I agree with other commenters that you are just less likely to see psychosis even if it’s there, both because it’s not ongoing in the way that depression and anxiety are, and because people are less likely to discuss it. I was only one step away from Jessica in the social graph in October of 2017 and never had any inkling that she’d had a psychotic episode until just now. I also wasn’t aware that Zack Davis had ever had a psychotic episode, despite having met him several times and having read his blog a bit. I also lived with Olivia during the time that she was apparently inspiring psychosis in others.
In fact, the only psychotic episodes I’ve known about are ones that had news stories written about them, which suggests to me that you are probably underestimating the extent to which people keep quiet about the psychotic episodes of themselves and those close to them. It seems in quite poor taste to gossip about, akin to gossiping about friends’ suicide attempts (which I also assume happen much more often than I hear about — I think one generally only hears about the ones that succeed or that are publicized to spread awareness).
Just for thoroughness, here are the psychotic episodes I’ve known about, in chronological order:
Eric Bruylant’s, which has been discussed in other comments. I was aware that he was in jail because my housemates were trying to support him by showing up to his trials and stuff, and we still got mail for him (the case had happened pretty recently when I moved in). I think I found out the details — including learning that psychosis was involved — from the news story though.
I was on a sports team in college, and the year after I graduated, one of my teammates had a psychotic break. I only heard about this because he was wandering the streets yelling and ended up trying to attack some campus police officers with a metal pipe and got shot (thankfully non-fatally).
It’s unclear to me if what happened with Ziz&co at Westminster Woods was a psychotic episode, but in any case I knew about it at the time, but only had the details clarified in the news story.
I feel like people keep telling me that psychosis around me should be higher than what I hear about, which is irrelevant to my point: my point is the frequency in which I hear about psychosis in the rationalist community is like an order of magnitude higher than the frequency I hear about it elsewhere.
It doesn’t matter whether people hide psychosis among my social group; the observation to explain is why people don’t hide psychosis in the rationalist community to the same extent.
For example, you mention 2 separate example of Bay Area rationalists making the news for psychosis. I know of no people in my academic community who have made the news for psychosis. Assuming equal background rates, what is left to explain is why rationalists are more likely to make the news when they get psychosis.
Another example: there have now been 1-2 people who have admitted to psychosis in blog posts intended as public callouts. I know of no people in my academic community who have written public callout blog posts in which they say they’ve had psychosis. Is there an explanation for why rationalists who’ve had psychosis are more likely to write public callout blog posts?
Anyway, this discussion feels kind of moot now that I’ve read Scott Alexander’s update to his comment. He says that several people (who knew each other) all had psychosis around the same time in 2017. No reasonable person can think this is merely baseline; some kind of social contagion is surely involved (probably just people sharing drugs or drug recommendations).
I think part of it is that this isn’t related to your social network, but your news habits and how your news sources cover your social network.
You probably don’t read newspapers that are as certain to write about your neighbor having any kind of “psychosis”, but you read forums that tell you about Rationalists doing the same.
Them leaving out the exact details of what went on with their groups make the whole discussion sketchy. Maybe they just want to keep the conversation to themselves. If that’s the case, why are they posting on LW?
I agree with other commenters that you are just less likely to see psychosis even if it’s there, both because it’s not ongoing in the way that depression and anxiety are, and because people are less likely to discuss it. I was only one step away from Jessica in the social graph in October of 2017 and never had any inkling that she’d had a psychotic episode until just now. I also wasn’t aware that Zack Davis had ever had a psychotic episode, despite having met him several times and having read his blog a bit. I also lived with Olivia during the time that she was apparently inspiring psychosis in others.
In fact, the only psychotic episodes I’ve known about are ones that had news stories written about them, which suggests to me that you are probably underestimating the extent to which people keep quiet about the psychotic episodes of themselves and those close to them. It seems in quite poor taste to gossip about, akin to gossiping about friends’ suicide attempts (which I also assume happen much more often than I hear about — I think one generally only hears about the ones that succeed or that are publicized to spread awareness).
Just for thoroughness, here are the psychotic episodes I’ve known about, in chronological order:
Eric Bruylant’s, which has been discussed in other comments. I was aware that he was in jail because my housemates were trying to support him by showing up to his trials and stuff, and we still got mail for him (the case had happened pretty recently when I moved in). I think I found out the details — including learning that psychosis was involved — from the news story though.
I was on a sports team in college, and the year after I graduated, one of my teammates had a psychotic break. I only heard about this because he was wandering the streets yelling and ended up trying to attack some campus police officers with a metal pipe and got shot (thankfully non-fatally).
It’s unclear to me if what happened with Ziz&co at Westminster Woods was a psychotic episode, but in any case I knew about it at the time, but only had the details clarified in the news story.
I feel like people keep telling me that psychosis around me should be higher than what I hear about, which is irrelevant to my point: my point is the frequency in which I hear about psychosis in the rationalist community is like an order of magnitude higher than the frequency I hear about it elsewhere.
It doesn’t matter whether people hide psychosis among my social group; the observation to explain is why people don’t hide psychosis in the rationalist community to the same extent.
For example, you mention 2 separate example of Bay Area rationalists making the news for psychosis. I know of no people in my academic community who have made the news for psychosis. Assuming equal background rates, what is left to explain is why rationalists are more likely to make the news when they get psychosis.
Another example: there have now been 1-2 people who have admitted to psychosis in blog posts intended as public callouts. I know of no people in my academic community who have written public callout blog posts in which they say they’ve had psychosis. Is there an explanation for why rationalists who’ve had psychosis are more likely to write public callout blog posts?
Anyway, this discussion feels kind of moot now that I’ve read Scott Alexander’s update to his comment. He says that several people (who knew each other) all had psychosis around the same time in 2017. No reasonable person can think this is merely baseline; some kind of social contagion is surely involved (probably just people sharing drugs or drug recommendations).
I think part of it is that this isn’t related to your social network, but your news habits and how your news sources cover your social network.
You probably don’t read newspapers that are as certain to write about your neighbor having any kind of “psychosis”, but you read forums that tell you about Rationalists doing the same.
Them leaving out the exact details of what went on with their groups make the whole discussion sketchy. Maybe they just want to keep the conversation to themselves. If that’s the case, why are they posting on LW?