a living: they are committed to Mental Ideologies because they can´t make a living expressing and believing differently.

Their inability to backtrack, change their thinking and expressions might be different from the Radicalized, Terrorists and Fundamentalist ones. And to me, there is no need to use Psychology, Psycholingo, Psychobabble, to understand and explain such rigid, stubborn, unchanging expressions and behavior. And I already also wrote about it…

Thanks.

Federico Soto del Alba.