Trump-bait / The Presidential Debate

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

Random debate on the U.S. Presidential Debate

-Who won this debate, and why?
-Who do you think will win the election?
-And who would you have voted for?

--
Me:
-I think Hillary probably won it. (If I had to guess the ratings.)
-I think Hillary will probably win it, and that it will probably be a close one. (Even given how dumb they make Trump look on television.
-Probably Nobody... Don't look at me... No no no... no no... But if I ABSOLUTELY had to vote, then my vote sways toward Trump. (Don't kill me.) (Can you really blame me, though, if there are no good options?)

(Keeping it brief so I don't have a huge wall of text.)

[charon the ferryman]

Its complete cancer and the two main candidates are cancer, we need to surgically remove the 2 party system, the electoral college and practically everything to do with elections at this point

I either will vote for Johnson or Duke Nukem because at least those two aren't completely retarded. Yes, a fictional character has more intelligence than those morons. Johnson more because I think we need to break the two-party system honestly because it won't survive much longer, or else our country will fall to complete @#$% lol

At least TomoNews has great animations for the occasion:







ALSO YAHOO WE GET IT YOU WANT ME TO VOTE FOR CLINTON WELL I'D RATHER VOTE FOR CLINT EASTWOOD



Real Talk: To be brutally honest, I think the Constitution needs an upgrade for the new era. The government is losing its effectiveness fast for providing services, at least the US government, in comparison to private companies. The government is one of the most inefficient systems currently in play in our modern world. For example they can't seem to get anything right with my brother, he's a legal resident alien ever since he was like 8 or so and he's almost been deported several times for literally bullshit in the paperwork. Furthermore they spent the resources of firing up a helicopter to make a marijuana plant raid when there were only TOMATOES at his place. It's gotten to the point that my whole family holds a lot of frustration for this country; at least I'm a citizen so I don't have to worry about that. But let's face it - if the US was a company, it would go out of business real quickly.

Marijuana is just one of the many things this country mismanages to an extreme level - at least in other countries I would only get fined for using it, not have a whole year and a half of my life dislodged because of probation. Just think about how much time and money is wasted on this one thing, and then realize just how much time is wasted on similar endeavors and you get a scale of how big this mismanagement problem is. At least stakeholders in a company can make real change to management when things like this happen in a public company.

Furthermore, as technology marches on, the government is falling behind. In the past, revealing state secrets was a huge deal and took quite a bit of effort to get it to the press, and the government could try to shut it down as was seen with The Pentagon Papers. Nowadays, if the government pisses off a Snowden or a Manning, all that information gets loose (and way way WAY more data can be leaked than just the pentagon papers), and the entire public now knows, and there's almost NOTHING the government can do about it. Yeah, sure, they treat Manning like a subhuman practically at this point but the damage is already done and no action can be taken to actually reverse that.

If you want to get something done, the government is practically a last resort. Let's look at disability employment protection laws. These actually do jack @#$% to protect the disabled and their employment because of how many states have "at will" employment policies. Even if they don't, they can simply give another excuse to why they want to fire you, when the real reason is because you're blind and blind stuff is a pain in the @#$ to implement. However, if you were able to implement a solution that actually mitigates this problem, then the problem of blind employment would be mitigated as well, and employers wouldn't have to hire employees that cost a lot of money to maintain that are only there to make their quotas look good - they could actually start hiring blind people based on their actual talent. This is why activism is such a failure most of the time, because it doesn't address the real problem and expects the government to pass a law to make things feel better. But it almost never works out pretty.

Another major problem - one that I don't really know what the right solution is - is that everyone can vote directly for at least senators. You might think that's crazy for me to say this, but let me put it this way - do you really want a nation of uneducated people voting on legislature, or do you want a team of trusted, diverse, highly educated team of individuals to go forward with it? The real problem with this approach is execution though, since disabling voting power is a great doorway to outright oppression - but this voter knowledge discrepancy costs our nation a ton of resources. The fact that things like evolution are even subject to "political debate" shows how backwards our country really is. This cripples our workforce by basically blinding individuals to knowledge that can help them be useful assets towards our development. Again, I don't know what the solution is, I just know a solution is desperately needed as we continue to lag behind educationally.

But as I stated previously, I don't think this protective infrastructure can keep up with technology. Any kid with access to the internet can find out about evolution and start questioning their parents. Any adult can go onto WikiLeaks and find out just how corrupt Hillary Clinton really is.

What we're left with is an extremely weak legacy infrastructure that we've basically been stuck with because of status quo. Now I don't agree with libertarians who believe we need to return to the constitution because that's where a lot of our problems lie - people seem to think the constitution only has the bill of rights and the amendments when in reality those are probably the best parts of it and weren't even part of the original submission of the document. I think the only real resolution is a reconstruction of the Constitution for the modern era. That smelly document is over 225 years old, and I don't care if it's a part of our cultural heritage, it desperately needs a system update.

