To begin with a definition of psychosis; psychosis is the inability to properly understand information, collate and organize information or reach logical results from that information. Specifically, I am, for the most part, going to discuss poorly socialized schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia is a timing disorder, the brain has difficulty cuing and sequencing tasks. Poor socialization is a panic reaction, the brain does not know how to respond, so it responds aggressively, obnoxiously.
The difficulty with schizophrenia is that people who study it have it backwards. A common diagnostic trait of schizophrenia is derailed thinking. Derailed thinking is the linking of unrelated traits and facts. So, for instance someone saying that because another person is wearing a yellow shirt, that yellow shirt will cause a thunderstorm. The problem with this is that everything labeled as thinking is actually derailed thinking.
Problem solving, thinking, involves bringing discordant themes together and using the differences to solve problems. If someone is trying to glue paper butterflies onto another sheet of paper it might be difficult to prevent them form sticking and being misplaced. A possible solution is to take a Post-it note, stick it to the back of the butterfly and use it as a handle to place the butterfly. When the glue is dry, the note can be peeled off the butterfly. Some might view that as a clever solution, but it is derailed thinking. Instead of working on placing the butterfly, an extraneous object is introduced that has nothing to do with the butterfly, glue or attachment surface, introducing ti is derailed thinking., but it is derailed thinking within boundaries.
Maintaining boundaries around the derailment is important. Without boundaries, yellow shirts cause thunderstorms.
All abstract thinking is derailment, that is what makes it abstract. People freely as sign values that do not exist. That is both abstract thinking and derailment. In Chinese, there are counter words, similar to head of cattle. The head is a counter word, when one says ten head of cattle rather than ten cattle. In Chinese, there is a counter word that applies to both sheets of paper and of roads. It is used for both because they are both connected by being flat. If you say that you can see that, you are insane because it makes no sense. Neither a road or a sheet of paper is flat. In fact paper is only approximately flat if it is placed on a flat object. Yet, most people are willing to go along with the connection. The reason for that is that people can coordinate their derailed thinking. The basis for agreeing to something is not whether it is irrational, it is whether it is useful. The concept of flatness is useful no matter how little sense it actually makes. Sheets of paper and roads have nothing in common but the human brain creates abstract groupings because of its derailment.
It is a strange and peculiar hobby of the mind to search for and create groupings. People will say that a cloud looks like a sheep, or that someone's head is shaped like a potato. It gives the brain great flexibility and suppleness of thought but it also leads to howling madness.
All culture and achievements of thinking are actually fairly kooky. Let us go back to the days of primitive men and cave dwellers and consider Ogg and Thog:
-Why are you sticking the antelope meat in the fire, Ogg?
-Well, when we killed it, it was warm. So I thought that if I put it in the fire it would be warm again.
-Fire destroys things.
-But I thought a little bit of fire.
-You're an idiot, Ogg.
If you think that is not nutty enough:
-Why are you rubbing leaves on the meat, Ogg?
-Well, the leaves have kind of an interesting smell, and I thought that if I rubbed them on the meat and then stuck it in the fire the smell would go into the meat.
-You need serious help, Ogg.
Another variation:
-Why are you putting those grass seeds on a rock and then rubbing them with another rock on top, Thog?
-I thought I could break them up and make them finer.
-Why don't you just boil them in water and eat them?
-I thought this would make them smoother.
-You sure no how to waste time, Thog.
The entire idea of cooking is a rational waste of time, there are no more calories and there is no more nutrition if food is just roasted or boiled rather than being prepared or seasoned.
Consider another example; you are reading this. Do you realize how peculiar that is? Think of what an alphabet is, it is making marks to represent puffs of air. So, "b" represents the "buh" sound. But different people pronounce it differently, so how can it mean anything. Or tell me what the mark is for a gust of wind that blows off your hat. As a rational exercise, it is at least highly questionable. But people can coordinate their derailment and everyone can agree on the "b" sound. By mutually assigning a value it becomes useful, even though it does not make a lot of sense, seeing the symbols and hearing the coordinated sounds makes it useful through recognition but trying to explain it is actually an exercise in futility.
