The main difficulty would lie in knowing where to draw the lines. Do you include any sort of agitated response to any sort of idea that isn’t of immediate practical relevance to daily life?
I would draw the line at regular obsessions, mostly because cognitive behavioural therapy at least offer some options. I have some experience with obsessions, and those were self contained, situationally. Not a personal example, but a pre-occupation with staying away from sharp objects for fear of committing suicide, despite not having depression or violent impulses, is local to that situation of being around sharp objects, not triggered by simply thinking about sharp objects in a room completely devoid of sharp objects.
Anything within the line would be subjects whose trigger is their being facts, whose consequences are reacted to quite quickly, and are not specific to any physical situation a person may be in at the time. I’m not so sure about Pascal (based on that sentence alone I mean), but Everett’s daughter would fit the bill, assuming her belief compelled her to commit suicide, rather than gave her freedom to do it. I recall one person who actually had a similar problem here at Lesswrong, not two months ago actually. I’m surprised that I forgot about it. I guess I would call these “abstract obsessions” as opposed to “personal obsessions”.
I apologize for not fleshing this out in better detail in the original post; I wasn’t expecting this to generate interest from anywhere outside the hypothetical target audience, though in retrospect, I would probably have dug into it too.
EDIT: I’m reading the transcription of XiXiDu’s psychology session, and this looks exactly like the class of problem I’m talking about.
I would draw the line at regular obsessions, mostly because cognitive behavioural therapy at least offer some options. I have some experience with obsessions, and those were self contained, situationally. Not a personal example, but a pre-occupation with staying away from sharp objects for fear of committing suicide, despite not having depression or violent impulses, is local to that situation of being around sharp objects, not triggered by simply thinking about sharp objects in a room completely devoid of sharp objects.
Anything within the line would be subjects whose trigger is their being facts, whose consequences are reacted to quite quickly, and are not specific to any physical situation a person may be in at the time. I’m not so sure about Pascal (based on that sentence alone I mean), but Everett’s daughter would fit the bill, assuming her belief compelled her to commit suicide, rather than gave her freedom to do it. I recall one person who actually had a similar problem here at Lesswrong, not two months ago actually. I’m surprised that I forgot about it. I guess I would call these “abstract obsessions” as opposed to “personal obsessions”.
I apologize for not fleshing this out in better detail in the original post; I wasn’t expecting this to generate interest from anywhere outside the hypothetical target audience, though in retrospect, I would probably have dug into it too.
EDIT: I’m reading the transcription of XiXiDu’s psychology session, and this looks exactly like the class of problem I’m talking about.