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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

#311

Post by pazimzadeh »

JamesBarney wrote: post #5

If genes that increase schizophrenic risk increases cognitive abilities you should find people who have high polygenic scores for schizophrenia without having schizophrenia test well on these cognitive abilities. I'm not aware of any of data that shows this in a convincing matter. I think I've seen a few small studies but nothing that replicated this on a large scale. And most of the studies show they score worse on…

seems like they should be good at finding solutions which require leveraging partial information, and generating a large quantity of ideas (which can contain quality)

But the optimal thing might be to have a number of more typical/boring people to filter their ideas through, and that might be hard to test experimentally

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

#312

Post by roarcher »

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…

> whenever I see wellness healers and the like extolling the virtues of psilocybin, I want to point out that there could be a downside

Anecdotally, I had a friend once who was very into psilocybin for its mind-expanding properties. He certainly thought he was enlightened and loved to brag about the great understanding he'd gained from his trips, but he was one of the more selfish and un-curious people I've ever known. It seems to me that these drugs create a feeling of having accessed great knowledge, but the "knowledge" is just whatever nonsense your brain conjures up on the fly, like a dream world that makes sense while you're asleep but whose logic falls apart the moment you wake up.

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

#313

Post by aspenmayer »

mandmandam wrote: post #198
aspenmayer wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real villains, here, are the people that have secondary agendas (like legalizing drugs, or pushing political agendas) The natural state of affairs is silence, as plants don't care about humans. The actual history of plant illegalization is inherently political, and inextricably racist in America due to Nixon.

I agree, except that the racism involved with prohibition goes right back to Day 1 with Harry Anslinger [0]. 0 - https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=harry+anslinger+racism&atb=...

I agree, except that isn’t how you cite sources. What’s the point of that? I know how to search, thanks. I will treat every instance of this kind of “let me Google that for you” whether it has Google or not as a native ad and will flag. Please cite a source, or don’t, but either way, stop shilling.

Thanks.

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

#314

Post by cosmic_cheese »

giantg2 wrote: post #256
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 context of this thread is that anything that is a medication has some sort of side effect and that some people overlook that. This is just as true for vaccines as for mushrooms. Cost benefit analysis is completely different.

As much as side effects get overlooked in some circumstances, they’re wildly overplayed in others and sometimes become the singular factor going into cost-benefit analysis, which is a problem.

The same way that not acknowledging that some accepted-as-benign substances can bring about mental health crises, overweighting of personal risks can cause weight-bearing pillars of modern society to crumble.

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

#315

Post by 1propionyl »

roarcher wrote: post #312
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…

> whenever I see wellness healers and the like extolling the virtues of psilocybin, I want to point out that there could be a downside Anecdotally, I had a friend once who was very into psilocybin for its mind-expanding properties. He certainly thought he was enlightened and loved to brag about the great understanding he'd gained from his trips, but he was one of the more selfish and un-curious people I've ever known…

As someone who has gotten a lot out of psychedelics therapeutically, you are correct. Psychedelics do not in of themselves grant any insight or wisdom beyond perhaps raw experiential evidence that our senses are fallible and our perception of the world is an artifact of cognition.

Past that, psychedelics are (kaleidoscopic, funhouse) mirrors. In the hands of a curious and humble person they can (in addition to being a lot of fun shared with like-minded others) be valuable therapeutic tools for approaching firmly rooted hangups, attitudes, etc. In the hands of someone like your friend, you get what you observed.

Both are commonly occurring patterns, and if you know a person's character even a little well you can usually predict how they'll engage with and come out of the experience.

To quote Shulgin,

> The most compelling insight of that day was that this awesome recall had been brought about by a fraction of a gram of a white solid, but that in no way whatsoever could it be argued that these memories had been contained within the white solid. Everything I had recognized came from the depths of my memory and my psyche.

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

#316

Post by mandmandam »

aspenmayer wrote: post #313
mandmandam wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, except that the racism involved with prohibition goes right back to Day 1 with Harry Anslinger [0]. 0 - https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=harry+anslinger+racism&atb=...

I agree, except that isn’t how you cite sources. What’s the point of that? I know how to search, thanks. I will treat every instance of this kind of “let me Google that for you” whether it has Google or not as a native ad and will flag. Please cite a source, or don’t, but either way, stop shilling. Thanks.

> that isn’t how you cite sources

And this isn't an academic paper. If you want to learn about Anslinger, so you don't make false claims, my link is a perfectly cromulent starting point.

> Please cite a source, or don’t, but either way, stop shilling.

Not sure you know what shilling means - I trust you can google it if you don't? If you do, what is it you believe I'm shilling?

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

#317

Post by 8bitsrule »

R.D. Laing was saying the same things 50 years ago.

" We must remember that we are living in an age in which the ground is shifting and the foundations are shaking. I cannot answer for other times and places. Perhaps it has always been so. We know it is true today. In these circumstances, we have all reason to be insecure. When the ultimate basis of our world is in question, we run to different holes in the ground; we scurry into roles, statuses, identities, interpersonal relations. We attempt to live in castles that can only be in the air, because there is no firm ground in the social cosmos on which to build."

"Sanity today appears to rest very largely on a capacity to adapt to the external world — the interpersonal world, and the realm of human collectivities. As this external human world is almost completely and totally estranged from the inner, any personal direct awareness of the inner world already entails grave risks."

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

#318

Post by aspenmayer »

mandmandam wrote: post #316
aspenmayer wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, except that isn’t how you cite sources. What’s the point of that? I know how to search, thanks. I will treat every instance of this kind of “let me Google that for you” whether it has Google or not as a native ad and will flag. Please cite a source, or don’t, but either way, stop shilling. Thanks.

> that isn’t how you cite sources And this isn't an academic paper. If you want to learn about Anslinger, so you don't make false claims, my link is a perfectly cromulent starting point. > Please cite a source, or don’t, but either way, stop shilling. Not sure you know what shilling means - I trust you can google it if you don't? If you do, what is it you believe I'm shilling?

> Not sure you know what shilling means - I trust you can google it if you don't? If you do, what is it you believe I'm shilling?

The search engine you mentioned is who benefits.

We’re both right, actually. I don’t disagree with what you said, just the needless url you linked. I agree with what you said, but Nixon is also responsible for his racist words and recordings thereof. There were a lot of racists in history.

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

#319

Post by __turbobrew__ »

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…

Terry Davis was a genius despite having schizophrenia.

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

#320

Post by roarcher »

1propionyl wrote: post #315
roarcher wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whenever I see wellness healers and the like extolling the virtues of psilocybin, I want to point out that there could be a downside Anecdotally, I had a friend once who was very into psilocybin for its mind-expanding properties. He certainly thought he was enlightened and loved to brag about the great understanding he'd gained from his trips, but he was one of the more selfish and un-curious people I've ever known…

As someone who has gotten a lot out of psychedelics therapeutically, you are correct. Psychedelics do not in of themselves grant any insight or wisdom beyond perhaps raw experiential evidence that our senses are fallible and our perception of the world is an artifact of cognition. Past that, psychedelics are (kaleidoscopic, funhouse) mirrors . In the hands of a curious and humble person they can (in addition to being…

That tracks with what I've heard about people getting genuine therapeutic benefits from it, like with PTSD. Thanks.
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