hummingwolf | (no subject)

In Donald A. Norman's book Emotional Design, there's some discussion of why human designers might want to create intelligent machines with something like human emotion.

The component failure should be detected at the visceral level and used to trigger an alert: in essence, the system would become "anxious." The result of this increased anxiety should be to cause the machine to act more conservatively, perhaps slowing down or postponing non-critical jobs. In other words, why shouldn't machines behave like people who have become anxious? They would be cautious even while attempting to remove the cause of anxiety. With people, behavior becomes more focused until the cause and an appropriate response are determined. Whatever the response for machine systems, some change in normal behavior is required.

Animals and humans have developed sophisticated mechanisms for surviving in an unpredictable, dynamic world, coupling the appraisals and evaluations of affect to methods for modulating the overall system. The result is increased robustness and error tolerance. Our artificial systems would do well to learn from their example.

Yesterday afternoon I went to see a psychiatrist, in part because my rheumatologist suggested a newish drug which he thought Medicaid would be more likely to pay for if it was prescribed by a psychiatrist. The new doctor did write a prescription for the rheumy's recommended drug, as well as a new prescription for Ritalin (which I've taken off & on for somewhere between eight years and a decade). After hearing a bit about my life as it is now, he also tried to convince me to take several more drugs, based on the fact that I'm clearly anxious and not sleeping all that well. The man was rather insistent.

During the appointment there was an uncomfortable argument going on in my mind as I tried to decide whether I should tell him that maybe the best treatment for the anxiety of someone who's worried about ending up homeless within a very short time period would be to figure out how to help that person find a home

or tell him that he really needs to change the medication for his own ADHD because he was acting very much like a ferret on crack.

The more reasonable part of my brain won, and I did tell him that I'd rather not take a bunch of new drugs when I've got an anxiety-provoking situation to deal with. He wasn't convinced. I guess there's just so much you can say to a crack-addled ferret.

A friend thought last night that I was pretty anti-drug. I'm not against drugs. I do take Ritalin and am grateful for the help it gives me in dealing with the cognitive problems that go along with fibromyalgia. What I am against is a culture where a person can say "Hi, I'm very upset right now because I'm afraid I'm going to end up on the streets and I need to find a place to live quickly and I don't know where to turn," a doctor can say "Here, take this pill to wipe your anxiety away," and the doctor's response is considered a helpful one. Of course I don't expect a doctor to help me find a place to live. But I do think they should recognize that not every emotion is a disease in need of a cure.

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Very well said.

Wish I could be of assitance.

Sounds like the better grasp of the situation was yours. . .

Oh, dear. I am confident in saying that I know all too well how the psychiatric "fix" works. I've been in very, very similar situations where I have gone to a doc for symptoms related to anxiety (sleeplessness and such). That anxiety was brought on, significantly, by just about unbearable living conditions and the fact that I had no where to turn and no one to ask for help. I was much like you, at first, in my resistance to such medication "fixes". I thought, "Gee. Help me get steady employment and reliable transportation and 90% of the problem will fix itself." Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Too many greedy bastards are making too much money off of over-medicating people. The psychiatric and geriatric sectors are particularly bad for it. It burns me up. If there is one thing that I have learned for certain is that the "system" that is suppose to help you is set up to keep you captive. I'm so sorry it's like this for you, right now. It will get better. I promise. I just can't promise that it won't get worse before it does. It did for me. I hope that it doesn't for you.

::REALLY HUGE HUG::

Thank you.

Well, of course *I* think so...

Yeah. In some ways it helps that I've had bad reactions to medications in the past. I now know enough about how my body works to know that throwing pills at it is an astonishingly bad idea.