Human psychology and why its important.

[Cyrene]

Theres many branches of psychology which are basically unsubstantiated horse-shit that will never reach real science. This isn’t a thread on why psychological standards are good to help sick people get better, this thread is about why everyone should have a basic education on some fairly newer sciences.

The first is evolutionary psychology. It is important to know the evolutionary logic behind why people fall in love, get angry, the subtle interactions in social groups, have anxiety, get afraid, and etc. For the average individual who can decipher some of the logic behind why we are the way that we are, it gives them a slight platform in which to better control their own actions.

A lot of people have anger problems, some times though when they realize why they are testy, say a situation that would produce anger in hunter-gatherer societies, someone questioning their social-status or physical ability, a lot of people might find it a lot easier to control those responses in modern day living.

A second field of study that I think is almost as important is heuristics and biases research. research that shows that people have ways in which we think that can economically work for the type of thought we get in day to day life, but which fall apart under more complex or diverse mental tasks.

Contrast effect — the enhancement or diminishing of a weight or other measurement when compared with recently observed contrasting object.
Déformation professionnelle — the tendency to look at things according to the conventions of one’s own profession, forgetting any broader point of view.
Denial[verification needed] — the tendency to disbelieve or discount an unpleasant fact.
Distinction bias — the tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.[2]
Endowment effect — “the fact that people often demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it”.[3]
Expectation bias — the tendency for experimenters to believe, certify and publish data that agrees with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appears to conflict with those expectations.

• wiki

A small list of them from wiki^

I think that because of a general unawareness to the types of ways the human mind works 1. somtimes allows people to act in ways that they later regret, when they could have made more rational decision making to begin with and 2. with the biases and heuristics, tends to continously set people off towards erroneous conclusions.

For an evo psychology example, a lot of people fall for people that they don’t really like or share interests with, maybe because their just attractive. Some people fall pretty quickly out of love after sleeping with the person a few times.

could save yourself the effort and realize that you’re not going to like the person before hand, even in the face of ‘emotions’ and not even bother.

What I mean is that controlling/directing things like hatred, anger, love, and etc is a lot easier if you have a grasp of why we’re given them to begin with, a see a lot of people who have themselves in an emotional mess of a life, jumping from one urge to another.

I’m not saying theres anything wrong with emotion, just that a type of education about emotions can naturally lend themselves to better control of those emotions.

[Knox]

I’m not sure I agree.

I can’t say I object to understanding our own motivations, I’m just not so sure about controlling them. Our emotions have a way of checking themselves. I might get really angry at somebody, maybe violently so, but my fear of injury will usually keep me from getting into a fight. Do most fights happen because anger overwhelms people, or because anger is combined with the thought “I’m not going to be the pussy?” That’s an ideal, not an emotion. Usually anger leads to a lot of yelling and cussing, but subsides or is checked by fear before the full-blown brawl. So which is the problem, the emotion or the thought? If the fight is purely emotional, that probably means it’s a good fight to get in.

This is where education gets dicey. Take evolutionary psychology, for example. As a male, evolutionary psychology tells me my attractiveness is based on becoming the alpha male. Now, my emotions already knew this, and unconsciously direct me toward that end. Male ape’s don’t understand evolution, but they still pursue social status. But for me, knowing evolutionary psychology, I’m now adding a second impetus, my rational thoughts, which are also directing me toward that end. It’s a double whammy. The result is that I end up pursuing social status with more vigor than is naturally warranted. I come off as cocky, arrogant, overly ambitious, or what have you, and women will actually find me unattractive. Women want “confident but not cocky.” The definition of cockiness is a forced or artificial confidence.

Another example is capitalism, (which isn’t psychology but certainly involves psychology). Adam Smith says the market is ruled by the unseen hand of self-interest. By nature, we pursue profit when trading (duh!). But when I learn this as a principle, I make profit an ideal above and beyond my natural inclination toward profit. This leads to greed, which is an emotional imbalance and degrades my sense of personal well-being.