[Salanewt]

I'm not American, so my vote would go for "who cares" in this instance. :p

[charon the ferryman]

must be fun not being sent to jail for ludicrous amounts of time up there for smoking plants

or have a low flying helicopter at your house because they think you have plants but you don't

[Caledor]

All this debate makes me think is that italians used to be made fun of abroad, due to Berlusconi being Head of Government, to the point where some of us used to wear t-shirt stating "i didn't vote for Berlusconi" in 4 different languages while outside our country.

My random guess is that we're gonna see similar t-shirts around here next summer, worn by Americans.

That aside, i'm with squirtle on the "who cares" party. :p

[Salanewt]

must be fun not being sent to jail for ludicrous amounts of time up there for smoking plants

or have a low flying helicopter at your house because they think you have plants but you don't

I guess, lol. You can still be charged for carrying it (usually only enforced for higher amounts or being close to the border) and the helicopter thing only happens every now and then in rural areas when they want to crack down on illegal grow-ops, assuming helicopter use for that. It's not actually illegal to smoke it though.

"My random guess is that we're gonna see similar t-shirts around here next summer, worn by Americans."

I'm looking forward to seeing those the next time I hit up some Niagara casinos. :p

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

I guess, lol. You can still be charged for carrying it (usually only enforced for higher amounts or being close to the border) and the helicopter thing only happens every now and then in rural areas when they want to crack down on illegal grow-ops, assuming helicopter use for that. It's not actually illegal to smoke it though.

In one way, I'm like why not just group Marijuana in the "Right to bare arms" category, and not have it illegal to carry? However, as long as I don't have to deal with potentially gross/hard to breath smoke smells, then I guess I'm okay. I'm not a smoker myself.

I'm looking forward to seeing those

If you see any, be sure to take pictures! (Or at least, the shirts you saw.)

the next time I hit up some Niagara casinos. :p

Ah. A gambler! Ever been to the Trump Taj Mahal...? If so, then we have another thing in common. (But I didn't gamble at the time... although my father may have a tiny bit. Not much, though.) It was way back... probably the time we took a vacation to New Jersey once? (And revisited New York City.)

(And yeah, only mentioned Trump Taj Mahal b/c it is at least semi-related to topic.)

I remember visiting Niagara Falls a long time ago... (Was the first visit to New York City)... and the gift shops... and that lighthouse thing(?) I think... whatever it was that had a gift shop(?) .... but didn't remember any casinos... interesting, though.


--
It's like a random idea came to my head similar to Pokemon GO... But instead, it would be about taking selfies with certain things in the background. (Like the Falls, etc.) You could store a picture in each slot filling in for that slot's requirements and such...  Weird idea (Didn't say it was a good one), and I'm sure people could cheat on that,.. unless there's a random crypto that you can scan at those places.. Erm... I feel like there's a missing piece to that idea...

[Menaus]

This election has to be one of the most simultaneously hilarious and retarded creatures of politics to come out of the system. As Trump would say, believe me there have been some real doozies in the past.

If we're being honest about what a debate really is, it is a pissing match between the candidates to see who can get the most burns. In that respect, I say that it was Trump who won the debate. If we're being intellectually honest, then it was a @#$% show from the start, no candidate really responded to much of anything the other said (especially the blatant straw men either candidate throws the other way), and all in all both of them went so off topic you began to wonder if they were there for a debate, or if they were really there for a pissing match where they try to add their campaign lines as often as they can (whodathunk?).

I'm surprised, though, that the moderator was actually quite fair in comparison to the other two debates. In the previous debates the moderators were literally arguing against Trump for Clinton. In this one he was far more fair, although if we're being rigorous I think he was actually a little biased towards Trump this time.

I will agree with a lot of what you say, here, Seto, although a few things I have to comment on.

Another major problem - one that I don't really know what the right solution is - is that everyone can vote directly for at least senators. You might think that's crazy for me to say this, but let me put it this way - do you really want a nation of uneducated people voting on legislature, or do you want a team of trusted, diverse, highly educated team of individuals to go forward with it? The real problem with this approach is execution though, since disabling voting power is a great doorway to outright oppression - but this voter knowledge discrepancy costs our nation a ton of resources. The fact that things like evolution are even subject to "political debate" shows how backwards our country really is. This cripples our workforce by basically blinding individuals to knowledge that can help them be useful assets towards our development. Again, I don't know what the solution is, I just know a solution is desperately needed as we continue to lag behind educationally.

I think you're on point here. This problem has been a big issue since before this country's founding, and it still hasn't been solved. On the one hand, you have the teeming masses of idiots who have no idea what voting for one thing of the other even means, and this applies not only to direct democracy but also to representative democracy. Representative democracy just shifts the issue from the policies themselves to the representatives, which doesn't do anything to resolve tyranny of the majority nor aristocratic rule. And, on the other hand, you have blatant aristocratic rule where a minority largely has control over the government and can use it's faculties to plunder the people it's supposed to protect. The problem with government as it has been is twofold: not only do the policy makers (whether that be the demos or the archons) not have much any knowledge as to the practical effects of their proposals, the incentives all point towards using their power for their own benefit at the expense of others.

