On April 03 2011 10:51 mordk wrote:In science, one study means absolutely nothing.
That, dear sir, is a blatant lie. Do the leg work, be meticulous and your study will mean a lot more than absolutely nothing. Things get more complicated when statistics are involved, as they often are in medical studies. But do the statistics right and your study will have an impact.
EDIT: At least the small amount of studies shown are listed on Pubmed. Also.. look at the authors. Many are made by the same team/people. Do they have any special interest in making this happen?
Scientific studies often require specialists and study specific instrumentation. If a group is focused on cannabinoid research you shouldn't be surprised to find most of their papers are on the subject. It's like saying Einstein had a secret agenda because he only published physics papers.
Hmmm.. maybe more than absoultely nothing... Let's say it means very little. Unless it's something like the Framingham. And we know this is nothing like that. And even then, the evidence from the framingham spawned multiple studies, which is actually where it's value relies.
You're just interpretating the second statement wrong:
1. It's OK if most of their papers are related to the subject, many people do that. That doesn't mean a conflict of interest doesn't exists and shouldn't be investigated. This has happened tons of times.
2. I'm not saying they DEFINITELY HAVE a conflict of interest, haven't researched that. I'm saying it could be there and should be ruled out.
This thing has happened so many times it's crazy. Farmaceutical companies finance studies ALL THE TIME, which make their products seem so much better than the rest. Many times it's not true, and has been proven wrong later on by thorough investigation.
1: There is no sensory perception not due to a real world stimulus, every hallucination ultimately starts with a real world stimulus, the question is how much does the mind warp this to something different. This line is very subjective and dives into the philosophical of what is 'real' and what is not. Essentially, a normal bloke in a world full of colour blind people would be called insane because he keeps insisting that a red and a green ball are fundamentally different and no one sees it.
A psychotic patient put in a salt bath with no sound and no vision won't hallucinate anything, no stimulus, no thoughts, no hallucinations.
I don't believe this. Take 500 mics of LSD and put yourself in a tank, you would still have a change in sensory perception.
2: 'Majority' is a very vague term which is with respect to a culture, time, and space, this definition also dictates that many of the greatest minds were 'psychotic' because they were well ahead of their time with brilliant beliefs the masses couldn't accept.
This is a pretty bad example because delusions and paranoia are pretty obvious.
3: Thought disorder is also an extremely vague term and greatly depends on the perceiver. I've seen videotapes of certified experts in certain specializations told to act out a crazy man and then simply ramble on about correct things in their certain specializations, of course, the psychiatrist, not a specialist in that field, couldn't understand it and classified it as crazy, incoherent rambling, while it was extremely coherent and if it was said to a peer it would be perceived as accurate, but simply in a strange voice. Power of suggestion gets you pretty far. Isn't this a delusion of the psychiatrist by the way?
Thought disorder is when people don't make sense. If they are going from one train of thought to another and constantly changing topics or just say sentences that make no sense, then you have thought disorder.
On April 03 2011 10:51 mordk wrote:In science, one study means absolutely nothing.
That, dear sir, is a blatant lie. Do the leg work, be meticulous and your study will mean a lot more than absolutely nothing. Things get more complicated when statistics are involved, as they often are in medical studies. But do the statistics right and your study will have an impact.
EDIT: At least the small amount of studies shown are listed on Pubmed. Also.. look at the authors. Many are made by the same team/people. Do they have any special interest in making this happen?
Scientific studies often require specialists and study specific instrumentation. If a group is focused on cannabinoid research you shouldn't be surprised to find most of their papers are on the subject. It's like saying Einstein had a secret agenda because he only published physics papers.
Hmmm.. maybe more than absoultely nothing... Let's say it means very little. Unless it's something like the Framingham. And we know this is nothing like that. And even then, the evidence from the framingham spawned multiple studies, which is actually where it's value relies.
You're just interpretating the second statement wrong:
1. It's OK if most of their papers are related to the subject, many people do that. That doesn't mean a conflict of interest doesn't exists and shouldn't be investigated. This has happened tons of times.
