Superior CRAZINESS For Superior LOGIC.
CALM IS OVERRATED, CRAZINESS A LOGICAL NECESSITY:
Abstract: Why do people go crazy? Is it fate, or is it evolution? Is it disease, or is it creativity?
Two of the creators of modern mathematics and metamathematics, Georg Cantor and Kurt Godel, experienced some craziness. Nietzsche produced some of his best work before he went insane. Van Gogh experienced serious mental difficulties. Bolztman killed himself. All these cases were within a generation. Those may all be unrelated accidents, sure.
However I will show below that superior intelligence in a species can only come from an ability to engineer (productive) craziness. (Perhaps the reason why chimps and bears are so unpredictable: they are not just clever, but a bit crazy!)
What president Roosevelt said of the bankers:”I welcome their hatred!” may sound crazy to some, and it is exactly the opposite of the praises the all too cool Obama bestow on bankers, every chance he gets. But Roosevelt domesticated the bankers, whereas Obama got domesticated by them. Of course the superior intelligent one was Roosevelt, who knew it was smart to go crazy on the bankers. It’s certainly crazy to cling to an appearance of sanity in an insane situation (Eichmann used Kant to justify his crimes, an appearance of philosophy to promote infamy.)
Thus insanity is hardwired in Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Perhaps Homo Wise Wise, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, should be renamed Homo Crazy Wise: Homo Sapiens Demens!
This has some fascinating, but sinister implications for Artificial Intelligence. In his Turing Test for intelligence, Alan Turing forgot craziness. That was crazy.
It also means that, as insanity will follow a normal distribution, some substantial part of any human population will be insanely dangerous.
As technological capability improves exponentially, the danger exists that this insanity will be also exponentially amplified (as happened with the death camps of WWII).
Hence the necessity of counterbalancing it by augmenting truth, and thus transparency, just as exponentially, too.
If we want survival, we have to become truth fanatics. A new religion.
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MADNESS AS THE SOLUTION TO LOGICAL INCOMPLETENESS:
[Advanced.]
The Incompleteness Theorems in logic say that any logical system big enough to contain arithmetic is incomplete, in the sense that there is an infinite number of propositions, about natural numbers, which are true but that cannot be proven in that logical system.
If it cannot be proven, it has to be assumed (and that, an infinite number of times! It’s a crazy world out there: it turns out that, if a logical system is complete, it’s inconsistent, etc. (If one supposes the usual properties of arithmetic to be true.)
These facts were demonstrated in the 20C, but they were true all along. I claim that there is a strict correspondence between brain circuitry and logical completeness. Thus, brain operations stumbled on circuitry incompleteness, all the time, ever since there are advanced brains, and they think.
The problem of logical incompleteness is solved in metalogic by making assumptions. The same holds with brain circuitry: logical incompleteness there is also solved by making assumptions.
How does the brain make assumptions? Well it just connects different neurons, or different parts of the brain with axons. In other words: Axons for axioms.
How does the relationship work? Incompleteness in logic is caused by a confrontation between the finiteness of logic on a piece of paper (or in a Turing Machine), and the uncountable infinity it gives rise to (modulo some assumptions mathematicians classically do). Basically the finite axioms allow, modulo some infinite choice procedure (for example Cantor’s diagonalization), to build an infinite number of further axioms.
The same happens with neuronal and neuroglial networks: they are finite. But, once given, it’s possible to build other neuronal and glial networks different from them. That’s the equivalent of the Godel proposition built from a Godel number. How does one build such a number? Well, with dendrites, etc. That in turn happens if and only if, some astrocytes get in high gear, andthat happens in case of high emotions. In other words, if the brain builds new assumptions through new emotions. And probably, the more different the assumptions, the more different the emotions.
Hominids who practiced a bit of craziness were evolutionary advantaged, because they found more readily solutions to logical incompleteness at hand. Craziness allowed to find new, necessary axioms. Thus evolution learned to exploit logical incompleteness.
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NO UNREASON, NO CREATION:
An excellent example is geometry without the parallel postulate; it’s a logically incomplete system. For more than 2,000years mathematicians tried to prove that it could be made complete.
