4 ms·
Makes me think of Terry Davis and Bobby Fischer. Mental illness can make it hard to be compassionate, but it is still illness.
by rhcom2 9y ago
Makes me think of Terry Davis and Bobby Fischer. Mental illness can make it hard to be compassionate, but it is still illness.
- theoh 9y agoI guess you mean illness as opposed to malicious behaviour. But what human behaviour is not conditioned by biological and environmental factors? There's nobody we can point at and say "this person is evil, not sick, and should actually be held responsible for their behaviour".
- tinymollusk 9y agoAs a dense primer on the subject, I'm reading Sapolsky's book "Behave". It was recommended by Gates and Mike Mouboussin as the best book they read in 2017.
- lomnakkus 9y agoIt's obviously quite tricky to decide such things with complete accuracy, but -- reading Popehat's account -- it's not so much Eng's actual statements, but just the disconnectedness of thought that really leaps out. (See also the YT video someone posted.) Robert Sapolsky also has an incredibly interesting couple of lectures on YT on schizophrenia. As it turns out it's actually recognizable in vastly different cultures, though not necessarily by concrete behaviors or mannerisms, but by persistent extremely erratic and destructive behavior. I can't recall the exact example at the moment, but I think it was something like "you killed the goat outside of the 'slaughering' season and covered yourself in its blood".
- Symmetry 9y agoI think the most important thing is that if criticism and threats of punishment aren't going to change a person's behavior then you shouldn't use them.