2. I'm not saying they DEFINITELY HAVE a conflict of interest, haven't researched that. I'm saying it could be there and should be ruled out.
This thing has happened so many times it's crazy. Farmaceutical companies finance studies ALL THE TIME, which make their products seem so much better than the rest. Many times it's not true, and has been proven wrong later on by thorough investigation.
Depends on the science really, in some sciences, one study is conclusive and all you need. In exact sciences, 'studies' don't exactly are able to contradict each other's finding.
Some might argue that the scientific method originally was designed for this exactly, that one research done accordingly scientific methodology and rigour couldn't just come to a different conclusion than another one. After all,what are they worth if they can contradict themselves gravely? What's it worth to cite a study if it's possible that one tomorrow will bring out a different thing?
I personally find that stuff in medicine and social sciences is really pretty liberal with interpreting stuff and going a lot further with conclusions than they should made. What is presented as a conclusion 'Sleep may be effective in improving reaction time' should really go no further than:
It was found that more sleep correlates with: - Improved performance on this specifically described test (if this test indicates reaction timing is everyone's own to decide) - In individuals of 18-24 years old - Who are students of pharmacology - And live in the east coast of the united states - During the summer months - Whenever the test is administered in a room with white walls - etc etc
I take it you know the joke of the scientist who comments on purple cows 'Tut tut, we only know they are purple on the side facing us.'...?
1: There is no sensory perception not due to a real world stimulus, every hallucination ultimately starts with a real world stimulus, the question is how much does the mind warp this to something different. This line is very subjective and dives into the philosophical of what is 'real' and what is not. Essentially, a normal bloke in a world full of colour blind people would be called insane because he keeps insisting that a red and a green ball are fundamentally different and no one sees it.
A psychotic patient put in a salt bath with no sound and no vision won't hallucinate anything, no stimulus, no thoughts, no hallucinations.
I don't believe this. Take 500 mics of LSD and put yourself in a tank, you would still have a change in sensory perception.
No you have no change in sensory perception, as you have no sensory perception at all in a perfect salt bath with no vision, and audio, that's the idea of it, to remove any all sensory perception.
2: 'Majority' is a very vague term which is with respect to a culture, time, and space, this definition also dictates that many of the greatest minds were 'psychotic' because they were well ahead of their time with brilliant beliefs the masses couldn't accept.
This is a pretty bad example because delusions and paranoia are pretty obvious.
No, they are not, where does the line lie?
I was also commenting purely on the 'definition' of it it, the definition is bad since it dictates what I just said.
I'm asking for a rigorous definition, not something like 'Yeah, duhh, it's obvious', that's not the real of science where one's ought to work with very clear unmistakable definitions that are not open any gramme of personal interpretation whatsoever.
Different psychiatrists are still possible to disagree about if a patient is paranoid or has real fears, thus it is not clear.
Thought disorder is when people don't make sense. If they are going from one train of thought to another and constantly changing topics or just say sentences that make no sense, then you have thought disorder.
Yes, and what does not make 'sense' to some people may to another.
Like I said, if I talk about advanced mathematics to a random person and (correctly) claim that a part may be just as great as a whole and start to throw in diagonal arguments to demonstrate it, to that person it will make 'no sense' even though to a mathematician this will obviously do.
Define 'making sense', it's far more subjective than you might think and depends on the understanding of the listener as much as the reasoning of the speaker.
I've even had maths professors disagree over if my argument made sense or not (though one was able to convince the other eventually.)
Sense is in the eye of the beholder, and quite frankly, any person studying psychiatry to completion without realizing half way through just how much it relies on half baked logic I wouldn't exactly trust to differentiate nonsense from crisp logic.
On April 03 2011 10:51 mordk wrote:In science, one study means absolutely nothing.
That, dear sir, is a blatant lie. Do the leg work, be meticulous and your study will mean a lot more than absolutely nothing. Things get more complicated when statistics are involved, as they often are in medical studies. But do the statistics right and your study will have an impact.
EDIT: At least the small amount of studies shown are listed on Pubmed. Also.. look at the authors. Many are made by the same team/people. Do they have any special interest in making this happen?
