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Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

psychiatrymargins.com

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Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#281

Post by Animats »

"The persistence of schizophrenia is an evolutionary enigma. It is a disabling psychiatric condition that reduces the likelihood of having children, and yet it has roughly 1% lifetime prevalence worldwide. Traditional evolutionary hypotheses, such as those invoking kin selection, mutation-selection balance, and evolutionary mismatch don’t quite explain this."

Much the same could be said for gayness. If it were genetic, it should have been eliminated by evolution by now. Which suggests that it's not.

There are some differences in incidence of schizophrenia in populations.[1] Birth order matters, slightly, with prevalence higher for firstborns. (This is the reverse of homosexuality and left-handedness.) Migrants have higher rates of schizophrenia than non-migrants. Women vs. men, about the same. Rural vs. urban, about the same.

What the original paper suggests is that they didn't discover anything significant. It's more like a discussion of feedback control problems near a cliff, but by people who don't know about that part of control theory.

The title is overly dramatic for the results.

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#282

Post by heavyset_go »

staunton wrote: post #261
tempestn wrote: post #254

This is fascinating, and makes me wonder if human intelligence itself is such a cliff edge trait. For most of human history our advanced intelligence has obviously been a benefit, but now we see, as people and societies become wealthier and better educated (both correlated with intelligence), their reproduction rates drop precipitously. Perhaps we've overshot the intelligence cliff and evolution is now gradually pull…

Humanity is changing so quickly nowadays, biological evolution most likely doesn't matter at all anymore, at least for the kind of questions and time scales you're discussing.

Humanity is still subject to evolutionary pressures. We are "natural" and what we do is "natural", and if something like our environment were to drastically change as an evolutionary pressure, selection would absolutely happen.

Consider a change in environment where, for example, oxygen levels drastically drop. That might make living at altitude deadly for those who don't have genetic adaptions to high altitude living.

As an extreme example, in ~500 million+ years when the sun starts expanding, you can bet natural selection will finish off non-extremophiles that aren't living deep within the Earth.

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#283

Post by card_zero »

gweinberg wrote: post #250
card_zero wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So like Matthew 6:28, "And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin", and something about how they're as glorious as King Solomon despite not having clothes or jobs. The religion in question did OK, despite this bad advice.

Sure, because most Christians don't take Jesus' teachings too seriously. You shouldn't slap a Christian (or anyone) on the cheek for no reason, but if you were to, the odds of him responding by inviting you to slap the other cheek are pretty slim.

Heh. Probably just as well.

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#284

Post by suzzer99 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #247
lucidrains wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you are a man and make it past age of 29 without starting to hear voices, you can breathe a sigh of relief (I did)

Unfortunately, this is just statistics. There are cases that lie outside of that age range. I know of two cases, personally. Things like stress, drugs, childbirth, significant life changes, etc can trigger psychosis and latent schizophrenia at any age, it's just statistically more likely to happen during adolescence and the period right after. Another way to look at this is that adolescence is when someone experience…

Yeah, in this case it seems to be menopause + losing her job and having all the free time and nothing to focus on plus who knows what other stressors. I think something bad happened with her Phish friends.

The really tough part for me is she was out of work, so I paid her to be a beta reader for my book. She's a brilliant person and very detail-oriented. She went way over and beyond what I asked for. She spent months and took three passes on the book making different kinds of notes. Then her problems seemed to come on right at the end of that. I worry that all the increased mental activity, and then suddenly not having anything to focus on again, might have been the trigger.

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#285

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Animats wrote: post #281

"The persistence of schizophrenia is an evolutionary enigma. It is a disabling psychiatric condition that reduces the likelihood of having children, and yet it has roughly 1% lifetime prevalence worldwide. Traditional evolutionary hypotheses, such as those invoking kin selection, mutation-selection balance, and evolutionary mismatch don’t quite explain this." Much the same could be said for gayness. If it were geneti…

> Much the same could be said for gayness. If it were genetic, it should have been eliminated by evolution by now. Which suggests that it's not.

There are very plausible explanations for the genetic basis of gayness. One is that being gay is essentially a "byproduct" of higher fecundity in women - I'd have to search for the study, but gay men with sisters tend to have sisters with more kids than the norm.

The other is the "guncle" hypothesis (which is related to the previous one). While gay men and women do not have their own biological children (at least through gay relationships), they are able to spend additional resources on their nieces and nephews. Anecdotal obviously, but it certainly worked this way in my family. As a guncle I helped pay for my niece's education (and was happy to do so because I don't have to care for children of my own ).

