[MUD-Dev] OT: Re:)

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Mon, 1 Sep 1997 08:40:35 PST8PDT, Ola Fosheim Gr=F8stad
<olag at ifi.uio.no> wrote:

>One of the major "bugs" in the human brain is that it does too
>well at grouping things together. Things that are mostly unrelated.

I have to step in here.

The major flaw in the human brain is its complete inability to
understand an absolute; the human mind is by its very nature entirely
narcissistic. The most obvious example is time. When you're young, time
seems much slower because at the age of (say) five, a year is 20% of
your life. A day is 1/1825 of your life. These are much more significant
than at the age of 25, where a year is 4% of your life and a day is
1/9125 of it. These quantities are miniscule, and as such seem to go by
far too quickly. The human brain cannot comprehend absolute time,
absolute value, or absolute measurement. Everything is relative. The
closer to home it is brought, the better remembered. If you show someone
a piece of wood and say 'this is an inch thick', it won't drill the
width of an inch into the person's head as well as saying 'your thumb is
about an inch wide'. This is the major failing.

Your 'grouping' mention is actually a symptom of the relative nature of
memory. The human brain, by nature, is incapable of retaining
information without relating it to something else. The human brain MUST
group, because nothing within it is atomic; everything must be related
to something else, or it is lost. This is the filing system of the human
brain, if you will; the method by which information is located and
referenced later.

(It may be extrapolated that the major failing of artificial
intelligence is its inability to relate things to each other. While the
human mind cannot comprehend an absolute, the artificial thought
processes thus far have been largely incapable of recognising anything
BUT an absolute. Further extrapolations and effort can lead to
significant increases in your own ability to learn and remember.)

>When the rapist come to the therapy group he usually starts by
>telling how bad a person they are, which the shrink of course stops,

Why? Is it not already understood that this patient has done some very
bad things? How can we impress upon the patient that what he has done is
completely unacceptable if as a punishment we reaffirm his sense of self
worth and tell him no, he is NOT bad, and why doesn't he talk about it a
little? Yeah, that's it, let's teach him that if he goes out to kill and
loot and pillage and burn we'll sit him down in a chair and pay some
attention to him. It's like a dog. If you stop and pet your dog every
time he craps in the living room, pretty soon your dog learns that if he
wants to be petted he should go crap in the living room.

>and the rapist is told to tell about their real self, how they grew
>up etc.  The therapist has to sympathise with the rapist. =20

He most certainly does not. He has to *empathise*. The therapist should
understand the emotions behind it, but at no point does he ever have to
agree that the patient's response was proper or warranted. I think in
any setting, group or individual therapy carries with it the associated
problem that the patient has an opportunity to judge the effect of his
words; the therapist and the other patients (if any) indicate their
approval or disapproval unconsciously through body language. The devious
patient can use this to orchestrate his release through the very simple
method of LYING.

>An
>important component in the therapy is for the rapists to think about
>their own sexuality, and talk about whatever good experiences they
>have had.  If you think a repeated rapist should be shot instead of
>having his worldview corrected and getting a chance to have a happy
>family life then I don't really think you care much about the issue
>anway?

Read Burgess. A Clockwork Orange comes to mind. Now, I'm only going to
address the question of changing worldviews and brainwashing and effort
directed at manipulating the human mind; I'm not even going to worry
about what crime may have been committed or any of that, because this is
universal. The crime is irrelevant.

I think there is far too much effort being invested in changing people's
worldviews today. We've all jumped on the therapy bandwagon again, just
like in the seventies. Take this new drug. Try this new therapy. Stand
up and tell everyone your name and what your problem is. Alcoholics
Anonymous is a club. Narcotics Anonymous is a club. People go to therapy
just to BELONG. And they will lie; they will be faced with the same sort
of peer pressure to be fucked up that a Christian is faced with in
church to be pious, or that a child is faced with in school to smoke
pot. Nearly all of us have given in to peer pressure at some point in
time. How do you think peer pressure affects those who would most
benefit from therapy? Those who are vulnerable, open to change, and
ready to submit to the suggestions of other more experienced people?
Does it strike you as frightening that this peer pressure is coming from
people who already admit to not being quite right in the head? Oh, yes,
group therapy DOES get results. Fantastic results. "Concentrate your
criminal element, and what do you get? Concentrated criminality."