Scientific studies often require specialists and study specific instrumentation. If a group is focused on cannabinoid research you shouldn't be surprised to find most of their papers are on the subject. It's like saying Einstein had a secret agenda because he only published physics papers.
Hmmm.. maybe more than absoultely nothing... Let's say it means very little. Unless it's something like the Framingham. And we know this is nothing like that. And even then, the evidence from the framingham spawned multiple studies, which is actually where it's value relies.
You're just interpretating the second statement wrong:
1. It's OK if most of their papers are related to the subject, many people do that. That doesn't mean a conflict of interest doesn't exists and shouldn't be investigated. This has happened tons of times.
2. I'm not saying they DEFINITELY HAVE a conflict of interest, haven't researched that. I'm saying it could be there and should be ruled out.
This thing has happened so many times it's crazy. Farmaceutical companies finance studies ALL THE TIME, which make their products seem so much better than the rest. Many times it's not true, and has been proven wrong later on by thorough investigation.
This is quite true and ought not to be taken lightly. The way a study gets carried out can be manipulated in a lot of subtle ways and much more importantly there is no real academic oversight on the way studies are represented or reported on by other parties. It doesn't make much sense to go to far in a discussion about them without at least reading the abstract and probably the procedure as well.
Here is a video that discusses some of the more popular myths regarding the effects of marijuana ( i post this because it seems that there is a fair bit of misunderstanding when it comes to these effects). The second video is by the same author, where he discusses some of the complaints that viewers had wit the first that will most likely appear in this thread as well. Please note that i didn't make the videos, and that these discuss the negative effects
On April 03 2011 12:00 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: [o you have no change in sensory perception, as you have no sensory perception at all in a perfect salt bath with no vision, and audio, that's the idea of it, to remove any all sensory perception.
You can't change something that's not there.
lol, high doses of psychedelic tryptamines will cause the user to lose all touch with reality, you wouldn't even know you were in the tub.
No, they are not, where does the line lie?
I was also commenting purely on the 'definition' of it it, the definition is bad since it dictates what I just said.
I'm asking for a rigorous definition, not something like 'Yeah, duhh, it's obvious', that's not the real of science where one's ought to work with very clear unmistakable definitions that are not open any gramme of personal interpretation whatsoever.
Different psychiatrists are still possible to disagree about if a patient is paranoid or has real fears, thus it is not clear.
You've clearly never met a delusional person before.
Yes, and what does not make 'sense' to some people may to another.
Like I said, if I talk about advanced mathematics to a random person and (correctly) claim that a part may be just as great as a whole and start to throw in diagonal arguments to demonstrate it, to that person it will make 'no sense' even though to a mathematician this will obviously do.
Define 'making sense', it's far more subjective than you might think and depends on the understanding of the listener as much as the reasoning of the speaker.
I've even had maths professors disagree over if my argument made sense or not (though one was able to convince the other eventually.)
Sense is in the eye of the beholder, and quite frankly, any person studying psychiatry to completion without realizing half way through just how much it relies on half baked logic I wouldn't exactly trust to differentiate nonsense from crisp logic.
Who is saying anything about advanced mathematics?
You're comparing incoherence to brilliance now. There is a different.
I really can't argue any of your points though, because all of them are "you can't really know". I don't really know what to say to it.
One man's gibberish is actually some kind of theory on physics to you lol
Legalization Persons over the age of 21 may possess up to one ounce of marijuana for personal consumption. May use cannabis in a non-public place such as a residence or a public establishment licensed for on site marijuana consumption. May grow marijuana at a private residence in a space of up to 25 square feet for personal use.
Local taxes and fees Allows the collection of taxes specifically to allow local governments to raise revenue or to offset any costs associated with marijuana regulation.
And requiring licenses and etc to sell, basically the same rules as booze with the exception you can grow your plant.
it was voted 54% no, 46% yes.
It was literally that close to passing. Such is the times we live in.
Legalization Persons over the age of 21 may possess up to one ounce of marijuana for personal consumption. May use cannabis in a non-public place such as a residence or a public establishment licensed for on site marijuana consumption. May grow marijuana at a private residence in a space of up to 25 square feet for personal use.
