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The Link Between Genius and Insanity
An anonymous reader writes in a story about the link between certain mental illnesses and high intelligence. "Genius and insanity may actually go together, according to scientists who found that mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are often found in highly creative and intelligent people. The link is being investigated by a group of scientists who had all suffered some form of mental disorder. Bipolar sufferer Kay Redfield Jamison, a clinical psychologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said that findings of some 20 or 30 scientific studies confirms the idea of the 'tortured genius' or 'mad scientist.'"
Emotionally unstable researchers find flattering results!
Crazy.
Maybe there is just a tippingpoint where the genius part of the brain has expanded that far that gets often out of bounds. Where the actual creativity is actually not a random set of neurons, but neurons primed for another task maintaining our common accepted singular personality.
Support Eachother, Copy Dutch Property!
"The link is being investigated by a group of scientists who had all suffered some form of mental disorder."
Shocking.
It's wyy most psychologists become psycholgists too. I have insecurity disorder. I try not to get angry when somebody calls me "stupid" and remind myself, "It doesn't matter what they think since I'm clearly not stupid." Still annoying though.
FREE magazine : http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/prior/
Linux games that try to make use of advanced features of OpenGL often suffer from driver bugs.
Compared to 1960 test results for IQ, slightly-above-average intelligences from today would be considered genius. IQ shifted almost a full standard deviation upward between 1960 and 1990.
And neither of you know that schizophrenia and split personality disorder aren't actually the same thing.
Many great minds are called "eccentric" but when we break down what that REALLY is, usually it is some kind of disorder, Howard hughes comes to mind, a very very smart man by any account, but he was batshit crazy when it came to some things, You could make the argument that steve jobs was slighty off balenced, and Many other great minds over the years have had some form of mental disorder, usually something autistic.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
From TA "Many prodigies like painter Van Gogh, author Jack Kerouac and mathematician John Nash had displayed self-destructive behaviors, and it is unclear as to why humans have evolved this trait. " Many people who *aren't* prodigies display self-destructive behaviors *all the time*.
Floating in the black seas of infinity without a paddle.
"He's not crazy, he's just....special."
Take that, fourth grade teacher!
the work ethic, the subversion of conventional wisdom and norms, and the increasingly esoteric and complex lexicon of the specialist being incompatible with social life, ultimately leading to isolation, stilted interaction, and resultant mental illness (some of it a matter of social construction, some of it legitimate disability).
At least, that's my experience—it's not that bright people are "inherently" socially awkward so much as that their practices, habits, and knowledge are incompatible with the lives, thoughts, and communicative practices of virtually everyone else, leaving them to be lonely, without much of a reliable support system, and feeling tremendously misunderstood, perhaps even hated, as well as having to deal with the knowledge (which can be quite persuasive) that everyone *else* thinks they're crazy, and the total lack of cooperation and support that can come with this.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
i prefer "mad tortured genius scientist"
Think of it like rope. The longer the length of rope you have, the more you can do with it, but it's also much easer for it to get tangled up in knots.
For starters, the genetics of intelligence have a large number of factors, and interactions between those genes is probably not all that simple. Secondly, some intelligence factors may not be expressed in all environments. If the limiting factor is diet, than those genes may have little value, or even be a disadvantage. Finally, humans are social creatures, and excessive deviance from the norm may be strongly selected against for reproduction, even if it is advantageous for the individual's survival.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Not only that, there is even a different result calculated per country. The main goal of an IQ test is to determine whether subject is higher or lower in points than the average. For every group there is a bellcurve set up, and the vast majority is in the 100's, if not, than the scores are changed to make it so.
Therefore someone scoring 90 in the US, tested in France might come out as 110 or the other way around. (insert jokes here).
Also over time the test is subjected to regular validity audits.
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
my genius and insanity were endowed by lsd in my teenage years. well, i was reading and writing by age 3, but that proves nothing. i still think it was the lsd.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
It was a good thing when I got excited and giddy about being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Everyone else was just jealous and too fucking stupid to understand me. Just like I always thought.
it was so obvious that you came up with it first...
If genius came free, without HUGE DOWNSIDES then selection would ensure that we'd all be geniuses. Think about it for a second, virtually every renowned genius had huge emotional or operational baggage. Dyslexia, autism, bipolar, monopolar, synesthesia... the list of common problems suffered by the exceptionally intelligent is legion. It's guessed that significantly more than half of all the great works of art and science were accomplished by Bipolar people in their manic phase. Personally, I think the hardest part for someone of profound genius, is being torn between the clear vision of what it possible and the sad reality of what is allowed by people to persist. There are some interesting conversations about ways of coping with genius. The Greeks had a very healthy concept, externalizing genius, such that it was a resource to be tapped and that some were simply better at getting to it. That took the onus of brilliance off the person, freeing them up, to simply pursue whatever it was they were pursuing. Here's a great TED Talk about that.
All geniuses HAVE to have some mental instability, since stability is the enemy of creativity. If you're fully stable, you've no reason to invent for yourself new methods of working through a problem. If you're fully rational, a small discrepancy between theory and observation won't keep you awake at night until you damn well fix the theory. If you're fully functional, you're going to be too busy doing regular work and won't have time for creative thought.
