Psychiatric (Legal ?) 'Physical Assault': Axiom-1 v. Axiom-1' Discrimination, Psychiatry v. Science, Whose Reality ? Human Rights & Civil Liberties

-- All 'legally-relevant' terminology used, is common / colloquial form. I do not know fully-correct, legal language. All statements are made as accurately as possible, given the constraints of document writing and editing time. Any error will be corrected if and when notified. Otherwise, I have no way to present this argument.

I regard highly, the NHS and those who work in it.

Question to self: Do all psychiatrists, as healers, who take the Hippocratic Oath, 'first do no harm', (in the form that I remember it), actually think hard enough about achieving that ?

-- I'm undecided about the motives of some psychiatrists as healers. Reasons below.

In my opinion and personal experience, mind is something finely balanced, self-consistently. Multi-level, at very least between conscious and preconscious / unconscious / subconscious (are these all scientifically accessible constructs ?). And likely to be nonlinear and recursive, maybe hierarchically nested, perhaps to infinity. Speculatively, to develop mental strategies for 'adverse effects' can be akin to nonlinear control theory in systems engineering. With multiple time-dependent source terms or forcings, external and internal, possibly in opposition, and with system monitoring and self-monitoring, all providing feedback, both positive and negative. Very likely, an extremely difficult nonlinear optimisation type problem. And 'forcings' on mind are 'everyday life'. That 'optimisation' not lending itself easily to mathematical implementation, any more than the 'quantification' of internal mental state. In practice, mental descriptions appear more pictorial and symbolic. Thus speculatively again, so would be the basis for implementation of any appropriate optimisation strategies.

I do wonder if this view of self-consistent, fine balance of the mind, is shared by those (minority of ?) medics, who electrocute brains at ~100 V ?

Medic reliance on drugs, imposed by forced detention and mob-handed physical assault, therefore appears to me, that it has the possibility to 'miss out' the largest part of psychology as science of mind, i.e., the mind. Drug treatment and physiology are in large part, science of bodies. The mind-body duality issue is a longstanding philosophical problem. And it strikes me that it could be something of a red herring. Without dismissing the link between physiology and mind altogether, it appears to me that: talking condescendingly to people, treating them as 'less', making them (and their minds) effectively 'unheard and unseen', assuming and stating their lack of understanding and comprehension, and applying legal power in the form of repeated deprivation of liberty and mob-handed physical assault, could be more than likely to counter-act any possible, but not known, benefits of drugs. Drug benefits often largely unknown, and in practice, tested by repeated trial and error. Often in the direction of increasingly worse known and expected side effects. Drugs have many known downsides. And what downsides when forced on adequately healthy people ?

-- My own experience of being detained on a locked psychiatric ward is that it is very noisy and busy. With all-day loud noise from in-patients, and radio, and in the past, really loud 'heavy metal' and drum music, as some in-patients' preferences. Currently, staff numbers on-ward have been increased, because of the recent number of patient 'kick-offs'. Occasional, more aggressive patients, are moved to another ward. Medics spend a shift here, then go home. I get flash lights from nurses or night staff, through the door window overnight. Sometimes hourly. Mine is an acute ward. I was not, and am not, in any acute state of mental ill health. Just adequately healthy (despite loud 'head noise', which I believe has been exacerbated by being on-ward) and trying to complete contract work for a client, in a very noisy and hostile environment. My experience is that being on-ward is detrimental to my mental health and well being. It certainly makes my work less efficient. Also, simply managing the home admin. Not as conducive an environment as working from home. Normally, I work from home, with my family around, 100% of the time. Here, we are on coronavirus lock down, so I have not seen any member of my family, since last Fri. Equally detrimental to my good mental health and mental well-being then, is the fact that I am effectively a second class citizen, who can be deprived of his liberty and livelihood, for days, weeks and months at a time, by medics, and physically assaulted on their order. With the law stacked against me. I have to work around medics and their forced depot injections.

... In part, I present the work below as an example of my science and computational-engineering technical work, and thus as an indication of my sanity, whilst forcibly detained on a locked psychiatric ward.

Detained by emergency ambulance and police, last Fri 27 Mar '20, against zero mental health problems or acute situation. Mob-handedly physically assaulted last night, Mon 30 Mar '20, 'soft force' to impose forced injection with reality-altering prescription drugs. Against my absolute refusal of such 'treatment' (= assault), on the grounds of being adequately healthy. Token passive resistance being my only visible means of non violent protest against on-going and recurring 'human rights violations' -- or civil liberties issues if legal (?).

The logic sections of this blog article are well founded, as are my thought experiments on time travel and telepathy. Including possible near-future 'telepathy' based on currently near-available hi-tech: Elon Musk and Neuralink, Body Machine Interfacing (BMI) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), e.g., Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), and my other LinkedIn blogs.

-- For instance, pick up low frequency delta / theta / alpha / beta (3 - 30 Hz ELF) and gamma (30 - 300 Hz SLF) brain waves by portable imaging sensors, e.g., Electro-Encephalography (EEG), functional near infra-red spectroscopy (fNIR), ..., transmit wirelessly to a remote server and apply: signal processing techniques (deconvolution, filtering, …); machine learning for acoustic and visual signal manipulation (classification, partitioning, principal component analysis, …); artificial intelligence trained on MRI, PETS and CAT scans, EEG, fNIR, …, test sets. Then transmit someone else's audio and visual 'thoughts' to your Windows HoloLens-type spectacles, where you can view those thoughts in an Augmented Reality (AR) window of your everday life.