Local taxes and fees Allows the collection of taxes specifically to allow local governments to raise revenue or to offset any costs associated with marijuana regulation.
And requiring licenses and etc to sell, basically the same rules as booze with the exception you can grow your plant.
it was voted 54% no, 46% yes.
It was literally that close to passing. Such is the times we live in.
ps,
You do realize weed dealers are the reason it didn't pass right?
On April 03 2011 12:00 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: [o you have no change in sensory perception, as you have no sensory perception at all in a perfect salt bath with no vision, and audio, that's the idea of it, to remove any all sensory perception.
You can't change something that's not there.
lol, high doses of psychedelic tryptamines will cause the user to lose all touch with reality, you wouldn't even know you were in the tub.
You don't know you are in a tub either way if you are in a perfect salt bath.
Do you know what a perfect salt bath does?
If I give you a spiked drink and put you there, you wouldn't even realize you woke up. There is literally NO stimulus, it's salt water at your own body temperature and your own body density, no sound, no touch, no vision, nothing.
A perfect salt bath gives completely sensory deprivation.
You've clearly never met a delusional person before.
You're trying really hard not to read are you?
I asked where the line lies? There is a continuum between utter clear mad delusion and completely conforming sanity. It's a continuum, now, where does the line lie.
Who is saying anything about advanced mathematics?
I'm just giving an example how something that makes perfect sense can appear as nonsense to someone who lacks the capacity, be it in education or intellect, to understand it.
You're comparing incoherence to brilliance now. There is a different.
No, I'm comparing incoherence to undergraduate mathematics that any maths student ought to understand.
I really can't argue any of your points though, because all of them are "you can't really know". I don't really know what to say to it.
My point is more that the 'definition' of these concepts is utterly vague and there is a grey area and there is a lot of subjective interpretation of it.
What one man may find insane another may find not. I'm not denying that there are people who are 'clearly' delusional (though really, if it's that clear, there is no need for a trained professional), I'm saying that there are people who are in the grey area.
One man's gibberish is actually some kind of theory on physics to you lol
It could very well be possible. Many people termed brilliant minds in retrospect were called insane because no one understood them.
I'm not saying that all gibberish is, I'm saying that a psychiatrist has no ability to differentiate between nonsense and coherence that he simply cannon understand.
It's extremely hard for any human being to see the difference between nonsense and simply something he cannot understand. I'm just pointing out that what is nonsense isn't really clear-cut.
I mean, the average person with a degree in philosophy will probably come across as saying nonsense to the average psychiatrist if he simply talks about life.. (much like your inexperience with the Sorites Parodox I outlined above)
On April 03 2011 07:27 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: that MJ has been linked to triggering a psychosis or paranoid episodes in people who are sensitive for it, that's also hard to deny.
marijuana in high doses does cause acute psychosis along with numerous other drugs
That can be said about anything. Use without moderation of any substance will be bad for you.
On April 03 2011 10:41 LilClinkin wrote: Smoking weed can cause symptoms of acute psychosis, any one who argues against this is an idiot or does not understand the definition of psychosis, which are presence of any of the following 3:
1. Hallucinations (any sensory perception in a person which was not due to a real world stimulus, can be visual, auditory, touch, smell, or taste).
2. Delusions (a fixed, unshakable false belief in something not believed by the majority of people (thus excluding things like religion)).
3. Thought disorder (disordered pattern of thought. There are many types of thought disorder, generally only assessed by a third party performing a mental state examination. Many people suffering thought disorder have poor insight and are unaware of this).
It's a bit liberal to call this a 'definition', this is a guideline at best. One of the things which is really why a lot of people don't take psychiatry that seriously, the extreme vagueness of many terms used therein which are also obviously a continuum with many a grey area in between.
Point is, unlike cancer, there are no objective criteria for 'psychosis', the only way to diagnose it is a subjective 'professional opinion', what one psychiatrist may consider a psychosis another might not with no objective way to determine which is 'wrong', let alone the philosophical question if 'wrong' even exists in such a case.
