Question on insanity

[Jonluw]

If Ugh the caveman one day goes over to Bog's cave and says "Me think earth be round", Bog is going to laugh at Ugh, and ask him why he thinks this is. Ugh doesn't have a reason. He just had a funny idea, and decided to believe it, even though the earth appears to be flat from anything else he can examine.

Now here's the thing: Even though Ugh's irrational belief happens to fit with reality, he is still wrong.

There may be a pink unicorn on the back of Pluto, but you'd have to be insane to actually believe it. If there actually turns out years later, that there is a pink unicorn on the back of Pluto, you're still insane.

Why?

Even with some facts? SO scientists are right and insane?
Its creepy how horribly entertaining this really is.

Because there is no reason to believe there is a pink unicorn on Pluto. Even if your insane delusions happen to match up with reality once in a while, that doesn't make you any more right or any less insane.

Picture a man who is hallucinating. In his mind, a bass guitar (Rickenbacker 4001) is floating 3 feet from his face. He sees nothing but this bass. You could go ahead and place a Rickenbacker 3 feet from his face, and his delusions would match up with reality to some degree. Still wouldn't make him any less delusional, or any more correct in assuming there is a guitar floating in front of him.

 

[Biodeamon]

Crazy is just a relative term for not being acceptable in society. If everybody walked around with feathers in their hats that would be the social norm and everyone else who just wore normal hats would be looked down upon as "insane".

Sanity's too mainstream for me.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

1) Yup. You're still crazy. You can be crazy and right, or crazy and smart.

2) If you're sane and everyone else is crazy...Then you're probably crazy, at least by typical definition.

I just think we should all stop pretending to be sane.

I'll freely admit I'm a bit crazy. Everyone is. We all have issues and complexes and irrational wacko behaviour ticks. I'm just not "broken".
-(I don't mean that in a mean way. I swear. But if your brain has begun "bugging up" to a degree where you cannot function and it's unfixable, then you're broken, and need help patching that up, so you CAN function.)

 

[Evidencebased]

...
I'll freely admit I'm a bit crazy. Everyone is. We all have issues and complexes and irrational wacko behaviour ticks. I'm just not "broken".
-(I don't mean that in a mean way. I swear. But if your brain has begun "bugging up" to a degree where you cannot function and it's unfixable, then you're broken, and need help patching that up, so you CAN function.)

I agree; there's the "crazy" where it's like oh, it's quirky and different and awesome and society needs to step off, and then there's the "crazy" where you want to die or you spend 3 hours picking pieces of your skin off or something. The latter is pretty objectively miserable, societal standards aside! Get that shit fixed so you can have a nicer life.

But now I'm totally off-topic. Uh... 1) yup, still crazy and 2) nope, still sane!

 

[Twilight_guy]

1. yes, you can be correct and crazy. Sanity and happening to have the correct answer are not mutually exclusive. Insanity gives you a new perspective, maybe it'll help find the answer.
2. Yes. Insanity is the deviation from the norm and is defined by the society. Insane here and somewhere else are not necessarily the same. If everyone else in insane then in reality you are the crazy one.

 

[chowderface]

1) I'll answer with a joke:
Three old men went to the doctor for a checkup. Being, as they were, elderly, the doctor felt he ought to check their mental faculties as well as their physical. So he asked each man in turn, "What's three times three?" The first man said, "273." The second man replied, "Tuesday." The third man, however, said, "9." "Fantastic!" said the doctor, enthused that such an old man still had it all together, "How'd you get that answer?" "I subtracted 273 from Tuesday."

2) Technically, yes. Normalcy is defined by the people around you. Therefore, if you're the odd man out, you're the madman.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

1: That depends. Are you "crazy" because you have a legitimate dysfunctional mental state of being and you're right by coincidence, or do people think you're crazy because the thing you're "right" about is perceived as absurd?

2: By everyone else's standards, yes, assuming they're all the SAME kind of crazy. "Crazy" is defined be abnormal cognitive behavior. If there's no "normal" to set that president, then there's nothing to deviate from. Though I can't really speak directly from the experience of the mentally unstable. Maybe you would just be viewed as exceptional. Einstein had a mental capacity beyond anybody of his time but he wasn't viewed as crazy.