

Schizophrenic Computer Points to New Theory of Disease - caustic
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/schizophrenic-computer-points-to-new-theory-of-disease

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streptomycin
Back in the 90s, Neal Stephenson wrote a great short story about the
implications of such technology:
<http://www.vanemden.com/books/neals/jipi.html>

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peterquest
I couldn't help but think of a drug user's eagerness to attach deeper meaning
to seemingly unimportant events while under the effects of heightened dopamine
levels.

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klipt
And drug use is thought to trigger schizophrenia in certain people:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia#Substance_abuse>

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daeken
Only by a small portion of the psychiatric community. The vast majority
believe that the causation runs the opposite direction, that it's self-
medication. This has been discussed for years for just about every serious
mental illness, in fact. There's no real consensus either way, but most mental
health professionals I know agree with this.

(I grew up in a house of mental health professionals, so I've had no dearth of
opinions on the matter, to say the least.)

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peterquest
Yet another problem that can be reduced to the chicken V egg dilemma.

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SoftwareMaven
This is truly fascinating, both from a computer perspective as well as a
psychological perspective. I have a person very close to me who may be schizo-
affective (diagnosing these things can be a bitch!), so I'm all for anything
that helps us understand the disorder.

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jwdunne
You're bang on when you say diagnosing these things can be a bitch. Especially
so with schizo-affective disorder where symptoms that are akin to
schizophrenia and symptoms that are akin to bipolar are both present. I
misdiagnosing twice has happened before landing on schizo-affective.

I had a relative who had this happen. Their symptoms seemed so much like
schizophrenia, with bizarre delusions and voices. On the other hand, bouts of
depression and bouts of hypomania were common. Before the mood component was
fully realised, he was slapped with a Paranoid Schizophrenia diagnosis - which
can particularly life shattering. A year or so later, a diagnosis of Bipolar
was slapped on him, which is a bit of improvement because I believe the
prognosis for Bipolar is markedly better than Schizophrenia.

Eventually, it was realised Schizo-affective Disorder fit the bill. After a
bit of research, it turns out that such a diagnosis fit particularly well. The
particular type of delusions commonly experienced by those with Schizo-
affective disorder were present in him, amongst other things.

You can probably tell from what I've said above that it is indeed a bitch.
It's almost life destroying and he was reduced to a lab rat in the process
(finding the right medication is really a case of an educated guess and
experimentation). I really am all for this sort of research because the more
we advance with it, the less people will have to go through what my relative
went through (and relatively speaking, he got off lightly).

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njloof
I can't help but think: no wonder the computer is experiencing schizophrenic
symptoms; they never let it sleep!

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6ren
How does assigning greater importance to learning lead to mixing up
identities?

There doesn't seem to be a link to the actual paper (if there is one yet) -
the DISCERN link is to a 1998 paper. The idea of a "story parser" is
interesting...

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jal278
<http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/?grasemann:cogsci11>

I believe this is the paper, from the abstract it seems like hyperlearning is
related to greater consolidation of memory, which might imply creation of
connections between things that are not really connected

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pierreminik
The _"connection between things that are not really connected"_ part match my
own experience of having schizophrenia very well.

It's not uncommon for me to have thoughts that very much makes sense _and_ is
meaningful to me while others simply can't make any sense of it what-so-ever.

This means I'll have to be cautious of my own thoughts and I often doubt them.

Thoughts as well as meanings change over time too. Sometimes I write down
ideas I think is brilliant to save for later. Revisiting those writings can be
troubling because I might not be able to make a similar sense of what I wrote
earlier.

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KevinMS
I also have a schizophrenic computer, but that points to the fact that I
shouldn't have upgraded to OS X Lion.

