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Comment Catcher siderea April 7 2015, 01:08:05 UTC
This is the comment catcher for catching comments.

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Re: Comment Catcher conuly April 7 2015, 03:06:57 UTC
3b. In addition to what you stated, of course we all know (or ought to) that plenty of people use terms like "depression" casually without having anything like a diagnosis to mean anywhere between "I am reasonably confident that if I went in and got help, I'd get a diagnosis, I have a good idea of what depression entails" to "I'm feeling a little sad today".

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Re: Comment Catcher nuclearpolymer April 7 2015, 19:08:41 UTC
I have no idea why so much of the news & discussion around the airline pilot has talked about suicide and depression, when the guy committed mass murder. If someone had shot down that plane or sabotaged that plane, and then killed themselves, the discussion would be focused on the mass murder part. The whole sense of "aha, so he was depressed, that's why he did this" just doesn't make any sense.

The only other murderers who get tagged as more suicidal than homicidal are "suicide bombers". I always thought that was partly because the category had some similarity to "kamikaze pilots", where the actor is almost always successful in killing themselves, but sometimes doesn't kill anyone else.

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gipsieee April 7 2015, 04:06:41 UTC
Blergh. Thank you for this. Though I'm not particularly happy to have to look at the US's attitude toward the mentally ill as comparatively enlightened.

I am very interested in reading the article you alluded to writing in the proscription from commenting on the topic of risk of perpetrating vs being a victim of violence... especially since it was the closing sentence of the csmonitor article that you linked. And cited as a crucial message to convey at this year's Mad Pride parade.

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siderea April 7 2015, 16:07:31 UTC
A taster: in interpersonal communication, topic-shift to avoid concession is not, as it's widely believed, diplomatic; it is escalatory the way dropping gasoline on a fire is inflammatory.

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en_ki April 7 2015, 17:53:50 UTC
Oh yes. This behavior alone suffices to distinguish a conversation from a fight.

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siderea April 7 2015, 20:40:43 UTC
I think you're thinking of the obvious case of when one makes a good point in a discussion and one's interlocutor changes their line of argument.

I'm thinking of that thing customer support and sales people do, where you ask "Do you have X?" and they reply "We support the full range of Y" instead of coming out and saying "No, we do not have X".

The first is denying that the argument you just went to the effort of rebutting was ever actually the argument.

The second is answering a different question than the one you asked, and hoping you don't notice. You notice.

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siderea April 7 2015, 16:07:56 UTC
No, I hadn't.

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