This blog article in itself then, provides an immediate test of conveyance of different meanings when reading the same words. And poses at least the question: is what is normal for a scientist, 'crazy' for some other people ? ...

At about 5 pm, today, Mon 30 Mar '20, I was again mob-handedly physically assaulted.

-- My emergency recall to hospital was not, however, based on any acute situation. No standard tick-box indicators of ill health. No external counter-indicators. No antisocial problem of any kind, except 'thinking the wrong way'. No risk to self or others. No history of ever having been a risk to self or others. Except for 'thinking the wrong way'. And family stress and concern because 'I do odd stuff' -- but not odd for a scientist.

-- No prescription medication for ~2 years now, except for repeated 'junkification' by medic-enforced injection with prescription reality-altering drugs. No mental health problem declared by me. No delusion declared by me. No contradiction between my own belief and my own reality and rational argument. Life: 'it is as it is' and keep it honest.

At first, two or three female nurses and one male nurse or carer turned up. I said that that was not enough of them to inject me and I refused the injection. As a matter of token passive resistance principle, both visible and stated non compliance, I told them that they would have to get more people. They rang the alarm and roughly another four female nurses turned up. I was simply sat on the bed, in my ward room, working on my laptop. No harm to anyone and with a deliberate implementational choice to 'first do no harm'. I was held and injected in the upper arm. I did shout my anger and refusal, without moving off the bed, and was duly held for the injection, as I required. That anger was genuine.

I refuse all 'treatment' (= assault) on the grounds of being adequately healthy. I sign no papers -- except Section 17 leave papers, in order to see my family. And then not without removing explicitly by pen, non-acceptable phrases. I put up token passive resistance as my only means of visible, non violent protest. My deliberate policy being to harm no-one, especially no-one just doing their day jobs. The message is intended to be a visible one. By preference direct, even if seen only by a few. However, recognising that indirect and evasive, misleading and misdirecting conversations are the medic norm, with some examples in this document.

I had just sat down to do some more work for the client in Norway. I had been distracted during the day, including a meeting with the Consultant Psychiatrist, Associated Mental Health Professional, Registrar and GP Registrar. I lost my temper with those in that meeting. I do not speak angry words very often. However, I have done so in meetings with medics a few times over the last few weeks, or couple of months, at the total ignorance of medics in those situations. They do not listen. They employ only 'lower level truth'. They are evasive, indirect, misleading and misdirecting. It is very difficult indeed, to get a straight answer to a straight question, from a psychiatrist. However, I chose deliberate non violence when medics then instigated physical assault to enforce depot injections.

However, today's Consultant agreed that the diagnosis that he had written in the 'CTO3 notice of recall to hospital', was not his own diagnosis. He cited paranoid schizophrenia.

Today's Consultant has a preferred putative diagnosis of cycloid psychosis. I have looked this up, previously. This does not appear to be a better fit than paranoid schizophrenia. Particularly, comparing paranoid schizophrenia as indicated by Jaynes, i.e., closing down of mind to a dark space. When I pressed the Consultant about this, he stated that it did not matter what his view was, he was utilising the working diagnosis from my Registered Clinician, which was recent. However, I am confident that my Registered Clinician does not have justification for a recent diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. I believe he is working largely with a ~37-year old unrevised diagnosis, from my first year at University in 1982/1983.

My Registered Clinician also adheres dogmatically to the holistic psychiatric viewpoint, with all dominant decision making weight given to collateral evidence. As, in my opinion, he establishes no adequate mapping between medic view of complainant view, and actual complainant view, this is 'whole system' medicine, without me much in it.

Not Being Average Enough as a Personality Disorder and Mental Health Condition

I do not have a personality disorder classification. However, as a related discussion point, it is an interesting observation to me, that personality disorder, is defined in large part, by not being 'normal' enough. That is, not being 'sufficiently average'. Those in the tails of the probability distribution, along with various deficits, can be classified as having a personality disorder. There are obvious deficits listed in the personality disorder spectra, such as social anxiety, depression, etc. However, an interesting element is listed under Schizotypal Personality Disorder, namely being eccentric or odd looking. I assume therefore, that diagnoses of personality disorder are made by normal people.

On the NHS website, it is also interesting to me that personality disorders are classified as mental health conditions. Therefore, on the major diagnostic element of not being 'normal enough', or 'sufficiently' average, along with deficits such as being eccentric or odd looking, and with a range of deficits including social anxiety and depression, it is possible to be classified as having a mental health condition. The NHS website does not state mental ill health. However, I think that would appear to be implied by the label of mental health condition. It is not normally a medic requirement to treat people for good health.

Token Passive Resistance And Spoken Anger

As part of my token passive resistance strategy, and immediately after being mob-handedly physically assaulted again, I thought 'I will now not talk to any medical staff on-ward'. I am unseen anyway. I am much, much 'less' on-ward than in everyday life. However, a nurse came to the door and introduced herself, so of course, I responded in friendly fashion. Staff on-ward deserve respect, even if they have to 'beat on' me in response to medic orders.

