Innomen

Oppositional Defiant Disorder is a Crock

So I was watching Criminal Minds, pretty sweet show, and there was an off hand reference to Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and I noted it mentally as an error as I do with TV shows and media if I am aware of them, and as I am in the habit of checking up on the things I believe, I Wikied this ‘ODD’ expecting to find an elaboration on its false roots, when to my shock and amazement, I discovered that it’s real.

From the Wiki..,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppositional_defiant_disorder

Diagnostic Criteria

1. A pattern of negativistic, hostile, and defiant behavior lasting at least 6 months, during which four (or more) of the following are present:

Note: Consider a criterion met only if the behavior occurs more frequently than is typically observed in individuals of comparable age and developmental level.
1. often loses temper
2. often argues with adults
3. often actively defies or refuses to comply with adults’ requests or rules
4. often deliberately annoys people
5. often blames others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior
6. is often touchy or easily annoyed by others
7. is often angry and resentful
8. is often spiteful or vindictive

2. The disturbance in behavior causes clinically significant impairment in social, academic, or occupational functioning.

3. The behaviors do not occur exclusively during the course of a Psychotic or Mood disorder.

4. Criteria are not met for Conduct Disorder, and, if the individual is age 18 years or older, criteria are not met for Antisocial personality disorder.

So there is a mental illness, ironically called odd, that makes you defiant.

Let me just sum up how I feel about that real quick and then I’ll go into how I came to this conclusion.

This is absolutely odious. As in, worthy of hate and disgust. I have trouble articulating the seething rage I feel at the very idea of this “condition” existing.

Never has it been so clear that the psychological community is being turned to unethical purpose by those who wish above all else to remain in power.

First lets look at the definitions.

The first question one would have is “How is this a disease again?” I mean if opposing things, and defying things, makes one crazy… well then I’m pretty sure we all are.

Their solution?

Consider a criterion met only if the behavior occurs more frequently than is typically observed in individuals of comparable age and developmental level.

So, if they are defiant to a normal degree, then it isn’t ODD. Heh.

This is my first problem. The word normal means acceptable. Acceptable defiance is a contradiction in terms. If the behavior is accepted then it is not defiant. The whole point of defiance is doing the unacceptable.

They must be talking about false defiance, like the cliché goth kid image, hanging up Manson posters but still showing up to choir practice. Buying a pair of pants covered in safety pins from hot topic with your allowance, is not defiance, yet for the purposes of this diagnostic, it would be considered “normal” defiance. The type of behavior that is normally called a “phase.”

Since this type of thing strongly reminds of pseudoscience used to halt social evolution, I’m going to shape my analogy based on race. In honor of all those dimwit doctors who tried to tell us that blacks were measurably and objectively inferior.

I’m going to show how a typical black child growing up under civil oppression would have squarely qualified for this disorder.

Let’s begin.

I’m going to write in defense, and from the perspective of, this child. His name is Malcolm, for obvious reasons.

1. A pattern of negativistic, hostile, and defiant behavior lasting at least 6 months, during which four (or more) of the following are present:

Yes I have a negative attitude, I’m tired of being told by word and deed that I am somehow a lesser organism by virtue of my birth. Yes I’m hostile, hostility towards oppression is not only natural but a hallowed aspect of our national identity. The English didn’t leave politely. Yes I’m defiant, I feel it is my ethical duty to reject social constraints that are clearly oppressive. These behaviors and attitudes will persist so long as the situation calls for them.

Consider a criterion met only if the behavior occurs more frequently than is typically observed in individuals of comparable age and developmental level.

Well the other kids have meekly accepted their secondary roles having folded under various forms of oppressive mechanisms ranging from shaming and despair to physical assault. But for some reason, I was born a fighter, and the fear of punishment and pain will not dissuade me.

1. often loses temper

I’m a child, not a sociologist or a psychologist or an economist, or an historian. I don’t have the context or the raw data needed to understand why I’m being treated like an animal. The historical and racial dynamics escape me for the time being, and when faced with the absurd and exploitive bigotry around me I as a result of my inability to understand am often frustrated past the point of quiet endurance.

I routinely end up yelling at bus drivers and police and store clerks and managers and anyone else in a position to enforce these bogus social restrictions, and who profit from the same.

2. often argues with adults

Well of course I argue with them, they say absurd and insulting things. They then use their position in lieu of evidence or debate, telling me to be quiet and sit down or this is not the time or place, and when I explain that this is unacceptable as a rebuttal, I am sanctioned.

3. often actively defies or refuses to comply with adults’ requests or rules

The water fountain I am expected to use is neglected, and were it in perfect working order I would still refuse to use it on principal. Nor do I feel like walking all the way to the back of the bus when there are so many empty seats readily available near the front. I will not obey a rule that is pointlessly inefficient or unethical.

