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How extreme isolation warps the mind

bbc.com

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Re: How extreme isolation warps the mind

#111

Post by rurounijones »

moe wrote: post #104
baddox wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really that difficult? The alternative is, of course, not having him in solitary confinement for 27 years. It's not that difficult to allow some level of social interaction while still preventing violence.

It's not that difficult to allow some level of social interaction while still preventing violence. I think the question is why society should bother to spend further resources on enabling this for him? And probably far from an insignificant amount of resources in the context of the correctional system...

> I think the question is why society should bother to spend further resources on enabling this for him?

Something regarding that variable quote about how you can judge a society on the basis of how it treats its X (criminals in this case)

Re: How extreme isolation warps the mind

#112

Post by savv »

kijin wrote: post #95
delluminatus wrote: post #5

A psychological gem was dropped in the middle of the article: People in her circumstances have their world suddenly inverted, and there is nothing in the manner of their taking – no narrative of sacrifice, or enduring for a greater good – to help them derive meaning from it. They must somehow find meaning in their predicament – or mentally detach themselves from their day-to-day reality, which is a monumental task wh…

> They must somehow find meaning in their predicament This helps you keep your sanity, but when the same thing happens on a large scale, it can also cause all sorts of social problems. There are many cultures that valorize unnecessary suffering for the sake of suffering, just because it has always been a part of life. Often this takes the form of a rite of passage, such as genital mutilation, mandatory military servi…

Thanks for the insights.

> Work that serves absolutely no purpose other than putting food on your table might fall into this category.

Have you read 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'[1]? The discussion on the concept of Value may challenge this idea that you have put forward.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_M...

Re: How extreme isolation warps the mind

#113

Post by darkmighty »

kijin wrote: post #95
delluminatus wrote: post #5

A psychological gem was dropped in the middle of the article: People in her circumstances have their world suddenly inverted, and there is nothing in the manner of their taking – no narrative of sacrifice, or enduring for a greater good – to help them derive meaning from it. They must somehow find meaning in their predicament – or mentally detach themselves from their day-to-day reality, which is a monumental task wh…

> They must somehow find meaning in their predicament This helps you keep your sanity, but when the same thing happens on a large scale, it can also cause all sorts of social problems. There are many cultures that valorize unnecessary suffering for the sake of suffering, just because it has always been a part of life. Often this takes the form of a rite of passage, such as genital mutilation, mandatory military servi…

I agree, but this is a tricky matter.

By one side, simply the best way of achieving any measure of success requires a lot of work, that's easily seen rationally; many other sacrifices we make though don't generate meaningful results. But we associate the effort required to perform all those, so to have enough morale to perform hard work by accepting sacrifice, some may need (irrationally) to perform other kinds of sacrifice.

Let me clarify this in the east asian setting: sometimes just prizing the result (good grades, acceptance at university) will not actually provide good results because kids (and people in general) are not perfectly rational and can't clearly make a best strategy to their goal. So people start prizing the necessary (but not sufficient) steps to reach the goals, namely sacrifice -- which leads to the stupid biases of putting unproductively much study, working an unproductive number of hours, and so on. Another reason there may be a bias toward sacrifice is that the other side is usually much worse (i.e. major unwillingness to put up work), so society overcompensates.

So even if you look at it rationally, it may make sense when you take into account our psychological quirks. Of course, it's all the best that we don't have those to begin with, and I figure a great part of our learning is simply bypassing those natural barriers, optimizing for results.

Re: How extreme isolation warps the mind

#114

Post by baddox »

moe wrote: post #104
baddox wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really that difficult? The alternative is, of course, not having him in solitary confinement for 27 years. It's not that difficult to allow some level of social interaction while still preventing violence.

It's not that difficult to allow some level of social interaction while still preventing violence. I think the question is why society should bother to spend further resources on enabling this for him? And probably far from an insignificant amount of resources in the context of the correctional system...

Why do you think solitary confinement would cost less?

