[ExI] We are all feral

[Darren Greer]

Keith wrote:

>
http://discovermagazine.com/2010/jun/03-the-insanity-virus/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=

It's a lot of insight into MS and Schizophrenia, even bipolar.<

Thanks for this Keith. I'm surprised I've never heard of it. I was diagnosed
with Type I Bipolar Disorder in August of 2004, and have spent a fair amount
of time researching and thinking about it and illnesses like it since then.
This information is actually quite hopeful, for the current approaches to
treating Bipolar, through anti-psychotics and mood-stabilizers, leaves a lot
to be desired. Even my own psychiatrist, one of the best we have in the
country, admits it's a baffling disease with less-than-ideal treatments. The
best you can hope for is to become symptom free by creating a consistently
emotionally flat mood (itself not an ideal situation) through a lot of
medications with some pretty harsh side-effects.

Darren


On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 2:33 PM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 5:00 AM,  Alan Brooks
> <alaneugenebrooks52 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >>On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 1:19 PM, Stathis Papaioannou? wrote:
> >> He's psychotic, probably schizophrenic. He should have been treated.
>
> You are probably right on both counts.  Schizophrenia seems likely to
> be objectively measured by the load of HERV-W that the Jerad was
> producing.  His reactivation of HERV-W (which we all carry at specific
> addresses on chromosomes 6 and 7) was probably due to some infection
> he got shortly before his symptoms started showing up in high school.
> There is a list of such infections.  Chances are fair we could even
> figure out which one it was.
>
>
> http://discovermagazine.com/2010/jun/03-the-insanity-virus/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=
>
> It's a lot of insight into MS and Schizophrenia, even bipolar.
>
> The well known transhumanist Kennita Watson has MS, which is one of
> the other ways HERV-W reactivation can affect people.  She thinks it
> can be traced to a bad virus infection she had at MIT.
>
> > Don't be so sure until we can read the examination reports; perhaps he is
> not psychotic, or maybe he is borderline; it could be he wanted to be
> famous-- which is being 'crazy like a fox'.
>
> That's largely the conclusion that the Secret Service came to with
> this study of the people who are involved in assassination or attempt
> it.
>
>
> http://www.npr.org/2011/01/14/132909487/fame-through-assassination-a-secret-service-study
>
> They also noted that at least half of the people they studied had
> known mental health issues.  I.e., fame/attention is a very powerful
> human motivation because of our evolutionary past--we are largely
> descended from those who obtained enough fame in a small tribe to
> reproduce better than most.
>
> The modern distinction between good fame (Nobel prize) and bad fame
> (serial killers) may not have been so different in stone age groups
> where typically 25% of males died by violence.  If you loose the
> distinction and take the absolute value of fame, the people you list
> below are probably more famous than all but a handful of Nobel Prize
> winners.
>
> > Was Tim McVeigh a psychotic, or was he also crazy like a fox? Or Son Of
> Sam, Mark David Chapman. Notice how they appeared psychotic at first but
> copped guilty (Berkowitz, Chapman) pleas or were found to be sane enough for
> trial. Even the wild Christian-rapist character who kidnapped Elizabeth
> Smart was found guilty!
>
> Without some objective measure like the HERV-W load and brain
> inflammation I could not say.  There are other modes, such as
> activating the psychological mechanisms of war, where humans can
> become violent.  They are the result of evolutionary selection in the
> stone age.
>
> Legal rulings do not always reflect the underlying reality as anyone
> who has followed my adventures might note.
>
> > Frankly, I don't think psychiatry is much more of a science than
> economics, sociology, political 'science', etc. Societal and professional
> biases are too prevalent.
>
> There is considerable agreement to your opinion of these fields, even
> by the practitioners.
>
> "Christopher Badcock (sociologist, Freudian psychologist). told Fathom
> that the insights that the social sciences once had into human
> behaviour are now defunct. He argues that the burgeoning discipline of
> evolutionary psychology, with its potentially unique combination of
> genetics, neuroscience, psychology and other disciplines, is the only
> realistic path to take toward understanding human nature."
>
> snip
>
> Badcock: It seems to me that if you want to explain human behaviour,
> it has to be an interdisciplinary thing. Human behaviour is complex
> and has multifarious causes, and if you limit yourself to one
> particular academic specialty you are likely to have rather limited
> insights.
>
> http://www.fathom.com/feature/35533/index.html
>
> I have contributed a little myself, there being so much low hanging
> fruit in evolutionary psychology.
>
> Keith
>
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-- 
*"It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard everyone would do it. The
'hard' is what makes it great."*
*
*
*--A League of Their Own
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