Hacker News Reader

Comment by inglor_cz | Hacker News Reader

This is really interesting. A proof that "not everything was thought of yet" and revolutionary ideas still wait for people whose thinking is sufficiently out of the box.

Who would have thought that "confronting your demons" could work in such a literal way.

View on HN

Many people probably do this already, somewhat intuitively. If you look around, descriptions of such problems and similar advice is found in many contemplative traditions. I've heard an sermon recently that was named something like "pay no mind to the evil thoughts". Now in the tradition of that priest (mainstream/Orthodox Christianity) they overly attribute some things to demons, but you'll find similar advice elsewhere without that baggage.

It is nice to see it in secular medicine as well, though.

I think calling them "demons" is part of the problem. I take my delusion as clues, psychic hints, a sort of over sensitivity and Cassandra like quality, that should be used by people without schizo. But I cannot tell you how many time sI was called stupid and crazy about my ideas on here yet I talk with research scientists on the regular.

To me Schizo is nothing more than an intensely creative mind. Why see nothing when you can see somthing?

Note that hunter gatherer genetics are linked to schizo and the idea of aa demon is a particularly Christian view of insights that do not fit the norm. More so if the ideas were coming from "pagan" people.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/evolutionary-psychi...

TBH these voices might have been the original reason why "demons" got defined by the ancients as evil spirits.

They often speak evil things, are unseen to the general population, but torment the sufferer ... a basic candidate for the category of "demon", especially in pre-modern times.

Also, I don't think that demons are a particularly Christian phenomenon. They certainly predate Christianity and various "heathen" religions were full of them: Indo-European, Amerindian, African...

But the idea of schizophrenia as a very intense mind going on empty is interesting. Only I would say that it needs some specific pathway to go down the schizophrenic route. Plenty of people with intense fantasies are normally adjusted and don't fulfill the criteria for a mental disease.

But it does look like there are some people who are tormented by mental issues and preoccupied with bizarre thoughts, occult imagery, and aggressive behaviors. And honestly, even though I've seen myself how meds work on my family member, it's so surreal to believe after seeing such manifestations, and demons would be the right term for the behaviors I've seen first hand, it also sounded like a living nightmare to the person experiencing it. The acceptance of these nonsensical ideas and going with the flow reminded me of how dreams work, but at least I'm not awake to live out the dream.

My dad thinks manic episodes are demon possession.

If antipsychotics fix the problem, was it really demon-possession?

The antipsychotics turn the body bitter, making it less comfortable for the demon. Hence the demon leaves for a better target.

Well, probably not. But if demon possessions were a real thing there is no reason why only medieval remedies should be effective against them

If the demons control your body by abusing your brain and nerve impulses, it could be. Our bodies work through electrical signals and various neurotransmitters like serotonin, so an anti-psychotic that affects brain receptors could prevent such a "hotwiring".

Would it be any different than if aliens could beam signals to individual neurons to force you to do something? What about a skilled surgeon with an Arduino, or those seizure prevention circuits they can install?

I sometimes wonder if the voices are suppressed in the “healthy” population, but to some extent still influential - but dangerous in that they operate out of sight. For reference: non-professional opinion.

That seems like a Freudian theory of repressed trauma or the more general idea of "coping mechanisms" that go wrong. The "healthy" mind isn't afraid/ashamed to hear and process discomforting thoughts. For the more fragile mind, pushing them back makes them more and more intrusive. Ronnie Laing, Thomas Szasz, Erich Fromm, and many others have said, variously; "Mental illness is a sane reaction to an insane world", "In a mad world, only the mad are sane", or "Coping is making yourself part of the problem".

That's not the same as being dismissive about the state of world, or legitimising/glorifying real and distressing medical insanity - it's just saying; be careful how you "cope". That said, just look around you. Aren't intrusive voices just reason tired of us telling it to shut up.

I’d say it’s less Freud than it is Internal Family Systems theory, which posits human personality is multiple. And we’ve somehow learned to suppress voices that we know sub-consciously to be unacceptable, maybe through socialization etc. Writing this, I make the leap to Jung and need for awareness and management of these suppressed voices before they overwhelm us.

I’m conscious I am (maybe we are) fumbling towards statement or acknowledgment of the same thing.

PS I like what you wrote!

It's only revolutionary if you ignore history.

As popularized in film, John Nash did this in the 1960s.

Ye olde question: is the crucial aspect of innovation if someone did that first, or if someone was able to break into the mainstream?

If the technique wasn't used for 50 years after Nash, wasn't it like the tree that fell in the forest and nobody heard it falling?

Imagine finding out that someone observed antibiotic effects of Penicilinum in the 1880s, but patients still dying of banal infections until Fleming; in that case, I would give the "revolutionary" credit to Fleming.

No, it’s not revolutionary if someone manages to find a counter-example 22 minutes after someone proclaims that it is revolutionary. It clearly hasn’t been relegated to obscurity.

Revolution means pretty literally "turn something around".

Which a first actual large-scale deployment of something fulfills, but isolated experiments don't.

Was Falcon 9 revolutionary? For me, absolutely, because it was the first widely deployed rocket that made partial reuse economical, and thus enabled projects such as Starlink.

We can call the previous small-scale experiments bold or maybe groundbreaking, but there was no revolution achieved.

EDIT: Ahead might be simply nitpicking & splitting hairs.

You’re moving the goalpost. First it was a revolutionary idea. Now a revolution is after an idea has been put into practice.[1] Which is it?

[1] Even “not everything was thought of yet” but it’s there “for people whose thinking is sufficiently out of the box”. Come on.

You are onto something. I moved the goalpost. One of the reasons might be that the conversation dragged over hours and I lost the precise context in my head, with tons of distractions coming my way.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com