> KMO <kmoprime@juno.com> wrote :-
>
> >Human brains seem quite adroit at sustaining contradictory beliefs.
>
> There is a really *big* assumption here : the observer is calling the
> shots as to what memes are antithetical. The host *never* considers his
> memes to be contradictory, I believe that's a psychological
> impossibility assuming the person isn't clinically schizophrenic or
> otherwise mentally ill. ...
I'm a host for a certain set of memes. I may not like it when these
memes are contradictory, but I definitely *do* consider some sets of them
contradictory, and spend much effort altering them to remove this ugly
trait. Allowing one's own memes to be consicously contradictory is probably
enabled by my implementation of the "logical consistency" meme. It's
hard to enforce logical consistency unless you can detect its absence.
You cited a fairly extreme example of mental illness. It's a bad choice:
all of the various forms of schizophenia have, as an EXPLICIT TRAIT, that
the person is convinced of their complete rationality [as far as can be
determined. Communication can be difficult. This is definitely true of
the milder cases]. It is precisely insofar as the schizophrenic's
perceptual map is warped that they are convinced of their own rationality.
Bipolar [manic-depressive] also has this as an explicit trait, and most
personalities in multiple personality disorder can also be so described
[usually].
The above sums up the major mental illnesses.
Obsessive-compulsive disorders are almost invariably described by those
afflicted as irrational, as in "I *don't* want to do this!" I don't
recall any of the other minors as specifically characterized by this, or
explicitly excluding.
[CLIP]
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/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
/
/ Kenneth Boyd
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