Pictorial symbols make sense, they can be justified and explained, but they are far less flexible and useful.
Consider ropes. The obvious conclusion is that ropes originated from vines. Someone saw a vine wrapping itself around another object and said to himself, that that could be useful. Or he saw the vine wrapping around stalks and got the idea of wrapping the vine around bundles to be carried. There is a huge gap in that story, The person is mentally insert another object into what is being wrapped by the vine. Why would he do that? He sees grass stalks but he thinks of kindling twigs? That is derailed thinking, one step short of yellow shirts causing thunderstorms. The human brain does that nonsense all the time.
Consider the zero. A mark is made to represent nothing, why not just leave the space blank?
Counting by strokes makes sense; ll for two, lll for three, lllll lllll lllll lllll lllll lllll for thirty. It is simple, clear, conveys the meaning and represents the scale, 30 does none of those things. Looking at 30, it is impossible to know the scale of the number. Only by constantly using it do people acquire some familiarity with its meaning. The number 15 000 000 000 000, 15 trillion, almost no one can understand, it has no scale or magnitude to which it can be compered and is only an abstraction. It is about the size, in dollars, of the U.S. debt. But that is the effect of using zeros as placeholders, all numbers become vague abstractions. But by people coordinating their derailment and agreeing to that vague structure of numbers they can be manipulated more readily and used with far greater flexibility.
The discussion of schizophrenia is the discussion of the degree of derailment. Though requires two processes, derailment and bringing in disparate elements and then structuring those elements to produce a useful result. Increasing derailed processes make the mind more flexible, but if the derailment exceeds some level the pieces cannot be gathered and used. People dealing with more concrete reasoning such as scientists and mathematicians have to be able to fully structure outlandish ideas, artists can leave the pieces scattered. Artists can be crazier than scientists.
Producing ideas requires new perspectives and new associations of data, it requires derailment. In bad science-fiction there are absolutely rational societies who are far advanced. Actually, if they were absolutely rational they would be running around naked, eating small furry animals raw for dinner. Anything else requires irrationality, derailment, derangement. The possibility of thought requires the possibility of insanity. The only way thought can occur is with parallel processing of thoughts with some skipping, derailment , between the lines of thought. This produces the possibility of new thoughts and structures. And that, is the definition of thought.
I cannot say that I have much direct contact with autism, although I, and everyone else, whether or not they realize it, have a had a lot of contact with schizophrenia. However, from what I do know, it seems that autism is a deficit in derailed processes. The brain cannot skip so it remains fixed and inflexible.
On a 0 to 100 scale for derailed processes, with 100 representing standing naked on a street corner screaming at people, maybe 0-5 would be autism and 30 would represent diagnosable schizophrenia.
Computers do not think because they are essentially autistic. If thinking were to be simulated, parallel processing would need to become randomly erratic. The good news it would be flexible and could solve problems, the bad news is that it would occasionally do something completely insane. So, it could autonamously run a nuclear reactor, but it might occasionally melt the reactor down just because it felt like doing it. (Yes, this is HAL in 2001.)
Reviewing on's actions is very difficult, it requires being oneself while looking at oneself. One must remember what one did, then consider what wanted to do, while at the same time considering larger goals that might have existed and comparing it to what other people did as benchmarks. It requires the brain to skip around without loosing track of where it is This is allowed by derailment, but too much derailment, diagnosable schizophrenia, causes the brain to skip too violently, which tends to produce a panic reaction as a warning that the brain is overloading, and causing the brain to be avoidant of the process.
