January 14, 2012

Worricoperdoublis Realities



So  here is your new word: Worricoperdoublis, pronounced Worry-Co-Per-Doobliss.  

So often, when arguments and discussions occur about cultural, social and philosophical issues occur, we are in territory in which the subject at hand has not only not been studied scientifically, but a proper concept for such a study has barely been conceived of.  The debate over psychoactive medication for depression is an interesting example: the debate about their wisdom and efficacy went for years with the the medical and phramacological industries winning, in a market worth many billions, over psychology, but it was all woricoperedoublis, *WithOut R(r)Igorously COntrolled PEer-Rviewed DOUble-BLind Studies -in other words, without very strong scientific evidence.  After two decades of both over and probably under-medicating, the other shoe finally dropped, and generously phrased, the huge JAMA study of studies suggests highly uneven evidence of  medication's efficacy for treated conditions such as mild or moderate depression- better than placebo, but just barely- and it points to persistent publication bias, which in turn was driven, shockingly, by economic interest. And this is within science.


On the other hand, much if not most of our experience of life, our own personalities, political preferences, likes, loves, social and personal realities, perception of the nature of reality, events, faith or lack thereof, etcetera, exists in the woricoperdoublis space - a statement which in itself is worricoperdoublis. (The r is added as a concession to the few clear spelling rules in english, but a double p is not, since such rules were were generated, natch, worricoperdoublisiously. )


Usually, we need to proceed into this frontier territory-which is almost by definition the most interesting territory (god, free will, national culture, aesthetics, morality, the nature  or mere existence of the human soul, etc, etc, etc) - worricoperdoublis.

And even more commonly, the period in which we must take action is far short of the time necessary to make good double blind studies, or even find them, even eyes glued firmly to the Google. We lead our lives largely facing worricoperdoublis situations and making worricoperdoublis decisions.

As it happens, I am quite tired of typing out, letting alone speaking, this tedious concession when discussing cultural issues which are clearly worricoperdoublis, and in turn I am especially irritated when knaves make worricoperdoublis claims, like some Exxon-funded study of global warming uncertainty, or worse, a Creationist museum, when the reality is not worricoperdoublis, and any smart-phone shaking fool can look it up. 

The hope is that this word can lead to clarity in determining when an issue is worricoperdoublis  a well-established, if incompletely described scientific fact. Evolution is, for example, not even kind of worricoperdoublis- and I resolve to waste no more time arguing about its truth, although we can have jolly good fun discussing the worricoperdoublis nature of rise of the human soul.

1 Comments:

Blogger The Other Front said...

Uncertainty is a problem.

January 15, 2012 at 6:13 PM  

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