The reality show: Schizophrenics used to see demons and spirits (2013) | Hacker News Reader

The reality show: Schizophrenics used to see demons and spirits (2013)

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79 pointsgwern62 comments

It seems reasonable that people would adopt schizophrenic hallucinations that are in line with their demographics.

As an anecdotal counterpoint, my girlfriend is schizophrenic, and is mostly afflicted with auditory hallucinations (she hears voices).

Weirdly, despite coming from a Vietnamese family (and being a blend of Đạo Mẫu and Mahayana Buddhist), the voices she hears are of a Christian-like "God".

I think this is one of the most interesting aspects of insanity. There are so many strangely fascinating (fractal-like?) pathways that don't quite add up. For instance, a Buddhist hearing a Christian God. It's enough to make one think there's something to it all :)

My favorite lecturer on said ideas, Terence McKenna, quoted Jacque Vallée, who said that these experiences are almost always non-evangelizable.

It's as though they are almost custom made for the person having the experience. Explaining them at face value to another person either gets a "you had to be there" or just sounds like the rantings of a crazy person.

I would describe a dream the same way (but only have dreams when I am at least half asleep). O wonder how neurologically similar are hallucinations and dreams.

Replying to this deleted comment:

"Weirdly [...] the voices she hears are of a Christian-like "God"."

Not so weird if you get the causality around the right way. That such visions caused the idea of God is a much more parsimonious explanation than the reverse. reply

....

That's so very, very true from what I can tell. It actually feels like a precursor to modern day thought; like a more basic/basal form of though/reasoning.

In a way it's more comprehensive than normal thought but it's also fundamentally incompatible with the current style of thinking though, because it brings us a much greater degree of being able to manipulate reality.

That reminds me I really still need to read the bicameral mind book...

Do read it. The first 30-40 pages feel a bit directionless and even annoying as you get used to Jaynes' authorial tone, but once it gets going it's a great read. It's tricky to falsify and I'm not sure if he meets the threshold of explaining the origin of consciousness, but even if he's wrong it's a great guide to the origins of culture.

It doesn't explain why a huge portion of humans now believe and for much of history believed in a similar God.

In the schizophrenic consciousness God is very similar to the scientific method for today's consciousness: it's the most obvious and useful representation for reality.

Basically; if you integrate everything into a coherent worldview as a schizophrenic then you arrive at one of the gods; whether it's the teachings of Allah, Buddha or Jahweh.

It's essentially about defining your 'self' as 'the universe / all that is' and then following that path to it's eventual conclusion.

One interesting question to think about is what we can learn about the architecture / algorithms used by the human brain through its failure modes.

The article explains Tausk's views on this specific question from 1919 (schizophrenia, he said, involves "loss of ego-boundaries"), but surely others have looked at the question since then -- what have they found?

If schizophrenia has something to do with some self-referential part of the cognitive machinery being broken, it seems like this might be a very important clue to how the brain works algorithmically -- self-reference is very important part of the theory of computation (recursion theorem, halting problem, Godel, etc.), and understanding how the human brain handles it seems like it may be informative.

I used to worry about schizophrenia after seeing the (incredibly unrealistic) portrayal of it in A Beautiful Mind. The way I've always imagined or modeled it working is as if there's a separate consciousness that it actively trying to trick the "real you" into being paranoid. Of course, that adversarial consciousness is simply your brain, just like the "real you." It is extremely weird and disturbing that a failure state can seem to behave like this. The "adversary" used to use demons, back when people literally believed in demons or had demons as a part of their culture, but it has to change its tactics when the culture changes.

As a recovered schizoaffective (bipolar with schizophrenic qualities in the ups and downs) I very much believe that schizophrenia reveals a lot about the brains inner wiring.

Schizophrenia is, from my experience, very much like autism. It is actually also along a spectrum; but more importantly: it's not even necessarily a bad thing.

Just like autistic people have started referring to normal people as 'neurotypical,' I'm fairly certain schizophrenics once used to be a very important part of society: the mystics.