*Question:* Is it justifiable to speak angry words when not being listened to, seen or heard ?

-- My view is that the human rights of liberty, and not to be physically assaulted, justify token passive resistance. Including angry words to achieve visible and audible non compliance, in response to mob-handed physical assault instigated by medics. Such assault by NHS staff, in order to enforce injection with prescription reality altering drugs. 'Soft force', in the 'nicest (!) possible way', by NHS staff just doing their day jobs.

The limiting case of instigated assault, is always murder. Thus to avoid escalation, token passive resistance is the immediate and only choice of non violent, visible protest. Thus whilst I regret giving police, without a warrant, detaining me from the safety of my own home, or emergency ambulance staff, in a totally non acute situation, or hospital ward staff, a 'hard time', especially during the current coronavirus pandemic, the principle is important.

It should not be allowed that medics can deprive me of 72 hours at a time, and then impose such mob-handed physical assault, to enforce medication when I feel adequately healthy.

-- No stress, no depression, no anxiety, no mania, no impairment. High functionality, generally happy disposition. My only antisocial problem: 'thinking the wrong way'. Only risk to self or others: 'thinking the wrong way'. No acute situation in play.

Weekends of My Time Do Not Matter to Medics

Why detain me on a Fri evening and then inject me at 5 pm on a Mon ? How urgent was that emergency ambulance detention by police without a warrant ?

-- All I did all weekend, was try to get some consultancy work done in a very hostile work environment. For instance, laptop charger mostly locked away. Thus work two hours, then charge the battery for about as long. The same with my mobile phone. Use it until it runs out, then charge it up in the cupboard for a while. I have an old wreck of a smartphone until next upgrade. Battery does not last long. And the ward is just really noisy.

So why should I wait on medic admin for 72 hours, whilst medics spend three days getting round to my case ? Why couldn't they just have detained me on the Mon ? Why Fri evening ? Why should they be allowed to keep me locked up for what now will be a whole week, until next Fri ? Against zero acute situation, zero standard tick-box indicators of mental ill health and zero external counter indicators.

-- In busy lives, 5 minutes is important. Why should any adequately healthy person be deprived of 72 hours, a week, weeks or even months, without good reason ? Why should any other human being have such legal power over me ?

-- In everyday life, lay one finger on somebody, and it would be an assault charge. Why can medics instigate mob-handed physical assault against an adequately healthy person, repeatedly, legally and at all ?

All it takes is a subjective medical opinion of 'lack of patient insight' and it is legal for medics to instigate physical assault, repeatedly. And medics do not have to justify their opinions, or even define their terms. Thus everything they say is effectively unarguable.

'Lower Level Truth' and Dishonesty

How to know what a medic means by 'lack of patient insight', when they will not tell you ? Medics can operate at 'lower level truth'. No straight answers to straight questions. In the end, this means no two-way communication. No aim at mutual comprehension.

Medics can cite 'nature and degree' but not list the symptoms. In my case, they declare mental ill health, but have no justification in terms of physical, external, mutually accessible world symptoms. And if 'the rest' is all inside the medics heads, how to work out what 'lack of patient insight means' ? Does it mean 'not thinking the way a medic thinks you should' ?

-- When the medic won't tell you 'how that thinking should be'.

The justification for such an approach, might be 'not to influence patient world view'. But then how to square that with mob-handed physical assault against absolute refusal of such 'treatment' (= assault) on grounds of being adequately healthy. Refusing to sign all papers and refusing all medical intervention on-ward. (Except for Section 17 leave papers, but crossing out the clause on agreement to take medication, i.e., only agreeing to return to the ward.)

What is the honesty of a situation, which either:

(a) imposes forced medication against: zero stress / depression / anxiety / mania / impairment, high functionality and general happy disposition, or

(b) imposes such medication for any other possible undeclared reasons without stating what those reasons might be ?

If the zero symptoms of (a) are obvious, why do medics impose medication by force in a non acute situation ? There is a well-known, on-going medical debate about the use of psychiatric drugs, which says that due to some very bad effects, they should not even be prescribed without good reason.

-- The situation is then dishonest from the point of view of both (a) and (b), because the stated reason for imposing medication is (a), and (a) is not justified.

Equally, what is the straightforward honesty of a situation, in which in response to an allegation of propagation of falsehoods through written medical records, the Consultant Psychiatrist says 'you have had that answer already'. When in fact, the NHS Complaints procedure refused point-blank, to consider all complainant offered documentary evidence, list-based comparison, true / false, true / false, ... , against respective relevant complaints, on a ~10+ month timescale.

My medical records are riddled with falsehoods unchecked by the NHS. For instance, dates wrong by ~6 months, or claims that the complainant was writing a book or thesis on ESP and / or telepathy, when he was doing no such thing. Or that he could not manage his professional commitments and talked pseudo-scientifically, in areas where he had ~35 years' post-graduate experience. And where medics were far less well informed.