But the solution was very obvious, and very crazy: take a sphere, and try to do geometry on it. Take a saddle, and try to do geometry on it.
A modicum of craziness is intelligence’s friend.
Hence a necessity, to make Creative Artificial Intelligence would be to contrive crazy robots.
[I will deny all and any responsibility when Artificial Intelligence engineers use that idea to make more clever killer robots.]
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LYING AS THE WORST CRIME:
So there is a hard core of badness out there. If one ignores it, it will grow: fascism, before and during World War Two is an excellent example. The more ignored fascism was, the bigger it got.
If one ignores the hard core of badness out there, one is lying, big time. Because one claims that something potentially lethal in giant proportions is of no consequence. That’s a lie, if there ever was one. Lying about nothing is not a lie. Lying about something that can turn into everything is a terrible lie.
Look at the haggard, drugged out, half dead, passed out face of the cruel and crazed maniac who shot 71 people in a movie theater in Colorado. Or the other crazed maniac in Norway, killing 73 Norwegians to save them from impure blood, or to save Norwegian culture (whatever).
Such people are bad, they are pathologically bad. Maybe they took too much drugs, maybe their neurohormones are all wrong from more natural causes. The basic fact, though, is that there will be pathologically bad people out there, always.
Or at least, there will be crazed out people as long as we do not have a thorough understanding of the human mind. And even then. Because when we understand why people become pathologically insane, some, the same as those who abuse drugs (starting with alcohol and psychoactive smoke), will decide to use their freedom (if they are left any) to become psychologically insane, deliberately so.
Some will whine when they read this. But they understand neither evolution, nor the logical incompleteness theorems, and even less the fact that evolution has mastered both.
It is even worse than that. It’s not just that there are bad actors out there. Power attracts bad actors, like flies are attracted by excrements.
Those who rise up high in human hierarchies, all too often do so precisely because they are bad. This is the Achilles heel of representative democracy.
Examples abound with dictatorships: there the worst do best. Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Stalin, are recent cases. Stalin overcame Lenin (founder and theoretician of the Bolsheviks) and Trotsky (head of the Red Army, and also a theoretician), precisely because Stalin was so much worse. as a human being. That was his best qualification (he started by robbing banks…wait…).
However, Stalin’s extreme badness allowed him to out-Hitler Hitler himself: that made him laugh, according to Churchill. That Stalin’s horribleness was viewed as an advantage by those subordinate to him seems unlikely, but it’s thoroughly demonstrated by the facts.
Hitler attacked his ally the USSR by surprise. Stalin had been leading the rapprochement with Nazi Germany, so he expected his colleagues in the Politburo to punish him severely. After sulking for days, he finally showed up, expecting the chop, and was enthusiastically confirmed as great war leader. Why? Because all his comrades knew he was the very worst. And indeed Stalin put in place policies considering that anyone not respecting an order was subject to immediate execution. Any soldier knew that his captain could kill him any time, and so on, throughout the Red Army.
Thus in Stalingrad, workers built tanks while other drove them to engage the Nazis in combat, at the other end of the factory.
The Nazis, who thought of themselves as the meanest characters on the planet, and had demonstrated it with engineers doing suicide attacks with explosives on their backs against the French after crossing the Meuse, could not sustain that level of ferocity.
Hence not just craziness, but criminal insanity can be an advantage to rise to the fore in society. Certainly, if Alexander so called the Great had not annihilated the cities of Thebes and Tyr (crucifying all the men there), he would have been less Great, because Athens would have taken him, and his general Antipater less seriously.
Ultimately, though, the criminal mood in the USSR was made possible by systematic lying on such an industrial scale that the connection with reality became increasingly tenuous. When enough truth was projected onto the system, the lying, and the political system that depended upon it collapsed.
If craziness is so useful to augment those mental powers we need so much to survive as a civilization, how do we survive it? Precisely by augmenting the truth. Thus only craziness compatible with the truth will be able to survive. That is why I have not hesitated to tell various truths about Obama (whom I have intensely supported in all sorts of ways), or Hollande, whom I approved of, until he started to say lies about World War Two (details soon to come).