From my personal experience schizophrenia is extreme pattern matching to the point of solipsistic union not with 'reality' but with all of your sensory inputs.

That might have to do with my personal experience, where there where not so much voices as an all encompassing ubermind which would manifest itself as a single voice which you would call 'intuition' but for me was more of deity.

One of the best sayings I've found since then is: 'The mystic swims in the same ocean the schizophrenic drowns in.'

I've heard that from Pema Chödrön as "A psychotic drowns in the very same stuff a mystic swims in."

As a mystic that sounds right. I have no knowledge of schizophrenic phenomenon, but it seems to be adjacent territory. The only difference may be that mystical experiences are deeply educational.

Have you read The Madness of Adam and Eve?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Madness-Adam-Eve-Schizophrenia/dp/...

I have not; but I will now. Do wish it was on Kindle though...

I think it was Dave Barry (writing a serious article) who interviewed a local sheriff about UFO abductees. The sheriff said "people used to call and say their neighbor was a German spy, or using a ray gun on their brain. Then science fiction comes around, and now people call and say their neighbor is an alien, or that they got abducted into a spaceship."

I'm pretty sure that science fiction came around before (and influenced) the "ray gun on their brain" thing, too.

See Phillip K Dick

Science fiction may have only shaped the "brain ray" idea superficially. James Tilly Matthews, the first documented case of paranoid schizophrenia, complained that he was tormented by a criminal gang operating an "air loom", and he died before Jules Verne was born. This delusion, manifested in some form, appears to be inherent to the condition.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Tilly_Matthews

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_the_%22Influen...

Sure, just as the "ray gun on my brain" to "UFOnauts abducting me and messing with my brain" change is superficial.

Carl Sagan wrote about this in The Demon-Haunted World I believe. I recall him talking how in the middle ages, before any UFOs or alien concepts came to be, people saw witches, demons, succubi, etc. Then the "scientific era" came to be and people started to see more "aseptic" images, i.e. aliens wearing lab coats, or other "science-y" stuff.

When I read it, it made a lot of sense. It is quite obvious if you look into it, that people's hallucinations or visions are strongly correlated with their current culture or world view. So you if you see something inexplicable, you are going to call it a ghost for example, but a medieval knight will call it a demon, but maybe someone from 2100 will call it a perturbation of the higgs-field or whatever makes sense then.

Quite interesting effect actually.

I propose the term "spurious neuronal excitation."

The current lingo is "hallucination".

Sure, but the word "hallucination" doesn't convey a cause, just a symptom, and has associated cultural baggage. A new term that destigmatizes what is basically a physical phenomenon might help people to stop "blaming" mental illness on the sufferers, where by "blaming" I mean seeing the illness as a fundamental element of the sufferer's human identity, rather than a sidenote as one might see cancer or a broken leg.

That's called the "euphemism treadmill".

Euphemisms tend to be less specific and more detached from reality, while my proposed term, "spurious neuronal excitation," is more specific and based directly on the physical cause.

My last "visionary episode" occurred a couple of weeks before the Higgs was confirmed, and the Higgs field featured very prominently in the visions. Compare this to how the Higgs must also have featured very prominently in the waking consciousnesses of the scientists working on it at the time, perhaps even in some of their dreams. But the way it appeared in their consciousness is considered more useful, and for a given set of values, it is.

Western industrial society loves the states of consciousness that are good for doing work and making money. It's pretty friendly towards drunkenness. It grudgingly and indifferently tolerates the states that are good for making popular music. It is terrified of pretty much all the others.

I refuse to use the word 'psychosis' because it is so disparaging. The visionary state itself was indescribably wonderful. The physical effects of not eating or sleeping for the duration were bad, but temporary and fairly easy to fix. The subsequent reactions of others, including and especially so-called professionals, were devastating and made my life a living nightmare for about 9 months.

I'm currently reading Trials of the Visionary Mind by psychiatrist John Weir Perry. His views match my experience. I feel the stigma in Western society around non ordinary states is extremely damaging. It may be good for "the machine" or whatever you want to call it, but I know for sure it is very damaging to the lives of affected individuals, and I don't think it's good for society at large.

