Michael McMahon
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Everything posted by Michael McMahon
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I've awoken from a dream in which I was floating along the shore and being swept be a stormy wave for me to land over a docking ferry. I saw an oval road system in the lower decks in which the traffic had to be balanced on either side. The surface of the road was tilted inwards around the bends. Perhaps my unconscious mind was elaborating on my Euler theory. What would the effect of uneven tidal heights have on the perceived gravity for passengers driving along the ramps and parking inside the ferry? The uneven depths of the Earth's land crusts are buoyant on the mantle much like the tides of the sea. How do we know this isn't contributing to the downward force of gravity felt on the top surface?
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Sometimes dieting and exercise fail to produce significant weight-loss in obese patients. This is often excused by variations in celular metabolism. Yet what if inadequate temperature resistance was a factor in obesity? For example gyms often have roasting saunas and cold showers as acute forms of exercise. Yet strolling in the rain is also a challenge to the body even if it's more gradual in nature. Wearing shorts is a subtle reminder that walking can still be athletic. Maybe mod-cons like air conditioning and central heating can be counterproductive for weight-loss. For example people who frequently walk can often build up resistance to mild temperature imbalances indoors. Leaving the bedroom window half-open on a moderately cold night for a gentle breeze is a hidden form of calorie burning. Children are often told to wrap up on a cold day or to change out of wet clothes in order to avoid viral threats. Yet people can get flus even in hats and scarves. There might be less flus during summer but there's not too much that can stop them during winter. As such avoiding the cold for pathogenic reasons can be overdone sometimes. Truth be told if we compared the tension of coldness to weightlifting then we'd view our focus on muscle tone and breathing rhythms more benevolently during cold days. I had shin splints as a running problem and yet I often found uneven body temperatures between a hot upper body, cold, numb arms and aching, overheating legs to be an incentive to initiate exercise. Yet even though I never ran fast or lifted heavy weights I managed to avoid being too overweight. I gave up sweets for half a year when I was a young teenager as I was tired of being tempted by getting a chocolate bar with my sandwhich every time I went to the shop for lunch at school. Even though I do indulge the odd time with sweets these days I never go too overboard because the experience early in life of strict dieting allowed me to be more reassured in my self-control. To be honest I enjoy higher-calorie foods like egg sandwhiches to deal with periods of mental stress but I try to avoid panic eating. Yet no matter how much I eat I can't visualise myself becoming really obese. Perhaps being too well-clothed can lead to a lack of motivation to engage in residual exercise in certain people. For example when I go walking I'm never too formal about it as I go at a slow speed due to chronic leg fatigue. Taking breaks during a walk doesn't distract me from resuming the exercise seeing as the suboptimal weather conditions in Ireland and exposed limbs forces me to walk for body heat. Maybe obese people in hot countries might have to embrace cold night walking! Or even wearing heavier clothes during hotter days can incentivise you to go for a walk to cool down with more sweat and to redistribute chest and tummy heat to your limbs and head by faster breathing. "Obesity levels are closely related to thermal sensitivity. Obese individuals tend to feel hotter and have a higher skin temperature in their hands than the non-obese under the same environmental conditions." https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13167-022-00273-6#:~:text=Obesity levels are closely related,25%2C26%2C27]
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Sexuality is a divisive subject when it comes to promiscuity. Religions often have beliefs about sexual sins even if these are a secondary topic to their supernatural beliefs. There'd be a high risk of false accusations and invasiveness if the sexuality of a patient was investigated by mental health staff. Yet sexuality isn't inherently stigmatising when it's biologically compulsory as an adult. Even those who choose to be abstinent could still entertain emotional sexuality rather than physical sexuality. After all a bachelor could just as easily say they felt so dominant over a woman that they didn't even need a woman to prove it! Anyway my point is that sexual intensity is actually a primitive way for your body to understand the state of your dualistic mind. For example so much of our nightly dreams and daily worries are invisible to the body. Yet the subtle way sexuality is activated correlates to your belief system in a profoundly indirect way. No scientist can actually prove why a physical orgasm produces pleasurable sensations even though no one would dispute that the mental sensation exists. So an impaired mindset would likely have a limited and distorted awareness of sexuality. Thus mental illness could be physically activated in the brain if it somehow detected any single instance of abnormal stimulation in the past. I'm not saying that mental illnesses are a result of hypersexuality. Yet the idea that the invisible nature of mental illnesses means that they're not physically objective is flawed. Dying by suicide technically means you'd be missing out on decades worth of sex!