Truth is my religion. A touch of craziness my sanity. (Latest demonstration: It’s not like I did not know of the danger in advance. I was slightly charged by a large bad mood moose with calf today on an Alaskan trail, where I was nonchalantly running with a bad ankle; after a high speed retreat, as a good predator, I circumvented the difficulty, and anxiety switched sides, the calf nearly spraining its own ankle in the process… . )
There is no truth but the full truth, and a touch of craziness is its prophet.
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Patrice Ayme
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Tags: craziness, creativity, criminal insanity, Reason, Truth
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
July 28, 2012 at 2:31 pm |
One of your more stimulating and enticing essays. Just loved it! Going to muse about what you have written and reply later in a more thoughtful manner – that is when I have finished ‘thinking outside the box’!
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July 28, 2012 at 5:48 pm |
I am in the depths of the Kenai peninsula, Alaska. I generally have no Internet connection whatsoever. I am really out of the box. I had an interesting out of the box experience with mummy moose, and Alaska, overall, is much instructive… I will relate some in an essay down the line… The musings of my commenter-friends are generally most instructive…
PA
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July 28, 2012 at 2:59 pm |
Lot of interesting meat here; I’ll just start on one – Hitler’s attack on his eastern ally, Russia.
It had ALWAYS been his plan to invade Russia because that is where the oil is. Hitler’s army needed to convert coal into diesel because that is all they had to work with. Remember that Germany was constructing the Berlin – Baghdad railway before WWI started. Turns out Britain thought she owned all the oil in the middle east – all others please stay out.
Having been defeated, humiliated, and cut off from the financial world, Hitler managed to get Germans back to work (pay attention, Mr Obama) by creating his own voucher system – Treasury Labor Certificates – and public works projects.
Unfortunately, these were building tanks and planes.
But to fuel them he needed oil. Hence, his incursions into the Balkans (Ploesti oil fields) and Russia.
Hitler thought that when he chased the Brits into a corner at Dunkirk that would be the end of that pest for a while, allowing him to divert his forces to the East.
He waited too late into the spring.
We all know what happened.
But the lure of the mother lode of oil was, IMHO, the ever present reason for the attack. The non-agression pact was signed in bad faith.
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July 28, 2012 at 5:56 pm |
Dear OGP:
When I put the “interesting meat” in my essay, I had to make many cuts, and there is much more to say, for example the connection with (philosophical concept of) DECONSTRUCTION. So incompleteness completed in the brain means to deconstruct some, always.
The points you make are extremely correct and interesting, but I beg to differ about some of the details. Maybe I should rush in a small essay, and we can debate my points. But of course I will lose Internet contact later in the day, as I go trample on grizzly territory…
PA
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July 28, 2012 at 5:08 pm |
OGP, I have no doubt that your thoughts are correct. But I trust you will forgive me for saying that what struck me about this latest essay was not the historical references but the ‘ah ha’ moment when the penny dropped about the relationship between craziness and innovation.
That observation from Patrice is wonderful and is, of itself, an example of innovative thinking!
When one pauses for a moment there are a number of catchphrases and clichés that recognise the ability of the brain to think in non-linear ways; if that’s the correct term.
For example; thinking outside the box, lateral thinking, it helps to be a little crazy here, and more. Indeed, a quick web search found this quotation: “Inspiration and genius – one and the same.” from Victor Hugo.
Having read Patrice’s essay I am now sure that those insightful and instinctive thoughts that we all have, often (always?) unplanned, are a solid example of the brain processing data in non-linear ways.
I recall many years ago a good friend and excellent entrepreneur, Frank T., who sadly died some years ago, saying that to solve a problem he always took the problem to bed with him. As often as not Frank said that in the morning there were a number of solutions to the problem available to him that logical thinking would not have released. In a much more limited way, I have discovered the same.
In fact, a middle-of-the-night thought that was in my consciousness in the morning was directly responsible for a chain of thoughts, discussions and actions that resulted in our deciding to move from Payson to Southern Oregon later on this year.