I also want to comment on your example of falling in and out of love quickly. To that, I say “so what?” Why should I avoid that? Animals fall in and out of love and it doesn’t cause them any overriding emotional distress. The reason this kind of thing is problematic for people is that we place too much value on “love.” It’s a societal thing. We are generally led to believe that love is eternal, and so become distressed as it waxes and wanes. I say love is temporary, not eternal, so let it wax and wane as it will. Avoid the trouble? Harldly. You’ll have a hard time convincing me that having sex is “trouble” just because the feeling fades after a few days. I call that a good week.

All that being said, these are just kind of random thoughts on the subject. I don’t know that I have any concrete ideology or overriding philosophy here. But I think it’s an important subject. There’s a discord in the human mind that is directly related to the fact that our rational knowledge and our emotions clash with each other, which is the source of what people call the human condition. “The spirit and body doth clash!” says Nietzsche. I just don’t think education, in the sense of “adding more facts” is the answer. That’s just feeding one of the combatants (IMO, the wrong one) and increasing the struggle.

They say ignorance is bliss, and I think there’s truth to that. Reason being that the ignorant don’t have artificial motivations impeding their emotional expression. Studies show that outgoing, expressive people are generally happier than repressed introverts. The former are ruled by their emotions, the latter by their reason. The approach I’m giving says “know nothing and follow your heart.” Of course, you can’t really “know nothing,” nor would you want to. Your brain exists to gather information. You just don’t have to believe in any of it. That’s the gist of any decent spiritual theory.

[Cyrene]

@Knox

I’m not sure I agree.

I can’t say I object to understanding our own motivations, I’m just not so sure about controlling them. Our emotions have a way of checking themselves. I might get really angry at somebody, maybe violently so, but my fear of injury will usually keep me from getting into a fight. Do most fights happen because anger overwhelms people, or because anger is combined with the thought “I’m not going to be the pussy?” That’s an ideal, not an emotion. Usually anger leads to a lot of yelling and cussing, but subsides or is checked by fear before the full-blown brawl. So which is the problem, the emotion or the thought? If the fight is purely emotional, that probably means it’s a good fight to get in.

concerns about social status or how you look after being challenged in a group is probably an adaptation and envolves a few emotions. As to how many fights does rage create? a lot.

This is where education gets dicey. Take evolutionary psychology, for example. As a male, evolutionary psychology tells me my attractiveness is based on becoming the alpha male.

Thats simplistic and far from the truth. Evolutioanry psychology tells us that females are attracted to a broad range of traits both in the idea of potential fatherhood and genetics. that includes, kindness and empathy and things of that nature.

Now, my emotions already knew this, and unconsciously direct me toward that end. Male ape’s don’t understand evolution, but they still pursue social status. But for me, knowing evolutionary psychology, I’m now adding a second impetus, my rational thoughts, which are also directing me toward that end. It’s a double whammy. The result is that I end up pursuing social status with more vigor than is naturally warranted. I come off as cocky, arrogant, overly ambitious, or what have you, and women will actually find me unattractive. Women want “confident but not cocky.” The definition of cockiness is a forced or artificial confidence.

Or you could manipulate them with evolutionary knowledge. If you know that a relationship/love is about genetic propagation, you can probably control it some-what better, tell her what you want to here, while ignoring the things she did that would typically upset a male. Nah, cockiness and all these other claims don’t directly follow.

I also want to comment on your example of falling in and out of love quickly. To that, I say “so what?” Why should I avoid that? Animals fall in and out of love and it doesn’t cause them any overriding emotional distress.

if you fall in love helplessly with someone who doesn’t love you and never will, or someone whose only a destructive force in your life, because of evolutionary reasons, than yeah, it will cause emotional distress. Natural selection and evolution don’t give a shit about how happy humans are, if depression and emotional turmoil end up being adaptive, and they are in plenty of circumstances.

I dunno, I think the more self-knowledge a person has, the more likely they are to control their own actions, and make the types of actions that they want to make without letting emotions cloud our judgement I mean, emotions can and do systematically cloud our judgement about important calls to make. I can’t see anyone denying that seriously.