So what criteria did they use to determine psychoses in these tests / researches I wonder? You can't really perform blind diagnoses because you can tell from people if they are high, and you still need a psychiatrist to talk to people to subjectively 'diagnose' such a psychosis, with all the power of suggestion that implies.
More technically:
1: There is no sensory perception not due to a real world stimulus, every hallucination ultimately starts with a real world stimulus, the question is how much does the mind warp this to something different. This line is very subjective and dives into the philosophical of what is 'real' and what is not. Essentially, a normal bloke in a world full of colour blind people would be called insane because he keeps insisting that a red and a green ball are fundamentally different and no one sees it.
A psychotic patient put in a salt bath with no sound and no vision won't hallucinate anything, no stimulus, no thoughts, no hallucinations.
2: 'Majority' is a very vague term which is with respect to a culture, time, and space, this definition also dictates that many of the greatest minds were 'psychotic' because they were well ahead of their time with brilliant beliefs the masses couldn't accept.
3: Thought disorder is also an extremely vague term and greatly depends on the perceiver. I've seen videotapes of certified experts in certain specializations told to act out a crazy man and then simply ramble on about correct things in their certain specializations, of course, the psychiatrist, not a specialist in that field, couldn't understand it and classified it as crazy, incoherent rambling, while it was extremely coherent and if it was said to a peer it would be perceived as accurate, but simply in a strange voice. Power of suggestion gets you pretty far. Isn't this a delusion of the psychiatrist by the way?
I'm sorry, but I don't think you know what you're talking about. I'm a medical student, becoming a doctor next year, and I have studied these things. Yes, psychiatry is not an exact science, but it is far more objectively based than you give it credit for. Simple questioning will suffice to determine whether some one is experiencing symptoms of psychosis in nearly all cases. Your assertion that all hallucinations beginning with a real-world stimulus is completely wrong. What you're describing is an illusion. Yes, it is true that a psychotic person put in a quiet room is less likely to experience a hallucination, but if they are psychotic enough, they will still hallucinate.
Your argument that geniuses who were ahead of their time are deluded is also completely wrong, and shows you don't understand the definition of a delusion. It is a fixed belief in something which is falsifiable. Christopher Columbus wasn't deluded when he said the world was round, because he could prove it. Delusions in psychotic people are things like "I believe I am Jesus Christ", or "the television is sending me secret messages", or "the government is hunting me and has spies watching me every moment, and you're secretly an assassin sent to kill me". The current DSM IV definition of delusion extending to "excluding anything that a majority of people believe in" I personally feel is a cop-out just so followers of religion don't get upset when atheists call them deluded, but I can't let my personal feelings get in the way of medical definitions.
Finally, "thought disorder" does not strictly mean some one is crazy or wrong in what they say or think. It is simply the presence of disordered thought patterns and thought constructions. Manic people tend to have a rapid flight of ideas, a type of thought disorder, but it doesn't mean they're 'crazy' or 'stupid' or whatever you think it seems to mean. If you've played Mass Effect 2, the character Mordin would be a good example: He obviously has thought disorder, but he's not "wrong" about anything he is saying, he's actually a genius.
Why are people so eager for drugs to be legalized? I often see arguments that they are no more harmful than alcohol or smoking, but frankly I don't think those are exactly desirable social elements anyways.
If I give you a spiked drink and put you there, you wouldn't even realize you woke up. There is literally NO stimulus, it's salt water at your own body temperature and your own body density, no sound, no touch, no vision, nothing.
A perfect salt bath gives completely sensory deprivation.
You're wrong. I really don't know what else to say. If you orally took DMT with an MAOI you would still trip your ass off.
]You're trying really hard not to read are you?
I asked where the line lies? There is a continuum between utter clear mad delusion and completely conforming sanity. It's a continuum, now, where does the line lie.
A delusion is when someone believes something is fact, when it's false. There are all kinds of delusions.
Thinking you can fly... Thinking your god... thinking someone is in love with you... thinking eating dog food will make you live longer
the list goes on, it's hard to draw the line. Obviously you can fake delusions, which is the only real reason you are questioning the diagnosis of a delusion anyways.