The other part of the essay which struck me so forcefully was the connection between non-linear thinking (craziness!) and the role in augmenting the truth. “Thus only craziness compatible with the truth will be able to survive.”
“There is no truth but the full truth, and a touch of craziness is its prophet.” Masterful and, oh so true!
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July 28, 2012 at 6:24 pm |
Dear Paul: The expression “thinking outside of the box” has lots of truth therein. What happenes is that established brin networks constitute “boxes”… Neuro-glial boxes
Warning: the word “neuroglia” is generally used, histotically speaking. to name glial cells… But that is a BIG mistake. Glial cells make their OWN networks, which induce the exquisite axono-dentriditic architecture. So neuro-glial networks is an allusion to both type of networks.
What the brain does is beyond non linear. A non linear process is within a space, but neuro-glial construction (I claim) is EXTRADIMENSIONAL. I am not saying non linearity does not describe well the run-of-the-mill craziness of the brain, but it goes well beyond that.
I also claim that there is a random thoughts generation system in the heart of the mind, precisely to generate new ideas, feelings, moods… The famous mathematician Hadamart, a century ago or so, wrote a book about creativity in mathematics, and confirmed the importance of sleep and dreaming… Not really a new observation, because Leonardo Da Vinci had said that the most productive time of the day for him was lying in bed, half asleep, and thinking…
Thank you for the compliment, by the way, and congratulation with the move to Oregon… I indeed believe the environment in Arizona is highly unstable, not for the good. Whereas in Alaska, the changes are huge, but stable, and positive…
PA
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July 30, 2012 at 3:54 am |
Forty five years ago, while I was at the U.of Wis. I observed how fine the line between genius and insanity really was. Many seemed able to skip back and forth over the line from genius to insanity and back with relative ease. Others, displaying genius in early years, slowly slipped into insanity with age, never to return to the genius of their youth. Unfortunately, many who displayed youthful genius built careers on those fortunate happenstances and their ensuing insanity was masked for years.
You say neuro-glial construction is extra dimensional, observing the physics of it I would call it omni-dimensional. However, time and training tends to limit the options and frequently used pathways become toughened and re-enforced by the very traffic that travels on them.
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July 30, 2012 at 7:24 am |
dear Roger:
Yes the reinforcing you talk about is called, I think, the Hebbian mechanism. Hence taking vacations from one’s own mind is most important, for those who want to stay mental creators, and quite an art, not to say a science. Today I tried to pacify and befriend an Alaskan wild male bull moose, and that worked pretty well, and certainly called onto skills I was not familiar with. Now I have 100+ moose pics… And brand new moose brain circuitry (I can use against academics).
And yes, I have observed the mechanism you talk about in universities, American, or European. I think the Internet will soon help genius, and spurn madness. It’s not just wealthy publishers (Elsevier!), and Main Stream Media which are going to get the Internet chop.
After all, we are in times where everybody ought to be able to take classes (FREE) from the College de France, and the likes of Harvard may have to change their story about what is so exceptional there to justify the established order they are the cement of.
“Omnidimensional” is an interesting qualificative. However the physicists who want to explain everything with extra dimensions may not be amused, all the more since they are not in a good mood, now that the LHC at CERN has found no evidence of extradimension, whatsoever…
But of course we can always wave the Quantum in spaces between dentrites, to excite them further…
PA
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July 30, 2012 at 9:16 am |
Say hello to Sarah’s hair!
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July 30, 2012 at 9:27 am |
I did not go north of Anchorage this time (Palin is based in Wasilla, which is north of Anchorage)… But that moose told me he had seen the Soviet Union from his bog, so I invited him to be Romney’s VP! Anyway, all on their knees, as Obama informs us that it may be his last birthday as president… And Krugman gets ready to tell us it’s all the fault of those bad Europeans, with their lousy euro… Palin, at least is grotesque for all to see (OK, except when she put those red white and blue shorts on…)
PA
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July 30, 2012 at 12:01 pm |
Hooray! My feeling that I am going insane is actually evidence of superior intelligence… And there was me thinking it was because I feel like Cassandra of Troy – having acquired knowledge but cursed with being unable to convince others of its importance!