You mention how private business often does better than government, and so here I'd like how to highlight how this is different for private businesses. For a business both of these problems are minimized extensively. On the first point, businesses always have to make decisions on a profit and loss basis, meaning that effective decisions are rewarded and ineffective penalized. And on the second point, whenever an individual business attempts to use the power and money (that has been given to it as a reward for the service that it has provided to its customers) against the interests of those it serves, it is usually punished by people changing who they choose to purchase from so they lose money, which is what they want. Both the former and the latter point are really solved by one thing, and that is by profit and loss, and this is how the interests of the people the business is serving often stay aligned with the interests of the business itself. I think we need to try to look for ways we can get government the same advantage. I think we need to think of government as more of an agency that we ask to provide us with certain services rather than what it is now. I propose that the government give its citizens the universal right to secede at any time and for any reason. Like a business, this would mean that a government would need to stay on its toes to appease its citizenry, and thus governments would have to find ways to keep taxes low and services effective if they are to keep their revenue given to them by their taxpayers.

Now I don't agree with libertarians who believe we need to return to the constitution because that's where a lot of our problems lie - people seem to think the constitution only has the bill of rights and the amendments when in reality those are probably the best parts of it and weren't even part of the original submission of the document. I think the only real resolution is a reconstruction of the Constitution for the modern era. That smelly document is over 225 years old, and I don't care if it's a part of our cultural heritage, it desperately needs a system update.

I'll have to correct you here. The libertarians you speak of are only a few and far between clueless bunch who call themselves libertarians probably because of their free market bent, and no other reason. Austin Peterson is a prime example. In reality, they're usually the hardcore teaparty conservatives who ignore the terrible behavior by the newly created constitutional government which was blatantly tyrannical by the standards of people who fought in the revolution. Libertarianism was never built on constitutional government (which is more of a classical liberal thing), but rather on the principle that property rights must be universally upheld. In this respect, the constitution fails miserably for the most part, but as far as some amendments and the bill of rights go it is oftentimes solid.

In one way, I'm like why not just group Marijuana in the "Right to bare arms" category, and not have it illegal to carry? However, as long as I don't have to deal with potentially gross/hard to breath smoke smells, then I guess I'm okay. I'm not a smoker myself.

I think this is an interesting point, and needs to be explored more. The founders of the US, I believe, placed such emphasis on the bearing of arms not so much because they were special objects that people needed to have so much that they were often taken by tyrannical governments to keep people from defending themselves. I place emphasis moreso on the *take* portion, not so much on the defense. It is my view that we have ought to have gun rights not so much due to any special rule but rather a very normal (lol unintended pun) rule: things the people own shouldn't be taken from them. This should apply to marijuana just as much as it applies to guns, just as much it should apply to anything that people own, and in that respect not only marijuana ought be legal in all respects, but a ton of other drugs, too.

[charon the ferryman]

I guess, lol. You can still be charged for carrying it (usually only enforced for higher amounts or being close to the border) and the helicopter thing only happens every now and then in rural areas when they want to crack down on illegal grow-ops, assuming helicopter use for that. It's not actually illegal to smoke it though.

Please tell me they at least CHECK to make sure you have a grow op there instead of just wasting all that fuel and time and money on people like my bro, or people who have like 1-2 plants because it happened to grow in their back yard

seriously they do it to these old people too who just had one marijuana plant start growing in their yard. The plants are quite hardy and will try to grow anywhere. Its completely retarded.

@Menaus

I suppose I'm more libertarian than I thought. People do a pretty poor job at explaining what a "libertarian" actually means, perhaps because of idiots like Peterson. I try to avoid labels with my own political beliefs because they often suggest you subscribe to some beliefs that you might not hold, but I digress.

On the one hand, you have the teeming masses of idiots who have no idea what voting for one thing of the other even means, and this applies not only to direct democracy but also to representative democracy. Representative democracy just shifts the issue from the policies themselves to the representatives, which doesn't do anything to resolve tyranny of the majority nor aristocratic rule.

Even more worrisome is the way that the election model is built. Even with more palatable candidates, voters still only vote based on a few key things that they personally care about, and then ignore the rest. What this gives the elected candidate is the requirement of having to fulfill the key issues that voters are most interested in, but once those things are done, the elected candidate is essentially free to do as they please. And this is extremely worrisome, since it's clear that the US politicians have used this hole to engage in wars and try to gain more and more control - which is almost the opposite of what the common US citizen actually cares about. Most US citizens are very closed off to foreign affairs and don't really care about anything outside of what a certain politician may say.

