A Beautiful Mind
turtoni
"The film opens with John Nash arriving as a new graduate student at
Princeton University. He is a recipient of the prestigious Carnegie
Prize for mathematics. He meets his roommate Charles, a literature
student, who soon becomes his best friend. He also meets a group of
other promising math and science graduate students, Martin Hansen,
Sol, and Bender, with whom he strikes up an awkward friendship. Nash
admits to Charles that he is better with numbers than people, and that
he strives for a truly original idea for his thesis paper. He is
largely unsuccessful with the women at the local bar. However, the
experience is what ultimately inspires his fruitful work in the
concept of governing dynamics, a theory in mathematical economics.
After the conclusion of Nash's studies as a student at Princeton, he
accepts a prestigious appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), along with his friends Sol and Bender.
Russell Crowe as John Nash.Five years later while teaching a class on
Calculus, he meets Alicia, a student with whom he falls in love and
eventually marries. While at Princeton, Nash runs into his former
roommate Charles and meets Charles's young niece Marcee. He also
encounters a mysterious Department of Defense agent, William Parcher.
Nash is invited to a United States Department of Defense facility in
The Pentagon to crack a complex encryption of an enemy
telecommunication. Nash is able to decipher the code mentally. Parcher
observes Nash's performance from above, while partially concealed
behind a screen. Parcher later encourages Nash to look for patterns in
magazines and newspapers, ostensibly to thwart a Soviet plot. After
being chased by the Russians and exchange of gunfire, Nash becomes
increasingly paranoid and begins to behave erratically.
After observing this erratic behavior, Alicia informs a psychiatric
hospital. Later, while giving a lecture, Nash realizes that he is
being watched by a hostile group of people. Although he attempts to
flee, he is forcibly sedated and sent to a psychiatric facility.
Nash's internment seemingly confirms his belief that the Soviets were
trying to extract information from him, and that being taken by the
officials of a psychiatric facility was a kidnapping by Soviet agents.
Alicia, desperate to help her husband, visits a drop-box and retrieves
the never-opened "top secret" documents that Nash had delivered there.
When confronted with this evidence, Nash is finally convinced that he
has been hallucinating. The Department of Defense agent William
Parcher and Nash's secret assignment to decode Soviet messages was in
fact all a delusion. Even more surprisingly, Nash's friend Charles and
his niece Marcee are also only products of Nash's mind.
After a painful series of insulin shock therapy sessions, Nash is
released on the condition that he agrees to take antipsychotic
medication. However, the drugs create negative side-effects that
affect his relationship with his wife and, most dramatically, his
intellect. Frustrated, Nash secretly stops taking his medication,
triggering a relapse of his psychosis. While bathing his infant son,
Nash becomes distracted and wanders off. Alicia barely manages to save
their child from being drowned. When she confronts Nash, he claims
that his friend Charles was watching their son. Alicia runs to the
phone to call the psychiatric hospital for emergency assistance.
Charles, Marcee, and Parcher all appear to John and urge him to kill
his wife rather than allow her to lock him up again. After Alicia
flees the house in terror, Nash steps in front of her car to prevent
her from leaving. After a moment, Nash states "She never gets old" as
he observes that Marcee is the same age that she was when he first met
her several years before. Only then does he accept that all three of
these people are, in fact, part of his psychosis.
Caught between the intellectual paralysis of the antipsychotic drugs
and his delusions, Nash and his wife decide to try to live with his
schizophrenia. Nash attempts to ignore his hallucinations and not feed
"his demons". Nash is growing older while working on his studies in
the library of Princeton University. He still suffers hallucinations
and periodically has to check if new people he meets are real,
mentions taking newer medications, but is ultimately able to live with
and largely ignore his psychotic experiences. Nash approaches his old
friend and intellectual rival Martin Hansen, now head of the Princeton
mathematics department, and receives permission to work out of the
library and audit classes. He eventually begins teaching again. He is
honored by his fellow professors for his achievement in mathematics,
and goes on to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his
revolutionary work on game theory. Later, Nash and Alicia about to
leave the auditorium in Stockholm, when John sees Charles, Marcee and
Parcher standing and smiling. Alicia asks John "What's wrong?" John
replies "Nothing." With that, they both leave the auditorium."
John Jones
John Nash is one of the great, intricately constructed psychiatric
stereotypes. He is a uniquely western product, a social construct,
which in a display of nauseating sycophancy we all pretend to
understand and care for as an individual 'condition'. Just awful.
Sir Frederick
namely, crazy. Evolution castes intelligence with stipulations
of cooperation with evolution. Thus we are produced
with common ubiquitous forms of insanity. Even "qualia"
may be considered a form of insanity, functional, but still
insane hallucination fabrications. Questions remain as in Nash,
are we possibly manifesting abridged higher mentations in our
own subjective experiences?
John Jones
Why bother to support a pseudo-chemical-reality (insanity) just to
snuggle up to the psychiatrists bent view of nature?
turtoni
When our qualia are *seriously* out of sync with others then this
could obviously become a problem.
Sir Frederick
Psychiatrists have nothing to do with it,
evolutionary pragmatism is all.
This is what we are trying to talk around.
turtoni
Your views are so fundamentally hostile towards the idea that the
brain organ system can become ill much like any other organ system may
cause a reader to come to the conclusion that your idea's have been
hugely corrupted by our own negative personal experiences.
Do you consider antibiotics to be worthless?
chazwin
I think what is most awful about the film is the fact that it did not
have the guts to be honest about Nash's sexuality.
The film pulled away from the truth that Nash was a homosexual.
So whilst the story qua film was moving and interesting, it fails to
engage with Nash's real dilemma. Nash was not alone, Turin was also a
gay mathemetician and was driven to suicide because of the social
stigma attached to homosexuality.
