If you want, I'll email you the first article. I downloaded it, but it's too boring for me to read.
Thanks. I think unfogged email is still down. THANKS NEB. And I'd prefer that someone who knows math reads it.
This may be the key problem:
Participants in the study were recruited at large from the World Wide Web.
Read: DeLanda could explain it to you. Also, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines. More queued.
"Sadly, the concepts can't be summarized for purposes of a book review blog comment, but it's breathtaking." ...as the review says
But DeLanda likes Prigogine, and Shalizi hates Prigogine, and I am not taking on Shalizi, so bye.
Yes, the unfogged email is still down. YOU'RE WELCOME OBAMA.
From the abstract of the first one:
driving human populations with no ambition for large scale coordination to rapidly evolve shared social conventionsNot to drive the "new mouseover text" convention into the ground, but...
I take it back, Shalizi lists a DeLanda book here
And re-reading the "hostile note" by Shalizi on the Wiki Ilya Prigogine page, maybe there is good emergence, good self-organization, and that goes way too far dude extrapolation. Wever.
I am interested in the paper too, just a little, but believe in self-organization and emergence to my very soul. Of course patterns emerge. Was the problem with the word "norms?"
Let's see. I might propose that an emergent (as opposed to intentional or intended) pattern of behavior in human society could become justified as a norm by its frequency.
As far as the 2nd note, I read that a few days ago.
DAs almost always have further political ambitions + prison-industrial complex. For-profit prisons and local/state campaign contributions. Did some searching for privatization over time but couldn't find a chart.
The DAs all ate lead paint chips while they were growing up. That seems unlikely, I know, but it's the only plausible explanation for their aggressiveness.
Obviously* what happened between 1994 and 2008 the crime rate dropped substantially, but the number of career prosecutors didn't decline by that much and the metric for their career success remained total number of felony convictions.
*not really, but it's a theory.
How does that upcoming Krakauer book I linked in the other thread fit with that Ripford?
I do indeed like some of DeLanda's books, though I don't get what he sees in Deleuze at all; I almost think he could delete those passages without any loss of content or continuity. I even (not to be too hipster-ish) like some of Prigogine's really old stuff; it's just that the things which everyone talks about came after he Went Emeritus, and are really not good at all.
As for paper #1, I've heard Damon talk about it, but not read this. It certainly doesn't sound crazy to me.
Tim Owens, detto "The Ripper", sometimes known as Glenn Tipton, né Robert Halford, aka Roberto Halfordo.
The very fact that bob mcmanus knows who Ilya Prigogine was is indicative of all sorts of problematic things about the popularization of science.
I also skimmed paper #1 but found it too boring too actually read. The intelligent part of my brain has atrophied in the past two years and all I'm fit for now is unfogged commenting.
OP.2: Oh look, an author at Slate who is a young preening twat with no practical experience in the area he's writing about.
What makes it very hard is that the person we really need to target now--whose behavior we need to regulate--is the district attorney
That DA is operating in the environment you all (the country, not the commentariat) created, so fuck right off. 40 years of middle class/wage/long term outlook decay plus a huge rise in employment background checks often means no way out, or at least a hell of a climb out for a guy with a felony conviction. Now couple that with a healthy uptick in three strikes laws. Look, this isn't some academic question for us in the mix. We have to deal with a bunch of chronic offenders in the here and now. Felony charges and the threat of incarceration is how we bully them into drug court. Failing that, you max the charges out to try and deal with that person as infrequently as possible. The real goal needs to be getting these fucksticks off drugs and back into society. For the ones who are for now irredeemable shitheads, you could probably at least better things by just giving them their hard drugs for free at the local clinic. For real. Drug addicts are probably 90 percent plus of my car thieves. And the car thieves are also your people doing burglaries, check frauds, etc.
