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ME: bitterest row yet in a long saga

Firestormm

Senior Member
Messages
5,055
Location
Cornwall England
If you are talking to me then no I wasn't referring to BG in my post. I also never said that people on BS do not critise him. I don't know if they do and I wouldn't care. A follower can criticise a leader while still staying well inside his/her comfort zone and without challenging shared beliefs... Criticising or not criticising BG has nothing to do with what I was saying ...

Is it then reasonable to presume (on my part) that open hostility towards proponents of 'psycho-social' therapies is keeping one in their 'comfort zone'?

You know it is damned hard trying to tread what is apparently a 'fine line' between me being seen as a 'Wessely Advocate' and someone who simply wants to better understand and to see any advocacy undertaken on my behalf based more firmly in factual evidence. Bloody fine line.

Feel like a tightrope walker. And a bad one! Such a crap sense of balance and no safety net. Ostracism can and does happen. Happened for my questioning of 'XMRV', the whole ME vs. CFS debacle, the Haggis-gate; and has happened over this latest round of Punch and Judy.

My fault of course. Should learn my place I suppose.
 

natasa778

Senior Member
Messages
1,774
Is it then reasonable to presume (on my part) that open hostility towards proponents of 'psycho-social' therapies is keeping one in their 'comfort zone'?

In general I don't think so. Might be true for some, not for others. Many will analyze the benefits of psychosocial therapies with open mind and readily accept (and openly state so) that they can be beneficial for individual sufferers of ANY disease, but will warn of mistaking benefits of therapy with accepting or excusing psychosocial APPROACH to their illness, which will be discarded (after long analysis and drawing from experience, wealth of literature etc etc) as not only useless but detrimental to their health and future. There will be a whole world of nuances of opinions in between, but some will completely fail to grasp any of those and will continue to misinterpret what others say, and bang on same old same old without actually ever coming out clean as to what bottom line of their arguments really is and what it is they are trying to sell.
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
Not ME related.

Firestormm

Creative/lateral thinking has been a huge topic in AI research for decades. However the software tends to be linguistically based. The brain does not think in words. Rather thought activates words (though its a two way street, words activate thought). The two are associated but not the same. That is why AI will be limited until we can use processes very similar to those in the brain. Of course I am biased in this, I was into neural modelling, but there are a lot of compelling arguments as to why this is probably the case.
 

natasa778

Senior Member
Messages
1,774
Not ME related.

Firestormm

Creative/lateral thinking has been a huge topic in AI research for decades. However the software tends to be linguistically based. The brain does not think in words. Rather thought activates words (though its a two way street, words activate thought). The two are associated but not the same. That is why AI will be limited until we can use processes very similar to those in the brain. Of course I am biased in this, I was into neural modelling, but there are a lot of compelling arguments as to why this is probably the case.

It was actually me asking. Thanks for reply. Interesting topic ... :)
 

natasa778

Senior Member
Messages
1,774
That site is a joke, IMHO. It would be more accurate to call it 'drugbasedmedicine.org'.

It does have a social purpose fwiw - it provides a platform to throw sticks at the week for sad lonely farts who populate it and gives them an illusion of having a braincell or two and there being some substance in their pathetic lives.
 
Messages
646
That site is a joke, IMHO. It would be more accurate to call it 'drugbasedmedicine.org'.
That'd be drugs like Ampligen and Ritixumab ? Still if you want some effective criticism of psychiatric confusionalism, 'that place' outdoes anything PR can manage. see: http://www.badscience.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=31929- .
It does have a social purpose fwiw - it provides a platform to throw sticks at the week for sad lonely farts who populate it and gives them an illusion of having a braincell or two and there being some substance in their pathetic lives.
Absolutely right, and some of us even like to throw sticks at the 'weak' as well, and suggest horrible things happening to puppies and shout 'faeries don't exist' just to hear a thousand Tinkerbells flickering into oblivion. Although I'm not sure about the sad and lonely part - seems like a rather a lot of happy successful, family orientated folks post there, so maybe it's just me and my M.E that make up the sad and lonely contingent with barely a brain cell left :lol:

IVI
 

Purple

Bundle of purpliness
Messages
489
That'd be drugs like Ampligen and Ritixumab ? Still if you want some effective criticism of psychiatric confusionalism, 'that place' outdoes anything PR can manage. see: http://www.badscience.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=31929- .

Absolutely right, and some of us even like to throw sticks at the 'weak' as well, and suggest horrible things happening to puppies and shout 'faeries don't exist' just to hear a thousand Tinkerbells flickering into oblivion. Although I'm not sure about the sad and lonely part - seems like a rather a lot of happy successful, family orientated folks post there, so maybe it's just me and my M.E that make up the sad and lonely contingent with barely a brain cell left :lol:

IVI

Ironic coming from someone who says "M.E" with one dot in every post which is grammatically nonsensical. I take it "Ritixumab" is an oversight rather than not knowing the correct name.
 

barbc56

Senior Member
Messages
3,657
Ironic coming from someone who says "M.E" with one dot in every post which is grammatically nonsensical. I take it "Ritixumab" is an oversight rather than not knowing the correct name.

So by this logic the fact that someone has spelled weak as week, makes them fair game for criticism?

Barb C.:>)
 

barbc56

Senior Member
Messages
3,657
My point was that the only things they consider 'science-based', seem to be drugs.

