so, we're done up until the 25th, and it's time to stop to eat.

after i finish eating, i will have one more segment to complete before i can start posting this and moving on to the next thing, which is filing a complaint against the divisional court judge in federal court, and just generally checking up on the court stuff.

after that, i will need to work through the various liner notes for all of those records that i released or re-released over january, 2014. and, then, i can finally pivot to period three.

i bet you do, don't you.

you're not the centre of the universe; this is about me - it's not about you.

i don't care about you.

at all.

sorry.

there will inevitably be some people that will be unable to define any meaningful reason to exist when given the freedom to do so, and will choose perpetual drunkenness in the face of objective meaninglessness as a rational conclusion of their own futility.

and, that's really ok.

we should stop pretending that it isn't, or that there's any better way around it - that's a choice, and it should be respected for what it is.

i think there's little question that drinking can form a bad habit, or that psychiatric intervention may be useful in helping people break that bad habit, as it may be in any other habitual or compulsive behaviour.

and, i don't really doubt that physical addiction to alcohol is theoretically possible in the most extreme scenarios, even if i think it's over-diagnosed as a bad excuse for smelly drunks.

what i think is flatly absurd is the idea that it's genetic, or an inherited condition, and that "alcoholics" are essentially powerless because their dna renders them helpless. that's just fucking ridiculous, and any organization pushing that idea is a dangerous cult that should be driven into the sea with pitchforks.

what "alcoholics" need is some kind of drive, some kind of purpose. they need something they'd rather do than get fucked up. and, i do think it's that simple - they really just need some focus in life where they're able to say "i'd rather do this than get drunk".

you might ask "are the kids not enough?" or "is their partner not enough?" or "is (insert whatever) not enough?", and you might even get defensive about it or question a person's morals if they give you the "wrong" answer. but the answer is rather clearly that, no, it isn't enough, and that's why the person is resorting to the bottle. an empirical analysis is that the kids and the partner and the (insert whatever) are actually the source of the problem for this person, who rather obviously doesn't want kids or isn't happy with their partner or wants out of (insert whatever). and, they need to be helped to realize that - that kids aren't for everybody, and sometimes relationships cause more problems than they solve, and that society doesn't provide one-size-fits-all solutions.

i'm just approaching this from a basic existentialist position: it's really just a question of defining some reason to exist and following through with it. objective purpose may be a delusion, and realizing it may make drunkeness rational, to a certain extent. but, transcending that means making up your own purpose, defining your own reasons, setting your own goals and then following through with them.

for a lot of people, the hard part is going to be in telling society to fuck off - and the help they really need is in building the self-confidence to actually do it.

don't let your loved ones get eaten by these cults. help them to see that they're alone in this universe, and need to define their own purpose all by themselves.

https://www.alcoholproblemsandsolutions.org/is-alcoholism-a-disease-heres-the-evidence-and-logic/

i'm just updating some posts, and i want to resummarize something that i've posted about a few times, because i think it's one of the more substantive ideas i've posted in this space over the years.

natural selection should always be treated as a hypothesis to be demonstrated, and should never be treated as an assumption to be uncovered.

i'm not actually arguing with the modern evolutionary synthesis, although i might be reproportioning it - all biologists agree that randomness and selection don't just work at cross-purposes, but are necessary for each other. what i'm actually trying to do is formalize this, because so much of what happens in evolutionary biology really isn't actually science, for the reason that they're so hardwired into their assumptions.

so, let's say you have a species of spider that eats it's mate before it breeds, and this behaviour is observed to decrease reproductive rates. oops. i've read papers where serious biologists try to argue that this is natural selection at work, which is retarded, but why are they doing that? because the synthesis has it drilled into them - everything is selection.

but, everything is not selection, and a spider that eats it's mate before it fucks it is obviously malfunctioning at a pretty brutal level. pointing out that this is obvious, while obvious, is not actually science either, though. so, what is science?

well, you need to throw a statement down and try and disprove it! that's how you do science, and the exact opposite of what evolutionary biologists do on a day-to-day basis.

science, in context, means doing this - you assume drift, and try to prove it wrong. it's only once you've ruled out drift that you can deduce selection.

in fact, this is obvious, and no biologist would disagree with me, when presented in such flamboyant terms as this. so, why don't biologists just fucking do it right, then? why do they need a logician, of all things, to yell at them to use the scientific method?

it's cultural. no, really, that's the right answer; biology is less removed from religion than the other sciences are. that's the actual correct answer, here. but, this excuse is fading, and even reversing.

nowadays, biologists are far more data driven than, say, physicists are. it's the physicists that are stuck with unfalsifiable theories nowadays, and the biologists that are basically doing applied chemistry.

so, this is a call to the field of evolutionary biology to clean itself up and start being more rigorous. you can't just assume any old trait is selection - you have to actually prove it.