Very, very few insane people are geniuses, although many will think of themselves as such.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This is the Flynn Effect. But it is much more obvious and less controversial on a longer timescale - we are all geniuses compared to our single-celled ancestors.
You caught yourself on using a technically incorrect definition of IQ - Thanks! You're halfway to understanding what you are wondering about, because you are at least trying to phrase your questions accurately.
A few points:
1. Intelligence does seem to be rising with each generation, if you use some of the standard tests and factor out a few questions for obvious logical reasons, (Such as one, for one example, that shows a picture of an old style rotary phone.). I.Q. remains at 100, but how many questions you get right to score that 100 goes up a smidge, in general, with each generation.
2. Intelligence is greatly affected by more than one gene. It's quite likely there are genes that together create a higher than average intelligence, mentally stabile person if they are all there together with a gene we'll call (as a convenient fictitious example) I.Q.Factor3A, but create a person with a higher than average intelligence, and a dehabilitating mental illness, if they are in the same organism as the gene I.Q.Factor3B version. It's also fairly likely there are cases where the I.Q.Factor3 gene doesn't, by itself, cause any problems in a person of average intelligence, whether it's version A or B.
3. One example of this is Aspergers syndrome. People (including many researchers) have tended to assume that a person with Aspergers has a lot of good genes for general intelligence and a bad gene that causes Aspergers, and that the same bad gene causes more 'typical' Autism in people without the bunch of good genes. But, that doesn't have to be the case. It could be, just for example, that a certain combination of otherwise good genes causes Aspergers if you have all five of them, but if you have any three, you get better than average intelligence without the problem side, and if you have any four, you get the smarts, plus only a few mildly limiting side effects that in general don't cause enough problems to be diagnosed. Factor in environment on top of this, and you see what a puzzle researchers are trying to unravel.
Who is John Cabal?
If being a genius, or for the sake of argument, having a high IQ, is such big advantage, why haven't we evolved to have higher IQs?
And who's to say that we have or have not evolved higher IQs? 20,000 years ago, Neanderthals weren't exactly sitting down to take baseline tests that would enable a comparison to current-man's intelligence. In 20,000 years, however, future-man will be able to run through today's IQ test and see if the average of his contemporaries is higher than that of current-man. (That is, if the differences between the culture expressed on our IQ test and his aren't so great as to make our tests meaningless to him. They're supposed to be culturally neutral, but that's nothing more than a guess about how people think in today's world, let alone 20,000 years from now.)
One thing we do know is that people choose mates likely to produce successful offspring. Think about all the factors that people consider attractive and therefore lead to mating: beauty, strength, intelligence, charm, wealth, power, courage, etc. Wealth and power are interesting because they're not necessarily inherited traits, but they provide evidence of someone who used whatever traits they had to become successful -- therefore they are likely to be good providers for their offspring.
Evolution isn't just about a single mutation. It's about the acceptance of mixing of that mutation back into the culture. People have to repeatedly demonstrate that they choose mates based on that trait for us to call it a success factor. In other words, you haven't seen it because you aren't old enough. (If you want, you can study history to try to figure out if the ancients were as smart as we are now, but that will probably yield nothing more than a debate.)
If higher IQs yield more successful people, they will eventually produce a population with higher IQs. Just don't look for results overnight. Set a reasonable timeframe.
John
Mad scientist ponders mad scientists
artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
"The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success." from Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
How do the two of you feel about split personality disorder? Do the voices tell you it doesn't exist?
This is the Flynn Effect. But it is much more obvious and less controversial on a longer timescale - we are all geniuses compared to our single-celled ancestors.
I guess you've never been to Walmart.
Yep,
When ordinary mortals were visiting Zombo.com, the mentally altered geniuses visited Obmoz.com.
http://zombo.com/
http://obmoz.com/
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
This is roughly 2 years ago, and the study then concluded the same thing. Hey figure that back 100+ years ago, Oscar Levant wisecracked himself with the "There's a fine line between genius and insanity." Go back through classical literature on figures writing about others, and you see the same thing. Genius and Insanity are on the same coin, it's how far between the halves that makes your brain go round.
Om, nomnomnom...
comes to mind...
I forgot the name, but he claimed that highly-above intellectual capacities are usually the result of childhood-trauma. Maybe just bullshit, but strangely the "childhood" section of "great persons" in wikipedia usually are quite "interesting" with that perspective... but if you look for something, you will usually find something.
People thought I was insane by thinking you could link quantum sciences with biological sciences.
And here I am, working with single-wavelength quanta growing plants.
Shows them!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Everything changed when the fire nation attacked
Szasz what are you doing here on slashdot ;)
I saw a documentary not too long ago, about autism (and similar afflictions) and superior ability in some special field. One example was a patient suffering from dementia. His hobby was painting and his doctor noticed that his painting got better as his dementia increased. There were other examples but the theory, which some people were getting ready to test, was that a 'healthy' brain filters out a lot of sensory input. In the case of this patient suffering from dementia, some of that filtering failed and he was seeing the world 'bare' so to speak. The filtering has a survival value in that it keeps us from being overwhelmed. To have the brain processing power to handle a greater input we'd need bigger brains, consuming more resources; birth would be more difficult, etc.