The film was just one big lie.
chazwin
It is no wonder that many more of us do not succumb to schizophrenia
as we are all required to some degree to surpress aspects of our
natural tendencies and desires. Nash suffered from a life time of
denial and concealment due to his homosexuality. One can only imagine
to what degree his mental impairment might have been avoided
completely if he were to have been born into a more open minded
society which did not traduce and demonise his sexual orientation.
turtoni
While i'm not defending the films main premise that nash had a mental
illness that caused him to hallucinate things that other people were
unable to also experience, I don't believe that homosexuals ordinarily
hallucinate imaginary subjects or that the theres a mainstream
conspiracy to coverup a prominant persons sexuality by concocting the
idea that they had a mental illness that manifests itself in such an
extreme manner.
turtoni
Are you open minded to the idea of mental illness?
John Jones
>
> - Show quoted text -
I am not one of psychiatry's poseurs, nor do I find their rationale
difficult to understand, so much as demonstrably shallow and
incoherent.
John Jones
>
> - Show quoted text -
'Hallucinate' is the psychiatric term for 'vision'. Just more beads to
the indians.
Nic
John Nash has his own site and occassionally comes on line using
his own name. I was interested to read during an interview that when
asked how much of the cinema version of thesaga was true-to-life
he replied 'very little'
Has anyone seen the 'an angel at my table' ? its a true story.
two days before scheduled for lobotomy she recieved a Lauriate
for her literature. she is discharged with no apology, no explination
for retention or release into the outside world.
These are special people tho, occasionally someone is let out
of a hospital who has not great impact on the world of science
or literature. I recently heard of a woman now aged in her 60's
discharged a month ago, who was admitted in her teens as
'being pregnant while unmarried'.
turtoni
>
> - Show quoted text -
"John Nash, the real-life subject behind the Oscar-nominated film A
Beautiful Mind, has spoken out against allegations that the movie
glosses over aspects of his life - namely that he might be bisexual,
antisemitic and a bad father.
Nash was interviewed for CBS's 60 Minutes and denied being anti-
Semitic, but claimed he could have said things that might sound that
way whilst in the grip of his schizophrenia. Nash and his wife,
Alicia, also said that he was not a homosexual. She said it was "just
not true. I should know".
The mathematician also denied that his relationship with his son from
a previous relationship was "non-existent". He claimed that he and
John Stier are in contact and that Stier even received a share of the
film's royalties."
http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Exclusive/0,,667864,00.html
turtoni
Could you provide us with a list of chemicals you find acceptible?
What situations/enviroments do you think are acceptible? Will you
provide these things?
Is beer ok? Is chocolate ok? Soda? Is the excitement of buying
something ok? Is somebody finding themselves in a social enviroment in
which *you* are not available to offer your physical non-"chemical"
support ok?
brian fletcher
"Sir Frederick" <mmcn...@fuzzysys.com> wrote in message
news:00f2h3hjfd6enr1aj...@4ax.com...
Thats "all" as we are doing, so do it with awareness.
BOfL
brian fletcher
"turtoni" <tur...@fastmail.net> wrote in message
news:1192313579.7...@t8g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
The source of all conflict, and the 'rite of passage' to self realization.
BOfL
brian fletcher
"chazwin" <chaz...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1192316130.1...@v23g2000prn.googlegroups.com...
There is always conflict between the group and an individuals struggle and
desire for 'true identity'.
BOfL
Immortalist
with the disease [Schizophrenia] : delusions, frequent auditory
hallucinations, illusions that messages are being sent to him through
television or newspapers, a skewed view of reality leading to
paranoia. And like many who have struggled to live functional lives
with the illness, he has watched his personal relationships dissolve,
his career interrupted and his life disintegrate.
What distinguishes Nash from others diagnosed with schizophrenia is an
uncommon amount of public attention. In 1994, Nash shared the Nobel
Prize with two other economists for the 1950 doctoral dissertation he
wrote at Princeton on game theory.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/02/01/beautiful_mind.html
"There could be a mathematical explanation for how bad your tie is,"
he tells one classmate. While at Princeton, he came up with a
strikingly original contribution to games theory (which purports to
predict seemingly random human behavior) that would win him the Nobel
Prize in Economics nearly fifty years later, but a full 25 years in
between would be lost to schizophrenia (& further alternate awareness
of conspiracies of events & phenomena).
http://www.mcmanweb.com/article-169.htm
Nash was a brilliant mathematician, and at the age of 21 developed the
'non-cooperative games theory', the economics theory which today
dominates privatisation, megamergers, big government, and
international trade.
http://www.sfnat.org.nz/news%20and%20notes.htm
...his doctoral thesis in 1949, he established the mathematical
principles of modern game theory. In four papers published between
1950-53 he made seminal contributions to both non-cooperative game
theory and to bargaining theory...
...group of mathematical theories first developed by John Von
Neumann ... and Morgenstern restricted their attention to zero-sum
games, that is, to games in which no player can gain except at
another's expense. This restriction was overcome by the work of John
F. Nash during the early 1950s. Nash mathematically clarified the
distinction between cooperative and noncooperative games. In
noncooperative games, unlike cooperative ones, no outside authority
assures that players stick to the same predetermined rules, and
binding agreements are not feasible. Further, he recognized that in
noncooperative games there exist sets of optimal strategies (so-called
Nash equilibria) used by the players in a game such that no player can
benefit by unilaterally changing his or her strategy if the strategies
of the other players remain unchanged. Because noncooperative games
are common in the real world, the discovery revolutionized game
theory. Nash also recognized that such an equilibrium solution would
also be optimal in cooperative games. He suggested approaching the
study of cooperative games via their reduction to noncooperative form
and proposed a methodology, called the Nash program, for doing so.
Nash also introduced the concept of bargaining, in which two or more
players collude to produce a situation where failure to collude would
make each of them worse off.
