gov: hmm we’re getting concerned about people abusing drugs
me: well really isn’t that their prob—
gov: it’s the state’s problem, and we’re going to solve it by making it illegal to use dangerous drugs without a medical professional to supervise and make sure you’re safe
me: well, okay, i guess i can see that preventing some drug abuse, but it kinda sucks for all the people who need those drugs and are using them responsibly, so you’ll make sure to inconvenience them as little as possible, right?
right?
gov: yea you’re gonna go to jail if you use drugs without special prescription from a member of a certain class of medical experts with onerous training and credentialing requirements that severely restrict the supply of such experts and make them ridiculously expensive
me, looking at legal requirements for doctors: okay so they need to (in most cases) get a 4 year college degree, then go to medical school for probably 4 years, then have a 3 year residency… is all of this really necessary to train someone to oversee drug use?
gov: yes.
there’s no way this would pass strict scrutiny, altho of course the courts have decided to apply strict scrutiny in as few cases as they can
interestingly tho it looks like the supreme court has never actually ruled on the substantive due process question with regard to drug prohibition
oh also of course all of this has a fuckton of asterisks—e.g. in some cases you can get prescriptions (even for controlled substances) from non-doctors like nurse practitioners or physicians assistants
altho presumably there are other reasons why you can’t go straight to a PA to get e.g. a psychiatric medication prescription
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courts (most relevantly the supreme court and circuit courts) are constrained by popular opinion; if they make a decision 80% of the population disagrees with, they loose legitimacy. so when they do shake things up they limit themselves to issues where there is a controversy
i suspect something similar is going on in many parts of academia (economics comes to mind)
you don’t want to just come out and say ‘yea we all think that everyone is wrong about this’
gotta pretend that the world is a sensible place with sensible people
this is how we get the heuristic ‘if it sounds crazy [i.e. disagrees with common sense] it is crazy’
let’s postulate a universe in which magic exists, and has few limitations other than that if you want to do something, you have to know how to do it. so it’s not too hard to cast spells that already exist, but if you want to do something new, you have to design a spell for it
designing spells is tricky, because the universe is complicated and magic doesn’t allow you to just say ‘i want this result’ without filling in the details
if you design a spell quickly and cast your first draft, it might not work at all, or it might not do what you want, or it might have unforeseen side effects
designing spells, in addition to requiring a certain amount of creativity and technical knowledge, is time-consuming
i like this thread and agree with most of its points
one thing i’d add: ‘social skills’ is a pretty vague term, and encompasses a lot of different skills, only some of which have to do with communicating to other people or presenting yourself
now, i’m something of an autist myself, and i feel pretty satisfied with my output-related social skills. i.e. i’m good at presenting myself the way i want to present myself
if i wanted to manipulate people more or control my presentation more, i wouldn’t be good at that
but i definitely have shortcomings wrt actually figuring out what’s going on inside other people’s heads (input)
idk how good the median neurotypical is at this, but i suspect people on the spectrum tend to have a harder time