Consider two mirrors set parallel and opposite to each other. In between them place a statue representing a person. The image will reflect back and forth creating an endless series of images. In schizophrenia the brain has trouble processing which is the original object and which are the reflections and cannot keep track of the orde of reflections. There tends to be one of two responses; cover the mirrors and ignore them, or draw a cartoon drawing of what the person wants to believe about himself and hang that cartoon on a wall and claim that it is a mirror image. Benjamin Disraeli, British prime minister, is quoted as saying about another politician, "He is a legend in his own mind." He is referring to someone hanging the cartoon drawing on the wall and claiming that that is a mirror image of the owner.
The reason why schizophrenia is so badly handled is that most psychiatrists are schizophrenic. That strange and peculiar tone psychiatrists use to speak is an avoidance of the mirror images. If they directly engage with schizophrenia they have to look at their own schizophrenia, so to avoid the endless mirror images, they avoid it by creating an external image point, a false focus, that allows them to avoid looking at themselves. They create endless categories to avoid placing themselves in a category of dysfunction.
Poor socialization, parents abusing belittling or constantly interfering with their children induces a panic reaction. Going back to the 0-100 scale, someone might be 20, normal range, but with panic go up to 40, schizophrenia, with panic making the brain skip more aggressively. The child exposed to bad parenting is constantly told to not do, to correct, to do something else and this induces panic from a need to constantly adjust to avoid the parental idiocy.
Unfortunately, promotion within most organizations and social advancement is decided by poor socialization, the upward selective mechanism is to for poor socialization. The reason is because the poorly socialized run everything and cannot tolerate anyone showing them their own insanity. They form protective groups to defend their insanity.
Let us look at a management model, i will use the alphabet to show the movement of people through management, lower letters first higher letters in the alphabet following. Let us say that there are five vice-presidents. Well socialized people will be shown as lower case letters, the poorly socialized by capital letters.I will say ten percent of management is poorly socialized to begin. The well socialized promote one poorly socialized person, he is a total jackass but he works hard and does good work. So, to start the vice-presidents look like this:
a b c d E
E, the poorly socialized removes anyone in his command who is not poor socialized so no one will challenge his insanity. Now, under E 20% of all management is poorly socialized under the other four 10% of 80% or 8% are poorly socialized or a total of 28% of all management. For the next promotion there is a 72% chance that a non poorly socialized person would be chosen But for two promotions it is only 50%, there is an even chance that another poorly socialized is chosen.
c d E f G
Now, two have 40% plus
10% of 60% = 46%, nearly a 50% chance of another poorly socialized.
E f G h I
Now, three have 60% poorly socialized and 10% of 40% = 64%.
f G h I J
Then
G h I J K
After not too long a time 100% of the candidates for promotion are poorly socialized. And if the president is chosen from the poorly socialized then 100% would be immediately poorly socialized.. Well socialized people say, to be fair we should promote him even if he does act like an idiot, poorly socialized feel no need to be fair, that is almost the definition of poor socialization.
That is the glass ceiling for women, women tend to have better manners than men, so are excluded from promotion. That is also why the women who are promoted have such charming personalities. It is also why you can have a coherent conversation with someone in middle management but need a translator of the bizarre to speak with senior management.
The people who study psychology tend to be schizophrenic. There is a process of mirror imaging that the brain does where it looks at itself, so if a person is asked about swimming that person tends to visualize watching himself swim. The reason people ask questions about brain function is that their own brains are telling them something is wrong. It makes them interested but prevents them from looking directly at themselves, they are avoidant and consequently inefficient in their studies.
There was a psychiatrist who estimated that ten percent of all people have diagnosable schizophrenia, he was propably about right. But all people have derailed processes and so are on the schizophrenic spectrum.
Humor has been shown to be something that surprises the audience, it is derailed thinking: A man walks into an elevator and finds that there is an elephant inside. The elephant turns to him and says, " You take up a lot of space." Elephants really do not talk. People who can create derailed situations are funny, people who need to be famous are poorly socialized, that is why so many stand up comics have toxic personalities.
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