The theory of games applies statistical logic to the choice of
strategies. It is applicable to many fields, including military
problems and economics; the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic
Sciences was awarded to Nash, John Harsanyi, and Reinhard Selten for
their work in applying game theory to economics...
http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/N/NashJ1F1.asp
1950-53
In four papers between 1950 and 1953 John Nash made seminal
contributions to both non-cooperative game theory and to bargaining
theory. In two papers, Equilibrium Points in N- Person Games (1950)
and Non-cooperative Games (1951), Nash proved the existence of a
strategic equilibrium for non-cooperative games - the Nash equilibrium
- and proposed the"Nash program", in which he suggested approaching
the study of cooperative games via their reduction to non-cooperative
form. In his two papers on bargaining theory, The Bargaining Problem
(1950) and Two-Person Cooperative Games (1953), he founded axiomatic
bargaining theory, proved the existence of the Nash bargaining
solution and provided the first execution of the Nash program.
Immortalist
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Beautiful_Mind_%28film%29
>
> John Nash is one of the great, intricately constructed psychiatric
> stereotypes. He is a uniquely western product, a social construct,
> which in a display of nauseating sycophancy we all pretend to
>
Then you could say the same about Einstien and his accomplishments,
since Nash won the Nobel Prize for helping start the science that is
solving the paradoxes of our being and its evolution, no small
accomplishment;
Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is often used in
the context of economics. It studies strategic interactions between
agents. In strategic games, agents choose strategies which will
maximize their return, given the strategies the other agents choose.
The essential feature is that it provides a formal modelling approach
to social situations in which decision makers interact with other
agents. Game theory extends the simpler optimisation approach
developed in neoclassical economics... ...Game theory has played, and
continues to play a large role in the social sciences, and is now also
used in many diverse academic fields. Beginning in the 1970s, game
theory has been applied to animal behaviour, including evolutionary
theory. Many games, especially the prisoner's dilemma, are used to
illustrate ideas in political science and ethics. Game theory has
recently drawn attention from computer scientists because of its use
in artificial intelligence and cybernetics.
In addition to its academic interest, game theory has received
attention in popular culture. A Nobel Prize-winning game theorist,
John Nash, was the subject of the 1998 biography by Sylvia Nasar and
the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind. Game theory was also a theme in the
1983 film WarGames. Several game shows have adopted game theoretic
situations, including Friend or Foe? and to some extent Survivor. The
character Jack Bristow on the television show Alias is one of the few
fictional game theorists in popular culture.
Although some game theoretic analyses appear similar to decision
theory, game theory studies decisions made in an environment in which
players interact. In other words, game theory studies choice of
optimal behavior when costs and benefits of each option depend upon
the choices of other individuals.
Wordsmith
Are you comparing him to Oprah?
W ; )
John Jones
>
> - Show quoted text -
I'm not bothered to talk about this here. But anyone who supports a
chemical morality like 'correct levels' of serotonin is either a quack
or a threat.
John Jones
Er....what?
What?
John Jones
'Stricken with the disease schizophrenia'? God knows why people speak
with such self-assured surety about something never shown or
explained. It's a herding instinct, probably, to think in this way, or
not think.
Like I have said, we simply exchange new myths for old, new blind
spots for old blind spots.
chazwin
You are sid-stepping the point. No one knows the causes of
schitzophrenia, bu tmost agree that there are stress related triggers
in early adulthood. Misfitting and denial of the self are serious
contenders of the causes of mental health.
If a film made so recently was unable to deal with or confront Nash's
homosexuality then what chance did Nash have in the late 50s?
Alan Turin, also a mathematician, and comtmporary of Nash commited
suicide becasue of his homosexuality - things were tough then.
chazwin
Strange question. Depends what you mean.
There is no purely mental ilness. The mind is generated by the body:
there is a more than physical corrolary to "mental illness".
I have close at hand experience to Mental illness as my brother is
schizophrenic (one day I will remember how to spell it).
Can you explain the question?
chazwin
What i don't like is those that assume the disease can be simply
contained in a few parameters: sorted out if only we had the right
chemical cocktail to redress the "imbalance". This sort of approach
ignores the reasons why mental states becomes problematic and how the
"patient" starts down the road in the first place.
turtoni
Sex was tough then. And what about now; Prisoners? Catholic priests?
Could you also defend the idea that abnormal socialization produces
abnormal behaviour?
Nash has stated he is not a "homosexual". I believe him. Perhaps he
did things in the past out of a frustation that he later stressed
about. We all stress about situations but it's how we go about dealing
with the stress. Personally, I'm not prepared to fund zillions of
dollars in managing other peoples lifestyles in order to provide them
with the best care.
John Jones
>
> - Show quoted text -
I'm not sidestepping the point. I am saying there is no point. There
is no cause for schizophremia any more than there is a cause for "?$
%^&.
The only definition for schizophrenia is that it is the name of a
medical practice. There's no other factual status behind it. You can't
ask the cause of something you haven't defined, obviously (but sadly).
John Jones
>
> - Show quoted text -
'What' exactly is a disease? And how do you know you are looking at a
'disease'?
pico
news:1192469085.6...@y27g2000pre.googlegroups.com...
> I'm not sidestepping the point. I am saying there is no point. There
> is no cause for schizophremia any more than there is a cause for "?$
> %^&.
The same was said about diseases at one time, "Germs do not exist."
> The only definition for schizophrenia is that it is the name of a
> medical practice. There's no other factual status behind it. You can't
> ask the cause of something you haven't defined, obviously (but sadly).
It is very well defined.
pico
> 'What' exactly is a disease? And how do you know you are looking at a
> 'disease'?
I know one when I read it.
tooly
In the movie, Nash is essentially crazy...insane...non-functional.
