Dr. Deborah Frisch's latest post includes this encounter:
Yesterday, she joined the chorus of friends and family members suggesting that I am loco in the coco and should seek psychiatric counsel and/or medication. I gave her my standard reply - I'm opposed to synthetic psychoactive drugs.Then she went and tried to get Bayesian on me. She argued that the fact that I believed I was not crazy was evidence that I was crazy! Now of course, in general, this is a crazy argument. If you, dear reader, believe you are not crazy, should that count as evidence that you are crazy? Probably not.
But if I really, truly think I am fine when friends, family and foes all think i m nutz....maybe that is a symptom of loconess in the coco. When Harvard psychologist and happiness expert Dan Gilbert dinged me on the jdm list, I wrote a snarky post about him (that has since been edited) and he sent me an email saying something very terse like "You're crazy." There are other signs as well, such as multiple pending litiginous matters vis-a-vis verbal aggression, lack of employment, etc.
If someone calls me a drunk when I take a sip of my weekly quota of one Bud Lite, and I deny it, my denial is not itself proof that I'm an alcoholic.
If Andy and Barney have cut me my own keys to the Mayberry dry-out tank, where I keep my office supplies, and someone calls me an alcoholic, and I deny it...
Perhaps it's the optimist in me. I see posts like this from Dr. Deborah Frisch as a positive development.
This Mr. Bayesian is one smart cookie.