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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

#291

Post by mike_hearn »

andai wrote: post #146
suzzer99 wrote: post #9

I've lost one of my best friends to what I think is schizophrenia. We don't know because she's cut off all contact with friends and family and refuses to see a doctor. It's definitely psychosis. She thinks she's in some kind of Truman show that she calls "the game". Since none of her friends or family are willing to admit to it, then we must be in on it. We don't know her full family medical history because her dad w…

Cannabis is also a potent psychedelic, and its association with psychosis is well established. (Not to condemn psychedelics, I just think the pendulum has swung a bit too far in the "it's totally harmless" direction.) Could you elaborate on The Game? What did she say about this?

> Cannabis is also a potent psychedelic, and its association with psychosis is well established.

It's really fascinating to read this, because Alex Berenson has been beating this drum for a while now and he claims the psychosis risk has been downplayed or even denied. It's easy to find evidence supporting his take because if you just search Google for [cannabis legalization psychosis] you get a big pile of papers like this one:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36696111

"Abstract: Psychosis is a hypothesized consequence of cannabis use. Legalization of cannabis could therefore be associated with an increase in rates of health care utilization for psychosis [...] states with legalization policies experienced no statistically significant increase in rates of psychosis-related diagnoses"

That's from 2023. So apparently it's not that well established? Or if it's well established, there's a lot of researchers denying it.

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

#292

Post by renewiltord »

subpixel wrote: post #43

Schizophrenia can coexist with extreme levels of intelligence and lucidity. A schizophrenic member of my family argued in divorce court that her husband, a leading physician at one of the most famous medical institutions in the world, was secretly involved in outrageous nefarious activities. The stories were all fiction but she was so convincing that the judge awarded her a ruling in the divorce that ruined her husba…

An alternative explanation is that the judge was stupid.

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

#293

Post by wizzwizz4 »

dimal wrote: post #265
bettercallsalad wrote: post #75

As someone who is currently dating someone with history of psychosis, I have vested interest. 90% of the time she is truly the most amazing, compassionate, full of life and thoughtful person one can ever meet. Then there are times when it’s truly awful. She can barely sleep at all, leaves house without telling anyone seemingly thinking the presence of third person around. And she strongly feels others around are judg…

This is a shot in the dark, but there is a lot of excitement right now about treating schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as a metabolic issue. Some people are seeing complete remission, without medication. This isn’t a quick easy recommendation to just go off meds and go keto, but for some people that apparently has worked. Chris Palmer M.D.[0] is one of the main people driving it. [0] https://www.chrispalmermd.com/c…

Is there a reason to go off the meds when starting keto? If the meds are only mostly effective, and then a keto diet makes them very effective, then I might be inclined to go off the meds – but only if it stacks like that.

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

#294

Post by throw4847285 »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #278
Fraterkes wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For evolution to “select” for homosexuality, wouldn’t it have to be hereditary in large part? As far as I can tell, to the extent that theres any evidence for that the effect of genes on sexuality is kinda limited

Male vs female differences, including differences in typical sex-specific sexual attraction, are obviously genetic, even if we've yet to figure out all the specifics (where are the male's "curve detector" genes, etc). Do men and women both have the coding for male/female attraction, with one typically disabled ? This perhaps seems most likely, in same way both sexes have nipples, etc. Without knowing exactly how this…

> Male vs female differences, including differences in typical sex-specific sexual attraction, are obviously genetic

Typical is putting in a lot of work in that sentence. I could rephrase it with the same truth content and make it much more ambiguous.

"Many phenotypical sexual differences in humans are obviously genetic. Some very common differences in sex-specific sexual attraction are likely genetic as well. For large swaths of sexual attraction, we have absolutely no evidence of a genetic link."

What's funny is that the one example you facetiously picked (a curve detector) is extremely culturally dependent. Trying to tie elements of human sexuality to evolutionary just so stories is usually pseudoscience. When we start isolating genes for the things that we think of as natural, if we ever do, I bet you $100 the mapping from our social experience of these traits to some kind genetic reality is muddled to the point of total detachment.

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

#295

Post by renewiltord »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #149

Genetics is messy - as I understand it most genes don't code for a single thing, so assuming evolution is "selecting for schizophrenia" that only implies that there is an evolutionary benefit to some of the things controlled by the same gene(s) that control schizophrenia, that outweighs the disadvantage of schizophrenia. Homosexuality is interesting from this perspective too - common enough that evolution has to be s…

The article's first paragraph has some alternative factors in selection

> Traditional evolutionary hypotheses, such as those invoking kin selection, mutation-selection balance, and evolutionary mismatch don’t quite explain this.