E.g., "Slugger". I'm at a loss as to what will fix that motherfucker. And he's just one of many. He was already on the run from drug court when I caught him with two stolen cars and a bunch of forged checks a couple months ago. Drug court gave him yet another chance and he ditched out on it again. So naturally all his warrants get re-issued. And apparently good luck isn't his lot in life so of course he pops out of his dive motel room for a smoke last Tuesday at the same time I'm pulling into the parking lot looking for hot cars. Damn straight I know who you are, you idiot. Come easy and you hang out and get a few smokes in before jail. Come hard and it's your ass kicked and jail all the same. He's actually not a violent guy and I know that and he knows my word is good. So he comes easy and hangs out and smokes a couple before he goes into cuffs. But now what? He's probably going into prison. But unless that involves a really intensive program involving getting him re-integrated as a productive member of society then it's all just about how long until I'm chasing him again.
I misread "Slugger" as "Ripper" and was like "wait what I don't think I'm on the run from drug court with stolen cars and a bunch of forged checks."
OT: being Facebook "friends" with the Natural History Museum (former home of Papa Swift) has taught me that there's a really, really hot entomologist out there.
Stay away from entomologists. In my experience, they are constantly trying to trick you into eating bugs.
Fried mealworms? No thanks. And who the fuck brings chocolate-covered crickets to a birthday party?
Although, I guess bugs are paleo, so maybe you're cool with that.
21: Thanks for sharing that, gswift. I got a call yesterday from Rowan's defense attorney saying she's going to counter the state's 10-15 years with the probation plus treatment he would prefer, although she also wanted to know if my mom would confirm he'd had a gun, which may change the equation. I told her I could only speak for myself and that none of us are vindictive, but that he's still asking me for money whenever we have contact is understandable but not a sign he has a sophisticated understanding of this. I'm all conflicted and sad.
21: I just watched a program about the lack of psychopharm treatment for opioid use in prison. Forced abstinence over a 6-9 month sentence leads to high risk of overdose on withdrawal.
One of the psychiatrists (probably a resident) actually asked whether prison and the period of forced abstinence might extend their lifespan despite a "slight increase" in the risk of overdose on release. The presenter, an internist, was boggled. He said, "The people I'm talking about are non-violent offenders on a short sentences, so it's not that long of a period we'd be extending their lives. And a 12-fold increase is not slight. I don't know of anyone who has actually analyzed the data that way."
Fried mealworms? No thanks. And who the fuck brings chocolate-covered crickets to a birthday party?
Those both sound pretty good.
27: There was an article about Suboxone in The Huffington Post, summarized in Slate. Kentucky apparently refuses to use it as part of state funded drug treatment programs.
27: This guy was from Rhode Island. Not clear that subaxone is better--only more expensive. As a patient you can pick up your med once a week or something whereas methadone is a daily visit to a clinic. But I think that clinics can only give out a day's supply at a time because of the DEA and not for any medical reason.
The state of RI will fund it outpatient, but not in jail. Some offenders who know they probably have other warrants out there won't engage in treatment, because they worry that they'll wind up in jail and lose access.
29: Yes, I was thinking about sending that as a guest post but wasn't sure if people were in the mood for a buzzkill. There are some fantastic people working to change things, but not the people with a ton of power. As I'm pretty sure I've said here before, we have been able to get Narcan/naloxone widely available to heroin users and their loved ones as well as first responders. The whole treatment paradigm is obscene for most people, though, and I really don't see how parents can get through it in a reasonable amount of time to be reunited with their kids, which is going to create an adoption crisis on top of the foster care crisis we already have because of heroin, etc. It's really bad and my key informant tells me that you can get treatment in prison but not in jail, and I suppose he should know.
31: I think that in Rhode Island you can't get pharmacological treatment in prison.
From the second page of ydnew's Slate link:
And there is the judge who oversees Kenton County's drug court, who won't allow Suboxone for defendants' treatment plans. When presented with the data that shows how risky it is to detox without medication, he says, "I'm not an expert on what works and what doesn't work." A sign was recently posted outside a Kenton County courtroom addressed to all "Suboxin users," warning that "IF YOU WANT PROBATION OR DIVERSION AND YOUR ON SUBOXIN, YOU MUST BE WEENED OFF BY THE TIME OF YOUR SENTENCING DATE." (The only thing as glaringly poor as the court's grasp of science, apparently, is its spelling.)
