but it’s also impossible to convince him he’s Alexander the Great (at least I think so; I don’t know if it’s ever been tried).
At the very least (pretending that there are no ethical concerns), it seems that you ought to be able to exaggerate a patient’s delusions. “We ran some tests, and it turns out that you’re Jesus, John Lennon, and George Washington!”.
To this same question, I can’t help but notice that the brain damage being discussed is right-side brain aka “revolutionary” brain damage. So if it turns out that it isn’t possible to get a paranoid patient to switch from FBI to KGB, it might simply be a case of inability to discard hypotheses (it seems like the original delusion, the CIA, wouldn’t count because for most of us “the CIA isn’t following me” isn’t an explicit belief). But then, I am not a neurologist or psychologist, so the pool of data I’m working with is 100% limited to that which has been written about by Yvain on LW :-)
The patient who believes he is Jesus and John Lennon will pretty much agree he is any famous figure you mention to him, but he never seems to make a big deal of it, whereas those two are the ones he’s always going on about.
A better phrasing might be to contextualize it from someone else’s viewpoint. The person having the “delusions” might not perceive them as such, and might not find them particularly fascinating at all.
Can you think of a way to do this that would not feel like a freak show? Psych hospitals are full of staff who actually need to talk the the patients, plus students and interns and the patients’ friends and family who visit. Almost all the patients get tired of being asked about how they’re doing, since they have to explain how they’re doing so many times a day to a lot of near-strangers. Introducing tourists seems like a bad plan.
I think the idea was to find psych patients willing to speak with one or more Bayesians about whatever interesting beliefs that got them there in the first place, and let them furiously jot down notes and do all kinds of arcane math in the process.
At the very least (pretending that there are no ethical concerns), it seems that you ought to be able to exaggerate a patient’s delusions. “We ran some tests, and it turns out that you’re Jesus, John Lennon, and George Washington!”.
To this same question, I can’t help but notice that the brain damage being discussed is right-side brain aka “revolutionary” brain damage. So if it turns out that it isn’t possible to get a paranoid patient to switch from FBI to KGB, it might simply be a case of inability to discard hypotheses (it seems like the original delusion, the CIA, wouldn’t count because for most of us “the CIA isn’t following me” isn’t an explicit belief). But then, I am not a neurologist or psychologist, so the pool of data I’m working with is 100% limited to that which has been written about by Yvain on LW :-)
The patient who believes he is Jesus and John Lennon will pretty much agree he is any famous figure you mention to him, but he never seems to make a big deal of it, whereas those two are the ones he’s always going on about.
Are random people allowed to visit harmless psych patients with those patients’ consent? This sounds fascinating.
Hehe. I’m a psych patient and I’m allowed to visit LessWrong.
Do you have fascinating delusions you would like to let us try to do Bayes to?
A better phrasing might be to contextualize it from someone else’s viewpoint. The person having the “delusions” might not perceive them as such, and might not find them particularly fascinating at all.
I think it was a fair response in context. I did write it tongue-in-cheek.
Can you think of a way to do this that would not feel like a freak show? Psych hospitals are full of staff who actually need to talk the the patients, plus students and interns and the patients’ friends and family who visit. Almost all the patients get tired of being asked about how they’re doing, since they have to explain how they’re doing so many times a day to a lot of near-strangers. Introducing tourists seems like a bad plan.
I think the idea was to find psych patients willing to speak with one or more Bayesians about whatever interesting beliefs that got them there in the first place, and let them furiously jot down notes and do all kinds of arcane math in the process.