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The trouble with stereotypes is that they're always capable of being defeated through perverted logic. Yet the perversion will invariably end up causing far more unanticipated problems. Thus the original harm is sometimes better left the same where you've to be careful what you wish for. For example if suicide was deemed effeminate then you could theoretically have a suicide pact where a man and a woman kill each other. Yet the obvious limitation of such euthanasia-suicide hybridisation is that it might tempt sexist murder whenever you're anxious. It's hard to know how consensual it could be if they're both nude and one pressures the other into mutual death. So you'd solve the masculine dilemma of suicide at the risk of outright sadomasochism! If someone was stranded on an island then suicide might not be viewed as sinful if they'd be forced into a life of hermeticism. It's an extreme analogy to compare it to how mental illness can isolate a patient. They're almost forced to deal with a collective metaphysical mystery and to resolve it as best they can as an individual. For example it's very hard for someone to concoct a new interpretation of spirituality to deal with a modern problem when it often takes millions of people to form a cultural spirituality and collective unconscious.
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Anxiety isn't always visible in a brain scan. So a psychiatrist won't be able to say exactly when the symptoms would disappear. Yet there are elements of determinism in our cognition even if we believe we've a small degree of free will. As such a mental illness might end deterministically whenever the brain perceives an increased confidence level in the mental faculty that was impaired. Logical determinism rather than biological brain science alone could help reassure anxiety patients that they might recover dualistically. The trouble is we don't have a clear picture of how the brain works. Thus to say a mental illness doesn't fully exist is to say the patient's mind doesn't fully exist during the period that they report symptoms. Critics of suicide might be able to relate to natural evil where the physical world can accidentally inflict innumerable deaths and injuries. So even if you disapproved of suicide it's still possible to view suicide as a lesser evil to the natural evil of the unlimited human pain response. If we viewed the mind materialistically then suicide is technically an indirect form of natural evil if anyone were to subscribe to pure physicalist metaphysics. The human mind is often tempted by happiness to achieve their goals. However it's possible that the unconscious mind has the opposite desire where a mind in pain functions better in a neurological way. Thus the unconscious mind might be tempted to inflict as much pain as it can seeing as it's separate from the conscious mind. Pain would almost be like a lassaiz-faire form of mental efficiency where the short-term well-being of the mind is irrelevant to the far-sighted unconscious. Perhaps mental illness is almost like a pact with the devil when it comes to unconscious decision making. Thus we should encourage people to try their hardest not to engage in their own depressive thoughtlines while still sympathising with those who fall victim to their unconscious. Both good people and evil people have died of suicide. Thus mental illness could also be viewed as metaphysical warfare that prevents ambivalent evil people remaining evil at the expense of good people succumbing to the same illness and severity of pain as collateral damage. For example group evolution caters for a collective mindset of resilience when it comes to mental illnesses. In other words a mental illness might sound counter-productive for individualistic survival-of-the-fittest evolution but not for holistic theories of group evolution.
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Euthanasia would be problematic if suicidal women asked to be killed by men and vice versa!
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Anxiety could sound unrelatable when it's distinguished from common stress. Let's imagine the state enforced a minimum grade policy on every student to get a B in every exam. We can see how well-intentioned it would be when many students could afford to work harder. Yet other students could find some subjects so boring that the whole idea of getting lifetime B grades could lead to suicidal ideation. It's clear that studying can help your long-term goals at the expense of short-term goals. Academia is an elitist analogy but mental illness is a similar state of mind. It's simply that your unconscious mind forces you to solve a homework challenge no matter how long it takes or how incredibly hard you've to work for it. Just like older adults can remind children of the need of school so too can our subconscious inflict anxiety on us on a topic we might find boring and pointless. Mental illness is usually beyond our control where the unconscious mind takes desperate risks. No one could memorise a book like a computer and so if the brain is like a computer then we've idea what our upper limit is when we're in hysterical pain. Pain is really just hard work even if it consciously feels like torture. Everyone is capable of working hard and so I'm not trying to downplay the hardship of pain. Yet it's immediately apparent that if everyone were suddenly enslaved and worked intensely hard then suicide among a few of them are inevitable. It's a very basic analogy but suicidal ideation is really just about perceived over-exertion.
