[ExI] anorexic geniuses, was Re: Religions and violence.

[Mirco Romanato]

Il 03/08/2010 22.53, Gregory Jones ha scritto:

> My favorite Godel story: He didn't realize fully the danger from the
> Nazis, being as Godel wasn't always on exactly the same planet with the
> rest of us, so the scientific community managed to get him to the US. 
> Einstein and others were trying to get him US citizenship.  At the US
> consulate, he was given a copy of the US constitution, which he read
> carefully.  An embassy worker asked "Dr. Godel, what do you think of our
> constitution?"  Godel: "According to this document, the US could legally
> become a dictatorship."

> That sure doesn't sound crazy to me.  We need a thousand like him, a
> million.

Godel, for what I understood of his psyche, was a schizophrenic.
A very intelligent and productive schizophrenic.
This account for much of his odd behavior, for his detachment from the
reality of day-by-day life.
This also sit well with his ability to follow logic and rationality to
the ultimate end in abstract thinking.
Some psychiatrist have argued that schizophrenic are hyper-rationalists.
Their problems arise from the inability to exit from the abstract
thinking and use other skills to manage day-to-day matters.

A post-human could have the ability to think ultra-logically without
losing himself.

His condition is not so abnormal for people with high abstract thinking
skills. A large number of the most preeminent logics of the last century
was sometimes hospitalized in some psychiatric ward or asylum or anyway
had/have psychiatric problems.

Look Fisher, for example.

This article, beyond a pay-wall, appear interesting:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/w121v88j0771r0x2/

This article focuses on John Nash, recipient of the Nobel Prize in
Economics in 1994, and subject of the Award winning 2001 film A
Beautiful Mind, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 1958 at
the age of 29. After presenting an account of the emergence, course, and
eventual remission of his illness, the article argues for the relevance
of his contribution to game theory, known as the Nash equilibrium, for
which he received the Nobel Prize, to research studies of the
schizophrenic brain and how it deviates from the normal brain. The case
is made that the Nash equilibrium is descriptive of the normal brain,
whereas the game theory formulated by John van Neumann, which Nash’s
theory challenges, is descriptive of the schizophrenic brain. The fact
that Nash and his colleagues in mathematics did not make the association
between his contributions to mathematics and his mental breakdown and
that his later recovery exemplified the validity of this contribution
are noted and discussed. Religious themes in his delusional system,
including his view of himself as a secret messianic figure and the
biblical Esau, are interpreted in light of these competing game theories
and the dysfunctions of the schizophrenic brain. His recognition that
his return to normalcy came at the price of his sense of being in
relation to the cosmos is also noted.

Another citation here:
The disease began to evaporate in the early 1970s and Nash began to
gradually to return to his work in mathematics. However, Nash himself
associated his madness with his living on an "ultralogical" plane,
"breathing air too rare" for most mortals, and if being "cured" meant he
could no longer do any original work at that level, then, Nash argued, a
remission might not be worthwhile in the end.  As John Dryden once put it:
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

    (John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, 1681)




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*Mirco Romanato*
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