I think this is a major reason why Bernie Sanders' campaign was targeted - Hillary would maintain control in this aspect while Bernie's campaign was focused on returning more to a domestic field. Bernie wouldn't have encouraged an aggressive foreign policy when people didn't want it (or at least, seemed less likely to). To be honest I think Trump would be better than Hillary in this regard but again Trump is a firebrand moron who I feel did a better job at making a joke of the US election system than actually being a good candidate.

This is extremely evident because you get large groups of people who support causes they have no idea about and only support because their "party" supports that cause - most obvious example that comes to mind is Israel vs Palestine, but there are plenty of other examples elsewhere. This problem is furthered by the government encouraging wars based on the grounds of "terrorism" despite the fact that foreign terrorism is almost a moot problem in the United States outside of 9/11 and a few peppered ISIS attacks in the last few years. The push is so great that people almost have entirely forgotten that the second biggest terrorist attack on US soil was the Oklahoma City Bombing, all domestic and all the work of angsty americans.

It should be noted that while Republicans and Democrats are almost always neck to neck, they rely on each other because the false dichotomy that they cause (you HAVE to be a republican or you HAVE to be a democrat) allows each party to stay healthy. This election is almost blatantly obvious in this fact, because many people are voting for Trump or Clinton just because they hate the other one (which is probably the worst possible reason to elect anyone ever). As I stated in the Cbox, if the election was based on Disapproval ratings, Gary Johnson would probably be the winner, lol. The reason why the media was almost allergic to Sanders and Johnson is because both threaten that stability, and we already know that Hillbills has her hands deep in their pockets.

You mention how private business often does better than government, and so here I'd like how to highlight how this is different for private businesses. For a business both of these problems are minimized extensively. On the first point, businesses always have to make decisions on a profit and loss basis, meaning that effective decisions are rewarded and ineffective penalized. And on the second point, whenever an individual business attempts to use the power and money (that has been given to it as a reward for the service that it has provided to its customers) against the interests of those it serves, it is usually punished by people changing who they choose to purchase from so they lose money, which is what they want. Both the former and the latter point are really solved by one thing, and that is by profit and loss, and this is how the interests of the people the business is serving often stay aligned with the interests of the business itself. I think we need to try to look for ways we can get government the same advantage. I think we need to think of government as more of an agency that we ask to provide us with certain services rather than what it is now. I propose that the government give its citizens the universal right to secede at any time and for any reason. Like a business, this would mean that a government would need to stay on its toes to appease its citizenry, and thus governments would have to find ways to keep taxes low and services effective if they are to keep their revenue given to them by their taxpayers.

I agree entirely, however, I think there is one problem with having government run as a business which adds an extra wrinkle to the issue - government protects its citizens from other governments overtaking them. Businesses fail all the time and are replaced by other business which are able to compensate for the difference. The INDUSTRY is what allows stability, because a single business failing means that another can take its place (and often already has). However, that's not really something that would benefit the people if government collapsed because of the defense that it provides its people.

Now granted, the way the United States uses its defense is not really on "defense" and more on "world domination", but at the same time, a collapse of US government would be catastrophic, especially for the states bordering Mexico. Furthermore, government is essentially the "basket" for all socially provided services. In a way, the government vaguely functions similarly to an insurance company in that sense (you pay in taxes towards the government and you take out when you need it).

Perhaps what might work better here is having a "government industry" that has several entities providing government features, under a single management system. I guess you could think of it as different committees in government, but instead of being absolutely declared, they instead spawn due to market needs and die when they are no longer able to compete. The problem of services not being covered would not last long because another business will seize this opportunity.

However, I think part of the problem too is ultimately cultural. Because of the power that government has, there's often an assumption of powerlessness. This is basically what a lot of liberal ideas are based around, the idea of distributing wealth to compensate for this powerlessness. However, I have found in my life that this sense of powerlessness is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and adhering to a too liberally leaning policy would essentially set that prophecy in stone. Part of the problem is that people really do expect a free lunch and don't want to accept just how difficult it is to stay competitive, but as many of those online businesses cropping up in the last 10 years have shown, if there is a market, people will buy, and if there is a need it will eventually be addressed in one way or another.

Let's return to the blind accessibility example since it's a good example of government compensating for a business void:

Certain industries have a lot of lag, which is why something like blind accessibility still sucks despite a great need. The problem with accessible devices is that they are 1. expensive and 2. archaic in design and model. However, to update the models and make them more efficient requires a vastly different approach - a major problem with standard approaches is that they are too "sight-based" - developing a blind-oriented model is difficult (blind people can't build the machine themselves due to issues with static electricity and lining up the wire work, while sighted people can't design a machine to translate adequately without understanding the blind experience). But if we look at the government's solution, it doesn't provide help either, and actually puts more strain on businesses by forcing them to treat their disabled employees differently. This actually encourages discrimination because the disabled person is seen as a clear bottleneck towards a business (and I've seen my friends go through it).