I know you won’t like me saying this, Patrice, but – even though I no longer go to Church and even though I do not see religion as the opiate of the masses – I do think that all humans have the potential to be mass murderers. Fortunately, most of us do not receive and/or respond to the “activation code”. Thus, I feel deeply sorry for people like James Holmes or Anders Brevik precisely because, if I had been through the same set of circumstances they went through, I believe myself quite capable of committing such an atrocity.
As I said to someone else online yesterday (in response to a post about the Colorado shooting), civilised society cannot be maintained by the use of force (lethal or otherwise) because it is perpetuated by common consent. In other words, it is contingent. Indeed, arguably, the rule of law is a form of collective hypnosis.
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July 30, 2012 at 7:45 pm |
Dear Martin: Humans have of course the potential to kill other humans, it goes with the territory (literally!) So, when there are masses, mass murdering is another potential. However what distinguishes the two guys above from a British crew in a Lancaster circa 1941 is that their reasons are tenuous, or incoherent, etc. The guy in Colorado clearly should not have been in that courtroom, he looked completely drugged out. I am zero sorry about people like that. They belong to the psychiatric ward, and shooting them down before or during their insanity is fine with me.
Of course some are genuinely sick. Yet, drug usage probably causes lots of madness (not just alcohol, but pot). In such cases, the madness, though genuine is self induced. And, worse, induced on others.
In any case the sort of craziness I referred to was much more subtle. Although it is taken as even more dangerous by, say, theocracies. And although, indeed, as you put it humoristically, superior intelligence would be nuts to go without craziness.
PA
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July 31, 2012 at 1:01 pm |
Thanks Patrice. Given the propensity for governments to prosecute people for malicious messages (although an anonymous teenager deserves to be prosecuted for a very hateful Tweet sent to UK diver Tom Daley), I should perhaps have said, “I think I could have been equally capable of committing such an atrocity”…!
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July 31, 2012 at 6:17 pm |
Dear Martin: Yes, especially in the internet age, one has to be very careful about what one exactly say.
Obama ought to be the first one to heed that advice, instead of celebrating Saint Augustine, the oldest known author of explicitly advocating the deportation of the Jews (among other anti-Jewish policies he advocated). Saint Augustine’s viciousness against the Jews was part and paradigm, of his general theocratic, dictatorial, fascist, reality hating general outlook. And here we have, the president of the USA singing Augustine’s praises, naturally accompanied by praising Buffet and Dimon, both principals in various global financial conspiracies.
PA
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July 31, 2012 at 6:23 pm |
On the other hand, St Augustine was quite sensible, rational, and pragmatic when it came to reading his Bible (especially those bits that are clearly not meant to be taken literally).
http://www.falsifiabletheology.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/did-darwin-kill-god.html
Please don’t leave comments on my old Falsifiable Theology blog – I am not even sure i could reply (even if I wanted to).
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July 31, 2012 at 6:37 pm |
Dear Martin: The banner you use on that site says much:
“Holy Scripture can be explained in a multiplicity of senses, [and] one should adhere to a particular explanation only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it if it be proved with certainty to be false, lest Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing…” (Thomas Aquinas, 1273 AD)
And indeed the fact is that the ‘four founding doctors” of Xtianism (Ambrose, Augustine, etc.) pushed for the fact the Bible ought to be interpreted (that’s all what the Jews do with the Thorah). They had little choice: the Franks, who were the sharp edge of the Roman army, were deeply hostile to Xtianism, and breathing down the necks of the bishops. Thus they had to give in on important points. An important consequence was the separation of secular and religious law, that Justinian decided to impose circa 540 CE. There too, he had little choice. He wanted to reconquer the Western empire, and he could not afford to antagonize the Franks, as he fought the Goths. By then, the Imperium Francorum had pretty much united Francia and (most of) Germania.
