H/T Rose for a trio of BBC videos: The Trap: What happened to our dreams of freedom?
They argued that Game Theory, developed during the Cold War, had subsequently been introduced into politics and medicine and much else. Game Theory treated humans as simplified robots ruthlessly pursuing their own self-interest.
I’ve only got through one and half of the videos, but I can see how it might have been applied to medicine. Clearly the simplified robots didn’t need to smoke, or drink, or eat too much, and so that was the first thing to put a stop to. Once that had been done, society would be much more efficient, and rational, and people would work harder. It was obvious, and it was rational, and it used “the objective power of numbers”.
Maybe that’s what happened to the medical profession. They got overtaken by mathematical modellers using a simple model of human life. Out went the old “caring profession” idea, and in came managers with targets – e.g. to reduce smoking prevalence by some amount -.
I was taught Game Theory a long time ago, and never thought that it had anything in the least meaningful to say about human nature. No more than I ever thought that the game of Life was any reflection on real life. Or that genetic theories of human life and behaviour (such as those advanced by Richard Dawkins) provided any meaningful picture either.
To tell the truth, I think more or less the whole lot of it is baloney, much like antismoking ‘science’ is baloney, and climate ‘science’ is baloney too.
I’ve begun to think that more or less everything that’s taught in universities is baloney these days. Not that it was always that way. Just seems to be that way now.
But it makes sense that all this Game Theory baloney has filtered through into politics and medicine and pretty much everywhere else, and the result is that we have mad things like smoking bans.
And yet I’m a fairly mathematical thinker. All my ideas seem to be mathematical. I was at it again yesterday with Rock Cloud Pangaea. And in Idle Theory I have my own simpified, mathematical-physical model of life. But my ideas aren’t the same as their ideas. If they’re baloney (and they probably are), they are at least a different flavour of baloney.
It’s not their mathematics that bothers me, anyway. It’s the underlying ideas which strike me as both simplistic and plain wrong.
Anyway, The Trap had quite a lot to say. And when it described public servants as motivated by self-interest, and scheming to build their own empires, Tobacco Control seemed a prime example of exactly that.
Part 2 of the set of videos is here, and part 3 here. They’re at least thought-provoking.
Frank Davis 
“Out went the old “caring profession” idea, and in came managers with targets – e.g. to reduce smoking prevalence by some amount -.”
The funny thing is that the actual amount is totally irrelevant. There’s a college in Canada that’s about to ban smoking outdoors on its campus (that’s the new big thing here in the US: dunno if it jumped the pond yet…) and Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer came out with witterings about the children (20 to 24 year old children) having a 29% smoking rate that, at 29% was “unacceptably high.”
So I wrote this little note to the article:
===
“29% is ‘Unacceptably high’? What number would Dr. Strang say was ‘Acceptably high’? My guess is that NO number would be ‘Acceptably high,’ which in turn makes his statement about the 29% nothing more than nonsense…. similar to just about all the other numbers and nonsense produced by the antismoking movement as they’ve moved from their proper role of education into the unacceptable role of “denormalization.” …
The ban is simply a form of behavioral conditioning: making an undesirable activity difficult or painful in some way in order to discourage it. Exactly like what the university researchers do to their lab rats when they want them to eat the red food instead of the white food and encourage it with little electric shocks. The only problem is that the University’s students are NOT rats and they shouldn’t be treated like rats, and they most certainly should not accept being treated like rats. They are not little schoolchildren running around the playground who occasionally need to be spanked so as to teach them not to run out onto the road where they can get hurt. They are 18+ years old and generally considered old enough to be given guns and told to run off and kill people or get killed themselves for our national benefit.
They’re old enough to make their own decisions about their healthy or unhealthy behaviors, and the proper role of the university is to serve as educator: not metaphorical cattle-rod-wielder.”
====
– MJM
Its a cattle Prod and after the duct tape is applied my wife shocks me back to reality! She screams there is life outside fighting smoking bans! ARRRGGG UUUGH!!! Yes dear yes dear yes dear…………..
LOL! Thanks for Prodding me back to reality Harley! :>
lmao………….its getting kinky at home
I suppose that the main reason for targeting universities with this sort of nonsense is because the people there are the brightest and the best, and if they can be controlled, then there won’t be much difficulty controlling everybody else.
No, they use university students as guinea pigs for experiments simply because they’re readily available. No other reason.