We glorify the insanity as relegating possibility of deeper insight.
Truth is, those with intrinsic minds bent upon probabilitistic reasoning,
would have probably come up with the same logical extrapolations as Nash
did.
turtoni
> I have a resistance to the very idea 'beautiful mind'.
> In the movie, Nash is essentially crazy...insane...non-functional.
>
> We glorify the insanity as relegating possibility of deeper insight.
The insanity was the most exciting part of the movie, imo. Nash seems
pretty boring.
I think Sir fred is the "funnist" character on alt.philosophy. I
enjoyed his panda pleasure. Imaging panda's chewing deep in a jungle
of fast growing bamboo, immune to it all.
chazwin
Duh! I did not say that abnormal socialisation produces abnormal
behaviour. I suggested that being gay in the 1950s was a fucking
stressful fact. That fact meant the you were not acceptible to
society. I person like Nash who was socially inept would suffer for
his orientation. I do not view homosexuality as abnormal, but natural.
>
> Nash has stated he is not a "homosexual". I believe him.
He did not have the choice or luxury of disclosure.
Perhaps he
> did things in the past out of a frustation that he later stressed
> about.
What on earth are you talking about here?
We all stress about situations but it's how we go about dealing
> with the stress. Personally, I'm not prepared to fund zillions of
> dollars in managing other peoples lifestyles in order to provide them
> with the best care.
What on earth are you talking about here?
chazwin
For everything there exist causes. Nothing springs to being
spontaneaously.
>
> The only definition for schizophrenia is that it is the name of a
> medical practice. There's no other factual status behind it. You can't
> ask the cause of something you haven't defined, obviously (but sadly).-
Schizophrenia is a medical label, I agree. But those that suffer under
the label are suffering in other ways which makes it variously:
impossible to live with others; with themselves; without harming
themselves; without harming others; impossible to support themselves.
The reason for these problems is related to cognitive problems and
delusions. I'm not sure what you mean by "factual status" but they are
suffering SOMETHING.
John Jones
> "John Jones" <jonescard...@aol.com> wrote in message
The point about a disease is that it is physical and that there is
something physically wrong. There was never any physical evidence for
a diseased thought, nor could there be.
Schizophrenia is a cultural blind spot. A tradition of repeating
mechanically what one has been taught to say.
John Jones
>
> - Show quoted text -
Oops. I replied to the wrong person.
Anyway. Is it a cognitive problem because a person is anguished or is
a person anguished because it is a cognitive problem? Aren't we just
multiplying or manufacturing synonyms and then just claiming that
there is a causal relationship between them?
What 'something' are you suffering when you are unhappy? What
'something' would count as an answer to your search?
chazwin
I utterly reject your assertion that Schizophrenia is not a physical
disease.
I utterly reject your implication that thoughts have no physicality.
Talk to my brother for 30 mins, when he is not on his medication, and
then come and tell me that he does not have a disease.
That there is a physical remedy for his problem establishes the
physical corrolary of his failing thought process.
Your objections are old fashion 1960s revisionist bullshit. No one
goes for that appraoch anymore becasue it doesn't work.
John Jones
>
> - Show quoted text -
I am not saying that thoughts are not associated with what is
physical.
BUT HOW ARE YOU going to assert that a schizphrenics thought is wrong
and anyone elses is right? Does a brain structure tell you what is
right and wrong? Of course not. We imply a sort of moral judgement
with this odd sense of wrongness. I've seen experiences that are
completely out of the norm, yet valued.
But more to the point, you can say that all thoughts are associated
with the physical. Name a thought that isn't.
pico
> On Oct 15, 9:54?pm, "pico" <pico.pico.pico> wrote:
>> "John Jones" <jonescard...@aol.com> wrote in message
>> > The only definition for schizophrenia is that it is the name of a
>> > medical practice. There's no other factual status behind it. You can't
>> > ask the cause of something you haven't defined, obviously (but sadly).
>>
>> It is very well defined.
>
> The point about a disease is that it is physical and that there is
> something physically wrong.
Yup.
> There was never any physical evidence for
> a diseased thought, nor could there be.
Diseased thought, indeed. Nice little sound-byte but you should be ashamed.
The mind is not all about thought. It does a lot more than thinking. It can
suffer from chemical imbalance which can caus distortions of perception and
that can lead to difficulty in how the person expresses what you call
thoughts.
> Schizophrenia is a cultural blind spot. A tradition of repeating
> mechanically what one has been taught to say.
So YOU say.
pico
> BUT HOW ARE YOU going to assert that a schizphrenics thought is wrong
> and anyone elses is right? Does a brain structure tell you what is
> right and wrong?
When a person has brain damage and is impaired, do you believe it's just
another natural configuration of the brain?
> Of course not. We imply a sort of moral judgement
> with this odd sense of wrongness.
It is moral to care for another who is in pain.
> I've seen experiences that are
> completely out of the norm, yet valued.
In a mirror. Deluded.
> But more to the point, you can say that all thoughts are associated
> with the physical. Name a thought that isn't.
I can point to a thought that is associated with nonsense. It's in your
sentence above.
chazwin
But I DO dare! I do, I do. When not on medication my brother's
monologue is incomprehensible to me, to others and when played back to
him it is also incomprehensible to himself too. His aggressive
rantings at the wall to imaginary persons and the destruction he
causes is an embaressment to him and a tragedy for others.
HOW DARE YOU imply that my brother is not suffering from an illness!
If you were to ask him, he would tell you how stupid you sound, and
how completely out of touch with the realities of his illness you
are.
> Does a brain structure tell you what is
> right and wrong? Of course not. We imply a sort of moral judgement
> with this odd sense of wrongness. I've seen experiences that are
> completely out of the norm, yet valued.