I'm just giving an example how something that makes perfect sense can appear as nonsense to someone who lacks the capacity, be it in education or intellect, to understand it.
No, I'm comparing incoherence to undergraduate mathematics that any maths student ought to understand.
My point is more that the 'definition' of these concepts is utterly vague and there is a grey area and there is a lot of subjective interpretation of it.
What one man may find insane another may find not. I'm not denying that there are people who are 'clearly' delusional (though really, if it's that clear, there is no need for a trained professional), I'm saying that there are people who are in the grey area.
It's a terrible example though. It has nothing to do with thought disorder. You're saying it's hard to tell what thought disorder is when someone can say something that makes perfect sense to someone who doesn't understand the actual meaning.
People of have thought disorders won't be able to follow trains of thought, or they'll start talking and then stop without finishing what they were saying. Or they'll have flights of ideas and talk and talk.
I mean, the average person with a degree in philosophy will probably come across as saying nonsense to the average psychiatrist if he simply talks about life.. (much like your inexperience with the Sorites Parodox I outlined above)
philosophy is for dumb people and people who want a 4.0 so they can get into law school.
On April 03 2011 12:56 sikyon wrote: Why are people so eager for drugs to be legalized? I often see arguments that they are no more harmful than alcohol or smoking, but frankly I don't think those are exactly desirable social elements anyways.
The problem is why are some legal and some illegal? People want the drugs they like legalized because they don't want to have to get arrested/ripped off/or worse, with legalization the government can control it as they do with alcohol/tobacco.
On April 03 2011 10:41 LilClinkin wrote: Smoking weed can cause symptoms of acute psychosis, any one who argues against this is an idiot or does not understand the definition of psychosis, which are presence of any of the following 3:
1. Hallucinations (any sensory perception in a person which was not due to a real world stimulus, can be visual, auditory, touch, smell, or taste).
2. Delusions (a fixed, unshakable false belief in something not believed by the majority of people (thus excluding things like religion)).
3. Thought disorder (disordered pattern of thought. There are many types of thought disorder, generally only assessed by a third party performing a mental state examination. Many people suffering thought disorder have poor insight and are unaware of this).
It's a bit liberal to call this a 'definition', this is a guideline at best. One of the things which is really why a lot of people don't take psychiatry that seriously, the extreme vagueness of many terms used therein which are also obviously a continuum with many a grey area in between.
Point is, unlike cancer, there are no objective criteria for 'psychosis', the only way to diagnose it is a subjective 'professional opinion', what one psychiatrist may consider a psychosis another might not with no objective way to determine which is 'wrong', let alone the philosophical question if 'wrong' even exists in such a case.
So what criteria did they use to determine psychoses in these tests / researches I wonder? You can't really perform blind diagnoses because you can tell from people if they are high, and you still need a psychiatrist to talk to people to subjectively 'diagnose' such a psychosis, with all the power of suggestion that implies.
More technically:
1: There is no sensory perception not due to a real world stimulus, every hallucination ultimately starts with a real world stimulus, the question is how much does the mind warp this to something different. This line is very subjective and dives into the philosophical of what is 'real' and what is not. Essentially, a normal bloke in a world full of colour blind people would be called insane because he keeps insisting that a red and a green ball are fundamentally different and no one sees it.
A psychotic patient put in a salt bath with no sound and no vision won't hallucinate anything, no stimulus, no thoughts, no hallucinations.
2: 'Majority' is a very vague term which is with respect to a culture, time, and space, this definition also dictates that many of the greatest minds were 'psychotic' because they were well ahead of their time with brilliant beliefs the masses couldn't accept.
3: Thought disorder is also an extremely vague term and greatly depends on the perceiver. I've seen videotapes of certified experts in certain specializations told to act out a crazy man and then simply ramble on about correct things in their certain specializations, of course, the psychiatrist, not a specialist in that field, couldn't understand it and classified it as crazy, incoherent rambling, while it was extremely coherent and if it was said to a peer it would be perceived as accurate, but simply in a strange voice. Power of suggestion gets you pretty far. Isn't this a delusion of the psychiatrist by the way?