Another thing to consider with people who lack social skills, is that it could be the lack of social skills that leads them to focus on, say, science, as a compensation or a way to pass the time, rather, than their concentration on science leading to underdeveloped social skills. I'm not saying that's the way it is, just that when seeing a correlation, to be careful about which is the cart and which is the horse.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
This is what a tortured normal person looks like.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLTIK4soif8&feature=related
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
You're obviously far more intelligent than me, I haven't a fucking clue what you are talking about.
Im not crazy! My mother had me tested.
AnimePapers.org: Anime Wallpapers Handled With Care
Why was this comment modded down? Multiple personalities would be classified as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). It is usually caused by trauma (typically child abuse and molestation). DID is a defense mechanism against further psychological trauma (for example, you partition your mind so that the repeated molestation is happening to someone else).
Schizophrenia is most likely a genetic disorder and does not appear to be caused by psychological trauma or abuse. It does not involve splitting personalities. It involves hallucinations, delusions, and disorganization in thoughts and behavior.
Really, schizophrenia and DID hardly resemble each other. While a person might be generally disorganized and confused in both cases, a little digging will reveal the cause. One is abused, the other is genetic.
"I'll tell you what I'm gonna do." God said to me. "I'm gonna make you a really creative ahrtist. People from everywhere are gonna talk about you and what you've produced. But just to keep it interesting, every now and then, you're gonna want to kill yourself. Have a nice life."
Creativity is something that we dont value nearly as much as we should.
Maybe the difference between a Genius and an Insane person has more to do with how we see them than any real difference in them.
If someone tells you an idea that you havent heard of before its fair to consider them creative, but unless that creativness is within your area of rational then you will think them stupid. If its a creative idea that is in an area fam,iliar with you, and you havent thought of it before, you will have a much better opinion of them.
Personally, I blame the monothiests and the empiricists !
I thought I was a genius, turns out I was just crazy.
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
Have gnu, will travel.
One of him suspects a schism from reality, the other of him is perfectly sane, thank you very much.
One thing about being an actual productive "Genius" vs. just having a genius level intelligence. In order to produce genius type results often requires a manic dedication to something that doesn't improve your life in a direct way. Basically you have to dedicate yourself to a subject in such a way that even if you do get monetary/social advantages from what you produce, you can't really take advantage of them. If you did, you wouldn't really have the time to make that next breakthrough.
Sometimes, by putting such people in the right type of social situation, so called “ivory tower”, they can have a slightly more balance social life. Basically lot's of the details of keeping things running in their life falls to others.
Time to work on advanced problems is so important in this kind of situation, you don't play games or watch tv, instead you are always brainstorming on new ideas. True breakthroughs are hard and time consuming, even for the genius that finally make them.
That idea may have come from variations of "ignorance is bliss". If you don't have a clue about the world around you, you have nothing to worry about. The better your perception or understanding of things, the more pitfalls or risks you can see.
There's gotta be a Windows user angle here someplace.
Have gnu, will travel.
The obvious question is whether insane geniuses are insane because we* are geniuses (i.e. being more intelligent than everyone around us causes more distress than we can handle), or we we are geniuses because we are insane (i.e. our non-standard brains offer us insights that are opaque to those around us). Or is this an example of two independent phenomena with a common cause?
*Don't expect false modesty from an insane genius. :)
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
The partition that separates genius from madness is painted in shades of gray, and possessed of enormous mountains and valleys populated by winged marsupials who reproduce by completely consuming their mates in a process that is neither quick, nor painless.
... is measured only by success. --Bruce Feirstein
I am by no means special as there are likely hundreds of thousands like me. I started out young, labeled as "gifted", and put through special school programs. I have a very high IQ, and have the ability to create extremely intricate CAD-like images of any thing I can dream up, transpose and create into real working hardware. I learn new languages and programming languages with virtually no effort, and I am amazed at my own abilities sometimes. Other times ashamed. The price has been trips to the mental hospital with a severe bi-polar diagnoses and extreme depression, where I cannot even function as a normal human being some days. I love who I am and wouldn't want to be anyone else, but I understand that my brain is all on or all off, and that is the gift and the curse.
Good point. I remember hearing of a study done on a Jewish community in Europe that suffered much higher than normal rates of some severe neurological problem, I forget what exactly. They also scored an average of 6-10 IQ points higher than the larger community. The conclusion of the researchers was that this community had been genetically isolated for many generations by antisemitic sentiment in an environment where intelligence presented a significant procreative advantage (the financial industry, which the surrounding Christians were religiously prohibited from entering)
As a result a gene mutation that caused increased brain activity (and intelligence) in those possessing a single copy spread throughout the community. Unfortunately, inheriting two copies of the gene apparently over-revved the brain beyond what it could reliably handle and caused... whatever the problem was. Frequent seizures maybe.