>
> But more to the point, you can say that all thoughts are associated
> with the physical. Name a thought that isn't.- Hide quoted text -
John Jones
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
You can say that what your brother 'has' is an illness. But you do not
know what the 'has' or the 'it' is to claim that 'it' is an illness.
You do not know the grounds for saying that he has an illness.
Incoherent babbling can be a helathy release. So it isn't the babbling
that's ill.
You have to say why he is 'ill', or rather, why he must be looked at
through medical eyes and as a patient.
John Jones
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
You can say that what your brother 'has' is an illness. But you do not
John Jones
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
You can say that what your brother 'has' is an illness. But,
paradoxically at best and unfairly at worst, you do not know what the
'has' or the 'it' is to claim that 'it' is an illness. You do not know
the grounds for saying that he has an illness. You cannot sstate
clearly what exactly is 'ill' or why it is ill. Incoherent babbling
chazwin
You are talking shit
Immortalist
> Er....what?
> What?-
Nash, he might have created a math that explains everything social and
much biological interactionism from the cellular to the social levels.
chazwin
I think you misunderstand mathemetics. Maths can model, it can
describe, it cannot really explain. The explanation is limited to that
which a description can ellucidate.
His models, like much game theory, depends on people behaving in
rational ways, and/or knowing the rules and possible outcomes of their
actions. In the vast majority of cases scenarios contain unforseen
events and people act emotionally in most given situations.
pico
> You can say that what your brother 'has' is an illness. But you do not
> know what the 'has' or the 'it' is to claim that 'it' is an illness.
> You do not know the grounds for saying that he has an illness.
> Incoherent babbling can be a helathy release. So it isn't the babbling
> that's ill.
>
> You have to say why he is 'ill', or rather, why he must be looked at
> through medical eyes and as a patient.
You were not writing to me, but I must answer because I lost one very good
friend to suicide because he was falling deeper and deeper into Paranoid
Schitzophrenia. It does not matter what name you give it - it was hell on
earth anyway. I knew him in High School as a bright and witty chap, a good
friend. He was hit by an auto one day. For eight years thereafter his mental
processes became more an more bizarre. He was an honors student in law
school in Washington, D.C.. He could not shake the image that the city was a
reclaimed swamp, or that the ground was a thin veneer covering a vast and
hostile, wild nightmare. He also became strangely anti-semetic and racist
believing, for example, that snow would not settle on a Jew's automobile and
that all women wanted a black man. His other thoughts outside of legal
scholarship were tumbled, and he was in visible pain most of the time.
Now what the fuck to you call that if not an illness?
zinnic
>
The 'normal' answer to your question is that when one is unhappy one
is "suffering" from dis-content. But I guess you will dismiss
discontent as readily as you dismiss mental disease (the absence of
ease).
IMO you deny 'abnormality' by obscuring it in the relativity of
language. From the general tenor of your posts, my guess is that you
consider all states of mind to be 'normal'.
Zinnic
John Jones
How can you 'suffer from' discontent? Do you enjoy happiness, cry over
sadness, laugh over jollity?
No; the reason why you want to say that people 'suffer from'
discontent is that it allows you to enforce a particular social
intervention - it appropriates the view of the medic who traditionally
deals with pointless suffering.
But who decides when discontent is pointless? Who decides when
experience is 'abnormal' ? The medic? Hardly. It is we, ourselves.
chazwin
When you are unhappy that is the problem that is the illness. This is
common parlance.
The causes of illnesses are not the illness. There are alwyas multiple
causes. The illness is the expression of those effects which are
deeded undesirable by the individual suffering and those around him
that recognise or might be affected by the effects of the causes.
It is those effects and affects, those visible and otherwise apparent
symptoms we find undesirable: we call illness or disease. This is the
accepted way such things are understood.
John Jones
> Hey Jonesy!
>
> When you are unhappy that is the problem that is the illness. This is
> common parlance.
> The causes of illnesses are not the illness. There are alwyas multiple
> causes. The illness is the expression of those effects which are
> deeded undesirable by the individual suffering and those around him
> that recognise or might be affected by the effects of the causes.
> It is those effects and affects, those visible and otherwise apparent
> symptoms we find undesirable: we call illness or disease. This is the
> accepted way such things are understood.
If being unhappy is an illness, then grief, crying, concern, worry,
fear, pain, ought to be removed from society and the individual
psyche, permanently.
Of course, unhappiness needs to be supported and not buried, sedated
or excised. But if we are led into believing that unhappiness is an
illness, then we shall have no need to support it, but rather, like
the bully and the fundamentalist, sedate it, bury it, and drive it out
by giving it a name of shame such as a 'mental' illness.
chazwin
Your argument is utterly bogus. Unhappiness is not the same in fact,
degree or seriousness to schitzophrenia. No one is saying that
unhappiness is an illness, though in extreme cases it can cause such
massive problems to be considered as such, but then even happiness can
be so extreme as to be an illness too.
A broken leg is not necessarily an illness either but if it causes
problems to a person's life then it takes on a different quality.
pico
> Of course, unhappiness needs to be supported and not buried, sedated
> or excised. But if we are led into believing that unhappiness is an
> illness, then we shall have no need to support it, but rather, like
> the bully and the fundamentalist, sedate it, bury
If you are referring to clinical depression, then you are so very wrong if
you think that the associated unhappiness is the significant feature of it.
The unhappiness is only a sign. Profound clinical depression changes all
perception.
pico
> How can you 'suffer from' discontent? Do you enjoy happiness, cry over
> sadness, laugh over jollity?
You answered your own question.
> No; the reason why you want to say that people 'suffer from'
> discontent is that it allows you to enforce a particular social
> intervention - it appropriates the view of the medic who traditionally
> deals with pointless suffering.
Dicontent is not the same as malfunctions due to damage, imbalance, genetic
fuckups.