4. often deliberately annoys people

I won’t deny a certain amount of satisfaction in bringing some of the frustration I feel to those around me. I do not consider this any more pathological than a police officer taking pleasure in arresting a child abuser, and as a result preferring to work on cases where child abuse is at issue.

Seeking to annoy can be quite natural.

Sometimes annoying an enemy even provides a tactical advantage. By forcing them to show their true nature. An excellent example of this is sit-ins, work stoppages, and other forms of non violent protest.

5. often blames others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior

Considering that my ‘mistakes’ and ‘misbehaviors’ include actions explained above, and as I said before I will continue these behaviors so long as the situations that call for them persist, I cannot help but blame others for creating or bolstering those situations and conditions.

For example, if I consistently am placed in detention by the principal for breaking his water fountain segregation rules, am I truly to blame?

6. is often touchy or easily annoyed by others

Slurs and racist implications have a profound effect on me, and it is very easy to work a slur into a sentence. Since the society around me takes it as a given that I should be content with my lot, I often appear touchy or easily offended. Why don’t I just go sit at the back of the bus? Because I shouldn’t have to.

7. is often angry and resentful

I do resent being treated like a second class citizen for no good reason, I am angry about that treatment and I think rightfully so.

8. is often spiteful or vindictive

Sometimes examples must be made. Sometimes a single person can typify a given behavior or position. Sometimes the unethical behavior pushes a person past the limits of equitable response, but in the end how does one determine what is equitable?

2. The disturbance in behavior causes clinically significant impairment in social, academic, or occupational functioning.

My refusal to accept my socially imposed niche has gotten me suspended from school time and again and I expect it to interfere with employment or socializing being that all three demand acceptance of rules which I feel are unjust.

3. The behaviors do not occur exclusively during the course of a Psychotic or Mood disorder.

I don’t have fits, and while I may have good days and bad days, I’m upset about racism all day, because racism exists, all day.

4. Criteria are not met for Conduct Disorder, and, if the individual is age 18 years or older, criteria are not met for Antisocial personality disorder.

No, I have a conscience. I don’t throw kittens into rivers or the like. In fact if they would just treat me like an equal citizen I’m sure I would be quite successful and well liked.

End of analogy.

You see my point?

This Bullshit “condition” can be used to drug or incarcerate budding civil rights leaders, and that’s its primary purpose. To weed out the free thinkers, ASAP.

Going against society is not a mental condition when society is wrong. And society never admits to being wrong until after it has been corrected.

I grow VERY weary of the ageist assumption that children are ALWAYS wrong. Or that they must wait until later to speak up, or demand rights.

Respect does not mean obedience.

Adults often ask unethical or outright stupid things of children.

This analogy can be extended to virtually any instance of a child responding quite naturally to an absurd setting. Imagine an atheist child in a religious home and private school, or vice versa. Debate and rebellion are required for a society to avoid death by stagnation.

Imagine how you would react if you were told that you needed to keep silent and do as you are told until you are ten years older. Imagine if the only reasoning given for this boiled down to or was explicitly, “because I’m ten years older.”

Imagine how the world would look if every 30 year old was required to obey every 50 year old on pain of medication and incarceration.

Society as a whole and our country in particular has evolved by leaps and bounds because of the rebelliousness of our children. Rebellion is the very soul of our country and to put a ceiling on it and to try and drug it or “cure” it is simply reprehensible.

Treating our children like property, pets, employees, and now psychotics, shames us all.

In short, maybe it’s not a disease, maybe the kid just has a point.

Reputable ethical psychologists would do well to voice their opinion on this subject, as should sociologists.

“The first principal of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating.”

Cesar Chavez

No Worries

“Thou living ray of intellectual fire.”

~William Falconer

Humanity is self serving. That’s not a cynical statement if you explore what that self is. Think of it like a samurai, or a handgun. Service depends on the leadership, the intent.

We all agree that survival and pleasure are good. There are a whole host of things we all agree on, stemming from that simple foundation. Further there are many actions one can take that are in service to the self directly and others (self indirectly.)

But the key is as I said, understanding that self. I don’t mean understanding as in neurology, or psychology, or even sociology. I mean philosophically, fundamentally, what the self does, what its goals are, and what it knows, thinks, feels, within its own context. We have to have a goal before we can implement it. “I just want to be happy” isn’t good enough. We have to know what happy is, where it comes from, and we need to decide if survival and happiness are enough.

Our goals as they stem from our consciousness (meme), and our nature (genes), are in fundamental conflict.

The complete self is the result of the interaction between the two. Well duh you say, everyone is a body and a mind, yes, but no one carries that forward. We have glimpses of unity, and hints, like in religion and martial arts. (body and spirit)

But I’m not talking about self help smoke and mirrors. I’m talking about solid reality.

