GiantAxon

GiantAxon t1_jefv8x8 wrote

That's nice but I'm looking for evidence that it's a "powerful" system. Wakefulness is mostly regulated by acetylcholine. Mood is mostly regulated by serotonin, but also by norepinephrine and dopamine. Cannabinoids do not regulate homeostasis, because homeostasis is the regulatory mechanism in the body, and relies on multiple systems that interact with eachother to maintain balance.

So far, I've heard from you that cannabinoids might be inplicated in some of these systems, to an extent that I would argue is much smaller than the other systems we are aware of.

I'll repeat my question. What's the evidence that it's "powerful"? Is there any comparison to other systems and neurotransmitters required to make that assertion or are we just saying "I've heard about it doing stuff therefore it's powerful"? I realize I might be asking questions a little bit above the level of a reddit forum. The point I'm trying to make here is that the original assertion was made without any basis whatsoever.

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GiantAxon t1_jefav3x wrote

Can you explain what you mean by "powerful"? Specifically, I'm curious to hear in what way the cannabinoid system is any more "powerful" than the serotonergic, adrenergic, dopaminergic system, or any other system you feel like comparing it to.

I wonder if "powerful" is referring to the broad variety of "effects" people claim the system modulates. In which case, I wonder if effect size is a better marker for "power" than number of effects claimed/discovered.

I'm growing tired of claims about marijuana being a wonder drug. I think people need to look at the historical context of other wonder drugs like stimulants, opioids, benzos and consider what lessons we might derive from our past experiences with those.

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GiantAxon t1_j9qh1c1 wrote

Why would he be banning fireworks? Any ideas? Do the Palestinians ever use them to launch at police or civilians as part of their Ramadan celebrations?

I looked up what you said about last year. This article seems to suggest 2022 was the worst since 2015 in terms of casualties, which doesn't quite fit what you said. Any ideas why?

>The number of casualties is the highest seen in such a short period of time since 2015. Unlike then, however, when the majority of the attacks were characterized as “lone wolf” knife attacks in Jerusalem and the West Bank, the latest attacks in Israel were boldly carried out in major cities in the heart of the country with the use of automatic weapons.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/fears-grow-renewed-violence-israel-ahead-ramadan/story?id=83757022

Also, I thought Israelis light fire works on independence day, not during Purim. Is it common to have fireworks displays for purim? Isn't that the holiday where they eat hamentachen?

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GiantAxon t1_j6lnda4 wrote

More empty buzzwords. In what prison can you store thousands of rockets under hospitals and schools and use them at a whim against civilians when your Iranian overlords tell you to?

Look at you acting like they lob one scud over. First of all, scuds are the wrong class of missile. You overshot on that one. But they fire thousands of them, so you massively undershot on the number. In fact, your mode of reasoning is a lot like those Palestinian rockets - absolute fucking trash that is as likely to hurt your people as it is to hurt the enemy. But we know that won't stop you or Hamas, right?

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GiantAxon t1_j6jd41z wrote

Did exiting Gaza and giving it over to the Palestinians in 2005, a full two years before the wall went up, help lower tensions?

The Israelis remember those two years. Constant explosions everywhere. On busses, in cafes, malls, and schools. They removed the settlers, withdrew the army, and gave the people of Gaza exactly what you're suggesting, but tensions increased, not the other way around.

The only way you believe tensions decrease is if you either don't remember 2005-2007, or if you somehow believe that an organization that doesn't recognize Israel and has a charter dedicated to freeing the land from the river to the sea is somehow going to change its MO because you feel like they should. Same goes for the Islamic jihad or the other small offshoots.

I doubt the people of Israel will ever fall for that again, much as we might want them to.

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GiantAxon t1_j6jbopl wrote

Because screaming genocide at everything detracts from the credibility of the person doing the screaming.

In the last 10 or so years the conflict has cost about 4000 Armenian lives and 3000 Azerbaijani lives. For comparison, Russia loses that many troops in a week in Ukraine, inflicting similar casualties on the Ukrainian side. Most of these, by the way, were troops.

It would be silly to call this genocide. If you did, is 9/11 genocide? Similar losses by numbers and all civilians, so why not, right?

You see this with the Israeli Palestinian issue. People talk about "slow motion" genocide because they can't defend the actual genocide accusation either.