It goes without saying that, after Ali and Aischa’ s defeat circa 660CE, allegorical and metaphorical interpretation of the Qur’an, to make it more progressive, was never a strong point of Islam. (Aischa had been very explicit about that, especially in connection with women lib.)
PA
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August 1, 2012 at 7:43 am |
Your comment reminds me of something I discovered on my recent vacation that I wanted to investigate further. I took my kids to Northumberland – to see Hadrian’s Wall. It would appear that the Romans crossed the English Channel but not the River Rhine – why was that? I know they found gold and all sorts of other mineral resources here but, surely, northern Europe has just as much to offer – so why was it left outside the Empire?
As for Islam, the BBC did a recent 3-part series on the Life of Muhammad, which I really enjoyed. I was particularly fascinated by the ways in which M was initially excluded from his ancestral community and sought peaceful co-existence with both Jews and Christians… but in the end the blood-lust took over and he or his followers started slaughtering people just like their ancestors had always done in order to solve problems… The BBC also did a recent series on The Crusades – massive amounts of autocratic mind games (i.e. promises of eternal salvation conditional on doing what someone else wants you to do) and blood-lust on both sides…
At the end of it all, sadly, I was even more convinced than I had been before that all you really need to know about M is the name of the supernatural being he says told him to write… (very probably the same one that spoke to Joseph Smith and Charles Russell and many others like them)…
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August 1, 2012 at 8:08 am |
dear Martin: Many subjects here, to be addressed more fully in the future. Although many I have done much about them, in the past.
The Romans DID cross the Rhine. Starting with Julius Caeasar himself, who did several times. The great crushing of an entire Roman army centered around three elite legions happened, under Augustus, in the extreme north of Germany, where the last rolling hills and forest meet the (what used to be the northern) swamp. An army led by Germanicus visited the battlefield, a few years later.
Much of the richest part of Germany (Cologne region, and east of that; and the entire south of Germany), nearly half of it, was Roman for centuries (before being invaded; the Romans living in Germany did not revolt, they were victims of invaders!) Control was lost as Xtianism gripped the empire.
The Pagan Caesar Julian, at the head of his Franks and Parisians, won an important DEFENSIVE victory in Strasbourg in 357 CE (or so). 150 years later, the Franks counterattacked, sweeping the Alemani all the way through Bavaria.
What is true is that the Romans never succeeded in a great extermination and control war. (Caesar was assassinated as he was to leave just for such a war, with the best Roman army ever!)
Augustus advised his successors against it, a huge mistake.
But the Franks, who viewed themselves as the Romans, discarded Augustus’pontificating, and did succeed to conquer all of Germania, and beyond (roughly the existing EU minus the Baltics). They took three centuries to finalize it, and, as I have said many times put Christ’s sword to good (if cynical) use.
About the Qur’an you may want to read my (shocking!)
PA
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August 1, 2012 at 9:23 am |
Yet again, Patrice, thanks for the history lesson.
Clearly, the museum at Housesteads (Vercovicium) is merely describing a point in history… when it tells visitors that the Roman Empire never extended beyond the Rhine or Danube rivers!
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August 1, 2012 at 8:02 pm |
Dear Martin: Wow. How wrong can that museum be?
What Augustus bemoaned as “his legions” were commanded by Varus in the north of Germany, and were coming back from further east, for winter quarters, closer to the Rhine. The drama happned hundreds of miles from the Rhine.
Anyway there is a gap between Rhine and Danube, and the limes went across it, an unending source of trouble, huge expense, and, ultimately, invasions, for two centuries (before the final one). Both Caeasar and the Franks though that the only way out was for Germany to use the Euro. I mean, the Solidus. they were right. So now here we are.
PA
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July 30, 2012 at 6:45 pm |
Truth is not the opposite of crazy, as you so crazily assume here. I would argue that the concept of truth IS crazy defined. Truth: The wholly objective, pure, unplagued by the insanity of man….explanation of….everything. I’m sorry, do I really need to explain further how this concept in itself is completely insane? Thinking that such a thing could possibly exist is ridiculous to say the least. Justifying the use of crazy through crazy masked as uncrazy doesn’t look good on even you, Patrice.