> But who decides when discontent is pointless? Who decides when
> experience is 'abnormal' ? The medic? Hardly. It is we, ourselves.
By that statement you seem to be taking the privilige of being he who
decides. Get it?
John Jones
>
> - Show quoted text -
The most extreme of unhappiness - being in hell and behaving like a
broken machine, is part of the human experiential potential and is
profoundly healing. To excise it it would be to drastically affect our
rationale for doing good in the world and would in effect be an
excision of our humanity.
More to the point, you still need to justify why it must be a doctor
that decides what is experientially valuable in our lives, and why, if
we judge an aspect of our lives not to be of value, then that aspect
is necessarily a clinical (doctor's) illness.
pico
> The most extreme of unhappiness - being in hell and behaving like a
> broken machine, is part of the human experiential potential and is
> profoundly healing.
Note how JJ inserts innuendo: "behaving like a broken machine". Shame.
>To excise it it would be to drastically affect our
> rationale for doing good in the world and would in effect be an
> excision of our humanity.
There are chemicals that can be given to you so that you experience certain
kinds of insanity and therefore gain a realistic appreciation. Given that
you claim value in "experimental potential", would you be willing to try it?
If not, then why not?
> More to the point, you still need to justify why it must be a doctor
> that decides what is experientially valuable in our lives,
Where I live doctors do not have that power unless the individual is a
threat to society. Being just a ranting pain-in-the-ass won't get you that
status. Maybe it does in South Wales?
> and why, if
> we judge an aspect of our lives not to be of value, then that aspect
> is necessarily a clinical (doctor's) illness.
Makes no sense.
chazwin
> "John Jones" <jonescard...@aol.com> wrote in message
I have to agree. I have a brother with the "illness" and I resent JJ's
revisionist nonsense. There is one thing saying that we might not have
a clear idea of all the causes, but it is quite difference to imply
that it is no illness at all.
Which ever way you cut it, it is well within the bounds of meaningful
English to associate symptoms with the illness whether or not we know
te causes.
In fact all conceptions of diseases have proceeded in this way as a
route to a fuller understanding. The illness is the physical
expression of problems. The causes are mutlitudinous and diverse.
Let's look at influenza. This disease wiped out millions in the early
20th century. The disease (illness) was described and understood by
its symptoms. Amoungst the suspected causes were poor housing, poor
health, old age, youth, and an unknown and undetected micro-organism.
I wonder if JJ would like to point to the "illness" in this case? He
would probably chose the undetected micro-orgaism we now know to be a
virus. But his doing so would not explain why perfectly healthy adults
who carry the virus do not get the disease. It would not point to the
illness. The virus is not enough, we all carry many viruses about our
person and are perfectly healthy. Where is the "illness" JJ?
pico
"chazwin" <chaz...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1193122506.8...@t8g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
JJ resents what he imagines is the medical authority, but then he wants the
same power to ignore persons in dire straits. It's a self defining position;
JJ is impotent, if not just downright in denial. At the very worst he knows
he is seeking power that he pretends to resent.
> There is one thing saying that we might not have
> a clear idea of all the causes, but it is quite difference to imply
> that it is no illness at all.
Good on ya!
Yes! In very recent history people were dieing of dysentry, and there were
the religious-sciencetismists who prayed for their recovery. It didn't work.
There is the human penchant in any moment of history to believe that
everything they know is all there is to know, so they inflict their
ignorance upon the rest of us and kill us in the process. Real medicine is
self-questioning, skeptical science.
> [... snip excellent article. See it above...]
chazwin
Nonesense. Many people who have "bi-polar" disorder are willing to
accept the downside of the problem becasue they often achieve so much
when in the manic phase. eg. Stephen Fry, Richard Dreyfuss. But there
are many others whose depression is so extreme that they would rather
die than face another episode. Many of these end up on a cold wet slab
in the mortuary.
John Jones
>
> - Show quoted text -
I don't know what you mean by 'disorder'. Disorder of what?
The people who would rather die than face another episode are those
who take the doctor's view that there is something wrong with them.
They have to contend with being a fugitive as well as receiving no
support. Many others who don't take the doctors view describe their
experience as a great teaching.
People's belief in doctor's and the 'sniffing out' creed called
'disorder' (a synonym for 'outcast') need to break that faith before
true healing can take place.
pico
> I don't know what you mean by 'disorder'. Disorder of what?
>
> The people who would rather die than face another episode are those
> who take the doctor's view that there is something wrong with them.
> They have to contend with being a fugitive as well as receiving no
> support. Many others who don't take the doctors view describe their
> experience as a great teaching.
>
> People's belief in doctor's and the 'sniffing out' creed called
> 'disorder' (a synonym for 'outcast') need to break that faith before
> true healing can take place.
Note how JJ responds only to weak challenges.
pico
news:1193243160.9...@y27g2000pre.googlegroups.com...
> The people who would rather die than face another episode are those
> who take the doctor's view that there is something wrong with them.
> They have to contend with being a fugitive as well as receiving no
> support. Many others who don't take the doctors view describe their
> experience as a great teaching.
>
> People's belief in doctor's and the 'sniffing out' creed called
> 'disorder' (a synonym for 'outcast') need to break that faith before
> true healing can take place.
Ya know what, JJ? I think yer in denial. Nutz.
Immortalist
I agree but this doesn't diminish the fact that Nash's ideas have
morphed or evolved into the best approach in social and economic
science. Obviously Nash's ideas explain more about the extra noise han
the alternatie theories.
turtoni
> "John Jones" <jonescard...@aol.com> wrote in message
"Psychologists can be good scientists and do research only at the
behavioral level. They need not be immediately concerned with the
physico-chemical foundations of behavior. However, psychology cannot
be good science if its concepts and theories contradict or are
inconsistent with the physico-chemical foundations of behavior.