For it to be genocide you have to demonstrate someone is trying to wipe out a group of people or a portion of it. What happened to the yazidis with Isis was genocide. What happened in the 20th century in Armenia was genocide. What happened between the tutus and the hutsis was genocide. If we throw in every conflict where 4000 soldiers die and call that a genocide too, we devalue the term - same as calling every teacher you dislike a nazi.

I suspect Armenia, of all countries, knows what a genocide is and how it happens. They're not looking to devalue something they're still fighting to have recognized.

Source: Armenian roots. Azerbaijan can fuck right off, in case anyone is wondering what team I play for.

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GiantAxon t1_j65g32y wrote

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GiantAxon t1_j659ywk wrote

Look, I see your point and I understand that not all these experiences are as depicted in movies. I am sorry to hear that you have first hand knowledge of these things.

Patients are as heterogeneous as anything else, and everyone experiences and perceives different things. But this is precisely why our definitions of things matter and why we need to, in your words, let the psychs figure it out.

The psychs (I'm sure at least some of them prefer to be called psychiatrists) have chosen not to include cptsd in the DSM for the time being. I think there might be good reasons for that, some of which we are discussing right now. The line between subjective experience and standardized diagnoses is hard to draw, but important nevertheless. It affects things like research protocols, and translates to how we understand and treat disorders. For example, how we define depression can translate into guidelines about pharmacology and therapy techniques. Before you say it, yes I know the DSM isn't the end all and be all of psychiatry.

For the time being, psychiatry as a field seems to recognize that there is a syndrome that results from prolonged repeated abuse, but some classify it under attachment disorders, some under trauma, and some prefer to stick to personality disorders due to the similarity in symptoms.

I don't know that it's helpful for us to argue about labels online because we aren't about to start flashing credentials and throwing papers at eachother. I take your point for what it's worth, and I hope you consider mine - I feel that we need careful definitions or else we risk blurring diagnostic boundaries to such an extent that everyone feels included when its time to self diagnose, but at the same time few people are helped by therapies because they are researched and delivered under highly heterogeneous research conditions.

When I ask myself if psychiatry has a bigger problem with diagnostic labels or with validated therapies it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation, but I lean towards poor therapies as a result of broad diagnostic categories for heterogeneous conditions.

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GiantAxon t1_j64tq63 wrote

You know, I'll have to disagree. I may be totally wrong on this, but it's very difficult for me to believe that a child would have trouble differentiating bullying from being trafficked.

Bullying may involve an element of fear and intimidation, certainly. It involves elements of rejection and isolation, for sure. It can even involve an element of threat. But you would have to be very young to not understand the difference between a situation when your peers are bullying you and when you get kidnapped, moved to another country, involuntarily confined, sold, moved again, and eventually raped repeatedly or sold into slavery.

To make the argument that both can be scary is one thing. But to make the argument that a child can't differentiate those experiences is to argue a degree of naivete that few children would have by the time they're old enough to experience actual bullying (at least school age).

If we are going to do that, I'll take it a step further and say that an invalidating environment at home can also be seen as similar to bullying, and we can just expend the definition to "adversity". While we are at it, we can look at the criteria for cptsd, compare them to borderline personality pathology, decide that they're effectively the same down to diffusion in sense of self, and pat ourselves on the back for renaming borderline personality disorder cptsd.

But that still leaves the Holocaust survivors and victims of repeated rape and slavery in a position where they share a diagnostic label with a child who was on the receiving end of bullying at school. As someone who was on the receiving end of severe bullying in their youth, I'll put my two pennies in by saying "that's excessive". We need to draw the line somewhere.

To answer your other question: >How would you put a scale between sex trafficking / plain sexual abuse and bullying?

I would probably start with the sexual abuse component. Bullying doesn't involve penetration or other forms of sexual abuse. If it does, I say we focus on the sexual abuse - which would then obviate the need to focus on the bullying. To me, "simple" bullying doesn't involve sexual abuse. If it does, it's bullying and also sexual abuse, in which case we can use our normal definitions of PTSD and move on without diluting diagnostic categories.

It's like saying: what if I'm being bullied and someone sticks a gun in my mouth. Well, then what you've experienced is severe intimidation with a weapon. Not bullying.

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GiantAxon t1_j64aekb wrote

Putting slavery, human trafficking, concentration camps and bullying on the same list makes no sense to me at all.

I really hope they come up with some sort of clinical severity cutoff because otherwise this reads like "adverse events are bad" when I'm sure it is meant to relate to a severe form of PTSD that results from serious adversity.

Even "regular" PTSD definitions likely would reject simple bullying as a cause because there is rarely a severe safety threat.

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