That doesn't contradict the parent's claim. Moreover, they're not drawn from the same population, there is a filtering mechanism that reasonably skews for police to be above-average even if we might want it to be better.
Moreover, I'm also skeptical of the simplistic idea that our policing problem derives from "too many immoral officers". It seems more likely that it's an emergent property of the incentives and constraints we put on police brass (including the police union system).
Further, if we're going to reform police, it would be nice if we focused on policies which weren't predictably counter-effective. Rather than the de-policing policies which have increased homicides by 9k/year (relative to the time period before the de-policing movement kicked off in earnest with the largest increases in the "communities of color" in whose name the de-policing initiative campaigned) for no appreciable difference in unjustified police killings, it would be nice if we instead pursued one or more of: more police training, weakened/abolished police unions, restructured internal-affairs departments, tightened background checks, mandated periodic psyche evals, etc.
I agree that most people are inherently good. But I add a few points of skepticism toward anybody who chooses a role that comes with inherent authority by default: clergy, legislature, law, etc.
Not saying they're bad, most aren't, however, you wanted to be the guy with the power- There is possibly a reason for that.
> you wanted to be the guy with the power- There is possibly a reason for that.
Sure, but there's nothing that suggests the underlying motivation would be negative. For example, a lot of people cite a desire to protect and serve their communities. Just because there is a motive for something doesn't imply that it's ulterior or nefarious.
I didnt say it was nefarious. When you open new lines of credit, or make an inquiry, your credit score drops. Atomically these aren't bad things, in a vacuum, yet when you step back and look at things holistically they can be part of a pattern. Feel me?
People like wearing blinders because it makes them feel better about wanting to keep the status quo while it actively harms hundreds of millions, if not billions of human lives
The studies I'm aware of were done on mice, which have a significantly different metabolism than humans. Not to mention there has been no mention of neurotoxicity from the current MAPS studies.
The dose an ordinary person (not a regular abuser) would take.
Coke is not equal (I mean it is arguably zero harm if taken rarely, but pretty addictive and serious harm if taken regularly), MDMA and meth are extremely similar substances chemically (MA=meth) and have similar mechanisms of action. Same harm prevention techniques work great with both. The most important difference is MDMA being harder to abuse than meth is, because a number of reasons. Most of MDMA users take it occasionally for good, most of meth users take it regularly for harm. AFAIK. Obviously there are many exceptions.
I would argue that MDMA and methamphetamine, while slightly similar in chemical structure, have very different mechanisms of action. Methamphetamine, at high enough doses. This is why dose is important, some recreational doses will cause dopamine efflux from the dopamine uptake transporter but MDMA does not do this
Doses are incredibly portant when discussing the mechanisms of drugs and comparing them because a compound may interact with new and different proteins when the concentration gets high enough. Recreational doses for methamphetamine and cocaine are all over the place partially due to the fact that you can develop tolerance and increase your dose. This doesn't really happen with MDMA as much, and while you can take repeated doses they will rapidly stop working if taken within a small enough time frame. Methamphetamine and cocaine do not have the same tolerance build up
While cocaine is a triple reuptake inhibitor and does interact with serotonin, I don't think its comparable to MDMA
It's like being a junior developer again, blundering through the codebase to fix some problem, which I do through brute-force coding, laser-focused on the goal, heedless of any broader considerations :)
LSD has the opposite problem where it's too easy to go down a refactoring wormhole or just get sucked into the internet because you read something on Medium and needed to know MORE.
This is a big one. Legalizing and regulating currently illegal drugs would remove most of the harm because nearly all of that harm is from not only adulteration but simply the interaction of people with the "justice" system