I'm sorry, but I don't think you know what you're talking about. I'm a medical student, becoming a doctor next year, and I have studied these things. Yes, psychiatry is not an exact science, but it is far more objectively based than you give it credit for. Simple questioning will suffice to determine whether some one is experiencing symptoms of psychosis in nearly all cases.
And doe it does so reliably and validly?
The latter being impossible to test because there is no hard objective and precise definition of psychosis, the validity of any test to determine it is therefore undefined.
Your assertion that all hallucinations beginning with a real-world stimulus is completely wrong. What you're describing is an illusion. Yes, it is true that a psychotic person put in a quiet room is less likely to experience a hallucination, but if they are psychotic enough, they will still hallucinate.
'quite room' != no sensory stimulus.
You know that most neurologists agree that people who have been deprived of sensory stimulus their entire live don't develop a form of thought right?
When I say 'no sensory stimulus', I mean it, I mean the neurons aren't firing.
Every thought, action, emotion, and even homoeostatic action starts with some form of sensory stimulus. Someone who receives no sensory stimulus is a plant, nay, worse, someone who receives no sensory stimulus isn't breathing. Heart beat, peristaltic functions, and all that all starts with sensory stimulus.
Your argument that geniuses who were ahead of their time are deluded is also completely wrong, and shows you don't understand the definition of a delusion. It is a fixed belief in something which is falsifiable.
Every person believes in many a thing which is falsifiable, all human beings believe in a lot of shit which is easily falsifiable. As a medical student who may have some experience in psychiatry, you ought to know that most 'sane' people to some extend over-estimate their own importance, capabilities, and just generally colour themselves better than they objectively are. This is just part of being a normal human being really.
Now, where this end and NPD beings is again, vague. Just as where a person who is slightly suspicious of others ends and someone who believes irrationally that the government is after him start is also vague and there is a grey area. I've met many people on the line who were a bit suspicious about things they saw but they were still some-what rational and could eloquently explain their point and the reasoning behind why they didn't trust some things.
Christopher Columbus wasn't deluded when he said the world was round, because he could prove it.
He was also not deluded because everyone back then already knew the world was round. Christopher Columbus (incorrectly) believed the radius of the earth was much shorter than everyone else (correctly) believed it to be.
Also, how does one proof the earth is round by discovering another continent exactly?
Delusions in psychotic people are things like "I believe I am Jesus Christ", or "the television is sending me secret messages", or "the government is hunting me and has spies watching me every moment, and you're secretly an assassin sent to kill me". The current DSM IV definition of delusion extending to "excluding anything that a majority of people believe in" I personally feel is a cop-out just so followers of religion don't get upset when atheists call them deluded, but I can't let my personal feelings get in the way of medical definitions.
Of course this is the case, and this is a sad thing, but it also highlights a very interesting point. People can be raised to be deluded.
Are religious people somehow 'insane'? I'm sure you agree that religions above all else are something that people are raised to believe in and a healthy human being will believe such things if one is raised to believe it. Together with various other cultural 'delusions'.
What I'm saying is, if someone is raised to believe these things about the TV or the FBI by his or her parents and that person believes that, is there then truly anything clinically abnormal going on with that person, or is this something you would expect from any human being in that position?
I'm quite confident I can make my kids believe the wildest stuff simply by repeating it often enough... like any human being, this is quite normal and not medically exceptional at all.
Finally, "thought disorder" does not strictly mean some one is crazy or wrong in what they say or think. It is simply the presence of disordered thought patterns and thought constructions. Manic people tend to have a rapid flight of ideas, a type of thought disorder, but it doesn't mean they're 'crazy' or 'stupid' or whatever you think it seems to mean. If you've played Mass Effect 2, the character Mordin would be a good example: He obviously has thought disorder, but he's not "wrong" about anything he is saying, he's actually a genius.
I know, there are a variety of thought disorders, from utter word salads to people who are simply hard to follow. (these are both called 'thought disorders' but as far as I know there is no indication that they have similar causes)
My point is that this is again in the eye of the beholder, what may appear as chaos to one person may be logical order to another.