[Knox]

@Cyrene

concerns about social status or how you look after being challenged in a group is probably an adaptation and envolves a few emotions.

Yes, it involves emotions but starts as an idea. Social status only exists in our collective minds.

Thats simplistic and far from the truth. Evolutioanry psychology tells us that females are attracted to a broad range of traits both in the idea of potential fatherhood and genetics. that includes, kindness and empathy and things of that nature.

Yes, I know it’s simplistic and general, but not far from the truth. The alpha male does rule. For humans, the alpha male has evolved. He’s not necessarily the biggest and strongest, but he is the most respected. That’s where things like kindness, empathy, etc. come in. Regardless, the female is still pursuing the most respected male (i.e. the alpha male).

Or you could manipulate them with evolutionary knowledge. If you know that a relationship/love is about genetic propagation, you can probably control it some-what better, tell her what you want to here, while ignoring the things she did that would typically upset a male. Nah, cockiness and all these other claims don’t directly follow.

Cockiness was just one example of how knowledge can bastardize our evolutionary motives.

You bring up manipulation. One of the reasons women are slower to sleep with men than visa versa is because she’s looking out for things like manipulativeness. The emotion we call “love” was programmed into us by evolution to tell us when we’ve found a mate that will benefit the propogation of the species. A manipulative relationship is not a loving one, and does not create a positive environment for children, meaning they will be less likely to survive and thrive. That’s why she will stop being attracted to you, stop loving you, if she finds out you’re manipulative.

if you fall in love helplessly with someone who doesn’t love you and never will, or someone whose only a destructive force in your life, because of evolutionary reasons, than yeah, it will cause emotional distress. Natural selection and evolution don’t give a shit about how happy humans are, if depression and emotional turmoil end up being adaptive, and they are in plenty of circumstances.

I would argue that people who experience the unrequited love you talk about are really in love with their image of the other person, much of which is illusionary. That’s another example where our ideas, or in this case they’re cousins, our imaginations, can corrupt our emotions.

As for natural selection not giving a shit about how happy humans are, you couldn’t be further from the truth.

Where do you think our emotions come from? Natural selection programmed us with the emotions of pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness, for the express purpose of guiding us toward propagation of the species.

Why does sex make us happy? Natural selection. Good for the species
Why does eating make us happy? Natural selection. Good for us and therefore the species
Why does eating too much make us unhappy? Natural selection. Bad for us and therefore the species
Why does buying a new car or getting a great new job make us happy? Natural selection. Good for us and therefore the species.
Why does death make us unhappy? Natural selection. Bad for us and therefore the species.

Natural selection most definately wants us to be happy. If you’re happy, it means your actions are leading to the propagation of the species. You’re emotions aren’t random and chaotic. They only appear to be if you don’t understand them. They have a purpose which is the propagation of the species and instilled by natural selection.

Natural selection and human happiness are joined at the hip.

I dunno, I think the more self-knowledge a person has, the more likely they are to control their own actions, and make the types of actions that they want to make without letting emotions cloud our judgement I mean, emotions can and do systematically cloud our judgement about important calls to make. I can’t see anyone denying that seriously.

Doesn’t “make the type of actions that they want to make” mean doing what your emotions say? Our desires and our emotions are one and the same (or at least, they come from the same source, call it the heart, the soul, the unconscious, whatever). To want something is exactly the idea of owning the thing accompanied by a pleasurable emotion.

It’s not the emotions that are clouded. It’s the ideas. Emotions are simple and causal. Good things make you happy, bad things make you sad. Suppose I have $15 dollars in my pocket. I’m at the store staring at 2 CDs I want to buy. They both cost $15 dollars. When I imagine owning the first CD, I get a pleasurable emotion, so I know I want it. Then I imagine the second CD and I also get a pleasurable emotion, so I know I want that as well. There is a conflict. Are my emotions clouded? No, they’re job was just to tell me which has the most pleasure value. Now it’s up to my mind to make the right decision. If I put aside my emotions, how can I make the right decision?