This dude is the one who did some really awful things to my kids and their families, including making fun of Nia's name from the bench and being horrible and judgmental and just awful, but then the guy who ran against him in the election looked to be even worse. I'm a fan of drug court and of family courts but you really need to have someone decent running it and it breaks my heart that you've got someone who has just recently loosened his stance and allowed parents with marijuana in their systems to have contact with their children in foster care as long as the measurable levels are going down. And that's a huge improvement from his past setup, where it would take a month to get out of your system and then you had to test clean for a month after that, because it's more important to punish all drug users than to let children keep connections with the people who love them.
Electing judges is a very good way to make sure that you have a real asshole where he or she can do the most damage.
I probably shouldn't have said that quite so openly and googlably but I really don't care at this point. I mean, he says, "I'm not an expert on what works and what doesn't work." Yeah, exactly, so it's great that you're in charge of particularly vulnerable people.
On the plus side, he probably makes a lot of not-vulnerable people feel better about themselves for a variety of reasons.
So: (1) he takes a position, (2) he is presented with evidence from experts showing that his position is wrong, and then (3) he decides to stick with his position on the stated basis that he is not an expert?
I want to laugh but really this is just deeply depressing.
If you live in a different state, it's a little bit funny when the courts confuse "you're" and "your".
38: Contrary to your previous slurs about my location, that's not my county and so I can laugh very sadly.
It's a little easier to laugh now that he has no power over the lives of any of my family members or other loved ones. That part was mostly fury-inducing.
Vox tackled the same thing a few weeks ago, and their take matches your quote in the OP, that prosecutors are the difference.
The NRC report found that prosecution has gotten a lot more efficient -- and that, the authors concluded, was a substantial reason for the explosion of the incarcerated population.Their efficiency measure in their chart is convictions per 100 arrests--so they're not just charging more felonies, they're also winning more cases.
Winning more cases could also reflect their getting better at exploiting the "I'll charge you with whatever I want" technique to compel plea bargains...
Or the higher sentences that article in the OP says aren't increasing the incarcerated population could be having their effect by compelling more plea bargaining.
For the ones who are for now irredeemable shitheads, you could probably at least better things by just giving them their hard drugs for free at the local clinic.
I am old enough to remember when this was the case in the UK. Drugs were prescribed by a doctor on condition of receiving treatment for addiction. Then they decided that locking people up was a better idea.
Oddly enough, I just shared this gem elsewhere. Dr Nutt is this guy.
46: Michael Pollan just did a piece in the New Yorker (The Trip Treatment on research into psychedelics--including programs to help terminally ill cancer patients come to terms with death. He covered Dr. Nutt's research.
I've very curious to know whether the pubmed hits saying that psychedelics don't make schizophrenia or bipolar disorder worse are true.
I have a vague belief that the psychedelics/schizophrenia connection was now thought to be life-stage coincidence -- that the age when you'd expect your first psychotic break for a schizophrenic was young adulthood, when you'd also expect experimentation with psychedelics to happen.
47: The sophisicated version of that was that if you were vulnerable to schizophrenia then the psychedelics could trigger it.
There's a renaissance in research into PTSD treatment using psychedelics, sort of guided trips. They're working with a few people who did the research years ago.
They always try to screen out people with or at high risk for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder when they do the studies.
From what I can (probably not reliably) remember the connection was actually a lot weaker than it's often said to be. The psychosis that the drugs triggered lasted basically as long as the drugs did, which given the effects of psychedelic drugs is a lot less surprising/interesting. Also if you think about it identifying which people are susceptible to/inclined towards psychosis or mental illness basically amounts to picking out people who are already mentally ill in more or less the way the experiments detected as a result. Maybe a bit less than when the drugs were in effect, but if you're saying that people who'd already experienced a psychotic episode seem to experience another one when under the effects of drugs which have effects that resemble (in some respects) psychotic episodes that isn't really as scary sounding.
47:1) I never saw any mention of dosage.
2) I am pretty damn skeptical about lasting therapeutic effects of psychedelic treatments at less than dangerous dosages. It ain't that big a deal anymore.
3) Blindfolds and headphoned art music in a safe environment? How do they even know they are high? Point being, it is the contrast between what we expect to perceive and what we perceive under the influence that is ego-deflating.
Psilocybin sucks for tunes anyway.
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Totally unrelated but too awesome not to share: zoo security exercises in China using people in costumes to practice drills for when animals escape.