Medic Ignorance of Degree-Level Science Can Lead to Human Rights Violations

Speculatively, on topics where knowledge of special relativity, general relativity, quantum mechanics, classical electromagnetism, ..., are relevant, what justification for medics assuming superior knowledge ? Again, I would guess that psychiatrists do not rank as the highest-grade-A-level medical students. (I do not have statistical data.) Then it could be quite possible that a psychiatrist does not have better than a B in maths and physics at A-level. And with little relevant graduate experience of these subjects at the level of a science degree, like physics or engineering.

If after describing LinkedIn-blog thought experiments on time travel, the Registrar looks at you and says 'thank you, that was very helpul', does he 'get' the degree level physics, or not ? Might he think 'looney' (or professional equivalent term), when you describe: jumping back-in-time, repeatedly in pairs, until there are 1024 of you, after the tenth backwards-in-time jump ? Does he think 'looney' or interesting thought experiment ?

For a physicist in a University, he would think 'interesting thought experiment'. However, once sat behind the 'looney'-label (colloquially) I suspect that the medic does not see a senior researcher of ~15 years' post-doctoral University experience, or an IT and Technical Consultant of ~35 years' post-graduate experience. Instead, I get the impression that such thought experiments are dismissed as delusional by the Registrar and other senior medics.

For instance, when a smart clinical R&D lead, (Professor) Consultant Psychiatrist, who still does the day-job on the Mental Health Assessment team, wrote in my detention papers that I was 'preoccupied with time travel and cloning myself', was he being a total 'idiot' ?

That being my usage of term, for a few smart, well educated medics -- who aren't allowed to be that stupid, when liberty, livelihood and physical assault, rest on medical accuracy. 

I had blogged all of the respective thought experiments, in carefully edited detail on LinkedIn. Those thought experiments are sound, as 'just that', i.e., well-motivated thought experiments, interesting as blog discussion items.

Equally, if after the Registrar thanked me for that 'useful' description, what to make of a 1-day, stand-in Consultant, who smilingly asks you at a medical assessment meeting, to describe your thoughts on time travel ? Umm. And then insists, that I 'had received insight ... (from somewhere unspecified) ... that made me believe that time travel was possible'. Also, that consensus was that time travel was not possible. That string of questions and comments, is so gobsmacking in implication, that that 1-day stand-in Consultant, must be a total 'idiot' too -- on my same rough usage of the term.

The stand-in Consultant presumably got his information from the Registrar, attending the same assessment meeting. How could either of them be so dismissive of well motivated, carefully edited, carefully argued thought experiments ?

-- Would the same conclusion of 'looney' (colloquially) have been drawn about a University academic ? Or indeed, a Technical Consultant met in his office, without the 'looney' label (non medic usage) already attached.

Equally, if a scientist puts a steel bin on his head, because he wants to test for the possibility of electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding effects, on low frequency, (brain wave frequency), environmental noise -- e.g., mains electricity or lightning strikes or magnetic field variation -- is that well received by medics ? Or do they put the 'whole lot together' and think 'real looney' (colloquially).

And if you describe your order of magnitude calculations of brain-to-brain mutual induction, as an interesting estimate for published work on brain-wave sync'ing (delta / theta / alpha / beta, 3 - 30 Hz, Extremely Low Frequency, or gamma, 30 - 300 Hz, Super Low Frequency), or as a putative mechanism for telepathy, should any such thing exist in nature, do they think 'loonier still' ?

What to make of the stand-in Consultant Psychiatrist, who writes in the papers that 'justify' your Community Treatment Order, after meeting you briefly, just once, that you are 'obsessed with telepathy' ? The accurate statement, is that telepathy is an interesting blog topic and I have thought it through, to some degree.

What would the Registrar make of time travel experiments from Harry Potter, with Hermione and the time turner (to save the hippogriff from the executioner, before it escapes with Sirius Black from the Tower) ? Does the medic get the blog-point, that when considering only time travel 'broad structure', it is not necessary to have any physical model details at all ? Or does he think 'the looney' (colloquially) is mixing up magic spells with science ? Roughly speaking, rolling the whole lot up into a single picture of mental ill health, duly declared by medics. Or does he think, 'OK, says some interesting stuff about space time, and the possible generation of singularities due to a backwards-in-time jump' ?

Best guess ? Does the medic say 'that's stupid stuff' ? Does anyone say 'that's stupid stuff' ? Or would everyone get the comments on space-time structure straightaway, without a background in special and general relativity ?

-- Moral: do not talk enthusiastically about such thought experiments with medics, else your fascination for science can deprive you of your liberty and livelihood for weeks at a time, and lead to you being mob-handedly physically assaulted.

Why is such an argument not spurious ?

(i) Because medics accuse me of talking pseudo-scientifically, when they may not have a relevant background much above, 'B', at A-level maths and physics.

-- Maybe. I will ask, at some point. And correct my blog appropriately, if necessary.

-- Not that I expect any direct reply at all !

And,

(ii) because the only 'symptoms' in 'nature and degree' that they have, are all of the above-stated form.

Any other 'symptoms', they do not describe, despite repeated questioning. Instead, saying 'you have been told that ten times already'. Duly corrected when I pointed out 'ten-times' was a very large exaggeration, for a list never made explicit in mutually comprehensible fashion, at all.

