# Alcohol and control

**URL:** <http://discourse.iapct.org/t/alcohol-and-control/930>\
**Category:** CSG1994\
**Created:** [April 30, 1994, 3:43pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/alcohol-and-control/930 "1994-04-30T15:43:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![William\_T\_Powers2](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/c67d28/32.png) [@William\_T\_Powers2](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/William_T_Powers2)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 1994, 3:43pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/alcohol-and-control/930/1 "1994-04-30T15:43:54Z")

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[From Bill Powers (940430.0730 MDT)]

Clark McPhail (940429.2222) --

> Perhaps I have missed previous discussions on this net of the  
> consequences of more routinely consumed drugs in this culture -  
> alcohol, marihuana, caffeine - for the way in which control  
> systems do their controlling?

There is some qualitative information about this, in the number of  
alcohol-related car accidents. Unfortunately, people who haven't  
been drinking also have accidents. In fact, just about any crude  
qualitative measure has this drawback, in that you could probably  
show a population effect of the drug, but couldn't predict whether a  
given person who has taken it will lose control of a car. So the  
only way to prevent alcohol-related accidents is to proscribe the  
drinking of alcohol by \_everybody\_.

Our society seems to have gone mad lately on this approach to  
understanding human functioning. We're all supposed to exercise,  
avoid eating fats and other things from a long list, avoid smoke  
(not to mention actually smoking), keep our cholesterol down, take  
an aspirin every day, gobble beta-carotene, and so on and so on. All  
this is because a statistical relationship has been found between  
supposed causative factors and supposed effects in a relatively  
small -- but significant -- proportion of a sample population. So to  
prevent the bad effects, we are ALL supposed to follow the  
prescribed rules. We even pass laws to make sure we follow some of  
them.

If the right study were done, it would probably be found that there  
is a significant incidence of nausea and mental upset from  
ingesting, or even considering ingesting, pork products. It would  
probably be found that blood pressure is elevated by putting certain  
names on ballots. It would probably be found that engaging in  
certain sports has an influence on the number of life-threatening  
injuries that occur, both among participants and spectators. With  
large enough studies, these effects would become incontrovertible.  
What then? Laws against pork products, certain names on ballots, and  
certain sports like soccer and car racing?

> In a series of studies done in the 1970s a psychologist at Kent  
> State University examined the retaliation for electric shocks  
> received by subjects who had consumed either alcohol or  
> marihuana. Alcohol consumers retaliated more quickly and by  
> administering more shock in return than did marihuana  
> consumers. For alcohol consumers the relationship was  
> curvilinear with retaliatory shock increasing with the increase  
> in alcohol consumed but only up to a point after which time the  
> alcohol consumers retaliated less and less.

I echo Tom Bourbon's question, in slightly different words. If you  
picked a person at random from the group studied, could you predict  
whether this person would retaliate more or less when given alcohol  
or marijuana than when not given it? Phil Runkel has had a lot to  
say about this sort of study -- a study in which people are assumed  
to be interchangeable, so that one person on alcohol can be compared  
with a different person on marijuana and a third on nothing, and in  
which a group trend is assumed to represent individual  
characteristics.

Since retaliation can be seen as a form of disturbance-resistance  
(encouraging the shock-giver to stop giving shocks), how are we to  
interpret the facts, even accepting that they are facts? If a person  
on alcohol retaliates more for being shocked than someone else under  
different conditions does, does this mean that the person on alcohol  
is controlling worse, or better than the other person? Could we say  
that a sober person who does not retaliate is more vulnerable to  
being shocked? Maybe, in the interests of self-preservation, we all  
should walk around with a mild load on.

The approach I would like to see is to measure individual  
performance as a function of drug ingestion, and to measure it in  
terms of changes in the best-fit parameters of a model of the  
behaving system. This depends, of course, on HAVING a workable model  
of the behaving system. Unfortunately, research money does not go  
very generously into building models. Building workable models is a  
long slow process with little interesting payoff in the early  
stages.

Drug companies can't make a profit by studying WHY drugs have the  
effects they have on some people, and why they have different  
effects or no effects on others. In fact, big statistical studies  
are beneficial to a drug company. The bigger the study, the less  
effect a drug has to have to demonstrate a significant benefit. So  
by doing large impressive studies, you can convince large numbers of  
people that they should buy and use the drug even when it is far  
more likely to have no effect or only a "side-effect" than to help a  
given person. It's ironic, isn't it? The larger the population  
studied, the less likely it is that the effect found is important to  
any given person. You do large studies only when the effect is too  
small to be found significant in a smaller study.

Incidentally, Thomas J. Moore has published a new book: \_Lifespan:  
who lives longer and why\_. Among other gems, he found a list showing  
the contributions to number of deaths by heart attacks from a list  
of risk factors as determined by the NIH. The total came to about a  
million deaths per year attributable to these risk factors. That was  
twice the number of actual deaths due to heart attacks, and about 20  
times the number of deaths \_indepedently\_ attributable to those  
factors. Statistical madness.

The same Tom Moore, in an earlier book called \_Heart Failure\_,  
showed that when the cholesterol flap occurred, the researchers  
arbitrarily decided that the upper quarter of the people showing the  
highest cholesterol were at immediate risk of heart-attacks and  
other diseases. So at one stroke, they declared that a quarter of  
the population of the United States had a life-threatening condition  
requiring immediate treatment by a physician. What a gold-mine,  
while it lasted.

Our Thought Policeman is temporarily in self-imposed exile. But  
somebody has to do the job.

> **···**
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------  
> Best,
> 
> Bill P.