[Cyrene]

Where do you think our emotions come from? Natural selection programmed us with the emotions of pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness, for the express purpose of guiding us toward propagation of the species.

natural selection has nothing to do with survival of the species. Why the fuck does everyone think this? When the gene-centric view of evolution is accepted, and has been accepted, by modern biology for a long long time.

genetic propagation is the goal, not survival of the species, they are two, hugely different things. We see natural selection almost wiping out species because of things like XX and XY, genes can be quite nonbeneficial to males, and still spread like wildfire among a population as long as their beneficial to females, because the chromosome X is more likely to be found in females, hence twice as likely to have a female host. WE see insect species almost go extinct because males start to vanish in huge amounts. Thats not beneficial to the species.

Genes, not organisms, not entire species, are the unit of selection.

We see animals that have sexual displays to the point that they go extinct as well. or at least, those which seriously hamper their abilities to progress as a species.

For example, we wouldn’t have people passing on huntingtons (sp) and various other peoples highly susceptible to cancer, if natural selection was about ‘survival of the species’. The genes happen to pass on, and people get it.

as programmed into us by evolution to tell us when we’ve found a mate that will benefit the propogation of the species.

Nope, we fall in love because its an adaptation, preprogrammed by natural selection to propagate genes. Theres a huge huge huge difference. The specific reason is probably because people who stick together due to love, can look over highly helpless offspring until its fairly old.

Yes, females are more selecting than males when it comes to sex due to having to house the baby and all that and they do look harder for manipulation. The point is, assuming that things like falling in love until you sleep with someoen then finding out more about them and dropping them, is assuming that it wasn’t an issue of self-deception.

Robert Trivers points out, and accurately so, its a naive view of mental evolution that would suggest organisms came to more truthful/truthful interactions. If theres selection to spot deception, there is in turn, selection to make ones own motives and desires unconscious, as so the subtle signs of self-betrayal can’t be picked up on.

Self-deception is a huge part of animal communication and it causes all sorts of suffering among humans, knowing that humans are capable of this self-deception for sex, which can hurt lots of people, one would think understanding it would give someone abit more power over themselves and their self-deception.

For example, if i forget that on tuesday theres a tvshow i want to watch. They put me in brain-scanning machines and look at the activity. However, lets say i ‘forgot’ that I owed someone money. When they do brain scans of when i forget, when its beneficial for me to forget the brain activity is massively, massively, massively different. Self-deception is often-times beneficial to individual people and can create problems in any kind of problem-solving scenerio.

[Cyrene]

The point is that we’re not adapted to be happy or to have good self control or to not engage in massive amounts of self-deception, or dozens of things, that many many humans don’t want to personally engage in. We’re adapted to propagate genetically which often-times means being miserable, for no reason, besides its advantageous in circumstances to genetic propagation.

My goals may be different from evolution/natural selections. Maybe I don’t want children but that makes me sad and don’t want to be under pressure from self-deception in important circumstances, understanding the logic, about why I feel that way, because it has evolutionary advantage, can help me, or anyone else, control those things.

If you understand that you’re influenced from somthing, that understanding can help, in part, give you more control.

You say that emotions come after ideas, but thats blatantly false in plenty of cases. When I see a bear/tiger I don’t think “oh my a dangerous predator i’m fucked” before a thought occurs to me, my body if flooded by chemicals and adaptation takes a huge reach forward to take control.

We couldn’t think it out because the time envolved in doing so is far far too valuable. We have economic and immediate responses to all sorts of situations being able to think through the logic to why these economic responses exist, can help lose the urge to follow through with them.

For example, sexual jealousy is obviously an adaptation but its very rarely ever warrented in modern day societies or at least it gets provoked in situations where it shouldn’t because we used to live in hunter-gatherer groups. Understanding why males feel sexual jealousy, should allow you to reason through situations in which a girlfriend or somthing is talking to someone and you feel unwarrented sexual jealousy.

Thats pretty obvious right? Sexual jealousy ruins relationships, hurts both males/females, because of an economic emotional response that a lot of people don’t understand.

