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Delusional themes may be more varied than we thought

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Re: Delusional themes may be more varied than we thought

#31

Post by ranyume »

caseyy wrote: post #23

The "terror of global catastrophe" is what doomscroller media constantly hammers onto its readers. And once someone has "bought in", it's impossible to reason with them. They'll just forever spread anxiety around them. What's interesting is how it happens. Take someone who is mentally stable and subject them to a terminally online lifestyle for a year or two. They will have tons of anxiety about all sorts of things,…

What you just described is an idea that's around intellectual circles about the nature of power in this era. It's the idea behind the book "Ipnocrazia" (not yet released), which gained fame around europe and south america.

Citing from the top of my head: "Simulation isn't imitating the real anymore, simulation precedes the real"

If I understand it right, tragedy is first simulated. Once the simulation is bought by the population, it gives the ruling class a reason to act how they really want to act, and the tragedy is made real.

In other words. It's population control without coercion.

A narrative puts people in a trance (they're hypnotized), inhibiting their cognitive capacity. The narrative is the simulation. The goal is to make people fearful and disoriented so they delegate their cognitive capacity to "illuminated" rulers, accepting the simulation as real.

If i were to put it in real terms. Let's spread the narrative of an incoming world war 3. Once it's settled, the population will just accept world war 3 as a matter of fact, unavoidable. This would allow us, the ruler class, to extend trump's presidency even beyond.

Re: Delusional themes may be more varied than we thought

#32

Post by brulard »

caseyy wrote: post #23

The "terror of global catastrophe" is what doomscroller media constantly hammers onto its readers. And once someone has "bought in", it's impossible to reason with them. They'll just forever spread anxiety around them. What's interesting is how it happens. Take someone who is mentally stable and subject them to a terminally online lifestyle for a year or two. They will have tons of anxiety about all sorts of things,…

You don't need to be brainwashed to be pessimistic today.

Re: Delusional themes may be more varied than we thought

#33

Post by whattheheckheck »

ranyume wrote: post #31
caseyy wrote: post #23

The "terror of global catastrophe" is what doomscroller media constantly hammers onto its readers. And once someone has "bought in", it's impossible to reason with them. They'll just forever spread anxiety around them. What's interesting is how it happens. Take someone who is mentally stable and subject them to a terminally online lifestyle for a year or two. They will have tons of anxiety about all sorts of things,…

What you just described is an idea that's around intellectual circles about the nature of power in this era. It's the idea behind the book "Ipnocrazia" (not yet released), which gained fame around europe and south america. Citing from the top of my head: "Simulation isn't imitating the real anymore, simulation precedes the real" If I understand it right, tragedy is first simulated. Once the simulation is bought by th…

Us? Lol

Re: Delusional themes may be more varied than we thought

#35

Post by dreamlayers »

This is a good article, but I dislike how the start defines delusions as "fixed, false beliefs that cannot be changed by evidence". Many delusions seem wrong to others without any solid evidence that can conclusively prove that they're wrong. For example, if someone says they're the second coming of Jesus, or if someone believes the CIA has mind control satellites, that seems obviously ridiculous, but you cannot disprove that.

Re: Delusional themes may be more varied than we thought

#36

Post by dreamlayers »

caseyy wrote: post #23

The "terror of global catastrophe" is what doomscroller media constantly hammers onto its readers. And once someone has "bought in", it's impossible to reason with them. They'll just forever spread anxiety around them. What's interesting is how it happens. Take someone who is mentally stable and subject them to a terminally online lifestyle for a year or two. They will have tons of anxiety about all sorts of things,…

I think there is a fundamental difference between such social phenomena and the seemingly solitary delusions that happen in recognized mental illness such as schizophrenia.

Re: Delusional themes may be more varied than we thought

#37

Post by kelseyfrog »

awanderingmind wrote: post #29
caseyy wrote: post #23

The "terror of global catastrophe" is what doomscroller media constantly hammers onto its readers. And once someone has "bought in", it's impossible to reason with them. They'll just forever spread anxiety around them. What's interesting is how it happens. Take someone who is mentally stable and subject them to a terminally online lifestyle for a year or two. They will have tons of anxiety about all sorts of things,…

Good insight, thanks. I've been struggling with existential dread related to https://ai-2027.com/ - trying to refute the arguments is exhausting, I should probably just ignore it and get on with my life.