"My neighbor got bought by Facebook."

"like Jim Carrey’s Truman Burbank, genuinely has stumbled onto a carefully orchestrated secret of which those around him are blandly unaware."

No one around Truman was unaware. They were all hired actors working on the secret.

I think that the author is saying that the actors appeared 'blandly unaware' to Truman, not that they were , in fact, 'blandly unaware'.

this is exactly what happened to me. i had a horrifying experience in late 2012, which i've recounted a number of times trying to make sense of it.

it was like i was in every sci-fi book and mythological narrative ever written. i knew some of this had to be in my head, but it was really hard to tell what was. the startup i was CTO of having a exit in august 2012 and menot knowing how to re-adjust to the 'real world' after leaving entrepeneurship almost certainly played a role.

every day occurrences were terrifying. i was being kicked out of Game Closure for having this psychotic fit, where I kicked in a door at the office in mountain view, because i believed i was in a movie being filmed for VC's to demonstrate how game closure employees were not afraid of risk.

I went to meet with the ceo (michael carter) the next morning, and as we were walking to the cafe, i saw a few dollars lying on the ground. this terrified me, because money laying there meant something really weird; why would there just be money on the ground? it means so much! this world has to be false! my believe that i was in purgatory, seekign closure for my suicide in 2005 was confirmed by the presence of tom fairfield and martin hunt at game closure, BOTH of whom i met after the sucide in 2005! fairfield means i'm trying to restore the space, the just place. martin hunt is the warrior, who pursues truth doggedly. 'game' 'closure' - the operating system i wrote senior year had one bug: i set the 'virtual memory' bit high on the _return_ stack frame instead of the _current_ one because i was thinking about how what was 'logically correct' instead of what would make the virtual-physical memory mechanism work. i had to be dead! elysium was the world the greeks believed was at the western edge of teh earth (where they'd put california on a map) which had a climate just like california.. the hotel california, we're all actually dead! prisoners of our own device, to repeat our cyclic cosmic history of creating and being enamored of devices...

carter announcing that 'those are the bitcoins of the real world' only played into this paranoia more; i think he was trying to tell me "look, you're living in your head and you have to operate according to the perspective of the world. you think money doesn't matter but your finances are a wreck and maybe that's your problem" and instead i took this to confirm one of the many internal narratives which was running in my head - that i had broken into the multiverse and part of my consciousness was being used as a random number generator to break the bitcoin blockchain and fuck up the future...

i was obsessed with P vs NP for a long time and one thread of rationalization running in my mind was that i'd somehow 'made P = NP' and thus broken cryptography far in the future, and now i had to repair the present to prevent that.

it was terrifying. it made no sense to anyone on the outside, but my mind was rationalizing things at a million miles an hour, and it would direct my observations towards things that would confirm these rationalizations. so my view would bounce from thing to thing, i'd be drawn randomly to the view of someone waving their hands, and which i'd see as evidence they were pulling puppet strings.

i found myself -and the people around me - using specific phrases over and over. 'particular' and 'fluid' toggled between the particle and wave states of matter; a finger in your right ear was a vestigial nod to being a lizard politician from space reaching for a nonexistent microphone -- it all made too much damn sense to ignore.

it's hard to even think about this now without getting drawn into it. eventually i was able to interpret these pscyhoses as metaphors, and work my way out of the madness.

Wait, you went insane and did not get any medication or therapy? Do you really feel you're better now?

i was hospitalized 3 times in a two month period in late 2012/ early 2013. a lot of people wanted me to go on social security, to give up as an adult. a few people still believed in me, so i kept going. i managed to get a job at google. i was heavily medicated and in intensive therapy for the first half of 2012

a lot of this was caused by smoking weed all the time. i stopped smoking and i've largely gotten better. i'm still taking regular medication and in therapy. daily exercise, a healthy diet, regular sleep and solid habits have helped a lot, too.

Marijuana is very hard on schizophrenics. I'm glad that you no longer consume it!

