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A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

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Re: A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

#101

Post by dasudasu »

loveistheanswer wrote: post #97
belval wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumption is as old as time. Whether true of false Bret Devereaux did an analysis on it and it made for an interesting read: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-... As far as we can tell, historically your assumption is wrong. Hard times do not really breed hard people it's a myth that comes from the antiquity and was used by philosophers and elites to link the moral corruption of a peop…

The gaining of strength through adversity and its inverse of atrophy can be found in countless places throughout nature, biology, and human history. There's nothing mythical about that. Take a cat that has lived an easy life indoors its whole life and put it outside. How long do you think that cat will survive outdoors compared to a cat who has lived outside its whole life?

It’s not about being pampered or shielded from the world. There is a difference between a) being challenged, being put into competitive environments, and having access to a wide range of experiences and b) having negative childhood events or trauma.

Re: A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

#102

Post by 101001001001 »

People who had poor mental health outcomes during COVID were mostly extroverted. Introverts actually did better, including myself.

Losing your mind comes from the machinery of the brain failing, which is almost always caused by stress in these kinds of scenarios. Emotional stress is the most acute kind of stress. Isolation and unrelenting physical danger are very emotionally stressful. It doesn’t intrinsically create psychosis, it creates stress which might cause psychosis. The human race is filled with stories just as harrowing as a well funded and planned Mars colonization where people made it through. If you disagree you simply haven’t read your history. Life 2000 years ago was unimaginably cruel, let alone one million years ago.

Just because people in 2020 mash together stress, depression, psychosis and other things doesn’t mean anything. These mental illnesses have biochemical underpinnings and they aren’t intrinsic aspects of the human experience or doing certain things, like going to Mars.

People fetishize the impossibility of things. They also fetishize doom. Global warming has become political not only because of the people who deny it but also because of the people who fetishize the doom and gloom of it. You can recognize these people by talking to them about potential solutions or how to fix it. Invariably they don’t want to think about solutions, think it’s impossible to escape the end of the world and tend to want to turn to some kind of spiritual/naturalistic repentance even though it wouldn’t fix anything when you run the numbers. Same thing with Mars. People fetishize the impossibility of it. You can’t possibly go there without going insane. The radiation will be impossible to deal with. The gravity can’t possibly sustain human life.

It’s all hyperbole. There’s valid counterpoints to all of it. But it goes in one ear... and out the other.

Re: A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

#103

Post by teh_infallible »

The symptoms remind me a bit of nitrogen narcosis, which affects scuba divers at deep depths. I have heard it makes people paranoid. One dive master told me about a diver who tore out her regulator and swam frantically towards him, signaling she was out of air. She had a nearly full tank.

Re: A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

#104

Post by Konohamaru »

belval wrote: post #93
loveistheanswer wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Advantages tend to accumulate in life. Those who had the easiest time growing up are often the most stable ones emotionally. Life doesn’t care about fairness, just like being and tall and attractive is correlated with intelligence, even though we might not prefer it this way. Many people who have had too easy of an upbringing may seem emotionally stable while inside the safety of their cushy comfort zone, but when t…

That assumption is as old as time. Whether true of false Bret Devereaux did an analysis on it and it made for an interesting read: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-... As far as we can tell, historically your assumption is wrong. Hard times do not really breed hard people it's a myth that comes from the antiquity and was used by philosophers and elites to link the moral corruption of a peop…

Hard times may not make strong men, but it's certain that weak men will make hard times.

Re: A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

#105

Post by hinkley »

alickz wrote: post #51
ggregoire wrote: post #33

On that topic, I recommend the first season of The Terror. Plot from Wikipedia: "The Terror is a fictionalized account of Captain Sir John Franklin's lost expedition to the Arctic in 1845–1848. The series' first season begins with the Royal Navy's polar explorer ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror having recently left Beechey Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, heading south toward King William Island into unchart…

I really, really loved the first season of the Terror. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys that genre of stranded arctic explorers. Pretty much anything with Jared Harris in it is good (The Expanse, Fringe, Chernobyl)

I hope Foundation is as good as it is pretty...

Re: A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

#106

Post by permo-w »

mkl wrote: post #46
permo-w wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the one of the main problems, lack of sunlight, shouldn’t be a huge issue on mars. Nutrition and a sufficiently large social, group on the other hand, may be a problem

> lack of sunlight, shouldn’t be a huge issue on mars. Mars only gets 43% as much sunlight as Earth ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars ). On top of that, Mars's lack of a magnetic field like Earth's makes cosmic radiation there worse to the point that colonies will likely be underground, or behind heavy shielding aboveground: https://phys.org/news/2016-11-bad-mars.html

I stand corrected

Re: A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

#107

Post by permo-w »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #72
naoru wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a very restricted diet combined with not seeing the sun for 6 months That's not an expedition. That's Russia. Now you know why majority of Russians are terminally funny in the head.

I was talking to a colleague who has spent the last few years living in southern Sweden (as in, hardly the most arctic conditions in the country), who described the winter months as a perpetual “jet lag” kind of feeling. I brought that up with my partner who is from Florida (we live in NY) and she said the feeling is mutual, even though the time difference is less extreme. There’s just something about long periods of…

I absolutely feel this in the UK. It’s probably worse for me because I tend to spend a lot of time indoors

Re: A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

#108

Post by nwsm »

wiradikusuma wrote: post #81

I wonder if digital entertainment (e.g. thousands of 1080p movies in a 10TB HDD) could make being there "bearable". You don't have to enjoy it alone, you have shipmates. Maybe even internet (satellite connection)?

Some relevant excerpts:

> Still today in Antarctic research stations, as modern amenities dull the ferocity of the environment and digital communications keep year-round personnel in touch with the outside world, madness lurks in the corridors.

> A study of 313 men and women conducted at McMurdo Station in the 1990s revealed that 5.2 percent of those surveyed suffered from a psychiatric disorder. While this rate is slightly lower than among the general population of the United States, it should be noted that all station personnel are rigorously screened for such disorders before arriving. The Antarctic had made them lose their bearings.

Re: A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

#110

Post by freshair »

dasudasu wrote: post #74
hellbannedguy wrote: post #39

I have thought for awhile that the best space voyagers, or guys whom are going to be isolated, are individuals who already had minor breakdowns when they were younger. That includes so many of us? Why? Because they know the crazy thoughts will pass. I'm not talking about individuals with serious mental illness like Schizophrenia, or have a genetic lineage of mental illness. I'm talking people that have survived mild…

This is mostly wishful thinking. Advantages tend to accumulate in life. Those who had the easiest time growing up are often the most stable ones emotionally. Life doesn’t care about fairness, just like being and tall and attractive is correlated with intelligence, even though we might not prefer it this way. I’m sure you’ve also seen they type: brillant PhD, liked by everyone, natural leader, accomplished on multiple…

> These are the people that have been selected to be astronauts. How often have you seen one have a breakdown during a mission?

I'm not sure about mental breakdowns per se, but there has been some insubordination. I can't recall which at the moment, but one of the Gemini astronauts during an EVA refused to get back into the capsule until he was plead with. Perhaps this could be categorized as a mental breakdown. (Edit: It was Ed White: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_4#Extra-vehicular_activ... )

There was also that well publicized incident in 2007 where an astronaut's life unraveled and their career was destroyed, but that wasn't during a mission.

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