And again, it's a grey area that lies in between, where does the line lie? This is all quite subjective.
I personally stand by the sorites argument here. If there is a continuous transition between two points, then they cannot be distinct, a position many philosophers and logicians you encounter will adopt.
If I give you a spiked drink and put you there, you wouldn't even realize you woke up. There is literally NO stimulus, it's salt water at your own body temperature and your own body density, no sound, no touch, no vision, nothing.
A perfect salt bath gives completely sensory deprivation.
You're wrong. I really don't know what else to say. If you orally took DMT with an MAOI you would still trip your ass off.
Again, do you know what a perfect salt bath is?
I'm talking about a hypothetical method that would deprive you of any and all sensory stimulus, I'm talking about perfect theoretical sensory deprivation, no neuron is firing in the perfect situation, you have no thoughts, no sensations.
A delusion is when someone believes something is fact, when it's false. There are all kinds of delusions.
Define false, define true, when is something false? If I believe HuK is going to win MLG but he's not going to? Was that then deluded? 40% of this forum is deluded if HuK doesn't turn out to win it?
Do you believe the earth is a sphere, because that's a delusion, it's not, it's actually more of an ovoid shape?
Thinking you can fly... Thinking your god... thinking someone is in love with you... thinking eating dog food will make you live longer
Define 'god', define 'being in love', these are all things which are vague, there are several gradations of 'love', people disagree about when people are 'in love', people wonder about themselves if they are in 'in love' or not, these are subjective and vague terms, and don't get me started on 'god'. Surely you have to see that in order to perform healthy science such terms have to be defined rigorously?
Also, again, the grey area, where does the line lie. There are some people who have beliefs which are a bit on the edge. Like ehhh, a really good player in Masters who thinks he can become a pro, I mean, is this deluded or not? This is the vague part. Of course we can recognise that anyone in Gold is deluded, but this is a grey area on the edge, maybe he's deluded, maybe he isn't..?
the list goes on, it's hard to draw the line. Obviously you can fake delusions, which is the only real reason you are questioning the diagnosis of a delusion anyways.
No, I'm questioning it because of the Sorites argument which holds that if a continuum exists between two points than they cannot be binary distinct.
Which is by the way something that exact sciences use all the time. If some guy A has a cool physical theory which supposes a duality of two groups of whatevers and some other dudes says 'But wait, I can demonstrate the existence of a continuum between an element of group A and one of group B.', then basically the theory is falsified due to being internally contradicting.
So basically, the fact that a lot of psychiatrists (definitely not all, many start to recognise that the concept indeed falls to the Sorites argument) still hold on to the believe in 'delusion' despite the existence of a continuum between delusion and sanity would be perceived as irrational and thus 'deluded' by a lot of exact scientists and philosophers.
It's a terrible example though. It has nothing to do with thought disorder. You're saying it's hard to tell what thought disorder is when someone can say something that makes perfect sense to someone who doesn't understand the actual meaning.
People of have thought disorders won't be able to follow trains of thought, or they'll start talking and then stop without finishing what they were saying. Or they'll have flights of ideas and talk and talk.
And like I said, a psychiatrist is not able to see the difference between this and coherent higher mathematics or something else fancy.
If the average person with no background in it sees analytical philosophers debate or what not it WILL appear to them as complete garbled unfinished sentences with no train of logic to be found to them.
I mean, the average person with a degree in philosophy will probably come across as saying nonsense to the average psychiatrist if he simply talks about life.. (much like your inexperience with the Sorites Parodox I outlined above)
philosophy is for dumb people and people who want a 4.0 so they can get into law school.
An argument which is as silly as it is completely irrelevant, true or not. It's still coherence which will be perceived as coherence by peers but as completely garbled nonsense and flights of ideas to a psychiatrist.
On April 03 2011 12:56 sikyon wrote: Why are people so eager for drugs to be legalized?
Because it's our right.
Says who? Rights are debatable things. Saying you have a right to something is merely stating your personal opinion unless it is some sort of practical legal discussion.
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.marijuanavaporizer.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/volcano-vaporizer.jpg)
