Death or Glory

I've been replaying the lyrics from an old 'The Clash' song in my head for some time now:

"Every gimmick hungry slob digging gold from rock and roll grabs a mic to tell us he'll die before hes sold
but I believe in this and its been tested by research
that he who fucks nuns will later join the church
----
Death or Glory becomes just another story..."

Its all just terribly pessimistic isn't it? Maybe pessimistic is the wrong word, maybe its realistic. One of our cultural images is the iconic rebel without a cause, the James Dean-esq character whose purpose is to run against the grain, be a true independent anti-conformist type. We smile and nod knowingly at this archetype because at one point or another everyone has thought them self a rebel; its almost a necessary part of growing up.

What concerns me, generally speaking, is that line "he who fucks nuns will later join the church". Is it true that rebels eulogize the very cause they hold dear with their act of rebellion? Sometimes probably. I suppose it depends on how rooted the rebellion is in either emotion or reason. People who are angry at god usually find their way back to the faith of their fathers eventually: the reason being that the root cause of their initial dissension was some form of unsatisfaction not with the truth of the belief, but with some other aspect that once satiated reopened the doors to faith.

Or how about people like disgraced evangelist Ted Haggerd? He centered a large part of his ministry upon preaching against the sin of homosexuality and the sanctity of hetero marriage. Yet for all his guster and pious anger he spent a bunch of his free time getting plugged in the butt by some beefcake prostitute named Mike. Death or Glory indeed.

Think of all the people who fought for progressive causes in the 60s only to take a turn for the right once they made a few bucks later in life. Or the reverse, people raised in conservative environments who turned towards hedonism once they had a taste of what they once lived without.

Maybe in the end we'll just have a bunch of causes with no rebels.

Too Expensive

Random thoughts ensue..

I don't know anything about healthcare other than it is damn expensive. The NCHC just quoted a recent study which says that on our current trajectory, by the year 2018 healthcare costs will account for nearly 4.4 trillion dollars, or about 30% of our GDP. They also said employer-paid healthcare for a family of four in 2018 will cost 25,000 a year. Geez, like I needed another reason to not want kids...

in 2007, 67% of all bankruptcies were due to medical expenses. 80% of those people who filed chapter 11 had healthcare. I suppose this makes sense because the uninsured don't pay for their hospital visits; which is just one more cause of increased premiums and costs.

Is a government program the answer to our problems? This study doesn't seem directly imply it; in three years Medicare and Medicaid will account for 50% of all healthcare costs.

Some of the reasons for these outrageous numbers are pretty clear: "inefficiencies, excessive administrative expenses, inflated prices, poor management and inappropriate care, waste and fraud". We also have a society which is increasingly obese and sick all the while being terribly afraid of death. We spend more on palliative care than any other nation. We also spend 1/3 of our healthcare money on things like unnecessary tests, bullshit idiocy like acupuncture and holistic 'cures', and other things that don't actually improve health. In this arena patients are to blame; their demands for shit that doesn't work is driving up our costs.

How can costs be lowered? The democrats currently control just about everything there is to control in government and they can't get any type of meaningful reform passed. Gutless morons... How could G. W. Bush pass just about anything he wanted while controlling nothing? Thanks Democrats for giving us Obama, a political eunuch.

Its hard to know what to think. Its obvious we have good doctors in this country, we have the top medical science and the best drugs, but we also have a public that wants more-more-more when it comes to healthcare. Maybe if we didn't view everything as a health problem we wouldn't spend so much.

I'm resisting the temptation to blame everything on insurance companies. The principal of Hanlon's Razor tells us that we shouldn't attribute to malice that which can be sufficiently explained by stupidity. Its not that Aetna and others are completely greedy; they surely are to some degree, but the people they are covering, the general public, is definitely stupid.

So, my conclusion is this: our health care is so expensive because we have a stupid populace which is serviced by a greedy insurance system.

Glorious Dawn

Brilliant.

post hoc ergo propter hoc

Lets talk critical thinking.



Assuming that correlation implies causation is a very prevalent error in thinking. The fallacy, in common use, is the assumption that a correlation (relationship) between two variables means that one caused the other.





I ate a sandwich which was made with 2 week old chicken salad and now I have a stomach ache.
:.Therefore 2 week old chicken salad causes stomachaches.

Wrong. Logically speaking that is. While the chicken salad might have caused the stomach ache, the pattern of thinking is not sound; the correlation does not 'prove' the causation, it merely implies or suggests it. The correlation in the example could be completely irrelevant. Maybe my stomach ache was simply transient, or caused by something else. Maybe it wasn't even a stomach ache at all, but a sign I had to take a dump. Maybe the old chicken salad soothed a stomach ache that was just flaring up! All we know is that this way of thinking brings us no closer to the actual truth of the matter.

The problem of this fallacy is further complicated when you realize there may even be errors in the correlated variables:

The rise in autism rates is due to the chemicals contained in vaccines.
:. Infant vaccinations are the cause of rising autism rates.

Not only is this popular argument a logical fallacy, but it contains factual errors in both premises:

"The rise in autism rates..." New data produced by the CDC has stated the autism prevalence rate at approx. 100 in 100,000 people or 1%. This is apparently higher than past studies which has led to the anti-vax crowd clamoring for an explanation. However, there are explanations for this apparent rise in rates. Our methods of detecting autism, not to mention a much higher awareness of the condition are most likely to blame. Scientific studies, not just phone interviews to not bear out a high statistical occurrence of the disease.

"Chemicals in vaccines cause autism" This claim has been thoroughly and categorically debunked by strict examinations by every reputable scientific agency. Despite the claims of mothers who 'know whats best for my baby!', there is no evidence to connect vaccine ingredients to autism rates.

There is currently no specific predictor of autism known at this time, a fact that does not sit well with some people, however this is the nature of medical science; all the answers are not yet known in a categorical sense. Hunting for correlations and then assuming causation is not a good way to understand reality, its a terrible way. Yet this is what we contend with in our society and thus it makes sense to point out when and where these people are wrong.