Unless theres hardcore evidence of sexual infidelity or emotional infidelity, it would seem that sexual jealousy is unwarrented, but it comes about in MANY MANY more circumstances.

[Knox]

@Cyrene

Genes, not organisms, not entire species, are the unit of selection.

It doesn’t make any difference to the argument at hand what the unit is. The point is that the emotions are formed by a selection process, and are therefore ordered.

Nope, we fall in love because its an adaptation, preprogrammed by natural selection to propagate genes. Theres a huge huge huge difference. The specific reason is probably because people who stick together due to love, can look over highly helpless offspring until its fairly old.

How is that different? Where is the huge, huge difference you speak of? The “specific reason” you point to is exactly the same one I was getting at. I just took it as obvious.

Yes, females are more selecting than males when it comes to sex due to having to house the baby and all that and they do look harder for manipulation. The point is, assuming that things like falling in love until you sleep with someoen then finding out more about them and dropping them, is assuming that it wasn’t an issue of self-deception.

Yes, yes, yes. Self-deception is a part of it. But self deception also involves self knowledge. It’s just that the knowledge is a lie or is incorrect.

That’s not the meat of my argument. If you ask me which is better, self-knowledge that is truthful versus self-knowledge that is false, I would say the former. My argument is against self-knowledge itself. I’m saying our actions would be more genuine, and work more towards our happiness, if we had no self-knowledge at all, and responded on our natural motivations. I realize that’s a very un-realistic ideal, especially in the face of a complex society, but I resolve it with the concept of belief. We don’t have to believe in any of the things we think about ourselves.

Maybe I should say: “We shouldn’t become attached to the things we believe about ourselves, even things taught us by evolutionary psychology.”

[Knox]

@Cyrene

The point is that we’re not adapted to be happy or to have good self control or to not engage in massive amounts of self-deception, or dozens of things, that many many humans don’t want to personally engage in. We’re adapted to propagate genetically which often-times means being miserable, for no reason, besides its advantageous in circumstances to genetic propagation.

My goals may be different from evolution/natural selections. Maybe I don’t want children but that makes me sad and don’t want to be under pressure from self-deception in important circumstances, understanding the logic, about why I feel that way, because it has evolutionary advantage, can help me, or anyone else, control those things.

I’m not sure your goals can be different from evolution/natural selection. At root level your goals are formed by motivations driven by natural selection. If they are different, or seem so, my guess is that there’s a bad idea somewhere preventing your emotions from driving your behavior.

You say that emotions come after ideas, but thats blatantly false in plenty of cases. When I see a bear/tiger I don’t think “oh my a dangerous predator i’m fucked” before a thought occurs to me, my body if flooded by chemicals and adaptation takes a huge reach forward to take control.

I didn’t say they always come after ideas, I said the ones that do are suspect.

For example, sexual jealousy is obviously an adaptation but its very rarely ever warrented in modern day societies or at least it gets provoked in situations where it shouldn’t because we used to live in hunter-gatherer groups. Understanding why males feel sexual jealousy, should allow you to reason through situations in which a girlfriend or somthing is talking to someone and you feel unwarrented sexual jealousy.

Maybe your jealousy isn’t so unwarranted.

Thats pretty obvious right? Sexual jealousy ruins relationships, hurts both males/females, because of an economic emotional response that a lot of people don’t understand.

Sexual jealousy is an indication of a lack of trust, which is what ruins the relationships.

If you don’t express the jealousy, then your partner never becomes aware of that lack of trust, and cannot act to engender more trust. The relationship is weak, and without the emotional expression, can’t be made strong.

Unless theres hardcore evidence of sexual infidelity or emotional infidelity

That is a learned idea. That there must be hardcore evidence. That’s also exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. The emotion should be expressed unless there is a greater emotion (like fear of the loss of the relationship) that overrides it.

[Cyrene]

A lack of trust which is highly influenced if not created by evolutionary mechanisms because they were advantageous in our EEA. When they’re not nearly so advantageous anymore.