They also haven’t been out in the real world yet, which makes them very easy to boss about. Most uni students (apart from the mature ones who have returned in later life) have gone straight from home, to nursery, to primary school, to secondary school, to college and then to uni with little or no experience of the real, working world where they come across a whole host of differing opinions to the “right-on” views of teachers and university lecturers and idealistic visions of their peers.
I always said that I didn’t really grow up until I went out to work, and I was always surprised how superficial and immature my erstwhile schoolfriends were who remained at college or went on to uni, even if they ended up with better qualifications than I did.
I’ve often wondered if this is the real reason why successive Governments (the last one was the worst, though) have been so keen to keep the majority of youngsters in full-time education for as long as possible – because the longer you keep them in education, the greater the delay before they get out into the big, bad world where they are vulnerable to the disruptive independent opinions of people like us don’t-care old ‘uns who speak our minds and to hell with the consequences, and who aren’t afraid to hold views which don’t conform to the “acceptable” viewpoint, as dictated to us by the PTB.
Bravo, Michael. If only the universities would take your message to heart but, alas, they are their own elite and will not cow-tow to anyone as insignificant as an individual. New York Mayor Bloomberg comes to mind as well. Perhaps, someday, the students themselves will realize the true, insidious nature of these cretins called “educators” and will vote with their wallets and their feet.
Frank
When I first saw those programmes on TV in 2007, I was watching because I felt something had gone very wrong in our country, but I didn’t quite understand what they were telling me.
Watching it now with the benefit of hindsight the effect of that early warning is quite chilling.
I found this after watching Part 2
Targets in Healthcare: why we should game the system
26 March 2004
“The current health system survives through the interplay of unrealistic top-down directives and bottom-up gaming, allowing it to accommodate the difficult set of balancing acts that the modernisation agenda demands. As a result, the system is held at a state known as self organised criticality or “the edge of chaos”(3) where it is most efficient and adaptable. Evidence is emerging to suggest this may be the case in the NHS (4).
No system performs satisfactorily by working to rule. By gaming the system, policy-makers, managers and practitioners co-evolve in a manner that satisfies the unrealistic constraints placed upon the system.”
http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/30/targets-healthcare-why-we-should-game-system
Gaming, lying, or deception?
12 March 2004
The “gaming” referred to by Professors Bevan and Hood in reality put patients’ lives at risk as was clearly stated in the original 2001 National Audit Office report on inappropriate adjustments to NHS waiting lists. Gaming is not an innocuous past-time engaged in by managers so as to produce an illusion of success and hit a higher star rating as the Professors would wish the public to perceive it as – it is a potentially dangerous, life threatening deception.
The fact that the managers involved in the “gaming” almost invariably walked away – often with tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money into the bargain either through pay-offs or bungled dismissals – without being taken through a fair disciplinary process and held properly to account speaks volumes for the lack of regulatory effectiveness of the 1994 Corporate Governace codes and the later 2002 Code of Conduct for managers.
When Alan Milburn failed to introduce the Bristol Inquiry recommendations for a register and regulatory body for senior managers he did the patients, the public, and health care professionals, including the managers themselves, a great disservice that was not in the public interest. It is a pity that the Council for the Regulation of Healthcare Professionals can not take individual NHS trusts to the High court in the public interest.”
FDA loosens restrictions on nicotine replacement products
Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is relaxing its restrictions on the use of over-the-counter nicotine patches, gum and lozenges.
Currently, consumers are instructed to stop smoking when they begin using a nicotine replacement product and to stop using it after 12 weeks.
The FDA said on Monday it plans to remove both these restrictions in response to claims by critics that they may cause some smokers to abandon attempts to quit if they have a cigarette while on a replacement therapy.
Allowing people to stay on a nicotine replacement for longer than 12 weeks may increase their chance of quitting, they say.
British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline Plc, whose nicotine replacement products include Nicorette chewing gum and the NicoDerm skin patch, commended the decision, saying it believes “this is a positive step to help more smokers quit.”
The FDA said nicotine patches and gum were first approved between 1984 and 1992, while nicotine lozenges and mini-lozenges were approved between 2002 and 2009.
After reviewing published literature, the agency said, it has determined that the concomitant use of cigarettes and other nicotine-containing products “does not raise significant safety concerns.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/01/us-nicotine-fda-idUSBRE9300BD20130401
So now if they lower the nicotine levels in cigs we can patch up and smoke too to get the same natural nicotine dose ehh!
