From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Nov 19 1998 - 16:58:44 MST
"J. Maxwell Legg" <income@ihug.co.nz> writes:
> Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> > people with mental problems today have less mental flexibility than
> > normal people - their repertoire of thinking and acting has been
> > limited due to their illness, and they often get stuck in nasty
> > attractor states (like in depression or paranoia).
> >
> Mainly because they have been unsuccessful in bucking social pressure
> against their activities.
No. Take a look at most major mental disorders and the lack of
flexibility becomes obvious, even without any social
context. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is obviously inflexible, as is
paranoid delusions. Depressives cannot easily shift out of their black
mood, borderline personalities seem to be unable to comfort themselves
and need others to do it, frontal lobe damage limits the ability to
switch strategies, schizophreniacs exhibit a whole range of
stereotypal behaviors and lack of metacognitive control, and so on.
It is easy to play games with the definition of mental illness, but
these states are out there and have certain properties, whether you
regard them as illnesses or not.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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