The concept of emergence appears to be used in two fundamentally
different ways in behavioral science. A material reductionist's use of
emergence accepts that emergent behavioral properties or processes
are, in principle, reducible to physico-chemical properties and
processes at foundational levels, although how the emergence occurs
may not be readily obvious from what is currently known about the
physico-chemical properties and processes. So, for example, the
reductionist accepts that properties of water emerge from the
combination of the elements hydrogen and oxygen in accordance with
other principles in physics, but when water is reduced, nothing is
left but those elements; nothing has been added. The whole is equal to
the sum of the parts. An anti-reductionist's use of emergence accepts
or implies that properties or processes may emerge that are not
reducible, even in principle, to the fundamental physico-chemical
properties and processes. In this sense, something new has been added,
for example at the behavioral level, and the whole is not merely
greater than the sum of the parts, it is not even traceable to the
combinations which may occur on summation. As will be discussed
below, this anti-reductionist use of emergence seems to have a role in
psychology that is parallel to the role that vitalism once had in
biology. It is now generally considered that biology had to rid
itself of vitalism to enable significant progress to occur. It is
suggested that psychology will develop as a science only after it rids
itself of anti-reductionistic, "emergentism."
Psychology as a science must not have emergent concepts and theories
that deny their theoretical reduction to physico-chemical
fundamentals. Most of what some of my symposium colleagues have
written about "emergents" appears to be consistent with physico-
chemical reduction, but at times they have written things that appear
to be consistent with an anti-reductionist use of emergence. One
example of an apparent anti-reductionist use occurred when Rumbaugh,
Washburn, and Hillix (1996) embraced John Stuart Mill's "mental
chemistry" as a model for their "emergents" and wrote, "Emergent
complex ideas had their own distinguishing structures and properties
and, hence, were more than just a composite of the simple ideas on
which they were based." (1996, p. 59; emphasis added). Admittedly,
there is sufficient ambiguity among these words, especially "ideas"
and "composite" and how they may relate to their physico-chemical
fundamentals, but it sounds like something has been added that is not,
in principle, reducible to those fundamentals. Later, I will cite
other things they have written that appear to be based on their
acceptance of an anti-reductionist emergence."
"Hazards of "Emergentism" in Psychology"
John Jones
Because that's a quote its hardly worth replying to. I would just like
to draw attention to the argumentative sleight of hand that riddles
the psychological sciences, such as the following:
"properties of water emerge from the combination of the elements
hydrogen and oxygen in accordance with other principles in physics".
Sounds reasonable? It's nonsense. We should correctly read the above
as
"properties arising from the combination of the elements hydrogen and
oxygen in accordance with other principles in physics, emerge from the
combination of the elements hydrogen and oxygen in accordance with
other principles in physics".
Explanation: Properties of 'water' is something else altogether from
"properties arising from the combination of the elements hydrogen and
oxygen in accordance with other principles in physics". It is water,
irrespective of its properties, that directs us to the combination of
the elements hydrogen and oxygen. Which is why reductionism fails - it
is parasitical on the reduced.
AH#2
news:1193289537.4...@y27g2000pre.googlegroups.com...
> "Psychologists can be good scientists and do research only at the
> behavioral level. They need not be immediately concerned with the
> physico-chemical foundations of behavior. However, psychology cannot
> be good science if its concepts and theories contradict or are
> inconsistent with the physico-chemical foundations of behavior.
> [... SNIP ...]
Ah, the gatekeeper Roger K Thomas is awake.
> It is now generally considered that biology had to rid
> itself of vitalism to enable significant progress to occur. It is
> suggested that psychology will develop as a science only after it rids
> itself of anti-reductionistic, " emergentism."
That is rather bad form. He first casts a wide net and presumes this
movement of "emergentism". He quotes two possible supportive examples of
emergentism, but admits he doesn't understand what they are talking about.
Then he points to a philosophical idea that was properly defeated as it
concerns hard science, then claims the same exists in psychology under
"emergentism". I guess if he can make up the name emergentism then he
presume it exists.
> "Psychology as a science must not have emergent concepts and theories
> that deny their theoretical reduction to physico-chemical
> fundamentals."
Pure Scientism. Here is where philosophy shows one of its greatest values -
in constantly questioning itself and science equally. So science should not,
but philosophy can. And I am not sure that there is no place for the
needling philosopher in science.
Now for the Show Stopper: Behavioral Psychology deals with how persons act,
and the discipline merges with Social Psychology in a very scientific
manner: the application of sophisticated statistics. The old saying, "See
what the DO and not what they THINK they do" is applicable here.
Immortalist
> On Oct 14, 7:41?pm, Immortalist <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > He [Nash] has experienced many of the same symptoms as others stricken
> > with the disease [Schizophrenia] : delusions, frequent auditory
> > hallucinations, illusions that messages are being sent to him through
> > television or newspapers, a skewed view of reality leading to
> > paranoia. And like many who have struggled to live functional lives
> > with the illness, he has watched his personal relationships dissolve,
> > his career interrupted and his life disintegrate.
>
> > What distinguishes Nash from others diagnosed with schizophrenia is an
> > uncommon amount of public attention. In 1994, Nash shared the Nobel
> > Prize with two other economists for the 1950 doctoral dissertation he
> > wrote at Princeton on game theory.
>
> >http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/02/01/beautiful_mind.html
>
> > "There could be a mathematical explanation for how bad your tie is,"
> > he tells one classmate. While at Princeton, he came up with a
> > strikingly original contribution to games theory (which purports to
> > predict seemingly random human behavior) that would win him the Nobel
> > Prize in Economics nearly fifty years later, but a full 25 years in
> > between would be lost to schizophrenia (& further alternate awareness
> > of conspiracies of events & phenomena).