I'm not saying all therapy is a load of crap. I think a lot of people
benefit from therapy. But it is overused; people are sent to therapy for
all sorts of reasons. I was advised (and in fact URGED) by several
co-workers to begin some sort of therapy when I left my wife. Why? It
was my decision. I made it, I was perfectly happy with my choice, and I
was willing to deal with it. But person after person after person told
me that I wouldn't be able to handle this alone, and that I really
should see someone about it. A less confident person could easily have
been convinced to go and begin therapy just to be on the safe side, and
who knows where it would have led? What hidden memories or unresolved
issues might you discover? Where does it all END? Who watches the
watchmen?

It is the Midgard serpent personified; the serpent encircling the earth,
feeding on its own tail. There is no end. There is no purpose. The
community supports itself, like a vast web of conspiracy that lies
underneath society as a whole. And not only a conspiracy, but a
conspiracy composed of abnormal people chasing a banner they will never
catch. Therapy is NOT the be-all and end-all of answers. It is, in fact,
something which is not at all appropriate for several cases. The person
in therapy must have a desire, a willingness, and most importantly a
NEED to change. If those three criteria are not met, then you have the
choice of waiting for them to be met or terminating the difficult
situation. A bullet does the latter admirably, although once again it is
not always appropriate. (Certainly, it *is* easier, and significantly
cheaper than either of the alternatives.)=20

Fundamentally, the view I postulate above about the nature of intellect
and memory is in every part of my experience true. I have brought the
concept to several other people's attention, and they have also found it
to be true in their experiences... unless they are professionals.
Professional therapists, psychiatrists, and psychology students resist
this view very strongly. They keep saying no, that's not true, but they
have no rebuttal. They have no alternatives to offer. The only possible
explanation for this is that they are themselves deluded; deluded into
the belief that the human mind is something like a machine, something
that always works the same way and can be fixed. Their process of
therapy and analysis is a complex iterative model which is easily thrown
off balance by even the slightest false information. A patient can
easily learn the 'rules' to follow and carefully orchestrate a recovery.
It has been done repeatedly. When the patient is willing to participate
in the recovery process, it can have fantastic results. But when the
patient actively resists treatment, no results are possible, although
the APPEARANCE of cooperation is trivial for the patient.

Perhaps it might be interesting to note that in many group therapy
sessions, the doctor is difficult to locate. The patients themselves
become rather heavily educated in the language and terminology of the
field, and while few of them ever actually become therapists themselves,
most of them make their own efforts to analyse and 'cure' their friends
and acquaintances.

It is a religion. Pure and simple. A religion just as flawed and just as
incorrect as any other. There is no one religion which is right for
everyone, and in the same vein therapy is not right for everyone. But
just as in every other religion throughout history, its members and
officials maintain that theirs is the ONE TRUE WAY. And they spend vast
amounts of time and effort attempting to convert the infidel, although
the infidel in many cases does not WANT to be converted. How is this
different from the Spanish inquisition, really? You have been found a
criminal (heretic); you may go to jail (the dungeon), or you may go to
therapy (the church). What do you choose? And why? Can you really expect
a man to say "Oh, I really don't believe in therapy, I think I'll take
jail"? Just go to the church, and say the prayers and go to confession
and sing your hymns and attend your little picnics and bake sales, and
you can be free. How hard is that?

But is he a believer?

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 You see me now, a veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I've been=20
 living on the edge so long, where the winds of limbo roar. And=20
 I'm young enough to get involved, too old to see, all the scars=20
 are on the inside; I'm not sure that there's anything left of me
               -- Blue Oyster Cult, "Veteran of the Psychic Wars"
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