A similar phenomena surrounds sickle-cell anemia. Inherit two copies of the gene and you get a death sentence, probably long before you reach adulthood, at least before modern medicine. But, if you have only one copy of the gene then not only are you unharmed, you're immune to malaria. In the African population in which the mutation emerged, where malaria ran rampant, this gene represented a good deal: even if both parents carried it they would only lose 1 in 4 children to anemia, while two would be immune to malaria. If only one parent carried the gene then it's an even better deal - half their children would be immune and the other half would be normal. (Incidentally if you're reading this as a KKK member with SSA, I hate to break it to you but there's only one way you could possibly carry the gene. Best get to burning crosses on your own lawn)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The link between them doesn't exist, as they are one in the same.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
At the risk of sounding like a pretentious prick, I had exceptional scores on tests, got invited to gifted and talented programs, and scored near-genius levels when I had a [real, not online] IQ test conducted as a child. Also I'M CRAZY AS SHIT. I take a mood stabilizer, an antidepressant, a benzodiazepine (3x day on the benzos, for serious) and Ritalin. Fortunately through the miracle of modern pharmaceuticals, I'm a somewhat healthy productive citizen, but it is hard. Even still my mind races with worst case scenarios, etc. and I always find new and and ever increasingly inventive ways to throw my brain into a frenzy over something completely stupid or erroneous; it's typically shit I can't control. Just saying is all... Forgive my self-absorption.
One thing I have noticed is that bipolar people who lack any employable skills/qualifications (eg my ex-wife of 20yrs) tend to be strongly attracted to the idea of being a counsellor and firmly believe they can 'fix' other people's mental problems, expecially when they are in the "up" phase. Since anyone can call themselves a counsellor without any formal training, that's what they do. Some may say that this is an undesirable situation but from my anecdotal observations I think keeping all the nutters busy talking to each other is ultimately a huge benifit to society
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Do the voices tell you it doesn't exist?
Nah. The other day I was thinking to myself "I'm fuckin' insane". The voices told me "no you're not, you're crazy".
In the distance you hear an ominous moo.
Good points.
For every idiot savant you show me, I can show you 1,000 "geniuses" who in fact are just idiots. Of course they are kings in their subjective worlds. But saying that some highly intelligent people are not sane does not mean that all insane people are highly intelligent and creative.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Seriously, a lot of patients with mental problems are actually very very smart !!
They might be "mentally troubled", but, the manner of their thought process, - the way their brain managing information flow - if can be adapted and applied to research projects, could yield surprising results !!
The phrase "Think outside the box" is so common these days. For the mental patients, thinking "inside the box" turns out to be an almost impossible task
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
am I both crazy AND stupid. That seems like a raw deal to me.
Given the segment of the population that has bi-polar disorder; and a known correlation between the disorder and some of the greatest artists and geniuses - I find it highly interesting that we suppress these people with medication.
Is this ethical?
Even at 140, which is not that spectacular, you are already one in a thousand.
In a city of a million, that's only 1000 souls. And you probably won't get along with some of them.
How do you even find someone? Let alone form a peer group?
How socialized can a man be, when he lives alone on a planet of chimps?
Is 'insanity' a thinly veiled slur hurled at elite minds by a slow witted reporter from the bully pulpit?
What is normal behavior? What is insanity?
Is 'Normal Behavior' defined as what is accepted as normal by the majority in the 90 to 110 group?
What is insanity? Cutting your ear off?
Or merely being incomprehensible to the normals?
Is 'Smart People are Insane' a meme to make people feel better?
Is 'Smart People are Insane' part of what Ayn Rand talked about when she said "the PTB are out to say that thinking was 'hard, dangerous and pointless?'"
Don't go out there Billy! Thar be dragons!
Here's a Rifle and a credit score!
No need to think. We'll tell you what you need to know. We'll define you and your paradigm.
Genius doesn't exist? Is that what you're saying? Strikes me as a construct by those who don't have that much of it, but enough to be aware that it does exist.... just not enough to develop a healthy relaxed attitude towards being mediocre just like everyone else. Because I dare say any remotely intelligent person knows they're dumb, certainly compared to intellects that could exist, or yet may come to be, and definitely compared to a flower or a drop of water. We're clumsy, not sexy. I'm more mad than intelligent, but even I know that much.
You're probably thinking of the Ashkenazi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_intelligence
"People thought I was insane by thinking you could link quantum sciences with biological sciences.
And here I am, working with single-wavelength quanta growing plants.
Shows them!
"
Growing dope under blacklights?
C|N>K
I'm not sure that it applies. Being abnormally intelligent isn't really harmful to the group, and there is no benefit to the group to everyone having average intelligence. What I'm saying occurs is that if an individual is exceptionally intelligent, they may not "fit in" or "relate" as well as their peers. That could result in decreased social standing and difficulty finding a mate, decreasing their chances of successfully reproducing.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
you cannot steal ideas
Try asking Xerox Palo Alto research center about "mouse", and "Steve Jobs"
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
"Often found" ... why, oh why, can't psychologists do statistical analysis? From TFA "They found that people who excelled when they were 16 years old were four times as likely to go on to develop bipolar disorder," Jamison said". That's something. And sample size was 700,000. Great. But that's just Sweden. And they're linking Genius-level to Bipolar disorder. What else did they look for ... examples: how many were vegetarians? Or had red hair? Or were named Lars? Or came from broken homes?
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
So, if I win the Nobel prize, I'll have to share it with my seventeen other personalities?