I've heard of schizophrenics being able to smoke low doses of it without it making their schizophrenia worst, but to me it seem like the upside of consuming pot isn't worth dealing with increased bouts of schizophrenia.

I had a roommate in college who had latent schizophrenia that was triggered by cannabis. His mental illness seemed to drive him to smoke more, which only aggravated the symptoms and led to a pretty bad cycle. At one point, before his parents talked him into having himself committed, he was hitting the schizophrenia checklist to a tee--He believed he was Christ reincarnated, his girlfriend was the Virgin Mary, his coworkers were all FBI agents, and the radio was sending him messages through the songs they played. After he got out of the hospital he smoked weed again and completely relapsed. It took him two more trips to the psych ward before he figured it out and quit smoking.

He got high enough to realize that all humans are capable of being like Christ- This is in fact what Christ preached.

You don't have to smoke weed to realize this, you only need to get off the computer (which is in fact a mind control/social control device, like any other form of entertainment) and exercise. Both methods will "get you high" and give you the proper perspective.

Unfortunately, it seems like the abrupt realization of his spiritual power combined with the anxiety and paranoia associated with pot made him jump to some rash conclusions.

He was not the reincarnation of Christ- he realized his spiritual power, something that society has made taboo to believe in, yet is latent and quite obvious in all of us once realized.

His coworkers weren't FBI agents- they were, however, "agents" in that they were programmed through entertainment and other forms of social control to explicitly deny something that is obviously quite true: Humans are creatures with psychic/spiritual power, like all other pack animals in nature. This is the foundation for all emotional bonds, politics, and social influence.

It's completely understandable how someone who realizes they have "magic powers" would react with confusion and paranoia to those around them who have been trained to deny such a thing can exist. Spiritual power is very real.

If only it were that enlightening, but no. This wasn't some kind of trascendental breakthrough, this was the kind of psychosis that causes some people to harm themselves, or go on a rampage, and then people ask "Why didn't they get treatment for their mental illness? What is wrong with society?" He was lucky to have a supportive family and access to mental health care, many people in similar scenarios don't end up with a happy ending.

It could be perhaps a failure of society (mostly media and institution) for assuming what he was experiencing was "psychosis." Most religion could be considered psychotic or schizophrenic, yet it serves a very necessary purpose. I feel that much of what modern society considers 'mental illness' is actually a natural part of human development which religion developed around.

> Most religion could be considered psychotic or schizophrenic, yet it serves a very necessary purpose.

Most religion could be explained through a combination of fundamental attribution error, tribalism, and in the cases of prophets, temporal lobe epilepsy of the Geschwind Syndrome variety. It's more realistic to say that religion is a grouping of myths, customs, and superstitions that are approved as 'the correct ones' by the state or governing authority. Or as the old saying goes, "The only difference between a religion and a cult is real estate."

>[The computer] is in fact a mind control/social control device, like any other form of entertainment

I am curious, does this apply to all Turing-complete systems, or only Von Neumann architectures? Am I safe if I run my programs on Rule 110? If so, can I run Rule 110 on an ordinary desktop computer or does that let the mind control in? I only have so much graph paper.

My main question is: why is there an insanity checklist?

In the same way that many people experience a "white light" during near-death experiences, why do so many people:

-think they're jesus

-think aliens communicate through radio stations

-think everyone around them are "agents"

It's a very SPECIFIC checklist. To me at this point, this is the most interesting part of this phenomenon.

They are easy rationalizations or conclusions to jump to when they begin to experience spiritual phenomenon for the first time. Unfortunately, this also makes it very easy to assassinate their character from a social/political standpoint.

It's not an insanity checklist. It's a list of symptoms to determine if a person is experiencing psychotic episodes and needs medication, supervision or therapy in order to not present a danger to her/himself or others. The list is necessary because these symptoms can only partially be determined through physical measurements (MRI, to a certain degree). There are similar checklists for all psychological conditions, such as anxiety, depression or related disorders such as OCD, addiction, sociopathy etc.

