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Inside the Mind of a Schizophrenic Through Virtual Reality
blottsie writes Viscira produces videos and technology simulations for the healthcare industry, and the project I tested called "Mindscape" was created for a pharmaceutical company that wanted to give potential clients insight into what some schizophrenic patients might feel like in a real-life scenario. Unlike audio tests or videos that show you a first-person perspective of schizophrenic experiences, Viscira's demonstration uses the Oculus Rift headset and is entirely immersive. You can look around at each individual's face, and up and down the hallway. Walk through the elevator, and hear voices that appear to be coming from both strangers and your own head.
No matter how hard you try, you cannot "get into the mind" of a schizophrenic. Even with the Oculus Rift.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Successful troll is successful.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
I find myself wishing that you are soon diagnosed with some horrible disease for which there is no cure.
Birth.
Done.
Obligatory.
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What if there were beings or entities that existed just outside our range of perception, that we are not aware of?
Much like a dog whistle, which humans cannot hear. What if some people were 'sensitive' to other energies - sounds, lights, etc. that were outside the normal realm of human perception?
What if schizophrenic people weren't "hallucinating", so to speak, but were able to actually "perceive" these energies or beings?
Ahh, what then?
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Anyone with a recent version of linux can experiece the mind of a schizophrenic with Systemd. Unlike audio tests or videos that show you a first-person perspective of schizophrenic experiences, Systemd allows you to experience the neurosis first hand!
Good people go to bed earlier.
Already happened, it's called Slashdot beta.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Timothy Leary and other researchers used LSD when it was still legal, to induce temporary psychosis in themselves and other clinicians.
They did so to better understand the mindscape of psychotic patients. A schizophrenic is not psychotic all the time, but the brain's full tilt mode is reportedly really close to what can be achieved by consumption of LSD. Recreational consumers of LSD call this state a bad trip.
Sadly, since LSD is one of the "bad" drugs that needs to have "war" waged against it, clinical experiments with it have all but ceased. Now, if you want to explore its potential as a pharmaceutical substance, you have to join the CIA (or other shady organization). I doubt they're working on helping schizophrenics though.
...there you are.
just like Tourettes. no "beautiful"or "marvelous" tics.
Those psychomimetic effects aren't necessarily interpreted as a "bad trip".
Many people with schizophrenia don't consider it a "bad trip" either. By the time they are diagnosed, many of them have already lost their friends, alienated their families, have no job, and little hope of having a meaningful life. For them, reality is shit. But inside their their own mind, they are the king of the world. So why should they go through the effort of conscientiously taking medication that converts them from a king to a lonely homeless loser? This is something that makes treating schizophrenia difficult: treatment makes things get worse, sometimes much worse, before things get better. It is explained in the book The Seduction of Madness.
Right now this idea is outside of what we can observe, the easier path is to state that it is an anomaly in the brain. In science the easiest solution that fits the model, is the one taken to be the one to use.
You can ask whether the information has predictive value.
The brain is an elaborate goal-setting mechanism coupled to a prediction engine. If the schizophrenic can use his extra information in some way that allows them to predict future actions or consequences, then we can say that the extra information is likely to be real.
We do this all the time; for example, predicting that we will get run over if we step off the curb, based on information from our visible inputs about cars in the street.
It's very easy to "get inside someone else's mind". If we step off the curb and someone says "watch out", we're effectively making use of their neural inputs as an adjunct to our own. Simply painting a picture in someone's mind through stories or college lectures is a form of mind sharing.
Set up an experiment using schizophrenics as "sensor" - telling us what the voices are saying and/or what the people are doing - and see if that information has any predictive value. For example, ESP tests with information (card reading) hidden from the test subject.
If the information is completely disjoint from our own universe and has no predictive value, it's indistinguishable from made-up fantasies.
About a decade ago, a one-shot FX series called Dirt came out. It was about the celebrity tabloid journalism industry, I thought it was pretty interesting even though I'm not into that kind of stuff. One of the more interesting parts of it was that there was a schizophrenic photographer, and they did a couple segments from his perspective during periods when he was on and off his meds. I have no idea if their portrayal is how it acutally is, but I thought it matched what we've been described to as the symptoms. When the show was through his perspective, it was hard to tell what was real and what wasn't real sometimes.
Would you also argue that there is no such thing as epilepsy in people who have no discernible physical abnormalities in their brains?
What would your "simple critical thinking skills" tell you if you observed someone having an epileptic seizure?
Your post is soooo meta. Even if the AC reply was really the troll himself (possibly quite likely, it's been a long, long time since I saw someone here fall for it), your post would have made itself be true.
"Overrated"? This is genius!
Or perhaps that happens to a lot of people but since it isn't distressing, they just assume that's how it is for everyone or they count themselves lucky.
Sounds like someone is having a waking dream. Has anyone ever considered these schizophrenic 'voices' are actually suppressed physiological impulses bubbling back to the surface as phantom voices. The subject and content of the 'voices' being a distraction from what ever really ails them. The reported flattening being fatigue caused by trying to not think about something.
True except the only part you got wrong is that the drugs don't work. The drugs in a lot of cases actually make you worse, they crush your talents and your skill and leave you emotionally dead and broken. They can literally make the illness worse and cause damaging effects that are pretty much permanent. Psychiatrists don't really understand schizophrenia and they don't really understand the brain. They still think you can fix a neural network with chemicals alone... (or - ECT like trying to start a car, at least a little better than an ice pick to the frontal lobes.) Unfortunately there is no proper 'medical science' for curing mental illness yet...
Its leaches and mercury poultices and blood letting, if you had cancer would you want leaches and mercury poultices or would you want chemotherapy?
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..