I love that apparently part of the procedure is "poke it with a stick", too (picture five).
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I just put that up in the Loyalty thread.
but that he's still asking me for money whenever we have contact is understandable but not a sign he has a sophisticated understanding of this. I'm all conflicted and sad.
Christ. I wish I could say he's coming around but it sounds like it might be a long road.
It's really bad and my key informant tells me that you can get treatment in prison but not in jail, and I suppose he should know.
That's pretty common. Jail is for short term sentences and has much less in the way of rehabilitation. A defense attorney getting a deal for some jail time instead of prison can actually be counterproductive for the long term prospects of that client. Six months in jail vs two years in prison sounds like a better deal on its face but jail is just a kennel whereas that two years in prison is much more likely to involve classes and counseling and such aimed at avoiding recidivism.
I misread "Slugger" as "Ripper"
Not made up, btw, that's his actual nickname on the street. Other street names of note lately, "Knuckles", and "Cheddar". Knuckles is about my age and shows no sign of pulling his head out of his ass. Almost exactly a year ago I spotted him rolling around in a stolen mid 90's Accord during a multi agency auto theft operation and he ended up wrecking the car when he fled into a dead end industrial yard and hit a parked semi trailer. He cried and talked about his kids on the way to jail. He got out after about eight months and put on probation and promptly got caught a short time later with a small amount of drugs and a shaved key (filed down key blank used to steal 90's Hondas). So a warrant went out for him for violating his probation and then he tried to fight a patrol officer down near the homeless shelter and had his ass handed to him and taken back to jail. Shockingly, he had meth in his pocket again. He recently got out on probation with the system trying yet again to re-integrate him back into society and never fear, he's already taking advantage of that opportunity to post some gang related pictures on Facebook.
"Cheddar" is only around 20 and I wish there was some awesome back story for his street name it's basically just something that rhymes with his real surname that he and/or his idiot cohorts thought would be an awesome nickname. Cheddar comes from a well known family of shitbags and is probably just a permanently broken human being doomed to going in and out of the system. I for real might need more than my two hands to count the members of that clan I've personally taken to jail. Cheddar once started beating his head against a concrete wall in a jail room right after he realized I and a colleague had just talked him into admitting he'd been driving around a stolen car. After getting out on probation for that charge he stole another car and tried to ram a cop in a neighboring agency in said car. On another occasion Cheddar's cousin also tried ramming one of our patrol guys in a stolen car and then fled in that car before ultimately losing control of it and shearing a wooden power pole off at the base and rolling the vehicle. Better yet, one of Cheddar's uncles a couple years back murdered a childhood friend in a fit of drug induced paranoia. Cheddar's uncle was living with dad and two of his longtime buddies came over to pick him up for a party. Uncle had been up for a couple days on meth and decided his friends were really there to assassinate him. Uncle goes into the house, retrieves his dad's 9mm piece, and then comes out and shoots one friend in the face and then chases the other friend down the street, inflicting a couple non fatal gunshot wounds. The friends were stellar people of course. I pulled these off of the surviving friend prior to his ambulance ride to the hospital. But anyways, Cheddar was recently released again and apparently couldn't be bothered to check in with his parole officer so his warrants are back out within 5 days of his release. I genuinely wonder if he's going to make one of us shoot him before he's 30.
The bloodstain on the second knife is a notable detail.
It's like a Geronimo Stilton mystery for adults.
54: Well, he's not getting money from anyone else and isn't likely to. Lee did go see him and had a bit of a come-to-Jesus. I got one letter, but as expected it was a poor-me thing with a request for money at the end. On the one hand, jail would probably be more tolerable with enough money for more than whatever basics you get, but on the other, wtf? He's smart enough to know he can't apologize specifically or extensively on a monitored line, but it's pretty annoying to have to go without that.
And as per a prior thread here, visitation is just by video but you have to pay to do it from home. So Lee instead made an appointment, went down and sat in front of a video screen at the jail, and saw him sitting elsewhere in the jail.
Anyway, I don't think he's at Cheddar level of hopelessness or anything like that, but it really makes me sad and the extensive family dysfunction is Cheddarlike and also super depressing.