Re: How extreme isolation warps the mind

#115

Post by kijin »

savv wrote: post #112
kijin wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They must somehow find meaning in their predicament This helps you keep your sanity, but when the same thing happens on a large scale, it can also cause all sorts of social problems. There are many cultures that valorize unnecessary suffering for the sake of suffering, just because it has always been a part of life. Often this takes the form of a rite of passage, such as genital mutilation, mandatory military servi…

Thanks for the insights. > Work that serves absolutely no purpose other than putting food on your table might fall into this category. Have you read 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'[1]? The discussion on the concept of Value may challenge this idea that you have put forward. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_M...

I don't have any problem with individuals finding value wherever they want to. I might disagree with them, but that's OK.

I only have a problem when a certain interpretation of value becomes an oppressive social norm, i.e. when people force once another to adopt their interpretation and no other.

Re: How extreme isolation warps the mind

#116

Post by kijin »

darkmighty wrote: post #113
kijin wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They must somehow find meaning in their predicament This helps you keep your sanity, but when the same thing happens on a large scale, it can also cause all sorts of social problems. There are many cultures that valorize unnecessary suffering for the sake of suffering, just because it has always been a part of life. Often this takes the form of a rite of passage, such as genital mutilation, mandatory military servi…

I agree, but this is a tricky matter. By one side, simply the best way of achieving any measure of success requires a lot of work, that's easily seen rationally; many other sacrifices we make though don't generate meaningful results. But we associate the effort required to perform all those, so to have enough morale to perform hard work by accepting sacrifice, some may need (irrationally) to perform other kinds of sa…

I agree with your analysis.

What I can't stand is the amount of brainwashing that goes on in every instance to make those sacrifices, overcompensations and necessary evils look like some sort of sacred duty. Please, call a spade a spade.

Humans may have psychological quirks, but they're not stupid. If you keep pretending that something is even more important than it already is, sooner or later people will realize what you've been doing and take it as an insult to their intelligence. What usually follows is cynicism, which is essentially overcompensating for romanticism.

Re: How extreme isolation warps the mind

#117

Post by CatMtKing »

gwern wrote: post #102
CatMtKing wrote: post #76

It seems like the author's confusing two concepts here. He postulates about isolation from human contact, but all his examples are for isolation from sunlight or sensory deprivation. I don't disagree that there are connections between the two, but it doesn't feel like he jumped that gap. Edit: Seems like the whole article is based on the author's book. So maybe it was taken a little out of context?

The sailing articles sounded like social isolation and not sensory deprivation.

True, but then he also gives examples of people that cope with social isolation just fine, suggesting that they substitute the environment instead. That sounds more like support for sensory deprivation being the cause of his claims.

Re: How extreme isolation warps the mind

#118

Post by zachrose »

savv wrote: post #112
kijin wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They must somehow find meaning in their predicament This helps you keep your sanity, but when the same thing happens on a large scale, it can also cause all sorts of social problems. There are many cultures that valorize unnecessary suffering for the sake of suffering, just because it has always been a part of life. Often this takes the form of a rite of passage, such as genital mutilation, mandatory military servi…

Thanks for the insights. > Work that serves absolutely no purpose other than putting food on your table might fall into this category. Have you read 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'[1]? The discussion on the concept of Value may challenge this idea that you have put forward. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_M...

I've read ZATAOMM, but remember it as a discussion about Quality as the alignment/connection between objective and subjective worlds. Did I miss something?

Re: How extreme isolation warps the mind

#119

Post by jqm »

nitrogen wrote: post #109
nitrogen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humor is essential for humans to cope with stress.

Of all the comments I've made, I can't figure out why this is the one that sits at -1. Interesting.

I can't figure it out either.

There appears to be a measure of anger in the world. It's sad really.

Re: How extreme isolation warps the mind

#120

Post by moe »

baddox wrote: post #114
moe wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that difficult to allow some level of social interaction while still preventing violence. I think the question is why society should bother to spend further resources on enabling this for him? And probably far from an insignificant amount of resources in the context of the correctional system...

Why do you think solitary confinement would cost less?

Because it's obvious?

Anything to enable social interaction for him would have to happen on top of solitary confinement (or equivalent security) after all...

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