So we're still stuck with the problem that blind people are still not up to speed with modern technology, and the government's solution actually makes the problem worse. What could the government do to make it better? Instead of investing in laws that force companies to act a certain way, instead invest towards a company or even a committee that is oriented towards these developments. Government already does this somewhat and in cases like NASA (while not a business, the idea still applies) it proved to be a vital success. If anything, the first step government could take is to work towards encouraging businesses in certain directions instead of holding down their natural growth.

I think this is an interesting point, and needs to be explored more. The founders of the US, I believe, placed such emphasis on the bearing of arms not so much because they were special objects that people needed to have so much that they were often taken by tyrannical governments to keep people from defending themselves. I place emphasis moreso on the *take* portion, not so much on the defense. It is my view that we have ought to have gun rights not so much due to any special rule but rather a very normal (lol unintended pun) rule: things the people own shouldn't be taken from them. This should apply to marijuana just as much as it applies to guns, just as much it should apply to anything that people own, and in that respect not only marijuana ought be legal in all respects, but a ton of other drugs, too.

A counterpoint: What about drug prescriptions?

Now, I'm not saying that individuals should be persecuted for having certain prescription drugs they shouldn't have, because checking and seizure is both time consuming and oppressive. And I don't think that something like Marijuana would be something that would have to be restricted by prescription.

But a major problem currently in regards to drug use is actually the opiate epidemic. I've personally lost family to it. It's not just people going on the streets and shooting up heroin, a large part of it is completely legal and is essentially doctor malpractice.

Opiates aren't the only drug - antidepressants are also overprescribed and protocol is not followed. Again speaking from personal experience, I was prescribed an AD for depression after a single one night self-submission into a hospital (which was really to try to get help for a separate condition and I had no idea what to do), and a single visit to a neurologist. Looking back, the reason why I did what I did was because I was very scared and didn't know what to do because the condition was destroying my work career and depression was destroying my ability to function. However, after just leaving the job, my depression improved and the other condition was nowhere near as bad because of the reduced stress - and then I was locked on expensive antidepressant medication that I couldn't pay for while unemployed for 9 months.

You're essentially encouraged to go down a long line of doctors to keep getting the prescription to feed a real addiction. And it is a real addiction, because even at my relatively low dosage of 70/mg a day, it took 3-4 weeks of extremely bad withdrawal symptoms to actually get off the medication. Opiates are so dangerous that withdrawal can be life threatening in some cases. I can speak from personal experience that Marijuana addiction is almost nothing alike - it's more comparable to wanting to have some tasty food and brushing off the idea because you can't have it.

The other problem here too is the assumption that society as a whole gives that withdrawal programs actually work. The idea is this naive immunity like, "oh I can just get off this drug if it doesn't work for me", when in reality it's nothing like that. I was lucky to be unemployed when getting off my AD's - most people don't have this and have to keep taking them even if they don't need them anymore. There is no real withdrawal program that "works" for any of these extremely addictive substances, they're based on us lying to ourselves about the fact that our bodies will always be able to put up with anything that is thrown to it. This is why people often fall back in their old ways.

Ultimately, this behaviour is encouraged because the addiction is very real and doctors are no more than pill dispensers to these people. If they don't get what they want, they just find a doctor who will.

Again part of the problem is cultural - there's an expectation that you have to be a certain way in order to be successful, and you have to make your body conform to it. It's seen also in glaucoma patients who as children are forced through dozens of surgeries to "save" vision that will die off 15 years later anyways. It's seen in kids "diagnosed" with ADHD and put on these pills. Being blind or being energetic or being whatever are not acceptable and instead of building around these problems we use these medications and treatments to try to patch a bigger problem here. For me, that realization at a relatively young age that I will never be able to "be" that "ideal person" I'm expected to be was a horrible but eye opening experience that I see more and more other people experiencing themselves, and it's what made me realize what's wrong with this model.

This isn't to say that these drugs and treatments aren't necessary, or to say they don't save lives. The problem is that they are dangerously overprescribed and I'm really not sure what the solution would be here in my model. It's very frustrating to see otherwise very solid thinking individuals completely brush over this problem because crazy hippies think the solution is "go and take a walk in the woods". Eh, this is really off topic but I guess it's worth bringing up.

[dive_darkness]

Step kaiba: if I understand your very last paragraph correctly, what you're saying is that society (in general) should adapt to people with handicaps, and not excessively try to change the handicap, right ? Or are you only talking about trying to change very minor details (I don't think blindness fits here though) in someone in order to make him perfect ?

[charon the ferryman]

What I'm saying is that people are using premature solutions to deal with these problems because they fail to consider every aspect of the problem.