The average (the "norms") seem to make quick judgements and associations regarding the mentally ill, whether this means mild depression, or OCD, or full blown mania. First and formost, it is seen as insult. "Crazy" used to be cool... now its somehow on the same level as "homeless." Then it is somehow inexplicably associated with violence. Next, crime, then sexual devience, and finally, pedophelia. It matters not that evidence shows that, on one point listed, the violent are almost never mentally ill, and the mentally ill are almost never violent. About 1% of any population is inherently violent, and this is true among the mentally ill as well, 1%. Yet when an average person learns that another is mentally ill, they immediate begin to fear them and treat them with mistrust, only serving to exacerbate the condition of the individual suffering mental illness by ostracizing them.
People in general place far too much significance on what they believe is going on in another individual's mind, forgetting that there is no way to know, and also forgetting that mental illness is not crime nor indiciative of a criminal mind. The criminal, by the vast majority, are all sane. We, as a society, need to move back towards responsibility of action, not continue to gravitate towards the notion of thought-crimes. Judge a person by what they do, not by wild, unprovably notions of what or how they think.
The Admin and the Engineer
You'd be insane too if you were a genius that had to put up with the common man. Nothing in this world is more frustrating than people who insist on standing in your way because they think they know better, all the while lacking the mental capacity to understand why they need to sit down and shut up.
When I read journal articles by mathematicians that intersect engineering, say, numerical solution of differential equations in dynamical solutions, hoo boy are some of these people bad programmers. I mean, a journal article is really a form of source code that gets translated into an internal model by the scientific, engineering, or mathematical reader of the article. As I said, some programmers write concise yet lucid code, others just fill pages with every obscure language construct to do the same thing.
What the hell? Where'd Republicanism come into it?
Kay Redfield Jamison may be quite intelligent, considering she is a professor at Johns Hopkins, but it seems she merely continues to attempt to prove to herself that she is bipolar and that makes her special. The train that she rides does not do those afflicted by mental illness any good, nor does it help to expose the fact that mental illness can be extremely dangerous. For everyone one of these genius' she touts, because we all hear about them and their odd quirks, in her never-ending attempt to label herself as a genius, there most be tens of thousands of people suffering through various mental illnesses. Do not give her books to anyone suffering from mental illness, the odds that you have a mental illness strike you in the prime of your professional career as a psychologist at Johns Hopkins, with plenty of money and resources available to you, are not good.
This woman does nothing more than obscure mental illness in her crusade to feel special and label herself as a genius.
I don't suffer from my insanity.
I enjoy every minute of it.
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
I'm bipolar and have an IQ of 145. This is the internet and I'm an AC so you'll just have to trust me.
This article resonated so strongly with me. My creativity has always been tied directly to my mania. Innovative problem solving, writing, music, artistic endeavors (for one unmedicated period of three years I became a traditional glassblower). It's not the mania itself, it's the period of transition from "baseline" to full-blown manic. As the brakes come off and my mind begins to work in a more random, expansive fashion I find new insights that don't really have a linear explanation. They just bubble up, seemingly from nowhere.
Of course, there's the rest of the time. The crushing, suicidal depression that follows the bouts of rabid, incoherent mania; the self harm and risky behavior; and the impossibility of maintaining a normal life and relationships. The 2% of my time that I was genuinely brilliant wasn't worth the rest of the symptoms.
I'm heavily medicated now, which has alleviated the extremes of my disorder. I must say that I miss my crazy. I can play the songs I wrote before, but when I pick up my guitar now nothing new ever comes out of it. I wrote whole stage plays in an evening, but haven't written a scene in a year. Whatever my "spark" was, it was the product of whatever malformation I'm now treating.
After suicide attempts and running down the street being chased by things that weren't there, I'm still not sure that I've made the right decision
I searched the page for the text "Stallman" and got a goose egg.
So much proof, so close to /home.
Interesting observations. That's one reason groups like Mensa exist and I assume that the average /.er has a higher IQ than average.
Maybe the question is whether you can control your brain (or not). You want it to think outside the box but can you stop it outside reality?
nosig today
Actually, it's even murkier than that. The more patients I see, the more convinced I become that "schizophrenia" is really a specific condition that consists of delusions and paranoia, and the various categories of "schizophrenia" are just what you end up with when you take any pre-existing conditions the individual already had (autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder, depression, etc) and pile paranoid delusions on top.
Classic "Hollywood" disorganized schizophrenia? Autism and/or ADHD + paranoia & delusions, probably amplified by giving tranquilizers to someone who REALLY needs amphetamines or methylphenidate and making it impossible for him to have two coherent thoughts in a row. There are still only a few doctors scattered around the US who are starting to seriously consider the possibility that patients with disorganized schizophrenia might benefit from taking BOTH stim meds (for their underlying ADHD and/or autism) *and* atypical antipsychotics or a sedating tricyclic antidepressant (names aside, the two have a lot more in common than most people realize, and drugs like Risperdal actually STARTED OUT in clinical trials as antidepressants, before it became obvious that they sucked miserably for that purpose, then got pulled from the fire & repurposed as antipsychotics at the last moment).