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#286

Post by suzzer99 »

overu589 wrote: post #217
lucidrains wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you are a man and make it past age of 29 without starting to hear voices, you can breathe a sigh of relief (I did)

I started hearing the voices well after 30. First it began with gang stalking, and by coincidence I am from the “home town” of Americas thought control elite. I was “recruited” (press ganged) and it is only a determination not to accept a word these say that keeps me unconcerned with the collapse of the lie that is modernity in my life.

I keep hoping my friend gets to the point where you are someday. Another thing not working in our favor is she's the most stubborn person I know. She thinks she can beat this thing with her mind and no help from anyone.

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#287

Post by Xmd5a »

bettercallsalad wrote: post #110
FollowingTheDao wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have schizoaffective disorder bipolar type, and I just wanted to acknowledge and thank you for staying with your partner. I’ve never been able to get someone to stay through my illness with me through my life. But that’s probably because I am man. I was on so many meds. I can’t even count them. Now I’m not on any, and I consider myself essentially cured after living with it for 35 years. If she has triggers, that m…

Thank you for sharing your journey! Most difficult part of this relationship has been to have her not worry about me leaving her because of her symptoms. Communication is the key. The only thing that can get tiring is when sleep schedules are so messy, and I have to go to work in the morning. If you don’t mind sharing, what was your progression towards being cured? Did you do anything different lifestyle wise? I have…

[flagged]

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#288

Post by mike_hearn »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #179
giantg2 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Was anyone ever under such an impression?" If you've ever listened to some of people pushing or debating psychedelics, or natural remedies, or even "totally safe" vaccines, then it should be readily apparent.

Vaccines are a bit of a different can of worms in that first generally, they’re well-studied and the risks are reasonably well known, and second the impact isn’t solely personal — you’re trading off in most cases a small risk for the betterment of society — maintaining herd immunity, reducing capacity for spreading, etc depending on vaccine. The lives of many others can be negatively impacted, in some cases fatally,…

The effects of drugs aren't bound to the individual, that's the reason nearly all societies have banned them throughout history: they cause addicts to create large external costs.

Saying vaccines are well studied is like saying drugs are well studied, it's a category error. You can't study vaccines as a whole, and the quality of studies of specific cases vary wildly. As a consequence, common psychedelics are probably much better studied than some common vaccines. LSD in 2025 is the same substance as it was when it first became available, as far as I know, and there's lots of research into its effects. Compare that to the COVID vaccines which weren't even the same substance from trial to deployment, as the manufacturing process was changed completely. The trials were done on vaccine made using a very slow, non-scalable and expensive process that yielded a very pure result. The stuff people actually took was made using a totally different process designed for cheap mass manufacture. That second process had problems, leading to DNA contamination in some batches, which seems to explain why injury effect reports clustered by batch serial number.

All this was heavily suppressed for a long time (e.g. by rules forbidding study of vaccine vials), but has been coming out over the past year or so as the initial findings were confirmed. Research into psychedelics at least doesn't have that kind of problem, I think?

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#289

Post by tempestn »

varjag wrote: post #267
tempestn wrote: post #254

This is fascinating, and makes me wonder if human intelligence itself is such a cliff edge trait. For most of human history our advanced intelligence has obviously been a benefit, but now we see, as people and societies become wealthier and better educated (both correlated with intelligence), their reproduction rates drop precipitously. Perhaps we've overshot the intelligence cliff and evolution is now gradually pull…

There is no evidence people are measurably more intelligent now than two-three decades ago.

Yes, the genetics wouldn't have significantly changed over such a short period, but the environment has.

Re: Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

#290

Post by johndevor »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #157
bettercallsalad wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for sharing your journey! Most difficult part of this relationship has been to have her not worry about me leaving her because of her symptoms. Communication is the key. The only thing that can get tiring is when sleep schedules are so messy, and I have to go to work in the morning. If you don’t mind sharing, what was your progression towards being cured? Did you do anything different lifestyle wise? I have…

First, I’m sorry if there’s any typos I am doing speech to text on my iPhone writing this and it’s early in the morning. There are many psychiatrist that have different viewpoints, for example I’ve talked to many who see purines as a problem and then you have the whole keto/mitochondrial doctors. There are many psychiatrist that will never change their minds about mood disorders because why do they have to? I should…

I lost my brother to suicide in a similar situation. Thanks for writing this and I hope it helps others stuck on the med treadmill.
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