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I understand that it's perfectly acceptable that the sensation of a certain mental illness can make no sense to a lot of people. It might be useful to think of mental illness not only in terms of the uniqueness of the brain and the mind but also of regional culture. Some countries might be superior at resisting a particular mental illness precisely because they all focus on a shared mindset. British people might be skeptical of suicide simply because they all share a history of international militancy. Yet so many smaller countries cannot possibly hope to share the stoic mindset of a much larger country. When we think of chronic back pain then it's theoretically or hypothetically possible that Asians aren't as badly affected simply because they all have a specialised physique. Germans and eastern Europeans might not care less about depression when they've collectively had to deal with themes of extreme nihilism in their past. An analogy could be made with glasses where ancient people may never have been so frequently impaired due to the changes of eye demands from technology. Perhaps autism isn't as common in Islam when they all have such a transcendent faith. Thus understanding the factors that lead to suicide can be relative to the country rather than the specific diagnosis of a mental illness alone.
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This is probably wrong but I'll ask just to clear up anyone else's misguided thoughts. Could the dead pathogens of the Covid virus vaccine be contagious? If so could those who weren't vaccinated develop residual herd immunity from dealing not only with former patients but also from interacting with vaccinated friends?
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The mental health system tends to be secular even though this can be inconsistent. A mentally ill person who is religious can request to leave the psychiatric ward to visit the church. Or sometimes there's a shrine or religious room elsewhere in the hospital. However the clergy often don't make direct visits to psychiatric wards. Psychiatrists might view this as a slippery slope where mental illnesses could make a patient gullible to non-medical treatment. However it's possible within a free society that depressed people could consent to religious treatment. The difficulty is that it's best to do so voluntarily given our freedom to pursue different faiths. A major problem with moral preaching is that mental health systems have many patients confined to the ward involuntarily. As such it could appear doubly dismissive to not only be confined against your free will but to also be morally criticised. For example it's true that criticism could help certain patients but then again they often aren't able to leave the ward if they disagree with the criticism. As such a blancing act can be very risky because staff and patients can be very diverse. For example some patients might not even get on well with other patients when everyone is stressed. So the patient's background might help staff determine the relevance of spiritual guidance.
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Even if a Euler hypothesis on gravity is flawed or unprovable it might still be an interesting area of study simply to explore the mathematics and poetry of it.
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Cool! "Nagel uses the metaphor of bats to clarify the distinction between subjective and objective concepts. Because bats are mammals, they are assumed to have conscious experience." wiki One difficulty with assessing the sentience of animals is that they're irrational for often polar opposite reasons. For example we could say a lion isn't fully self-aware because they're dazed after all the carnivorous violence. Yet we could also say a herbivore isn't as conscious simply because it spends an inordinate amount of time in a tranquil state. Likewise we can't always tell immediately why spiders and snakes are non-conscious simply because they're completely different from one another. You'd need to philosphically analyse a species to determine the exact source of its insentience. Maybe it has a trait to such a high extent it becomes ad absurdum. How could a random spider that cannibalizes its own youth have any modicum of awareness? As such you'd almost have to rely on faith that such creatures aren't sentient even if they appear to be more than a mere robot. "Spider cannibalism is the act of a spider consuming all or part of another individual of the same species as food. In the majority of cases a female spider kills and eats a male before, during, or after copulation." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_cannibalism
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A knowledge that men and women are equal with opposing strengths, along with a temporary or subconscious sense of masculine superiority?!