With the congenital glaucoma example, people treat glaucoma by basically claiming a glaucoma patient is "sighted" until their vision decays, and performs surgeries to try to fix the issues that are caused by glaucoma. However, because none of these treatments actually reverses damage done, or even reverses the process, eventually these people will end up blind. As you can imagine, this leads to a whole slew of problems, including severe psychological trauma and a stunted growth on being able to live as a blind person. A better solution would be to label these individuals as "blind" from the beginning and then try to properly integrate blind people into society. This is a better solution because 1. it's not restricted to people with glaucoma and 2. it doesn't have the severe consequences of all those treatments.

Treating blindness is, on a utility level, a far less adequate solution than accessibility because we don't actually have a cure for blindness and all the problems associated with transitioning between blindness to sightedness never need to be directly addressed. A lot of utility is lost when these congenital glaucoma people not only cannot integrate into society despite their blindness but also because of the psychological damage that these treatments cause.

Curing blindness, even if it was perfect, has a couple of problems, because since there are people who were born blind, they would need to properly transition. This can be extremely difficult because you've essentially built your whole life around being blind. What I notice when I talk to blind people is that their grievances aren't necessarily because they are blind, but rather how people treat them, the inability to find employment and other social issues. Some are honestly nervous about the thought of getting vision because it's such a dramatic change in their lives. Like it or not, something like blindness becomes a part of who these people are, and trying to force them into a sighted position without actually trying to solve the problems that actually cause their misery first might lead to more problems in the future. Let's face it - we rarely consider the blind when trying to figure out how to deal with the blind.

As I see it, a LOT of disorders suffer from this problem. Autism is another good example. Moderate to mildly autistic people thrive in certain environments, namely rigid, mechanical roles, where they are able to use their extremely specialized ability to good use. However because of the need for social interaction in many situations this utility is lost because they can't integrate well here.

Now, this isn't to say curing blindness isn't a good idea. We should still try to find cures for blindness because 1) if we can cure blindness before a life is built around it, then they can be raised as a sighted person, and 2) if someone goes blind later in their life as a sighted person, they can return to their previous state. However, what's important is to find the BEST solution for the problems here, and "curing blindness" isn't the best solution in all cases.

I sort of see everyone as having potential utility to offer towards society, and a lot of utility is lost by essentially trying to make people conform into a certain archetype that people should fall under. Culturally we're told to follow through a certain set of steps in order to reach success but these steps are more just a beaten path than anything. Not to say they aren't valuable, but I think the actual value through this process is lost because we try to streamline it so much. Blind people and other people with abnormalities both physically and mentally discover this fact a lot sooner than the general public because they can't fulfill this path and instead are forced to do something else. This might be a discussion for a different thread though.

[dive_darkness]

Alright: the success rate for congenital glaucoma surgeries is 80%, and with proper monitoring and regular check ups, you can save the eyes for a pretty long time (granted it's detected before the damage is done).

Also, just a few points: there is NO way to give sight to someone who was born blind. They don't have the right part in the brain to be able to see. While is you find a way to connect the optical nerve with a camera (which we lack the technology for), you can give back sight. But: if you don't have the neurons to interpreted the signals, it's 100% useless. Your brain does create new neurons, but not in the sight-related areas.
=> the only blind people you can cure are those who became blind later on, so those who became blind after the age of 2 -3 yo. Which is most of the blind population, really.

the way you explain things is the exact same argument obese people use to justify why they are fat. "I love to eat, you can't judge me and you should love me as you love someone that isn't obese" (caricatural representation). Of course society has to try to help those who can't do anything about their handicap, that includes autism, ADHD, mental disorders or incurable physical disorders. But if one condition is not suitable to society, then one should strive to adapt and accept the change if it can be changed. So I do perfectly understand why you give medications to people with ADHD for exemple.


Edit: I'm not saying you're wrong nor that the best solution isn't to try to make them blend much better in society by adapting it in a way that the can live normally in it. I just wanted to point out a few things that I found strange in your last post. (As well as give my thoughts, but anyone is free to disagree with me.)

[charon the ferryman]

...What the @#$% are you talking about.

It's true that glaucoma surgeries have a high success rates, but that doesn't mean they don't cause harm. First, you need to consider the psychological effects of glaucoma surgery. These surgeries are extremely invasive and include scraping calcium off the front of the eye, putting tubes in your eyes to regulate pressure, reattaching the retina, ect. If these surgeries are so traumatic to people that they are being submitted into hospitals in their 20's and 30's from attempted suicides, then there's something wrong. If these surgeries don't "fix" the situation then what point is there? This is not mentioning the fact that the "success rates" are based on the success of what surgery they were attempting, not "curing glaucoma" (for example, reattaching the retina, changing the eye pressure, ect). Yes, scraping off excess calcium is a treatment for glaucoma, and usually this surgery is successful, but that doesn't mean it reverses, cures or even really does much of anything for the disorder outside of maintaining your eyes.

Furthermore, their vision is not comparable to standard vision. These people are most certainly blind, which is why they are never allowed to drive. Most people I've met born with this condition have never been able to make out much. Some are able to read but often lose this ability in their 20's. They keep up with the standards for care and they have done everything right, and they go to the doctor and everything, but that's the thing - these people ARE blind and we are trying to make them sighted through prematurely developed treatments.