Also, I don't believe hallucinations in and of themselves (or at least their physical manifestation in patients with ADHD or autism) are necessarily a symptom of schizophrenia -- the symptom is what the patient REGARDS them as. When you ask schizophrenic patients to describe hallucinations, you start to realize after a while that they RARELY involve clearly-heard verbal commands, or concrete visible people/things, and mostly look like someone with ADHD and/or autism hyperfocusing on something, being totally "in the zone" and oblivious to his surroundings, then having something startle him without warning. The difference is, someone who just has autism or ADHD knows he just got startled by some random sound, gets annoyed, and tries to block out external distractions even harder. In contrast, someone with schizophrenia piled on top of his underlying ADHD and/or autism sees external MEANING in those startling environmental cues, and fills in missing details to complete the mental image.
At the end of the day, patients with pre-existing ADHD and/or autism aren't really any more likely to develop schizophrenia than neurotypical patients... it's just that when they DO develop it, it tends to completely derail their lives in publicly-visible ways that are impossible for others to ignore.
Why was this comment modded down?
Because it was a pedantic reply to a funny joke.
And yet people are dumber than ever.
Or am I just really that smart?
I find it interesting that the majority of us are doing well above average, even though we came from poor families. The only thing we really have in common is a strong work ethic and most of us like to help other people.
I came from a "poor" family too, yet like yours my family holds themselves to higher standards of decency and civilization than most of our "peers." After tracing my ancestry I found out I'm the descendent of countless kings and nobility from all across Europe, but primarily Scotland (descendent of James II through the Robertson line.) Most of my ancestors emigrated in the early to mid 1600s, when Britain was getting way too crowded and oppressive. The ensuing marriages over the years between Scottish, English, Irish, French, and German descendents of high ranking families, plus a bit of Cherokee to boot (1/32 in lineage, much more than that in practice) has created quite an interesting individual.
Trace out your own family history and I bet you'd find something similar.
Even at 140, which is not that spectacular, you are already one in a thousand.
In a city of a million, that's only 1000 souls. And you probably won't get along with some of them.
I find it hilarious that "smart" people like to think they're unable to socialize with anyone of lower intelligence. The problem: Someone with "X" IQ doesn't think he/she can socialize with anyone with "X-1" or less IQ, so the "smart" person plugs the values into the normal distribution and figures that they can only socialize with (area under the curve from X to infinity). But what these "smart asses" fail to realize is that nobody with "X+1" IQ wants to socialize with them for the exact same reason.
In other words: If you subscribe to this form of exclusionary definition of "peer," then you have no peers.
IQ is just a number. Yours is higher than most. Congratulations. Now stop being so full of yourself, and maybe "normal" people will want to talk to you.
Just sayin'.
I know exactly what you mean.
Think about that! How lucky one would be, to work with people, interact with people more clever than your self.
I could only dream....
Doctor enters room...
Mr Einstein we were able to cure your mental illness; now you will be stupid like the rest of us.
Humility, it's a virtue.
...apparently one that has fallen out of fashion. Most functional adults interact with people who are less 'intelligent' than them- both in terms of having more knowledge and being more creative/insightful. That shouldn't be a barrier to empathy or communication. It is sheer arrogance when someone who is more knowledgeable or more capable at a particular task than someone else allows that to get in the way of caring about others and forming social relationships. I decided to comment on this story rather than moderate because so many of the commenters here seem to be wallowing in their own misery, lamenting about how smart they are and how lonely they are as a result.
.01% of whatever intelligence scale you choose to measure by have a different experience of things. Their skills may allow for a level of self sufficiency but "no man is an island" still applies, and if people isolate themselves from others then it is easy to fall into self-destructive patterns. With some mental disorders there is a very fine line between learned/self-induced behaviors and biological causes... I'm sure someone will throw up a snarky [citation needed] reply, but working to keep oneself involved with a community and investing the time and effort to develop genuine friendships can do a lot to ease the "burden" of intelligence.
Sure, those at the top
Much Madness is divinest Sense --
To a discerning Eye --
Much Sense -- the starkest Madness
Except the problem with Mensa is you end up having to hang out with a bunch of self absorbed pricks who spend their time masturbating about their 180 IQ's or whatever. According to an online test I took (the most "legit" looking one I could find), my IQ is around 130. I would much rather hang around captains of industry and dudes and ladies who are actually out in the world doing interesting things, than a bunch of jerk-offs in their ivory tower.
And nothing is more annoying than a person writing they're smarter than the entire world.
A more interesting topic of research is the link between mental illness and stupidity. How often are schizophrenics and bi-polar disorder sufferers utterly stupid?
Cars that drive 200 mph on a road not-so-designed for it often crash spectacularly.
Well I said it anyway, but that's what happens when you forget to log in.
Place something witty here
As the absent minded type of genius,
They were speaking generally, not making a claim about themselves.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
I call BS. You should be able to easily and productively talk to people with an IQ +/- 1SD of your own. At 140 that gives you a range of 125-155 with whom you should be able to hold a relatively interesting conversation, which comes out to about 5% of the general population. As long as you hang around the sorts of places where other smart people frequent, this will be much higher. College towns, business areas with largely college-educated workforce, etc. Hang out at the right pub and half the denizens there will have IQ's above 120. For that matter if you have an IQ of 140 and aren't working daily with lots of people with IQ's in the 120+ range then you need to find another place to work, or another line of work altogether.
