[ExI] Top ten dumbest remarks

Stathis Papaioannou stathisp at gmail.com
Tue Oct 9 10:50:09 UTC 2007


On 09/10/2007, hkhenson <hkhenson at rogers.com> wrote:

> It wasn't presented as proof, just an interesting observation.  It
> would be most interesting to do a study about the effect of
> antipsychotics on irrational beliefs.

Alas, antipsychotics do not work on all irrational beliefs, only
irrational beliefs due to a mental illness. You can have irrational
beliefs because you're gullible, or because you grew up in a community
where everyone holds those beliefs and medication will do nothing at
all for you. This is noted all the time in people who are treated for
a psychotic illness and incidentally have another belief, which on the
face of it is just as irrational as the newly-developed delusion, but
which they have held for most of their lives.

Occasionally it is difficult to decide if a member of a far-out
religious group is psychotic or not since all of them claim to hear
God speaking to them and so on; but in these cases, the others might
point to the mentally person and declare them to be crazy, or at least
possessed by a nastier than usual breed of demon.





-- 
Stathis Papaioannou



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