Psychiatrists and 'Lower Level Truth'

The medics that I encounter, are knowingly evasive and indirect. And I still have not obtained from them, after ~two years, a clear statement of what 'lack of patient insight' means to them. Does it mean the same to each of them, say ? Equally, I have not obtained any clear list of external indicators of mental ill health, on my part. So on what do they base their diagnoses ?

It is actually highly insulting and patronising, to an intelligent human being, to deal with 'lower level truth' from psychiatrists, routinely and as default. If their mysterious decision-making is explained by reasons known only to them, then 'higher level truth' would aim at mutual comprehension and strive for it actively. Thus answer direct questions with direct answers. And not deliberately mislead and misdirect.

For instance, if in response to the assertion that conversation is not two-way, a medic insists that is two-way, explicitly and directly, then he is using 'lower level truth', because he very definitely intends transfer of information mostly in one direction. Therefore he knowingly and deliberately uses 'two-way', with a different meaning to that made in the original counter-assertion: 'lower level truth'. It is not possible to have an intelligent, two-way exchange of information, and conveyance of meaning, with a psychiatrist, on this basis. To him, I am 'less'.

As a key example, unexamined by the NHS Complaint 'due process': in my medical records, my Registered Clinician inferred that I could not understand or comprehend hospital meetings. I am an IT and Technical Consultant of ~35 years' experience and I have chaired multi-hour meetings with advanced computational engineering content, minuted those meetings in full, and distributed full minutes, post meeting. I was firing on all cylinders, as evidenced by a long string of carefully-edited email, to every relevant legal and mental health body in the UK. I very definitely could understand hospital meetings. I was adequately healthy. So either the Consultant Psychiatrist was delusional -- his belief in contradiction with reality and / or rational argument -- or else he was saying that the meetings were 'going over my head'. However, that would be 'lower level truth'. Given my high functionality, and as an intelligent person, anything that I missed in those meetings could have been explained to me, or questioned. Rather than assuming my incomprehension. Again, does 'lack of patient insight' mean effectively, not reading medics' minds ? Otherwise, how to tell what they mean, without direct answers to direct questions ?

The same lack of respect for another human being, is evidenced by the evasive, indirect or non response to the question 'how do you justify forced injection' ? That is such a key question, it is worthy of a carefully explained answer. However, it receives no such.

-- Zero stress / depression / anxiety / mania / impairment, high functionality, generally happy disposition. Only antisocial problem 'thinking the wrong way'. Only risk to self or others, 'thinking the wrong way'. Plus family stress and obvious concern due to behaviour and thought experiments, normal to this scientist, but not obviously to family or to medics.

-- Zero acute situation in play.

-- No prescription medication for ~2 years now, except for repeated 'junkification' by medic-enforced injection with prescription reality-altering drugs. No mental health problem declared by me. No delusion declared by me. No contradiction between my own belief and my own reality and rational argument. Life: 'it is as it is' and keep it honest.

Delusion, Belief, Reality and Rational Argument

Key Q: Is there only one reality and one rational argument ? And why should medic reality and medic rational argument, override my liberty, livelihood and right not to be physically assaulted ?

Reality (as knowledge, subjective): combination of own immediate primary experiences, local to self in space and time.

It is not possible to experience anyone else's reality.

Rational argument: mostly means intuitive argument, in practice. And intuition is subjective, based on unique life experience to date. Everyone's rational argument is their own.

Consider the pure rationalist position. It is about generation of innate knowledge, without empirical input. Thus it is not 'rational' to scientists, for whom empirical input is essential.

And all pure rationalist knowledge structures are arbitrary, i.e., arbitrary axioms and laws of inference. Including 'bad reasoning and assertions'. Without application of some preferred meta-rule for knowledge structure selection.

Thus maths and logic because they have collections or natural numbers (hence both), which are empirical intuitions. Once we have {} and 1, 2, 3, ..., by equivalence relations we have integers, rationals and matrix-vector products. And in combination with recursion and iteration, etc., all of computational science at number-crunching level, and at the level comparable against experiment. Speculatively, the 'unreasonable efficacy of maths in science', and possibly elsewhere, is because both maths and the physical, external, mutually accessible world, Life The Universe And Everything (LTUAE), have {} and 1, 2, 3, … . And Everything might include what is not life and not the Universe.

The correctness of a knowledge system is determined by the accuracy of its mapping to its domain of application. In science, by predictive input->output modelling, falsified systematically against experiment, to experimental accuracy and statistical reproduciblity, always with reasonable assumptions.

Beyond personal reality, as combined immediate primary experiences local to self in space and time, always reasonable assumptions. That is, existence and personal reality are givens, but all interpretation comes down to reasonable assumptions. Ontology is more 'straightforward' than epistemology, i.e., everyone has to 'just do it' in the sense of simply living a life. It is possible to know 'a lot'. However, it is not possible to know how much is known or how well.