Wow. And that's what's wrong with modern psychiatry, which has made no progress in 50 years and whose sole focus now it to make new drugs that turn you into a zombie with less and less lethal side effects.
Medicine has been married to the dopamine hypothesis for decades now, too low and you're schizophrenic, too high and you have parkinsons, so they elevate the dopamine levels in schiz patients so they're near to parkinsonian levels then try to deal with the fallout from that with side effects ranging from disfigurement to death. The "new class" of "atypical antipsychotics" was invented to mitigate some of the side effects of old school antipsychotics, but in reality, they're worse.
An alternative hypothesis is the adrenochome hypothesis which states that in some individuals, they rapidly oxidise adreneline into adrenochrome (and related androlutins). This acts like LSD (with a profound post-depressive effect) which explains the hallucinations. The seminal work in the area of "lets try every psychadelic" by a couple of biochemist/psychiatrists was Hoffer and Osmond in the 50s and it was they that noticed the similarity bewteen LSD and adrenochome. A case of a kid using an old asthma inhaler and going instantly crazy revealed the adreneline has aged and turned pink, oxidised into adrenochome, which would instantly make anyone nuts who tried it.
This and other notable modalities of the disorder such as: schiz patients have a high pain threshold, seldom get cancer (even though many chain smoke) and are perfectly normal during an infection/inflammation are not explained by the dopamine hypothesis but are explained by the adrenochome hypothesis.
Methamphetamine induces adreneline. That, or any stimulant are the worst things you can do to anyone with problems like this.
Schizophrenia isn't an disease of unknown origin. It's a symptom, like scurvy. It can be induced in anyone by depriving them of B3 (google pellagra) and the reason all white flour is "enriched" is to prevent this symptom on a widespread basis after losing tens of thousands of lives a year to this in the 20s. It's felt if the amount of b3 added was 10 or 100x higher it would make a serious dent in the worldwide rate of schizophrenia, currently running at about 1.1% (twice that in Ireland and Serbia) and consistant from the Arctic to Australia suggesting a genetic origin older than 70,000 years when the lang bridge to Australia sank.
I leave you with this quote. This is a long and complicated yet fascinating subject and I'd love to go on but have moles to whack, so I leave you with this:
"On October 27, 2000, King County in Washington State, by a vote of 11 to 1, passed a very unusual ordinance. This directed psychiatrists working in the state mental health systemto make their patients well and to report annually on how successful they had been in achieving this goal. The ordinance defined exactly what was to be considered a mental health recovery. Such a former patient had to be able to meet four criteria. They must have become well enough to engage in volunteer work, or be employed full or part-time, or be engaged in culturally appropriate activities, or be pursuing educationalor vocational opportunities. Secondly, a recovered mental patient had to be living independently or in supported housing. Thirdly, they must have been discharged from the county’s publicly funded mental health system or, at most, be receiving only infrequent maintenance services. Lastly, when tested they must be able to score 81 or more on the Global Assessment of Function Scale. This scale measures such things as aggression, ability to communicate, and level of personal hygiene.
It is now some 3 years since this ordinance was passed and the required initial report on the efficacy of the system has been issued, covering the period January 1 through December 31, 2001. King County, Washington is not a rural backwater. It is one of the most progressive counties in the US, the location of Seattle. So what did the residents of King Count
Need Mercedes parts ?
I think you might be posting to the wrong audience.
The average highly-trained adult human can give the impression of higher than normal intelligence, even though they are fundamentally the same fumbling child they always were. They may say "insightful" or "interesting" things but are simply imitating something they read or heard somewhere else. The interesting thing is that they don't even fully realize that some of their contemporaries possess orders of magnitude more capacity.
... and these Slashdot folks are just crazy about intelligence.
OK, it was ignorant - horticulture is not my field. OTOH I love it when people make applied engineering comments... (among other things) - It's a joke, son. I'm freakin 44 yrs old, and I can't have any fun?
C|N>K
Hello, Slashdot, I've posted for years. And being insane is more misery than you can know.
I clearly have to give credentials: Duke undergrad, evil Michigan MBA. And earning both of those degrees were hell. Not because of the work, but because I was hospitalized so many fucking times. I could - and can - do absolutely brilliant work, but having a clinically recognized illness screws things up.
In a very concrete sense, I don't perceive things as you do. I'm always lost in the details, lost in the shadows. Don't think I don't know that. I can't be in a normal classroom setting; I can't work in a normal job. I can't talk to you in a normal sense, you don't see what I see, and I can't see what you see.
I've been able to write very, very, serious papers with no problem, but I can't take a normal quiz. I don't know how to express this, but I actually know I'm insane. And before you scoff, suicide attempts should count. And to the posters above - I'm not doing anything for my pride, I'm not doing anything to make life easier on me. I've lost my family, I've lost my job, and I still dwell in the math of the economy. I can't escape, I cannot leave. But the math endures.