You’re not going to tell me that people don’t experience unwarrented sexual jealousy all the time, because hunter-gatherer societies work much different than our own, you’re not going to explain that being able to control that jealousy better because of understanding of its logic, wouldn’t help.

When I talk about self-deception i’m talking about only self-deception. People decieving themselves in ways which hurt other people, and them not caring about it, because they have other ideas about it.

[Knox]

I think people experience unwarranted jealousy, but I don’t think the warranted/unwarrantedness of it has much to do with natural selection. I also don’t think the sexual selection process is much different today than it was back then, except that it’s become more complex and the criteria has changed. It’s still about finding a good father for the female and finding a good mother for the male, and cheating, etc is probably just rampant as it’s ever been. I guess. I don’t understand why that would have changed just because we live in a complex society as opposed to a simple one.

So be the jealousy warranted or unwarranted, I think that’s driven by some conscious or unconscious observation. How lightly did she touch his arm? How personal was their conversation? Things like that.

[Cyrene]

Y’know what, thats a fair criticism to make, that we probably have just as much cheating and so the need to detect accurately is as great as ever. Don’t really know why I said otherwise.

heres the thing though. We are trip-wired to detect agency in lots of situations. (people seeing dogs or whatever out of shadows). If you jump at every shadow, and you detect a predator, once only every 100 thousand times more often than the next guy, it will become beneficial to jump at shadows and species typical to see things in shadows which aren’t always there.

in the same way i think we could agree that males are ‘trip-wired’ to any small indication that a woman may be cheating on them, and ‘jump’ at shadows so to speak. As in feel sexual jealousy, when the women envolved have no interest in other men.

it’d be absurd to deny that this happens.

[Cyrene]

of course, the whole point is that its very important and obviously so.

If a person’s imagination can massively alter their perception of how likely it is to get a disease (either mass over prediction or under prediction) than, uh, obviously knowing we have evolved to make a lot of snap judgements that ‘seem’ right, but on later examination aren’t is important.

Theres dozens and dozens of types of systematic errors that humans make, even very very smart people. Obviously knowing about those can help you avoid making the same mistakes.

[Cyrene]

Adaptations aren’t perfect ‘designs’ they are only ‘better than’. Otherwise lion wouldn’t hunt up-wind, same applies to sexual jealousy, its not some kind of ‘perfectly tuned’ device, only better than not having it. Theres going to be situations where understanding the evolutionary logic of sexual jealousy and its trip-wired nature, should help people avoid feeling it (by rationally reinforcing the idea that their girlfriends have no interest in the other person or whatever).

Every single time a male feels sexual jealousy its gotta be justified? haha. c’mon, seriously.

You might think so, but thousands of chicks obviously don’t share that sentiment.

[Knox]

@Cyrene

You might think so, but thousands of chicks obviously don’t share that sentiment.

Yeah but trying to think about what chicks think is a dangerous thing!

[Mr_Doom]

Why one should be cautious of psychology and psychiatry:

Sanity and insanity are social constructs that don’t reflect quantifiable patterns of human behavior which is only indicative only of the “sane” over the “insane”.

“The only difference between the Sane and the Insane, is IN and yet within this world, the Sane have the power to have the Insane locked up.”

Foucault-

“Central to this is the notion of confinement as a meaningful exercise. Foucault’s history explains how the mad came first to be confined; how they became identified as confined due to moral and economic factors that determined those who ought to be confined; how they became perceived as dangerous through their confinement, partly by way of atavistic identification with the lepers whose place they had come to occupy; how they were ‘liberated’ by Pinel and Tuke, but in their liberation remained confined, both physically in asylums and in the designation of being mad; and how this confinement subsequently became enacted in the figure of the psychiatrist, whose practice is ‘a certain moral tactic contemporary with the end of the eighteenth century, preserved in the rites of the asylum life, and overlaid by the myths of positivism.’ Science and medicine, notably, come in at the later stages, as practices ‘elaborated once this division’ between the mad and the sane has been made (ix).”