Fears about AI misalignment look like a modern, secular Pascal's Wager. It's hedge against a low-probability, infinite-cost outcome. The Rationalist version builds a matrix where one cell is -inf, and from that, derives an imperative to act, regardless of how speculative the premise is.

However, once you admit infinite utilities and epistemic humility about probabilities, you can justify literally anything. The same construction could obligate you to worship simulation overlords, or to develop interstellar missile defense in case of hostile alien AIs. That's not a rational risk model, it's theological reasoning dressed up in Bayesian costume.

This stuff operates on the boundary of plausibility, the intelligent paranoid mind generates scenarios that can't be conclusively ruled out but also can't be grounded in anything falsifiable. That's not where productive engineering lives.

The escape hatch here is the same one we used for Pascal's Wager: you reject the premise. You don't hand the keys of your threat model over to speculative infinities. You work on problems you can see, measure, and influence. You don't respond to every "what if?" with a fire drill. Recognizing that this is a failure mode in human cognition is enough to avoid it.

Yes, there are real risks with AI: bias, misuse, surveillance capitalism, economic displacement. These are all tractable, all human-driven. But the misalignment discourse? It's less a bet against an existential outcome and more a projection of philosophical anxieties onto a technical domain. And once you frame it that way, it's clear: this isn't engineering. Folks doing this are playing metaphysics in front of a terminal emulator.

Re: Delusional themes may be more varied than we thought

#38

Post by dreamlayers »

miros_love wrote: post #17

Has anyone looked at similar studies from, say, five years ago? I worry that half of what was labeled “delusional” back then is now a widely accepted opinion. Feels like we're one step away from a follow-up paper titled "We regret to inform you: The paranoid were just early." Not saying everything turns out to be true - just that social consensus tends to shift a lot faster than clinical definitions.

It seems like there is a continuum between being oblivious and delusional. You need to notice things, recognize their meaning, make connections and then make conclusions. Being oblivious can mean missing important signs and making bad choices due to not realizing what is happening. Being delusional can mean jumping to conclusions by "connecting the dots" in one particular way that leads to one conclusion even though that may not be the truth. A sane perspective would mean evaluating different hypotheses to come to a reasonable conclusion. Someone who is paranoid may be right about some things much earlier than others, but they may also be wrong about many other things.

Re: Delusional themes may be more varied than we thought

#39

Post by selimthegrim »

ranyume wrote: post #31
caseyy wrote: post #23

The "terror of global catastrophe" is what doomscroller media constantly hammers onto its readers. And once someone has "bought in", it's impossible to reason with them. They'll just forever spread anxiety around them. What's interesting is how it happens. Take someone who is mentally stable and subject them to a terminally online lifestyle for a year or two. They will have tons of anxiety about all sorts of things,…

What you just described is an idea that's around intellectual circles about the nature of power in this era. It's the idea behind the book "Ipnocrazia" (not yet released), which gained fame around europe and south america. Citing from the top of my head: "Simulation isn't imitating the real anymore, simulation precedes the real" If I understand it right, tragedy is first simulated. Once the simulation is bought by th…

Isn’t that Baudrillard?

Re: Delusional themes may be more varied than we thought

#40

Post by azemetre »

awanderingmind wrote: post #29
caseyy wrote: post #23

The "terror of global catastrophe" is what doomscroller media constantly hammers onto its readers. And once someone has "bought in", it's impossible to reason with them. They'll just forever spread anxiety around them. What's interesting is how it happens. Take someone who is mentally stable and subject them to a terminally online lifestyle for a year or two. They will have tons of anxiety about all sorts of things,…

Good insight, thanks. I've been struggling with existential dread related to https://ai-2027.com/ - trying to refute the arguments is exhausting, I should probably just ignore it and get on with my life.

You’re having existential dread over pure science fiction written by people who have something to gain from LLM companies becoming profitable?

You have it right. Just ignore the grifters. These companies are burning billions and are realizing they don’t have an exit strategy so they’re becoming desperate.

Just ignore the grifters.

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