So before you become a righteous bastard, try to understand how much it hurts. I can't relate to you, except through writing on the Internet. I'm supposed to have an IQ over 160, but I cannot relate to anyone. You have no idea how that feels - the isolation, the isolation, the cold and constant fear. There's nothing I can do, as I an who I an. No sleep, no rest, no comfort. That's what insanity actually is. So you can make fun of me, but the pain is real.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
Coding (and sysadminning) and alcohol aren't mutually exclusive; the dose is the key here. When the technician is too afraid to make a bug, or to screw up, a small dose of alcohol can relax him enough to be willing to perform the task (it must be low enough to not significantly impair his job performance; slowly(!) drinking something tasty until one feels the courage for the task does the job well).
(Incidentally if you're reading this as a KKK member with SSA, I hate to break it to you but there's only one way you could possibly carry the gene. Best get to burning crosses on your own lawn)
Even worse! I'm in the John Birch Society. There a hammer to go with that sickle? I knew there was a reason why those blood cells were red.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Agreed. I'm smarter than a lot of the people I hang with, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy each other's company. I just have to bite my tongue when they say something dumb, and they keep quiet when I get boring and stuffy.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
First, thanks for two things. I'd never heard of the Flynn effect, and I wasn't aware of how IQ tests are continually re-normalized over time.
So are you saying the Flynn effect proves that intelligence has been increasing over time, because next generations have always scored better than previous generations on the previous generation's test? Or are you saying that due to the testing methodology of setting the baseline of any population's overall IQ at 100, that by definition IQ is always 100 for any population, and that comparisons of IQ over time aren't meaningful due to this practice, therefore the original poster's assertion isn't valid?
Basically IQ tests are flawed. They be be indicative but often stuff that is valued changes over time. By practising IQ tests you get better at them. Yet a higher IQ doesn't unlock magical abilities or make people more effective.
The thing with IQ tests is that they're supposed to abstractly measure your ability to think, and are not supposed to be just a trivia test of stuff you've learned. If you understand analogy to a depth greater than the average of your population, your test results should show a higher IQ. The hope is that your higher score is due to your innate ability; but it might be that an understanding of analogy is being taught more effectively in schools and you simply paid more attention than your classmates during those lessons. That's the kind of noise I understand they're trying to steer clear of, but it seems that it would be almost impossible to dodge. If the IQ-testing-community decides that a specific ability confers an advantage, wouldn't they ultimately be self-selecting for teachers that would naturally have that ability and who would be able to teach it as a skill? And is that why you think they're doomed to always be wrong?
John
I'm afraid you're a little misinformed.
And that's what's wrong with modern psychiatry, which has made no progress in 50 years and whose sole focus now it to make new drugs that turn you into a zombie with less and less lethal side effects.
My friend has several disorders, the biggest being bipolar disorder. She's also a cocaine addict. They had her on Zoloft for a while, and she did become zombie-like and it didn't help her addiction. But they switched her to Paxil (another SSRI) and that actually worked, for her. When she's on it she stays sober and says "it doesn't make me feel like a zombie like Zoloft did." When she's not high or on Paxil, she's suicidal (IMO nobody should EVER get on SSRIs unless they're already suicidal). Clinical depression can be fatal; the patient suicides. SSRIs can prevent this.
Fifty years ago -- hell, thirty years ago, that would not have been possible.
Medicine has been married to the dopamine hypothesis for decades now, too low and you're schizophrenic, too high and you have parkinsons
You have it exactly backwards; Parkenson's is a neurological disease that comes from the death of dopamine-generating cells in the substantia nigra, a region of the midbrain; the cause of this cell death is unknown. Schitzophrenia's treatments decrease dopamine, and judging from schitzophrenics I've known, sometimes the treatment works. One guy I knew who had it was just batshit insane, hearing voices and all, completely unable to be a productive member of society. They put him on Haldol, and the last time I saw him was at the poll; he seemed normal, had a paying job, and was an election judge.
It's true that mental health treatments are far behind physical health treatments, but they are in fact improving at a rapid pace.
I googled Foster, he doesn't even hold a doctorate. I wouldn't lend him much credence. Find a better source for your information, an MA is nowhere near enough education when you're talking about something as complex as brain and nervous system function.
Free Martian Whores!
Yes, but it was informative to most, anyway. Most people actually do think schitzophrenia is multiple personalities, including the joker, or he would have said "DID" rather than "schitzophrenia". I got the joke, but I would have corrected him if the GP had not. I've known schitzophrenics, and Evil-X has DID. Both are pretty damned bad; I'm happy all I suffer from is arthritis.
Or to make another joke, "I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it!"
Free Martian Whores!
What smart people should realize is that a great deal of the reason they're "smart" is because they're lucky.
1) They were born with a good brain. (luck)
2) Their parents probably trained them well. (luck)
3) They had access to education. (luck, and possibly following from 1,2)
SOME of your "smarts" you won by your own efforts, via study and working hard. But lots of people work hard.
Find someone really intelligent? It's mostly luck that sets them apart.
Now, if someone is smart, wouldn't they realize this and realize how ridiculous it is to be arrogant about how smart they are?
"Uh, I won the lottery, so I'm better than you!"
It's amazing to me how few "smart" people realize this and act decently to those less fortunate. It goes back to your point, humility. One break of a blood vessel and you could be dumb as a rock.
--PM
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw
Casteism