“Foucault directs his analysis toward the ‘statement’, the basic unit of discourse that he believes has been ignored up to this point. ‘Statement’ is the English translation from French énoncé (that which is enunciated or expressed), which has a peculiar meaning for Foucault. ‘Énoncé’ for Foucault means that which makes propositions, utterances, or speech acts meaningful. In this understanding, statements themselves are not propositions, utterances, or speech acts. Rather, statements create a network of rules establishing what is meaningful, and it is these rules that are the preconditions for propositions, utterances, or speech acts to have meaning. Statements are also ‘events’. Depending on whether or not they comply with the rules of meaning, a grammatically correct sentence may still lack meaning and inversely, an incorrect sentence may still be meaningful. Statements depend on the conditions in which they emerge and exist within a field of discourse. It is huge collections of statements, called discursive formations, toward which Foucault aims his analysis. […] Rather than looking for a deeper meaning underneath discourse or looking for the source of meaning in some transcendental subject, Foucault analyzes the conditions of existence for meaning. In order to show the principles of meaning production in various discursive formations he details how truth claims emerge during various epochs on the basis of what was actually said and written during these periods of time.” [9]

The difference described by Foucault between the sane and the insane does have observable and very real effects on millions of people daily and can be characterized in terms of those effects, but it can also serve to illustrate a particular effect of the indeterminacy of definition: i.e., that insofar as the general public tends not to characterize or define insanity in very precise terms, it tends, according to Foucault, unnecessarily and arbitrarily to confine some of its members on an irrational basis. The less-precisely such states as “insanity” and “criminality” are defined in a society, the more likely that society is to fail to continue over time to describe the same behaviors as characteristic of those states (or, alternately, to characterize such states in terms of the same behaviors).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indetermin … f_insanity

[Cyrene]

@Mr Doom

Why one should be cautious of psychology and psychiatry:

Sanity and insanity are social constructs that don’t reflect quantifiable patterns of human behavior which is only indicative only of the “sane” over the “insane”.

Yeah, except the only people that consider that as true, have no education about biology, and hence, are not in a fucking position to say anything about the subject.

The idea that ‘sanity’ and ‘insanity’ are social constructs is a lot of bullshit. If I can’t find food because i’m hallucinating about an imaginary tiger outside or a wolf outside, obviously thats an issue of biological dysfunction.

If I have a tumor or other condition which creates my body being flooded with rage, for no apparent reason, and I murder my children, again, thats an issue of biological DYSFUNCTION.

as long as humans have adaptations that exist in all humans like HANDS OR EYES, we can make judgement calls about whether or not those adaptations are functioning PROPERLY.

the idea that our brain mechanisms aren’t as complex as the bones in our hands, is fucking stupid. Evolutionary biology isn’t just making things up when it says that adaptations become species-typical.

Unless the idea is that no human anywhere has mental adaptations, which is fucking stupid.

[Cyrene]

but then again, psychology brings up concerns outside of sanity/insanity, dipshit. Like, if humans systematically engage in judgement errors, because our brains are like swiss-army knives and not specialized to making probability judgements, knowing which ways, humans seem to make these errors, would help us prevent making them, ourselves.

When we talk about probability judgements, these things have REAL WORLD IMPLICATIONS. Like, the difference between a medical expert’s opinion of his accuracy, and his accuracy in the real world determined by well kept patient statistics.

The difference between you knowing about systematic errors in human judgement, can be the difference between thinking you’re going to live/die, which has an effect on HOW PEOPLE CHOOSE TO LIVE THEIR LIVES.

[Mr_Doom]

Indeterminacy in new physical theories:

Science generally attempts to eliminate vague definitions, causally inert entities, and indeterminate properties, via further observation, experimentation, characterization, and explanation. Occam’s razor tends to eliminates causally inert entities from functioning models of quantifiable phenomena, but some quantitative models, such as quantum mechanics, actually imply certain indeterminacies, such as the relative indeterminacy of quantum particles’ positions to the precision with which their momenta can be measured (and vice versa). (See Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle.)