Do I have to pull up the surgery log of my close friends? I'm sure if I had their permission to share it with you, you would change your mind. It isn't something that you go and check in for. Maybe if you're older, but that's why I said congenital glaucoma. Older glaucoma patients have a much lesser need to continue going to surgery, but considering that 1 in 10,000 infants are born with it, it's not something that I would say is "low enough to be ignored".

Should I also bring up how expensive it is on both our nation and the individual's family? Or the limitations that having glaucoma has on your ability to travel, enjoy entertainment versus having your eyes removed? Or how painful the condition is? Or the large variety of medications that are required to regulate it?

The problem is that the statistics sound nice until you actually have to deal with it. I'm sure there are cases that are not as bad that are "cured" but the truth still stands - there are thousands of people in this country alone who are going blind and the surgeries are only putting it off.

We as a society view being sighted as more important than all the suffering that we're willing to put blind people through, because we feel that society must consist of sighted people, as blind people have limited utility (basket weaver syndrome). But if the problem is really seated in society's inability to properly integrate the blind, then trying to cure these people is not the most effective solution, and accessibility is a more practical answer, because it removes the actual problem (basket weaver syndrome).

Also, just a few points: there is NO way to give sight to someone who was born blind. They don't have the right part in the brain to be able to see.

Wrong. Many conditions with born blindness have nothing to do with brain development at all - for example, Leber's Congenital Amarosis (sp) is a disorder that causes the retina to be extremely underdeveloped. So much so that Leber's patients have been studied to understand how sight affects our childhood development. Gene therapy can help with people born with this condition to gain normal sight by basically allowing their retina to grow - however this doesn't help people born with this condition and grew up blind. There are also people born completely blind due to congenital glaucoma and that also has nothing to do with brain damage or malfunction.

The truth is that blindness can be caused by anything ranging from an eye defect to a brain defect. You can get hit with enough force to dislodge your optic nerve. You can be born without retinas, or lenses, or with extremely high eye pressure, or with eyes twice the size they're supposed to be, or without eyes at all. You can be born with an underdeveloped or malfunctioning visual cortex. There's literally a million things that can go wrong.

However, since you do seem to believe that born-blind is always a brain problem, can you address to me why society seems to act like it's always an eye problem and gives people who go blind or have visual difficulties because of problems in their visual cortex so much @#$%? Do you know how hard it is to get a diagnosis if your blindness is not caused by your eyes?

the way you explain things is the exact same argument obese people use to justify why they are fat. "I love to eat, you can't judge me and you should love me as you love someone that isn't obese" (caricatural representation).

What the hell. Overeating is a choice. Are you suggesting that blind people have a choice?

Blindness may be a disability, but blindness in of itself most times doesn't make you a sickly person. Obesity almost always does. So obesity is a problem that should have more priority in solving the problem than accepting it. You can live a healthy, long life as a blind person, but good luck doing that as an obese person.

I think you're missing the point here. The point isn't "just accept blind people for who they are", it's "come up with a better solution to deal with the problem". "Cures" for blindness that don't cure blindness, leave the person blind in their 20's or 30's and force them to live blind for most of that period anyways is NOT a adequate solution, especially when accessibility is already in need of development, and would benefit other sources of blindness. Especially if that long line of treatments leaves that individual in a messed up psychological state. And even if a treatment exists, forcing that treatment on people isn't right either because they have their own right to their own bodies, and you may be destroying their potential unique utility for lower quality generic utility.

Since blindness is not a condition that affects your health outside of your eyes in most cases, you really can't make the comparison.

Of course society has to try to help those who can't do anything about their handicap, that includes autism, ADHD, mental disorders or incurable physical disorders. But if one condition is not suitable to society, then one should strive to adapt and accept the change if it can be changed. So I do perfectly understand why you give medications to people with ADHD for exemple.

Of course, but the problem is we are prematurely judging those solutions to be adaquate solutions. Furthermore, if an individual performs better in a certain environment, then trying to normalize that individual loses the utility that person would have in that environment, which is true for many disabilities. Even blind people perform much better than sighted people in low light conditions.

Why should we sacrifice this utility by making everyone into essentially an "acceptable person"? Again, we lose the utility that difference offers if we want to just "fix" it all. This isn't even bringing into the problem that ADHD is oftentimes considered a diagnosis to make your kid shut up.

You should probably make another topic for this. Just saying. Also I highly suggest you educate yourself because you have no idea what you're talking about, you sound like someone who got their information off of a quick google search to back up their strong opinion. Drop the opinion and actually look into the problem yourself, with your shields down, and actually learn a little bit from these people.