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Stoicism is a complex topic because masculinity is itself a form of hysteria! Thus people will be stoic in radically different ways. It might even be possible to be stoically effeminate given the vagueness and open-endedness of the definitions! Taking embarrassment like a man is the root of the paradox! Stoicism is a virtue but any virtue can be distorted. Could stoicism ever be so good as to be evil?! Death can be a very scary topic in spite of the copious amount of resources we have compared to historical generations. It's logically the case that no matter how worried or upset you are there'll have been millions of people who died before you. Yet this can be viewed in different ways. Should we gloat at the fact that we are but one of countless many who'll be killed? Here stoicism might seem a bit macho. Although trying to appreciate the fear of death in the context of others does seem charitable. There'll always be a subjective side to things!
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I might be wrong on this but if relativity is explained by the Earth's surface moving upwards to catch up with a thrown object, then it'd be like the normal force from the ground actually exceeds the conventional downwards force of Newtonian gravity.
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If gravity didn't exist, then nor would the normal force exist (upward force from ground). So to reconcile gravity as a contact force as opposed to an action at a distance would require an altered viewpoint on multiple forces. I once gave an example in the philosophical antirealism thread about the irregular rotation of the Earth somehow creating a downward Euler force to mimic gravity. In my lucid dreaming thread (profile blog) I recalled an experience of going up in an elevator and having the backpack increase in weight relative to the horizon. So I wasn't throwing the backpack upwards and rather I was going upwards in sync with the elevator floor. I don't know much about the maths or physics of Euler forces. So does anyone know any symbolic way to elaborate on fictitious forces like the Euler force so as to mimic gravity? For example you could think about a closed system like a rotating asteroid. What if you were going upwards in a lift on top of an asteroid?! "The Euler force is one of three fictitious forces found in rotating frames of reference, the others being the centrifugal and Coriolis forces. It depends on the angular acceleration of the rotating reference frame and the position of a particle in that frame." (conservapedia) (Use the search box and type "Euler" to see relevant posts.) https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6006/anti-realism
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A hidden factor when we apply stoic masculine ideals to withstanding suicide is that the preparation time mentally ill patients have is often nothing. People can become hysterically anxious out of nowhere. The problem when we apply this standard from soldiers in battle is that while they're extremely brave they're much better able to psyche themselves up. So they know in advance that they'll have to fight possibly to the death. This forces them to almost become immanent in whatever form of spirituality they had to give them strength. But lets take the analogy of physical torture. Technically soldiers who die in battle experience far more pain than those who recovered from torture. But we can all agree that torture as a punishment could be far more destabilising because it's performed out of the context of a fight to the death. So in my view suicidal thoughts can also be destabilising simply because patients don't know if they need to fight to the death or if they'll survive. A lot of people don't tell themselves that they might be depressed next year and that they'd have to really meditate beforehand to survive! A risk factor when we use masculine phrases like "man up" is that some people aren't very resilient. This means you'd get away with this style of banter on an adventure holiday but not really with disadvantaged people. I agree that people can use masculine notions in a very well-intentioned way. Concepts like stoicism and solidarity can be very reassuring for males. Yet we don't want to exaggerate this too far. The culpability for criminality is similar for those from any background. Obviously I condemn crimes without discriminating on the perpetrators' personality type. Yet we do have to realise that some criminals can be insecure. So you don't want to distort someone's sense of self. No matter what virtues we ascribe to masculinity we must remember that it is the gender of every male. As such there's a very small risk that if you start implying that people aren't masculine to homeless or mentally ill people that a bad minority of them could start warping their own gender in a violent way. To reiterate I condemn all psychopathic and perverted criminals. I'm merely saying that we do need to be cautious about presenting social problems in an explicitly masculine way.