You said “Hominids who practiced a bit of craziness were evolutionary advantaged, because they found more readily solutions to logical incompleteness at hand” – while I might agree with you here, I would have to suggest that we are in fact born crazy, and our structured logic is vastly learned from society. That evolution came first. We had to de-evolve in a sense, or unlearn the logic we so naively believed FIRST in order to “practice a bit of craziness.”
You stamp the word “bad” around like you’re god or something. What is it? What does it even mean? Who gets to decide if some guy really was bad?
Amna
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July 30, 2012 at 6:50 pm |
Dear Amna: So you seem to agree that truth itself is “crazy defined”… Which is my point. Truth needs craziness to be defined. Then truth is revealed to be, relative to a context, of course, whatever works in that context.
Lions do not write treaties about truth, they eat it.
Defining truth has been a serious problem in logic and metamathematics. The mathematicians’ practice has been more to define mathematics as, precisely, whatever works. Calculus was used for nearly two centuries before a French mathematician defined it in a way that was considered, at the time, rigorous enough.
The initial inventor, the lawyer Fermat thought that he knew what he meant, and it had got to be right as he invented the fundamental theorem (that differentiation and integration are inverse of each other… sort of).
Newton and Leibnitz had a fight about their differing approach to calculus, and, well after their death, bishop Berkeley scathingly ridiculized the whole logic underneath Newton and Leibnitz’s “infinitesimals”. Only in the 1950s was that approach made rigorous by Model Theory (Non Standard Analysis).
So men, real men, the great thinkers, are not just who decide of good and evil, but who decide what is crazy and what is not.
My serious point was that pre-existing neural and glial circuitry is what defines true and crazy.
To define a better truth, a truth that works better, one needs to change the pre-existing circuitry, the definition of crazy…
In Islam some illiterate pathetic lunatic in the desert, honorable in some other ways, who lived 13 centuries ago, defines truth and goodness for more than a billion. That’s incompatible with the neurocircuitry of their conquerors and dominators, and that delirious, rabid masochism is real crazy.
PA
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August 1, 2012 at 7:53 am |
Certes, un “grain de folie”, expression très française, est souvent une supériorité sur les autres.
Mais un problème reste entier: comment distinguer le vrai du faux psychopathe (le fou en Français de base) et l’empecher de passer à l’acte: d’où les macabres faits divers qui viennent des USA tous les semestres!
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August 1, 2012 at 7:57 am |
“Grain de folie” effectivement une expression tres francaise. Mais je ne sais si elle est si positive que cela dans ses connotations… Le grain dont je parlais est celui de la petite folie constructive.
Les tueries Americaines, comme celle de Norvege, sont du a l’acces aux armes de guerre. A Denver l’arme principale du tueur, qui tenait un hargeur de 100 balles, s’est enrayee. Sinon il y aurait eu beaucoup plus de morts. De plus la police est arrivee massivement 2 minutes apres le debut des hostilites, un delai tres bref.
Pas d’armes de guerre, beaucoup moins d’ effets de la psychopathie. Le fou criminel de Denver etait completement drogue’. En plus, il voyait un psychiatre. Des gens pareils devrait etre sur une liste interdite d’armes a feux (pour commencer).
L’usage du cannabis mene a la folie, le fait est bien connu, et demontre’. Certains individus sont tres sensibles. J’ai vu plusieurs cas, de tres pres, avec plusieurs deces de morts violentes (suicides, mais aussi tentatives d’homicides, et meme kidnapping!). Pourtant, si on mentionne le fait scientifique que le pot rend (certains) fou, on est vu comme ringard. Je suis pour la legalisation, a petite dose, comme l’absynthe…
PA
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August 6, 2012 at 11:09 pm |
[…] it’s a sort of re-production of the perceived world. To be changed, one needs un-reason, as I argued, a jolt out of the box to create new dimensions. Maybe that French laser on Mars can zap away at […]
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August 8, 2012 at 7:00 am |
[…] see what Patrice wrote about on the 27th July was about the proposition “that superior intelligence in a species can only come from an […]
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