But before I go, I have to ask you one thing - what actually makes blindness bad? Most life on earth is blind, and indeed some species evolve towards blindness, so clearly nature has no problem with finding a use for it. What is the actual problem that blindness presents? Because based on everything that I've gathered in the last 5 years, its society. The technology for a cure isn't here yet, despite what you might think. The technology to build equivalent accessibility is here, but we haven't built it yet. So which makes more sense to invest in?

[dive_darkness]

You do know that the brain rearrange itself when you're born right ? Which means that if the eye is blind, the brain selectively delete it's neurons related to sight. => no hope of recovery after the first few years. This is not a matter of the eye. If you can correct the eye disorder before then, then you can technically recover sight. You can technically correct the eye, but you cannot replace a neuron. You can replace the eyes by copying it's signals, but not a whole sight-area in the brain.

I never talked about people liking or not the operation. And I did research what I've just wrote before doing so. Congenital glaucoma IS manageable medically if you detect it early. I'm not talking and never talked about the patient's point of view and won't talk about it (because I have hardly any experience on that side).
Also when the heck did I ever say that every sight problems are in the brain ??? Do not insult me please, I didn't insult you. I know a ton about the medical facts because that's exactly what I'm studying. I admit that I have no idea about what the people feels.

What I tried to point out poorly was that the environment where handicapped people can have a full use, or a highe than normal one, is not always present. That's what I said that in my opinion, trying to fix those problems is more important that trying to modify the whole environment for those people.

Edit: answer by mp if you want to. Otherwise, let's just leave this thread and go back on it's subject.

[charon the ferryman]

You do know that the brain rearrange itself when you're born right ?

Which means that if the eye is blind, the brain selectively delete it's neurons related to sight. => no hope of recovery after the first few years. This is not a matter of the eye. If you can correct the eye disorder before then, then you can technically recover sight. You can technically correct the eye, but you cannot replace a neuron. You can replace the eyes by copying it's signals, but not a whole sight-area in the brain.

No no no no nope. This is not actually what happens. This is actually what happens.

Brains have a property known as "neuroplasticity", which means that parts of the brain usually used for one thing are often used for different things. People born blind do not "lose" their visual cortex. The problem with regaining sight actually has to do with the fact that as a brain adapts towards a blind lifestyle, the ability to understand a sighted one diminishes. The visual cortex does not "die" or "atrophy", it's processes are used for different purposes, usually those related with spacial reasoning.

And I did research what I've just wrote before doing so.

3 minutes of research is not enough to dive nose deep into this subject, I'm sorry.

Congenital glaucoma IS manageable medically if you detect it early. I'm not talking and never talked about the patient's point of view and won't talk about it (because I have hardly any experience on that side).

Yes, but the problem still remains - these people are still blind, and they will always be blind, and while not everyone with congenital glaucoma will have to have their eyes removed, they will still be blind (in function) for the entirety of their lives.

What I tried to point out poorly was that the environment where handicapped people can have a full use, or a higher than normal one, is not always present. That's what I said that in my opinion, trying to fix those problems is more important that trying to modify the whole environment for those people.

Yes, it's true that they can't be used to their full utility. My approach aims towards solving the barriers towards their full utility. I specialize in the blind, and I can tell you that most of their utility is lost because of the inability to work in sighted systems. Curing blindness can fix that but it's a very costly approach that has a lot of issues that I explained earlier, but it seems more palatable to the sighted public because we look at it like "well being blind sucks so you should be sighted". However, that's a hasty conclusion that doesn't actually investigate the real core problem, which is a social inability to integrate. If this inability can be fixed with proper accessibility then the problem is no longer a problem.

Also when the heck did I ever say that every sight problems are in the brain ??? Do not insult me please, I didn't insult you. I know a ton about the medical facts because that's exactly what I'm studying. I admit that I have no idea about what the people feels.

Why should I care about your feelings if you're dead wrong? If you're wrong, you're wrong, and if you're so wrong that you make me want to throw my head into a wall, you're an idiot who should really stop talking. What value does your opinion have over reality? If you don't know anything about these people then maybe you should sit down and listen to someone who does, and then make your own conclusions. I've dedicated 4-5 years to this and plan to make it a lifelong endeavor, perhaps you could learn something from it instead of being so arrogant.

Alright, I'm done here, make a new thread already.

[dive_darkness]

fine. Cya someday.

[Rolina]

I actually never bothered watching the debates - it's plain to me that both candidates are poor.  Hell, all four counting the main third parties...  I've heard some rumblings about some interesting write in candidates (Evan McMullin in particular), and I'll be looking into those to see if I find them agreeable.

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

Um... wow... What did I just read? It looked like a random debate on blindness... XD

@Not watching the debates: Don't worry, you literally didn't miss anything... They're rambling on the same subjects all the time... and criticizing each other, etc. - Yeah... Definitely poor.... If not in money, then maybe in mentality. (Etc.)

[charon the ferryman]

tomonews

don't ever stop

[Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas]

Wow... Whoever does this is quite artistic! I almost want to see a game made about them.