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In the fourth post p. 40 I mention a dream about seeing a spider move a tray of extra legs: https://onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15514&start=585#p423904
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I'm upset that you've experienced such distress. I'm sad to hear about the death of your stepdad. That's a great attitude to have; very inspiring. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Sometimes I feel a need to engage in realpolitik with those who are critical of suicide. Suicidal people need help and so I don't want to reject those with mixed feelings about suicidal patients. In other words I support the existence of the mental health system where suicide isn't ignored. I suppose it's like the way bad publicity can be better than no publicity. That is to say even if staff are unsupportive of suicide they'll at the very least be supportive of your mental health. I also think of poorer countries where the mental health system must compete with lots of government departments for limited resources. Nonetheless there might be rare occasions where the help is outweighed by negativity if it comes at a cost of stigmatising suicide victims. So debating the topic of suicide can be a bit of a balancing act between asserting your point of view and tolerating those who disagree with you. I wish I could offer you better advice but I suppose it's best that I leave that to your friends and caregivers who know more about your circumstances. Nonetheless thank you for sharing your story. Yes you phrased that very well. Often times there's a multitude of factors that go into someone's decision to die by suicide. While I certainly condemn bullying I still don't want to vilify any bully to the extent of being wholly responsible for the death of a suicide victim. A complex maths question might create a small bit of stress and yet the simplicity of basic questions about our existence could create huge stress during mental illness. One way to think of it is that consciousness is holistic and so it's harder for the brain to work on the starting blocks rather than the abstractions. For example a lot of our personality is set by the time we reach adulthood but that doesn't mean it's impossible to transform yourself wholesale. Defying critical periods in our personal and spiritual growth is possible and merely entails a lot of pain. "In developmental psychology and developmental biology, a critical period is a maturational stage in the lifespan of an organism during which the nervous system is especially sensitive to certain environmental stimuli. If, for some reason, the organism does not receive the appropriate stimulus during this "critical period" to learn a given skill or trait, it may be difficult, ultimately less successful, or even impossible, to develop certain associated functions later in life." wik
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Perhaps this may be more noticeable in 4-legged spiders like the photo below. This creature was in my bathroom and there's some kind of non-verbal truce between us! So long as he doesn't move about I won't kick him out!
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One problem is that humility has a subjective component. For example each religion interprets the spiritual quality of humility in a slightly different way. Humility also changed over the centuries where gender roles have become more egalitarian. Humility is almost a postmodern concept in how rebelliousness can be viewed as humility as it is in the rap genre.
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(Shrimp; not squid!)
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I ordered a fish dish in a seaside restaurant in Tunisia. I no longer mind cutting up the squid because I'm accustomed to eating the ready-cut prawns. I can tell myself that the eyes and legs are just a superficial appearance of the same food. I ate one of the squiggly things and it was cooked in a nice sauce. I thought it could have been some kind of octopus tentacle. However I soon realised that it was too long to be such an entity. I procrastinated by eating a few mussels. However I became disconcerted by the spirals of the long, elongated fish. I decided to err on the side of caution by not eating any more of the wiggly things. I ordered some ice-cream to distract myself! I had asked a waiter what they were and he rather conveniently replied that he wasn't sure. Somehow I couldn't escape the baby snake analogy! When I got back to my room and researched it I realised that eels were part of the Tunisian cuisine! I thought I'd be more shocked but the tasty ice cream had mellowed me! "Are eels related to sea snakes? Judging by their anatomy, definitely not. Eels are actually fish (albeit typically longer) and are flatter than snakes. As marine animals and unlike reptiles, eels breathe underwater with their gills and fins, and therefore cannot survive outside of water." https://www.scuba.com/blog/explore-the-blue/difference-eels-sea-snakes/
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Capitalism works by voluntary reward for work rather than active punishment for underworking. It's true that poor people are to some extent passively penalised by a lack of resources but technically they're not deprived in a coercive fashion. In other words they're not being put in detention for a lack of homework but rather they miss out on opportunities due to a lack of wealth. At least that's the economic theory even if it's not the reality for those who are exploited in sweat shops in the third world. Anyway my point of comparison when it comes to suicide is that people are free to reward to their heart's content those who live with physical disabilities, terminally ill patients or mentally ill individuals who manage to avoid suicide. It's a free country and if you don't want to commemorate suicide victims then no one can stop you. However actively condemning suicide victims crosses the line in my opinion.
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The insect below had huge whiskers on his head and I was worried about injuring it. Luckily the glass didn't snap the whiskers and the insect retrieved them from under the brim of the glass. I suppose if the situation allows for it injuring an insect would still be less worse than killing it.