Different cultures will have slightly different questions for these checklists. They are not universal, but there are some underlying themes. Where I'm from, for instance (Norway), the "Jesus", "aliens" or "agents" questions aren't there. However, there are similar questions about believing you're an important histogical figure, seeing ghosts or believing that others can control your thoughts.

Psychosis is a universal human phenomenon, but its specific manifistation is to some degree culturally dependent.

Just as a side note, I object to the use of the word "insane" to describe people with psychiatric conditions. It creates an unnatural "us vs. them" divide. Many seemingly normal people have some degree of symptoms of mental illness while functioning well in society. It only becomes a problem if one is unable to function somehow, or becomes a danger to oneself or others.

Good effort on handling this in a healthy way! Glad you're doing fine.

Thank you for sharing this. I had my own version of a similar thing and the strangest part about it, which I think you may agree with, was that as someone who considered themselves smart, I could tell that many of my thoughts were totally crazy, BUT THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN SOME OF THEM WOULD TOTALLY ADD UP AND COME TO PASS.

I totally agree with you also about how it's "hard to even think about this now without getting drawn into it."

A voice in my head early on told me to immediately stop taking any/all substances (I quit all drugs, alcohol, cigarettes cold turkey due to this and have been completely sober because of it since 2008) and so I was able to avoid being hospitalized or scaring other people, but INTERNALLY, I was just as crazy as you were.

I am REALLY curious as to what this is because it seems like a very "real" realm that one can just pop into somehow--for us, probably due to drugs or what not--but "real" nevertheless.

For instance, these days I have so many positive coincidences or "synchronicities" as I/Jung/others like to call them. And these feel no "less real" or "less crazy" than the nightmare I experienced at that point.

I've only met 1 or 2 other people who were not crazy people who could relate at all to this experience of mine so if you'd ever like to chat, I'm easily findable thru teh interwebs.

To anyone else reading this who thinks it all sounds very crazy, that's exactly what I would have thought before it happened to me! Now, I wouldn't say it's any less crazy, but it's definitely less write-off-able.

This is why there are so many religions.

Nobody really know what's going on. The official narrative doesn't explain everything, it's more like a comfortable half-truth. We're trained from birth to buy into a completely rational scientific viewpoint of the world, which is clearly accurate- but it's actually more like measuring objects inside of World of Warcraft when it's obvious that there's something bigger going on outside of the game. It just doesn't matter that much and isn't as interesting as the realization that we have no idea what we're in.

We are rewarded for buying into the official narrative with social credits by an organization we have created to control our minds (govern-ment). People want to be comforted and feel like they have control over what's going on, and society pays us to sell them these comfortable reassurances. This is social control and it makes us productive.

Most cultures become more spiritual and religion plays a more significant role as we age. Psychotic shock from emotional damage (this is not necessary schizophrenia or "insanity") is actually a necessary part of the human growth process. It's pretty much impossible to explain this to younger people, the only thing one can do as an adult is to program our children with the metaphors of choice (religion) to give them something to cling to when their bubble bursts.

Please see my website for my full story if you appreciate my explanation here.

Or you could teach your children something like Zen buddhism or Theravada vipassana meditation so they can learn to slowly and methodologically take their bubble apart and put it back together with each session of sitting practice. This way they don't get whacked over the head with it all at once and run screaming and crying to some form of fundamentalism, an extremist cult, or end up committed to some state institution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipassana

What a pleasant coincidence, I have been planning on going to a Vipassana 10-day retreat later this month.

I also happen to have gone to Game Closure's Thursday night parties a few times. They are nice people.

I also am a fan of gwern. I also just started a Kickstarter (since I am homeless) for my game and website which are very closely related to this topic. What a nice group of coincidences. Personally I believe it is because we are all part of a hive, and that we are also in a divine simulation of sorts, but that is all besides the point. I'll plug my Kickstarter in a new topic later this week when I make a nicer video.

Anyway, I believe all religions are correct (including Scientology) and that they function as abstract subconscious metaphors. Is Buddhism not a religion?