From a historical standpoint the gene (our strain) was given a hard choice. Build a mechanism to house intelligence and loose it upon our enemies (starvation, predators, environment, etc.), or face extinction. This was a deal with the devil from its perspective because intelligence is in fundamental opposition to the gene. That is, we see everything about life in terms of what it can do for us, or to us, the individual. The gene’s goals are precisely the opposite. They don’t care about the individual at all. The gene is only selfish as a means to an end, and it is by definition unintelligent, self interest is intrinsic to intelligence. The gene often acts in self interest but this is a coincidence; through selection our set of genes has learned to mimic selfishness by process of elimination and thus intelligence. Actual memetic intelligence was dangerous, because that goal became truly about the individual, rather than a smoke screen for species survival.

Intelligence for its own sake is absurdly capable. Just look around. The gene by contrast wants merely to breed and eat, rinse lather repeat, and anyone with an ounce of math skill can tell you where that’s going. For the gene, happiness is survival, or rather happiness is meaningless. The gene has a brutal purity of purpose which the meme can sometimes lack because as of this moment the meme is a parasite or a symbiont with the gene, they can not be usefully separated, yet. The gene can obviously exist without the meme, but the meme currently can only be housed in structures based on the gene. Our primary advantage is that it is unable to detect and plan for our eventual mastery of it, or escape. Indeed, it cannot care.

The gene’s plan requires discipline from without else it leads only one place. The grave. We are not a staff infection, yet we act like one to a frightening and embarrassing degree. Why? Because it was like having to allow demon possession to cure a nasty case of cancer.

The whole of the human condition can be seen as a war, or dance, with these opposing elements. All our weaknesses, all of them, can be understood in this way, and what can be understood can usually be manipulated.

In order to win, we have to create harmony, and there are a number of possible ways to do this. But they all boil down to the following items or equivalents there of. You will be able to see these factions at war.

1. The gene wins and intelligence is selected out of existence.

2. The meme wins and preserves the gene resulting in extinction.

3. The meme wins and the gene is selected out of existence.

The gene will not preserve the meme unless forced to by the environment. It has no ethics.

The first option results in a planet bound society that grows dimmer and dimmer until humanity is once again well and truly a member of the animal kingdom, at which point we’ll probably be consumed by the insects or the fungi or the microbes, having eventually choked to death as a result of our own environmental manipulations intentional and otherwise.

The second option leads to total war. Plagues have no concept of restraint, ants don’t negotiate, and fanatics do not compromise.

But the third leads to what can loosely be called every human word for happy ending. Take your pick because the reality of it is everything anyone has ever wanted for all time limited only by the laws of physics.

You have to know what to fight. The tyranny of the gene over our mind is the enemy and it is not an enemy we can chant or pray or meditate or medicate away. We have to physically edit it, we have to make it a function of the meme by converting it cleanly and completely into a willful intentioned construct. It does not care, it does not think, therefore we must think and care for it. We must halt erosion, and replace it with sculpture.

Dentists and Tooth Care: Conflict of Interest?

Here we have a group of people handsomely paid to address tooth damage, telling us how to prevent tooth damage.

Problem? I think so judging from the butter churn approach the whole industry takes.

I can think of a few ways we could approach the problem and annihilate tooth pain almost entirely.

I grow weary of dentistry apparently refusing to think and act outside the box. Seriously, dental ‘advances’ to me are anachronistic at best. It’s like seeing a “high tech” wash board.

Here are just a few alternatives off the top of my head.

Now I realize I’m not an expert, and some of these may be invalid at the moment, but to dismiss them out of hand is premature given the potential.

1. A gene therapy or drug that tells the body to shed our teeth and grow a new set.

2. A drug which causes the teeth to fall out, so they can then be replaced.

3. A substance that can be applied at home to fill cavities.

4. A substance that actually rebuilds enamel.

5. Custom tooth replacement. MRI/CAT, CAD, Carve, Swap. (water cutter/prototyper machine to carve the tooth out of titanium, and then color it white, with laser surface manipulation)

6. A locally acting neurotoxin that can kill a given tooth’s nerve without destroying its blood supply. And please don’t tell me what I should or should not want, that’s a separate issue.

7. At home sealants or permanent sealants.

8. Custom plaque feeding symbiotic bacteria.

9. A super toothbrush.

10. A hundred other things I haven’t even thought of.

It’s 2009, and we have custom goats that make spider silk, and the best our dentists can do is needles and drills? We can swap out a person’s face/heart/liver, and defeating cavities is beyond us?

Why has nothing like this been attempted? If it has why did it fail? Money?

Could it be because if they approached the question with the goal of actually answering it once and for all one time preventative measures would destroy a multi billion dollar industry?

My tooth hurts as we speak, and I cannot afford to pay my local sadistic/extortionist.