There's lots of explanations here but one that is often mentioned is "kin selection". If you increase evolutionary fitness of nephews, nieces, etc. There's many others, some of which apply here and others which don't.

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

#296

Post by staunton »

heavyset_go wrote: post #282
staunton wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 livin…

Sure, I never claimed otherwise.

What I'm saying is that evolution matters across large timescales. By contrast, I believe the topics I was commenting on concern timescales where effects of biological evolution are negligible compared to the effects of memetic evolution.

Thus, biological evolution doesn't matter at all for predicting what will happen (or is happening right now) to humanity, unless predicting so far into the future as to be completely futile speculation (imagine someone 200 years ago wondering how biological evolution might affect humanity during the next couple thousand years).

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

#297

Post by staunton »

tempestn wrote: post #289
varjag wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Genetics isn't all that matters. Things like malnutrition (and a lot more things) very much also do.

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

#298

Post by alganet »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #107
alganet wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a guitar since I was 16, and never gave up trying to learn. I reached a plateau very quickly (knew some chords, simple songs), and could never go past it. I then spent almost 20 years in that plateau. Then, suddenly, it all started to click. I was reharmonizing, writing my own lines, improvising, soloing. It was uncanny. I moved to other instruments at similar speed, stuff I never played before. It became so ea…

Did the diagnosis perhaps relax some defensive structure in your mind which freed up an ability to tolerate the discomfort of actually identifying what you need to improve?

I don't know. It seems too vague of a description.

On the guitar, I did some identifying and learning.

On drums though, I just sat there and in a matter of months I was able to play to a lot of songs. I was doing polyrhythms, for example, before I knew what polyrhythms were.

Possibly, this is nothing extraordinary and fits the overall learning curve for the general population (I'm assuming lots of people do polyrhythms without knowing them). Which means that before the first episode, I was below that general curve of learning music (slower than everyone else would learn), then something changed right after such episode.

Since I'm on HN, let's use a computer analogy: I would describe it as upgrading a PC to new hardware, things felt smoother. The world of music (and arts in general) felt higher resolution, faster, more responsive to my actions.

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

#299

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

throw4847285 wrote: post #294
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Male vs female differences, including differences in typical sex-specific sexual attraction, are obviously genetic, even if we've yet to figure out all the specifics (where are the male's "curve detector" genes, etc). Do men and women both have the coding for male/female attraction, with one typically disabled ? This perhaps seems most likely, in same way both sexes have nipples, etc. Without knowing exactly how this…

> Male vs female differences, including differences in typical sex-specific sexual attraction, are obviously genetic Typical is putting in a lot of work in that sentence. I could rephrase it with the same truth content and make it much more ambiguous. "Many phenotypical sexual differences in humans are obviously genetic. Some very common differences in sex-specific sexual attraction are likely genetic as well. For la…

> What's funny is that the one example you facetiously picked (a curve detector) is extremely culturally dependent.

Actually, it wasn't intended as facetious! I'd bet money that male attraction to females is indeed based on curve and jiggle detectors! If not this, then what - it has to be based on some (simple, perceptual) physical characteristics. I realize that female ideals vary a lot between cultures, and time periods, but the differences are more about things like fat percentage and distribution than the underlying characteristics that visibly differentiate men from women.

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

#300

Post by have-a-break »

motorest wrote: post #137
overu589 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right and wrong. The voices are quite real, we’re not alone in our own minds, and the it is the greatest taboo of society to discuss. It’s really sad, all of these sharp modernists determined upon the cult of science explanations for everything. Those who refuse to believe our thoughts are not all our own. That much mysticism is rooted in something that merely cannot be explained by the logical empirical mind.…

> It’s really sad, all of these sharp modernists determined upon the cult of science explanations for everything. That which you try to attack and downplay as "cult of science explanations" is actually something extremely simple: you need to show something, anything at all, that actually supports your beliefs. How can you tell something exists or works as you think it does if you are unable to show it? Do you expect…

Simply put the observer affect shows that somethings cannot be measured without causing change to the system hence may not be verifable.

Maybe the only way to make enough random looney until they outnumber the "sane" individuals. The only issues being how do you organize the new pyramid structure which will evidently be formed by this new "religious" organization?

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