An immune system and thyroid upside for tobacco
Who would have guessed that second-hand cigarette smoke could have a surprising health benefit? Or that tobacco, long dismissed as unhealthy, might have some healing benefits, even playing a role in a new dietary supplement? Medicine and health technology are full of surprises sometimes.
In 2004, Dr. Paul Ladenson, Director of the Division of Endocrinology at Johns Hopkins, conducted a study among a group of flight attendants and found reduction of thyroiditis/Hashimoto’s Disease related to inhalation of second hand cigarette smoke. That discovery started the ball rolling toward the development of a anti-inflammatory supplement called Anatabloc, the key ingredient of which is the anatabine compound, one of the 4,000 chemical components of tobacco. Anatabine is a naturally-occuring alkaloid also found in eggplants, peppers, green tomatoes, potatoes, and a variety of other plants in the Solanaceae (nightshade) family, including Nicotiana, the Latin term for tobacco.
Armed with this information, entrepreneur Jonnie Williams was motivated to formulate Anatabloc, a dietary supplement that works by inhibiting pro-inflammatory pathways to help the body maintain lower levels of inflammation. Anatabloc combines one milligram of anatabine with 500 units of Vitamin A and 40 units of Vitamin D3; pre-clinical studies have shown that this combination may inhibit pro-inflammatory pathways to help maintain lower levels of inflammation and promote a healthy anti-inflammatory response.
The thinking behind the formulation of Anatabloc is that chronic low-level inflammation contributes to many disorders such as coronary artery disease, diabetes, asthma, autoimmune thyroid disease, and rheumatoid arthritis, so Anatabloc is marketed as a potential preventative treatment for these diseases. Anatabloc requires no prescription; the recommended dosage is two tablets or lozenges taken sublingually three times daily for best results. (The manufacturer also markets Anatabloc skin care products).
http://www.sott.net/article/260346-An-immune-system-and-thyroid-upside-for-tobacco
Those who quit smoking have a 6-fold increase risk for autoimmune thyroid problems
Glenelg won’t enforce beach smoking ban
SMOKERS will be able to light up on the Cape Bridgewater foreshore after Glenelg Shire voted down a motion to enforce a smoking ban on patrolled beaches.
The decision breaks ranks with other south-west councils, including Warrnambool and Moyne which have given council officers power to slap on-the-spot fines for anyone caught with a lit cigarette between the flags.
At Glenelg’s monthly council meeting last week members also voted to hold off on spending cash on no-smoking signs at the popular Cape Bridgewater Beach.
Council chief executive Sharon Kelsey told The Standard enforcing the ban on the wide stretch of beach would cost council a small fortune and raise community expectations.
“It would be difficult for council officers to enforce it,” Ms Kelsey said.
The ban was brought in just before summer last year amid much praise from the anti-tobacco lobby.
Glenelg has just two patrolled beaches in Narrawong and Cape Bridgewater.
While lighting up will remain illegal between the flags at both beaches there won’t be a badge or fine book within sight providing little if no deterrent for would-be smokers.
See your ad here
“During the season when the flags are out we wouldn’t have the resources dedicated to that,” Ms Kelsey said.
Mayor Karen Stephens also defended the move on the basis of practicality.
“If the council was to enforce the amendment, the cost of installing ‘no smoking’ signage and employing local laws officers to patrol the beaches would be a burden to ratepayers that council believes is unnecessary,” Cr Stephens said.
“The legislation does not oblige council to appoint inspectors, nor is council obliged to erect the signage.”
Print Story
http://www.standard.net.au/story/1405057/glenelg-wont-enforce-beach-smoking-ban/?src=rss
Sales must really be slacking for PHARMA
http://www.kcentv.com/story/21855940/fda-says-safe-to-use-nicotine-gums-patches-lozengers-longer-than-3-months
Or is Big Pharma surrendering the NRT MARKET
KCEN) — Experts now say it’s safe to use over-the-counter nicotine gums, patches and lozenges longer than previously recommended.
On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration said the over-the-counter products can be used longer than the recommended 12 weeks with a doctors approval.
Nicotine replacement products are popular with smokers trying to kick the habit, but many people relapsed when they were forced to stop using the products after just three months.
The FDA says it hopes the change will allow more people to use these products effectively to quit smoking.
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