>
> >http://www.mcmanweb.com/article-169.htm
>
> > Nash was a brilliant mathematician, and at the age of 21 developed the
> > 'non-cooperative games theory', the economics theory which today
> > dominates privatisation, megamergers, big government, and
> > international trade.
>
> >http://www.sfnat.org.nz/news%20and%20notes.htm
>
> > ...his doctoral thesis in 1949, he established the mathematical
> > principles of modern game theory. In four papers published between
> > 1950-53 he made seminal contributions to both non-cooperative game
> > theory and to bargaining theory...
>
> > ...group of mathematical theories first developed by John Von
> > Neumann ... and Morgenstern restricted their attention to zero-sum
> > games, that is, to games in which no player can gain except at
> > another's expense. This restriction was overcome by the work of John
> > F. Nash during the early 1950s. Nash mathematically clarified the
> > distinction between cooperative and noncooperative games. In
> > noncooperative games, unlike cooperative ones, no outside authority
> > assures that players stick to the same predetermined rules, and
> > binding agreements are not feasible. Further, he recognized that in
> > noncooperative games there exist sets of optimal strategies (so-called
> > Nash equilibria) used by the players in a game such that no player can
> > benefit by unilaterally changing his or her strategy if the strategies
> > of the other players remain unchanged. Because noncooperative games
> > are common in the real world, the discovery revolutionized game
> > theory. Nash also recognized that such an equilibrium solution would
> > also be optimal in cooperative games. He suggested approaching the
> > study of cooperative games via their reduction to noncooperative form
> > and proposed a methodology, called the Nash program, for doing so.
> > Nash also introduced the concept of bargaining, in which two or more
> > players collude to produce a situation where failure to collude would
> > make each of them worse off.
>
> > The theory of games applies statistical logic to the choice of
> > strategies. It is applicable to many fields, including military
> > problems and economics; the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic
> > Sciences was awarded to Nash, John Harsanyi, and Reinhard Selten for
> > their work in applying game theory to economics...
>
> >http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/N/NashJ1F1.asp
>
> > 1950-53
>
> > In four papers between 1950 and 1953 John Nash made seminal
> > contributions to both non-cooperative game theory and to bargaining
> > theory. In two papers, Equilibrium Points in N- Person Games (1950)
> > and Non-cooperative Games (1951), Nash proved the existence of a
> > strategic equilibrium for non-cooperative games - the Nash equilibrium
> > - and proposed the"Nash program", in which he suggested approaching
> > the study of cooperative games via their reduction to non-cooperative
> > form. In his two papers on bargaining theory, The Bargaining Problem
> > (1950) and Two-Person Cooperative Games (1953), he founded axiomatic
> > bargaining theory, proved the existence of the Nash bargaining
> > solution and provided the first execution of the Nash program.
>
> >http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/class/histf.html
>
> 'Stricken with the disease schizophrenia'? God knows why people speak
> with such self-assured surety about something never shown or
> explained. It's a herding instinct, probably, to think in this way, or
> not think.
>
> Like I have said, we simply exchange new myths for old, new blind
> spots for old blind spots.- Hide quoted text -
>
But the Nash Equilibrium continues to be used in most economic models.
Besides what has someone's circumstances have to do with the value or
truth of something they discovered or elucideated?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium
Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or
argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the
author of or the person presenting the claim or argument.
chazwin
You are so full of bullshit that I can smell you from here.
You are now trying to suggest that people with manic-depression can't
even think for themselves.
> They have to contend with being a fugitive as well as receiving no
> support. Many others who don't take the doctors view describe their
> experience as a great teaching.
No, many take the doctor's view AND would rather be manic-depressive.
Stephen Fry did a series of programes on tv recently in which he
looked at the problem which he himself has. The views were as diverse
as one can imagine. Perhaps you would like to imagine what the doctor,
who has M/D, thought of the problem? Because I am getting fed up with
your idiotic black and white subscription of prejudice viewpoints to a
topic you clearly seem to know very little about.
>
> People's belief in doctor's and the 'sniffing out' creed called
> 'disorder' (a synonym for 'outcast') need to break that faith before
> true healing can take place
Praise the Lord and place the hands of "true healing"!!! JJ is surely
a be-lee-ver!
chazwin
Just because induction can never ultimately provide the bottom line
explanation to phenomena, does not mean that along the way it also
fails to provide insights into those phenomena. I would rather know
that water is composed of H2O than stick to the medievel belief that
water is just one of the 4 elements - or worse still that water is
nothing more than water.
Sorry, JJ, this argument is way out of line.
Water is not water irrespective of anything that is relevant. Water is
defined and recognise by its properties. Get over it! Water exists in
our conception of it.
chazwin
Nash "explains" nothing. His models merely attempt to describe and
identify factors which might help ellucidate and give proportional
likelyhoods for particular outcomes. A model is a copy, not the main
story.
juanp...@hotmail.com
TruthSlave
> could someone describe the historical, economic, social and political context of the movie? thanks :)
First some background.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Beautiful_Mind_%28film%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash,_Jr.
Historically the 50's was quite a heady period, not least the hysteria
of commies or the reds, with the organisation and management which this
hysteria then facilitated in a democratic country.
Reading between the lines, Nash was on the cutting edge with a number
of ideas, ecconomic theories, and cryptography. In short he was good
at maths. He might well have discovered and placed in the public forum,
what was already known, who's to say.
"In 2011, the National Security Agency declassified letters written
by Nash in 1950s, in which he had proposed a new encryption-decryption
machine.[8] The letters show that Nash had anticipated many concepts
of modern cryptography, which are based on computational hardness.[9]"
Nash life is apparently to be summerised by his mental disorders,
the background to which might have something to do with the flu
pandemic of the late 50's and his work on the frindge of public
knowledge, again who's to say.
see also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_stalking#Stalking_by_groups