Subjective and Relative Knowledge and Truth and Discrimination

Personal knowledge and truth are relative and subjective. People know different things for the same thing. People have absolute knowledge of 100% diametrically opposed things. Speculatively, to know anything with certainty, would require knowledge of everything, on the assertion that all knowledge is interconnected. And even given immediate knowledge of everything axiomatically, no deductions all, everything 'immediate', there can be no guarantee that such a knowledge system is not coupled to, or embedded within, a larger structure. A structure which would impact accuracy or predictive power, in any given domain of application. That is, it is never possible to know that the last implicit assumption has been made explicit -- even if it has.

Thus from the point of view of medic declaration of mental ill health, what justification, ever, for medics assuming the superiority of their own belief, reality and rational argument ?

-- Where such an assumption is made, human rights violations can occur. And where such 'human right violations' are legal, that is a civil liberties issue.

Dogma is essential and captures all core beliefs and key life positions. All no cross lines are dogmatic. Three key positions held are: (i) others have dogma, (ii) everyone has dogma, (iii) others have dogma and self does not. Discrimination law ranks dogmas. Thus policing is required. And at national level, armies. And wars occur.

Given reasonable assumptions, many disputes are amenable to solution. However, given limitations of knowledge, all disputes reduce ultimately to:

Axiom-1 Versus Axiom-1'

where those axioms can be simple, e.g., a1, compound, e.g., a1-a2-...-an, or symbolic, e.g., a-symbol, capturing either the simple or compound form. A system can also assert (but not prove, based on 'natural' definitions of equality) its own self correctness.

'Not prove' in the sense of 1-to-1 mapping of say { a_correct, a_1, … , a_n } to { a_correct', a_1', ... , a_n' } with 'natural' definition of '=' in, a_1 = a_1', etc. If a_correct asserts correctness of a_1, ..., a_n and itself, similarly a_correct', then even if, a_1 = a_1', ..., a_n = a_n', there is no equality, a_correct = a_correct', (and what definition of 'equality' implicit in usage of the term 'correct' ?), unless that '=' is redefined to mean that that particular equality statement holds by definition. Thus a system that asserts its own self-consistency does not (even) 'prove itself' -- except by the above self-definition of the test for equality '='.

I am still thinking through the case of the unspecified symbolic statement, e.g., as in commonplace meaningful shuffling of meaningless symbols, with 'meaningful' definition of 'equality' employed in deductive chains. Can it be meaningless shuffling of meaningless symbols if there is no 'hard typing', i.e., without declaration of symbol 'form' or 'placeholder nature', e.g., integer, double, …, and particularly compound object, e.g., structure, vector, list, …, declarations in computer programming ? I suspect that such 'hard typing' must be implemented in symbolic logic manipulation software. I should and will check. In Boolean logic, all statements evaluate True or False, thus all equalities state either, True = True, or False = False. There are many logic forms other than Boolean, e.g., 3-value, multi-value (beyond 3-value ?), quantum, fuzzy, … . And presumably there are vastly more possible implementations of generic symbolic manipulation. For instance, would a symbolic logic statement, capturing a whole knowledge system, reduce to a-symbol = True or False ? Thus what equality statement, '=', to use for a generic symbol representation of a whole knowledge system ?

And symbolic manipulation might, for instance, give rise to asserted self-correctness of a knowledge system without meaning. Or a consistent system which 'lies' consistently, depending on respective definition of terms: correct, equality, lie, truth, consistency, etc. Or perhaps systems which could be 'consistently or inconsistently' either 'consistent or inconsistent', etc.

-- Still thinking those through.

Application of 'natural' equality requires LHS and RHS terms to be well defined, which is not obvious immediately for axioms of the form, a_correct.

And even use of the same symbolic term, a, twice or more in any application of logic, would appear to be problematic from the point of view of term-ambiguity in any domain of application. To know that the 'same' term was used correctly repeatedly, would require elimination of the last implicit assumption, underlying asserted equality of any two usages of, a, within that domain of application. And even if that last implicit assumption in definition of terms can be made explicit, it cannot be known that that has been achieved. This would require knowledge that the respective knowledge system was not coupled to, or embedded within, any other system, which impacted accuracy and predictive power in the domain of application. Nested and tangent space knowledge structure constructions hierarchically to infinity, can be envisaged immediately -- without asserting self-consistency or correctness of the overall structure, when picturing such a construction.

However, the ontology is 'easier' than the epistemology. It is possible to know 'a lot'. Just not to know what is known or how well. Thus existence and personal reality are givens, i.e., 'it is as it is' and 'just do it' in the sense of simply living life. In practice, it is no problem not knowing how much is known or how well. Scientific models, for instance, are always tentative, current best approximations, falsified systematically to experimental accuracy, statistical reproducibility and reasonable assumptions. Yet science works 'in small pieces' and allows building of engineering and technology piecewise. Thus a 'good' indication of underlying objective reality, i.e., science not defined by measurement prescription.

It has perplexed me in the past, to see world class logicians, such as Godel, make arguments, e.g., his ontological (non) 'proof', without defining their terms up-front. I had assumed that the justification was construction of the 'most generic' argument. However, I now suspect that the process can be meaningless 'until after the fact', without up-front definition of at least symbolic statement 'placeholder forms' in some well characterised fashion. And with the meta-problem (!) posing the question: why does well-defined meaning even matter ?