One ardent supporter of the possibility of a final unifying theory (and thus, arguably, of the possibility of the end of some current indeterminacies) in physics, Steven Weinberg, stated in an interview with PBS [14] that

“Sometimes […] people say that surely there’s no final theory because, after all, every time we’ve made a step toward unification or toward simplification we always find more and more complexity there. That just means we haven’t found it yet. Physicists never thought they had the final theory.”

The wikipedia article on the possibility of such a “theory of everything” notes that

“Other possibilities which may frustrate the explanatory capacity of a TOE may include sensitivity to the boundary conditions of the universe, or the existence of mathematical chaos in its solutions, making its predictions precise, but useless.”

Chaos theory argues that precise prediction of the behavior of complex systems becomes impossible because of the observer’s inability to gather all necessary data.

As yet, it seems entirely possible that there shall never be any “final theory” of all phenomena, and that, rather, explanations may instead breed more and more complex and exact explanations of the new phenomena uncovered by current experimentation. In this argument, the “indeterminacy” or “thing in itself” is the “final explanation” that will never be reached; this can be compared to the concept of the limit in calculus, in that quantities may approach, but never reach, a given limit in certain situations.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indetermin … f_insanity

[Mr_Doom]

Indeterminacy in consciousness

It has been speculated that there is a connection between consciousness and the quantum uncertainty underlying all observable phenomena, since the brain’s activity can be correlated to a great degree with the phenomenon of consciousness and all physical activity is to some extent unpredictable. According to some philosophers, such as Dr. William Plank, this would tend to agree with a Nietzschean view of causality.[15][16]

Furthermore, qualia, a way of talking about the way things appear to subjective consciousess, were argued to be indeterminate by Dennett in the works noted above.

If communication and memetic replication are taken as necessary to human consciousness, then the indeterminacy of definition can arguably be seen as necessary to human consciousness as well inasmuch as it facilitates (or, possibly, enables) memetic replication; however, such a proposition is currently untestable and cannot predict any real events except, perhaps, for the continuation of indeterminacy. The indeterminacy of definition is itself determined by physical events, according to a biological psychology, and does not demonstrably cause them: like qualia, indeterminacy might only appear to accompany observable, quantifiable processes. The proposition that indeterminacy has a definite effect on observable phenomena (such as on the wide influences of Platonism and Kantianism) is based on historical evidence rather than on scientific experiment; however, it is nevertheless not an untenable position in modern philosophy if it does not treat indeterminacy as a “transcendental cause” but as a phenomenon or process which can be precisely characterized and which is evidenced by other observable phenomena.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indetermin … f_insanity

Indeterminacy through philosophy

Uncertainty and indeterminacy are words for essentially the same concept in both quantum mechanics. Unquantifiability, and undefinability (or indefinability), can also sometimes be synonymous with indeterminacy. In science, indeterminacy can sometimes be interchangeable with unprovability or unpredictability. Also, anything entirely inobservable can be said to be indeterminate in that it cannot be precisely characterized.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indetermin … f_insanity

[Cyrene]

Foucault’s ideas are stupid and not compelling and aren’t a legitimate arguement against anything. Though, I agree it may be true somtimes; people being locked up as insane, when they’re engaging in what was once adaptive behavior.

Say, you might be called insane for second degree murder, but in reality, someone was hunting you, and you ambushed them without really caring if they were human, or whether or not they knew you’d defend yourself with a knife if attacked.

I might be called insane if someone attacked me and I knifed them without giving them warning that i’d defend myself that way.

the arguement might hold that these people aren’t insane, our classification of them as insane is artificial, theres no biological dysfunction. (not that we should accept these actions as ‘okay’ just their not signs of dysfunction)

however when we get into things like someone not being able to find water because they hallucinate so much, yeah, thats an issue of the brain, and specialized brain adaptations, which envolve complex neuromachinery, not working right.

The same way that I can say a keyboard isn’t working right if its hard-wiring gets screwed up and I can’t type with it. The same applies to humans in plenty of circumstances.