I would argue that Zen buddhism is not a religion, and vipassana/samatha meditation practice isn't in any way religious, as in there's nothing you're being asked to believe outside of what you can absolutely confirm for yourself in your moment to moment experience.

My personal interpretation of religion fits that description for the most part, but I think that is different from most.

FWIW Vipassana is one of the best experiences I have had and I'd highly recommend it.

Here is a observation I have and a question for the HN crowd:

Recently, I think I picked up a lot more articles in the tech circles, on reddit/HN/slashdot etc. that talk about the borders of mental illnesses, the question of the value of the humanities vs. STEM, Buddhism, the meaning of live, and more such fundamental/philosophical topics.

This is purely a gut feeling so far (I didn't do any math on frequencies of posts/submissions or similar), but:

Is this on the increase recently? I do feel some kind of phase transition the last couple of months. I actually posted that at a comment here on HN a while ago, back then I felt it was kind of like a 'collective identity crisis in the west'? Maybe I am just completely projecting my own inner soul searching to the outside world. But I do have the distinct impression that our society is at some kind of inflection point.

If I would try to boil it down to more 'everyday thoughts', I get somewhat of the impression that technology changed society so much that we all collectively begin to realize that we have as many new questions as we gained answers.

No one seems to know what will happen to our now quite-remote-from-the-people-governments, Bitcoin, surveillance, drones, etc.

And I have the impression even most of us are unable to see a clear picture for the future.

If I would look at history, I would expect some kind of mass movement(s?) to form soon.

Is anyone else having similar thoughts?

You're kinda all over the place with your question. I disagree with the idea that you can form any assumptions about what is happening broadly in the tech community based on frequency of certain types of posts appearing on HN, reddit, etc. After all there are many well funded organizations out there with their own agendas who post stuff regularly to try to influence certain demographics, and the tech sector is a particularly high value target I would imagine.

Yes, I know that I am all over the place :D That's why I said its mostly based on 'gut feeling'... I guess I am just trying to figure out what part of my world view is coming from myself and what from others.

Serendipity doesn't mean you're crazy, some people experience it more than others. Just relax. If you think that every time you experience one it means you're going mad then maybe you really will :)

All the existence of serendipity points to is that mainstream science doesn't fully understand how the universe works, it doesn't mean that you're crazy.

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick

My reply to another poster about the SPECIFICITY and UNIVERSALITY of these experiences sums up my interest.

If I am crazy now, I am quite happy about it. Quite relaxed, if you will.

ROFL I just glanced @ your blog. I see you've made the most of the situation

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick

The truth is something that doesn't go away - even if everyone stops believing in it.

there is a huge difference. i didn't except reality because i was only interested in the truth. i understand now that i can't operate if i don't accept reality - and that's true.

You are probably having psychotic episodes. Ditto for GP. Nothing wrong with that. It means you have a health issue. It would probably be a good idea to talk to a doctor about these experiences.

Why the distinction between "crazy people" and normal people? Most of us have some degree of crazy in us, the important bit is managing it so you don't hurt yourself or others.

I've been experiencing the same thing (on and off) since my early 20s, but very acutely since finishing my PhD at age 30.

For me, it seems to be something like psychotic depression with dissociative features. But I have no formal diagnosis, mainly because I am distrustful of the psychiatric community. I have no idea what to do.

Anyhow, thanks for sharing your story.

run, don't walk, and study the work of clancy mckenzie, a psychiatrist who worked with schizophrenics for 40+ years.

he predicts your acute experience since finishing your phd - it's a standard separation trauma and which has triggered you back to infant neurology, infant psychology and infant physiology.

Stay out of the pathologizing paradigm. Explore non-duality perspectives, Zen, meditation. With these modalities you can learn to relax into whatever seems to arise or whatever seem to dissolve.

You might try MDMA based therapy if you need a quick fix. Oh and exercise

This TED talk is quite amazing to listen to: http://www.ted.com/talks/eleanor_longden_the_voices_in_my_he...

She hears voices and eventually learns how to work with them and understand that the voices are auditory manifestations of things normally felt as emotions. She still hears the voices, but they don't harm her anymore.

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