-- Psychiatrists appear to make a point of such indirectness. Thus maybe interaction with psychiatrists, drives people 'nuts', which then makes the psychiatric approach, including subjective medical opinion, self-consistent by definition, construction and implementation. :-)

For instance, whilst editing this blog tidily, and before moving back on to completing the assignment for the client, I am listening to really loud banging noises, gorilla calls and animal noises, along with various loud conversations, echoing from the corridor outside my room on-ward, along with a radio playing, on and off, at varying levels to high volume. A locked psychiatric ward is not the ideal place to work. Speculatively, given someone in adequate mental health, protesting his appalling treatment, a good approach to 'silencing' that person, might be to lock him up and treat him badly enough, that eventually he can no longer 'think straight'. That could be a solution to the problem, without being a problem solution. A lot easier than ever admitting either dishonesty, illegality and / or a total 'b***s-up'. Given the totally inexplicable, apparent complete lack of concern by medics for either external symptoms or actual facts, such notions are at least broadly consistent. And given the little god mentality, and getting angered by medics, I recall the phrase 'Whom the (little) gods would destroy they first make mad' [by Prometheus in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "The Masque of Pandora" (1875)].

And I note that my own choice of language, above, indicates a 'preferred' definition of equality. The statement in the first paragraph in this [ … ], is accurate as given. However, it appears to me that in a system asserting its own self-consistency, the definition of equality takes multiple forms. For axioms, one equality for one form, one equality for another. But giving in apparently 'word-contradictory' fashion, 'both sides of all axiomatic statements are equal' (!).

-- As a meta-observation it is always (?) necessary to take care with the definition of terms, and with use of same words having different meanings, at least in applications, and in order to avoid 'semantic pitfalls' and invalid inferences.

Psycho(logy / analysis / therapy), Psychiatry 'v.' Science and Cognitive Psychology

The obvious downside of undefined terms, as in my conversations with psychiatrists, is that if terms are not defined, subjective medical opinions can be unarguable. And a key question is, 'is that regarded as a good thing, or a bad thing' ? By medics apparently, a good thing. By me, a bad thing.

And this is closely related to the notion of psychology as science and the well known physicist's friendly dig at psychologists for 'always correct' statements. Given different meanings for the same words, possibly good from the point of view of psychology, bad from the point of view of science. Bad from the scientific viewpoint, because science insists that models be experimentally testable. It must be attempted to prove them wrong repeatedly. And all the time that the models 'do not break', they are increasingly well tested and good. Whereas an 'always correct' psychological model, say, would never be amenable to test. Thus it might be applied with bad results and no way to know it. 'Just make it up as you go along. And assume that you are correct ', roughly speaking.

As a case in point, consider the broadly psych' notion that anal retentivity is due to conflict over toilet-training in infancy. (I use the abbreviation 'psych' ' to capture, broadly: psychology, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, psychiatry, …, as appropriate.) To make this a scientific assertion, firstly it would be necessary to do good science. Not be scientistic or pre-judgemental. Therefore, take a large number of children and attempt to falsify methodologically, an appropriate scientific working hypothesis, e.g., taking the poo in the potty away from the child unkindly, when the child is still proud of the poo, can cause anal retentivity in the child as an adult. To falsify this, it would be necessary to take the poo away in this unkind fashion over an extended period, from many children, and attempt to show that anal retentivity did not result, failing 'every time'. At least to experimental accuracy and statistical reproducibility, given reasonable assumptions. In reality, a statistical correlation would be generated for such an analysis, given appropriate definitions and methodology.

Have these experiments been performed ? I'd be interested to know. I would hope not. Though some psych's do have a deservedly bad reputation. Not all variants of psych' take the Hippocratic Oath 'first do no harm'. For instance, psychiatrists as healers do. Psychologists do not. If such experiments were performed, maybe any such children could be 'disturbed', broadly speaking, without being specific about resulting adult deficits. Maybe psych's do something different ? Perhaps talk to large numbers of anally retentive adults and then ask them if they had the poo in their potties taken away unkindly, for long relevant periods, as children. I do wonder if many anally retentive people can remember this ? I would be interested to see the statistics, if gathered in a methodologically sound fashion.

Along the above lines, and as a kinder sort of experiment, a scientist might pose the roughly (but not completely) 'reciprocal' assertion: not taking the poo in the potty away from the child unkindly, when the child is still proud of the poo, cannot cause anal retentivity in the child as an adult. Then falsification of this related assertion, would require following a cohort of children who did not have the poo in the potty taken away from them unkindly, for relevant long periods of their respective childhoods, and attempting to ascertain that they did become anally retentive as adults, failing 'every time'. Again to within experimental error and statistical reproducibility, with reasonable assumptions. Intuitively to me, this roughly reciprocal assertion would be found false. Best guess, without gathering the data or doing the stats.

On the notion of the term 'two-way', and ambiguous use of terminology, relevant to my personal experience of (non) conversations with psych's, we could consider other usages of the term anally retentive. This could for instance translate roughly as constipated. In which case, it would be necessary to look for causes of constipation. Which would be a medical rather than a psychiatric issue. Confusing medical and psych' issues, and applying psych' techniques outside of their respective domains of applicability, to non psych' matters, does have a bad history, I seem to remember [Sir Peter Medawar, Pluto's Republic]. I should recheck.

