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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

#71
post #4

> Delusions — fixed, false beliefs that cannot be changed by evidence — are a key symptom of many psychotic disorders Interesting that "psychotic disorders" can be replaced with "tribalism" and still be true. We can easily identify such false beliefs in other tribes but often have a blind spot for them in our own. But in terms of tribes or politics it is not clear that this is a disorder. Believing the same false thi…

> Interesting that "psychotic disorders" can be replaced with "tribalism" and still be true

That's because both are defects of rational reasoning.

I view it this way: The only difference is "disorders" are generally harmful to both the individual and society while "tribalism" is often beneficial to the individual (making allies, strenght in unity, status as you said, ...) even if it's harmful to society as a whole.

Re: Delusional themes may be more varied than we thought

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The comparison to Pascal's Wager is apt - I came to the same conclusion when I first read about Roko's Basilisk, but the insight somehow slipped from my mind. It's like an epistemic tarpit attractor.

Re: Delusional themes may be more varied than we thought

#73
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you say it's a scandal. The author worked with the publishing company from the start, and from the start the intention was to "unveil" the truth to make an impact. > And those words aren’t his either. They came from two AI platforms (still unnamed). According to interviews, he used AI platforms in a very specific way that couldn't be called "vibe philosophizing". It seems he treated the AI as a mirro…

> I'm not sure why you say it's a scandal. The author worked with the publishing company from the start, and from the start the intention was to "unveil" the truth to make an impact. That just means he didn’t lie alone. They lied as a group. They lied to the newspapers that interviewed Jianwei Xun, they lied to the bookstores that sold a non-existent author, they lied to readers and academics, they violated the EU Ar…

I'm just going to clarify one point.

> Right. Except… I’m not the one saying:

I've read the interview I mentioned before and he explains how he used the AI and which AIs he used.[1]

It might be a bit confusing. He thinks of the author of the book (the final product of "prompt thinking") as something that's not him and it's not AI either, and that's why he phrased the use of AI like that. Basically, he says he could not have written the book without AI because he would not have thought of the concepts without AI, but he also says AI didn't write the book.

It's true that even if he wrote everything, he used AI to help him think ("prompt thinking"). I imagine that philosophically speaking for him, the book isn't entirely his. In the interview he also talks about how AI manipulates. You can't escape AI manipulation, but you can't be out of the loop. You have to be conscious about the fact that you're being manipulated at all times.

About prompt thinking: it seems to be a technique that uses AI to facilitate thinking in people. It's the reverse of using AI as an oracle.

https://www.perfil.com/noticias/periodismopuro/hipnocracia-d...

Re: Delusional themes may be more varied than we thought

#74
post #31
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…

Well you clearly do not know what you are talking about.

That's grade A hash your smoking, not the cheap stuff but the premium 5th Generation Warfare propaganda. Its vile, and without any rational basis.

You misunderstand critical things, and are quite wrong if you actually believe this trite garbage.

A narrative doesn't put people into a trance (i.e they're hypnotized).

Torture through its elements, structuring, and clustering puts people into an involuntary hypnotic state, the same now as it did back during Mao. Evil people have made the science to do this simple, to do to any one anywhere without them largely knowing.

The goal is to break people mentally where they are no longer capable of rational thought, which prevents them from holding their leaders to account among other things.

Cognitive capacity is reduced as a simple matter of exposure to the psychological stresses induced by torture, prior to psychological break.

When you get more than 2/3 of the population broken, bad things happen.

If I were to put it in real terms for you, at that point you have made an existential threat with a nuclear power, and even worse... there is a very real possibility that the person deciding whether to push that button or not and end everything has a mental break, with a great chance at it falling into the second group of psychosis seeking annihilation; in other words you have induced that powerful person to become an insane person, with their hand on the button, who will then press it because they aren't in their right mind because you've made it so.

It doesn't matter if the threat China poses is real, people near psychotic breaks jump at shadows, and it doesn't matter if this was done indirectly either. It is also becoming pretty clear that setting up the dynamics where you fail to seize power under communism causes failures to Fascism, creating these problems as well.

This is what blind delusional evil people fail to see. They don't think through the sequence of actions they put into motion with any kind of objectivity just because something is unthinkable.

The people pushing narratives like what you suggest, are the same people torturing everyone. The outcomes show they want only one thing, all life on the planet to be dead, yourself included.

If you look carefully at who did what historically to push this forward, the trends are clear, and the delusional court disaster until they no longer can. Its a fundamental disadvantage they have, that willful self-induced blindness to reality.

You really need to develop your skills in breaking down false narratives and discard them rather than accept it as truth. Lest you want to join them in their endeavor to destroy everyone and everything anyone cares about.

Re: Delusional themes may be more varied than we thought

#75
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.

There doesn't appear to be. There is actually quite a bit of older literature on this.

Many of the books reference the observation that schizophrenia symptoms are commonly seen in victims of torture, specifically in returning PoWs during the Korean Conflict.

Joost Meerloo, and Robert Lifton are two well established authors that come to mind, and while there are other diagnostic criteria its fairly safe to say that mass delusion it seems occurs more regularly when the population is tortured.

The 4 elements needed for torture are isolation, cognitive dissonance, coercion with real or perceived loss, and lack of agency to remove.

These things naturally occurs where all communication channels have been jammed with misinformation. These things fall under 5th Generation Warfare.

Mao came up with some very clever ways of structuring and clustering the elements of torture into trauma loops utilizing all of the psychological blindspots we have. Cialdini's book on influence covers most of the blindspots if you are unaware, except distorted reflected appraisal.

Technically the phone-based dopamine triggers of today through associative priming could be considered a form of targeted Narcosynthesis/Narcoanalysis which has impacts on the ability to resist torture.

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