The fact that teeth even have nerves is just about the most asinine thing about the human body in my opinion, other than the fact that we don’t grow new parts when old ones are removed.

Come on, we make tools capable of literally shredding steel, we can do better.

Edit: The first sense of this post was placed in a forum for student dentists, the reaction was shocking. Here is a link,

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=4863519

It also led to a debate challenge, where in two member of the board followed me to harass me further, one of them actually is an adult established employed doctor of dental surgery.

http://www.debate.org/debate/8262/

The debate he has as of this writing failed to accept or decline, is located here.

http://www.debate.org/debate/8288/

He has stated he will not participate.

Dear Dad

Thanks for…

Special eggs.

Giving me the good pieces.

Letting me ruin your tools.

Playing Vivaldi.

My first sword.

Showing me the value of honesty.

Making me a nerd before it was fashionable.

Sledding.

Proving by example that kindness is not weakness.

The Sergent family deformity.

Driving me everywhere.

Showing me how to work smart, not hard.

Saving mom from Denny.

Showing me how to shoot.

Connecting me to the world.

Having insulated pliers.

Teaching me loyalty by example.

Showing me that jokes don’t have to be funny to be fun.

Making learning fun.

The PVC robot arm.

Replacing Soundwave.

Showing me what willpower is.

Making toddlers crack up.

Peanut butter sandwiches.

Elderberry jelly.

Showing me how to start a conversation with anyone.

Never judging me.

Putting absolutely everything together.

Breaking the cycle.

The y chromosome that made me so tall.

Showing me how to fix anything.

Letting me “help.”

“Silly.”

Showing me that being a man does not mean being mean.

C.I.M.S.

Remembering what it was to be a boy.

Making me a Borg for Halloween that time.

Letting me buy both when I couldn’t decide which I wanted.

Diablo.

Showing me what real strength means.

Dear Mom

Thanks for….

Bringing me cans of mountain dew when I was being a computer geek for days on end.

Keeping me alive by figuring out how to make broccoli awesome.

Not killing dad even when he really got on your nerves.

For putting up with me after it became clear I was going to very nearly be a clone of my dad.

Trying to play GI Joe.

Showing me that nothing is above being made fun of, not even GI Joes with dumb hair.

Showing me that its ok to get seriously pissed and throw crackers.

Putting up with my complete and utter distrust for the entire concept of medicine when I’m sick.

Having my back against the school system.

Teaching me compassion.

Showing me that my emotions matter.

Putting up with my ranting despite the fact that I’ve attacked virtually everything you believe.

Unblinding my bear.

Buying me a house.

Never suffering fools.

Making hunger a mystery for nearly a decade.

King for a day, day.

Monster spray.

Letting me get you a robot for mother’s day.

Showing me that forgetting is not the same as not caring.

Letting me stay in the pool till my hair turned weird colors.

Packman bologna.

Making those “Best mom in the world.” statues mean something.

Letting me stay up late enough to watch star trek for years on end.

Every time you answered to “MOOOOMMMM!”

Waking me up so I can sleep some more.

Letting me open another one early.

Cleaning my room when you wanted it clean instead of making me do it.

Making my casts tolerable.

Letting me ruin your camera.

Getting my knives back from the fascists.

Being the medic for every random friend I ever had.

Putting up with the string of weirdos I exposed you to.

Letting Papaw show me the guns.

The Christmas coupon countdown calendar.

Making it ok to stand up to morons.

Hiding presents for me at random all over the house.

Teaching me optimism.

Providing proof that a mind can be open and strong simultaneously.

Giving me my very best trait, my ethics.

Showing me that I was not a possession or a pet to be trained.

Introducing me to the three best men on the face of the earth, your dad your brother and your husband.

Sorely testing my position that unconditional love is a myth.

One answer to the Fermi Paradox

Imagine the singularity, and how fast it is happening. Now think of the Amish. What would happen to the Amish if transhumanity exploded around them?

Would transhumanity hurt them? Force transhumanity on them? No. We’d take care of them, allow them to live their lives as they choose, and accept strays, maybe even protect them from asteroids and gamma pulses and the like. Ultimately we would do the right thing.

What if this already happened? What if the stories of Atlantis and the old gods and the pyramids were true to some extent, a prehistoric technological society that reached singularity and abandoned the planet, but saw many dense pockets of humanity obsessed with staying as they were.

Maybe we’re living in a nature preserve, fenced and protected and thats why SETI sees nothing, and why it looks so very much like we’re alone. Maybe we’re not. Maybe the grays are zoo visitors. Maybe the angels we claim to see are game wardens, and maybe the light at the end of the tunnel is just the exhibit’s exit.

I say we try to find the glass so that we may tap on it.

Sure Occam’s razor cuts this to shreds, but the answer can’t always be simple, can it? Seems arrogant to think so, given just HOW simple our idea of simple is.

Just a thought.