November 2. The pain comes in waves. I might be incapacitated for 20 minutes and then have a couple hours when I can barely feel it. I've discovered that cannabis has the same effect on physical pain that it has on TV commercials: annoying and distracting when sober, but when high, kind of interesting. (Update: Pain is much reduced, I assume because the antibiotics are kicking in, 72 hours after the first dose. I'm continuing to take them, and eating lots of home-fermented yogurt-kefir to replenish my gut flora.)
It's funny how both government-funded dentists, and for-profit dentists, for different reasons, make you go in two times for an obvious tooth pull. The government loves to make rules, and capitalism loves to make money. I would be in favor of legalizing unlicensed medical and dental care. Of course the average quality would go down, but getting it would be so much easier that it would be worth it. I bet teeth could be pulled with an hour's notice in Kowloon Walled City. The actual pulling would surely be more painful, but it would be less painful overall. More generally, modern society generates a ton of chronic suffering to avoid acute suffering which is usually preferable.
As promised, a few political links before the election. The Democratic party is no better than the Republican party on the rich getting richer, but they are a lot better on a lot of other stuff. This Reddit comment provides links on 17 issues, refuting the idea that both sides are the same.
Removed from Ask Reddit, What was it like when Obama was elected President?
Thanks Chad for this link, The MAGA Cult Is All Feelings and No Facts:
Every object, every person, every idea, every political candidate sits in what Slovic called the "affect pool", tagged with a positive or negative feeling. When a judgment or decision is required, the brain does not pull up the data file. It checks the feeling.... The feeling arrives first, occupies the judgment seat, and the reasoning process, if it happens at all, works backward from the conclusion the feeling already reached.
This article makes the same point, How the Elizabeth Holmes Doc 'You Can See Everything' Is Deceiving You. Specifically, the film makes you aware of how easy you are to deceive:
We like to believe that we form our opinions by gathering evidence, weighing facts, and arriving at reasonable conclusions.... Here's how it actually goes: We form an emotional impression first, then we build a belief around it, and then we go looking for facts that support it. This is my theory as to why we're so divided in this country. Beliefs built on emotion are nearly impossible to reason with.
But it doesn't have to be this way. From the MAGA post: "In calm, low-stakes, time-abundant situations, people can override the affect heuristic. They can slow down, examine the evidence, and reach conclusions that contradict their initial feeling." This reminds me of my favorite line from the Tao Te Ching, Ellen Chen's translation of 46:1:
When the world practices Tao
Fast horses are used for their dung.
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