Interestingly from the point of view of science, most everyday questions are not accessible to science. Science is slow and laborious, requiring comprehensive experimentation and model building. Most science has to be done by full time scientists, as their day jobs. For daily questions, however, pre-science is always possible, in the form of 'reasoned thinking based on evidence, internal world and external world'. And eschewing scientism, i.e., unscientific pre-judgement of any issue before the evidence has been examined and the analysis performed.

In my personal experience, neither NHS medics nor NHS complaints staff, achieve anything close to a scientific or pre-scientific approach. I find them to be pre-judgemental and not bothering to show required due diligence in checking, corroborating, clarifying, correcting or verifying key facts. They have propagated falsehoods throughout my medical records with total impunity. And 'libelled' me repeatedly, under common usage of that term, totally safe from all recourse under the law, within private meetings and the privileged Mental Health Tribunal environ. NHS complaints procedure has refused point-blank, to consider respective documentary evidence in list-based fashion, true / false, true / false, …, on a ~10+ month time scale -- when examination of such evidence would have thrown out a spurious, malicious or trouble-making claim on day one. Incorrect facts and falsehoods on which decisions to 'violate human rights' are based, in the form of deprivation of liberty, livelihood and mob-handed physical assault. 'Soft force' in the 'nicest (!) possible way, by other NHS staff just doing their day jobs, in order to enforce injections. Those forced injections against absolute refusal of such 'treatment' (= assault) on the grounds of being totally prescription-drug free for a couple of years (except for repeated medic 'junkification' with prescription drugs by 'soft force'), never having taken recreational drugs, ~35 years' tee-total, never having smoked, exercising regularly, adequately healthy, highly functional and of generally happy disposition. My only 'antisocial problem' being 'thinking the wrong way'.

And if these 'human rights violations' are actually legal (?), then this is a civil liberties issue.

Thus some fundamental psychology versus science issues, including the need for systematic scientific experimentation and methodologically sound falsification. Or more colloquially 'just getting facts right'. Also, cognitive psychology versus broadly stimulus-response modelling, effectively multi-input / multi-output systems modelling. Thus psychology as science of mind, with and without models of mind, e.g., some variants giving science of bodies. And metrics for efficacy of treatment in psychiatry. Patient mind included, or not included, in the diagnostic and treatment loop ? Efficacious treatment from whose point of view and assessed how ?

Axiom-1 v. Axiom-1' and Discrimination

Given free definition, a system can always assert its own self consistency. And holders can always apply that system to any domain, including self-demonstration of own self correctness. However, that system will always be inconsistent by definition, viewed from any system with a 'natural' definition of equality '='. Such systems cannot (?) and do not (?) assert their own self-consistency and known correctness. I'm still thinking about those (?)-marked tentative assertions.

Scientific systems, as just one example of knowledge systems, provide only always-tentative models, always known to be incomplete current best approximations, falsified systematically, to experimental accuracy and statistical reproducibility, given reasonable assumptions.

Given any assertion of own self correctness, it is possible that a holder of such an axiomatic position can be unaffected personally by that choice, until its domain of application impacts self. In which case, either internal inconsistency, or coupling to, or embedding within, some other system, could lead to contradictions or conflicts, etc., impacting self. Thus holders of such positions could be discriminatory, without either knowledge or concern, until feedback from some other domain of application, within a larger framework, impacted personally the holder of such an axiomatic position, asserting its own correctness.

Thus axiomatic positions asserting self-correctness can be held consistently, until conflicts arise in given domains of application, impacting those holding those positions. At which point, the self-consistency of the system must be considered, and its consistency relative to any additional coupled or embedding structure, past, present or future,

-- where those are the correct level of physical emergence in any given domain of application.

Until such conflicts or contradictions impact the holders of such positions, discrimination can occur, conscious or unconscious, recognised or non recognised. Prior to such impacts, knowledge of this possibility raises the question of the critical appraisal of the possiblity of discrimination. For instance, flagged by claims of discrimination or otherwise. And without the need to wait for observations or impacts, resulting from any possible internal conflicts. Or from any possible conflicts related to any possibly-relevant, additional, coupled or embedding systems, past, present or future.

Key questions being: why and where to look for possibilities of any such discrimination ? Especially, given both the possible range of disputes and the range of possible disputants and their respective, disputant-standard-axiomatic-assertions of self-correctness.

And under what circumstances, if any, can a claim of discrimination, be ignored, from a position of integrity and honesty, ethics and morals ? Or, treated without minimal fairness and transparency, with regard to anyone or anything, making such an allegation ?

The position, Axiom-1 versus Axiom-1', is fundamental and captures everything from civil protest and resistance, to terrorism versus freedom fighting, to slavery.

The Meaning of 'Meaning'

As an interesting to me related follow-on, e.g., in 'logic', any system could define itself always to be: (a) correct and (b) truthful. That irrespective of what it 'says or does'. However, is any such system then meaningless ? As everything depends (?) on the definition and meaning of terms, do we then get to the meaning of 'meaning' ? Wrapped up in that, certainly from the view of 'logic systems', one key consideration is the definition and nature of 'equality' (=). And given some application, another can be the nature and relative importance of 'power'.