If you don't know already, Ben Goldacre just published a book slamming big pharma. Once again, I think an internet meme about the evils of the BS board that has now been repeated so often that it'is taken as truth. For a real scientific opinion, I would recommend going to the site and read with an open mind.

Barb C.
 
Messages
646
Ironic coming from someone who says "M.E" with one dot in every post which is grammatically nonsensical. I take it "Ritixumab" is an oversight rather than not knowing the correct name.
Oversight - more like just laziness ! The thing is, my mispelling of a product name, didn't produce a homonym that changed the intended meaning, nor was it in reply to a snide post that slagged off some other 'unnamed' people. You see that's where the humour comes in; being one of those people who was slagged off in a snide post, now every time I visit the BS site, I see myself in full Mr Angry mode hurling invective at an arbitrary division of time - sums up very well my existential impotence and makes me laugh. So I thought I'd share.

Interesting point about the M.E dot. Grammatically nonsensical ? How so ? Capitalisation is hardly sound grammar, it's a lazy convenience and traditionally when used did include a full stop after each capital to indicate that a real word was not being intended - of course in the case of acronyms arguably the full stop should be absent. Anyway none of that is really the 'point' (get it ? - hmm that could be infinitely recursive) - the point is you, and hopefully others see the M.E with a 'dot', as separate and primary too CFS - (note not C.F.S which would be punctuationally consistent but that's not my aim) when separated by a slash . We have no choice but to talk about CFS because that (no matter how much we may dislike it) is what many people are coming to this forum having been diagnosed with , and I don't see those people as separate from me (M.E get it ?) so the best construction I've arrived at is M.E/CFS.

IVI
 
Messages
1,446
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Further to my last post re Barb's "open mind" suggestion.
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As Terry Pratchett put it ......

"She had an open mind. A mind as open as the sky. A mind just waiting for something to fill it up"

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Firestormm

Senior Member
Messages
5,055
Location
Cornwall England
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Further to my last post re Barb's "open mind" suggestion.
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As Terry Pratchett put it ......

"She had an open mind. A mind as open as the sky. A mind just waiting for something to fill it up"

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Of course such a saying, applies equally to all. It's is what we might chose to fill our minds with that is of importance. Me I like to try and get some balance - some input from various angles - different 'sides'. Try and understand each contributors point of view - before I make up my own mind and form an opinion.

Difficulty is - with us being ill - and on forums - that we are often subjected to uninformed opinions presented as authoritative facts. There's also the simply practicality of 'I honestly can't be arsed to look further than the end of my nose - but hell I'll sign that petition anyway!' or join that group or follow the leader...
 
Messages
646
My point was that the only things they consider 'science-based', seem to be drugs.
Oh I think there's posters on BS who support CBT ! I don't understand what you expect from a forum that's aimed at taking the rise out of quacks. No forum is going to be to everyone's taste, there are those of us who are M.E/CFS patients and, who find sites like BS engaging and informative - the link I gave actually shows a serious deconstruction of psychiatric misinformation in action, something likely to effect actual change.

IVI
 
Messages
1,446
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I think you miss my point, Firestormm.

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My quotations (from Richard Dawkins and Terry Pratchett) about the problems of 'open mindedness' (in response to Barbc56's posts which encouraged 'open mindedness')
.......my posts and quotes were intended to convey a message of caution about falling for arguments based on exhortations to be 'open minded'.

Such exhortations so frequently have the effect of (and sometimes intentionally) dampening critical thinking about the issue at hand.

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Such arguments based on exhortations to be 'open minded' can also be highly manipulative... implying (and sometimes openly stating) that if you do not agree with the exhorters of 'open mindedness', then you must be 'closed minded'.


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Messages
1,446
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Of course such a saying, applies equally to all. It's is what we might chose to fill our minds with that is of importance. Me I like to try and get some balance - some input from various angles - different 'sides'. Try and understand each contributors point of view - before I make up my own mind and form an opinion.

Difficulty is - with us being ill - and on forums - that we are often subjected to uninformed opinions presented as authoritative facts. There's also the simply practicality of 'I honestly can't be arsed to look further than the end of my nose - but hell I'll sign that petition anyway!' or join that group or follow the leader...


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@ Firestormm - the problem I have on this forum at present is the knee jerk disparagement and dismissal (by certain forum members) of the high quality referenced evidence that I bother to post.... just one example was the knee-jerk dismissal of a number of highly respected Official Reports from the UK ME childrens Charity The Tymes Trust over many years. Those Reports (one in conjunction with a BBC Panorama investigation team, another as requested evidence for a court case, others presented to Inquiries and the UK APPG) addressed the high prevalence of wrongful Child Protection Investigations of families of children with ME, for example.
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Messages
1,446
Of course such a saying, applies equally to all. It's is what we might chose to fill our minds with that is of importance. Me I like to try and get some balance - some input from various angles - different 'sides'. Try and understand each contributors point of view - before I make up my own mind and form an opinion.

Difficulty is - with us being ill - and on forums - that we are often subjected to uninformed opinions presented as authoritative facts. There's also the simply practicality of 'I honestly can't be arsed to look further than the end of my nose - but hell I'll sign that petition anyway!' or join that group or follow the leader...




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How insulting!


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Which leaders do you follow, Firestormm???? ??

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