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> Dr Pittenger says it is now clear that covid-19 infections can trigger psychosis, fatigue and other neuro-psychiatric symptoms. A misbehaving immune system is

> Dr Pittenger says it is now clear that covid-19 infections can trigger psychosis, fatigue and other neuro-psychiatric symptoms. A misbehaving immune system is thought to be the culprit. The idea that schizophrenia may, at least sometimes, likewise be an auto-immune disorder is also under investigation. Until I got long covid(generally recovered now after 2 years), I couldn't comprehend this idea. I felt like I was actually going crazy. But then that lead me down a rabbit hole of reading about things like the microbiome and immune system which is a whole new domain yet to be formally explored. I highly recommend people read Ed Yong's book "I Contain Multitudes". Post acute infection syndromes are a real thing and it is fascinating that we get to see science take on this topic in the spotlight right now. Especially Jeff Gordon and his work on the microbiome and Akiko Iwasaki and her work on long covid. It makes you honestly question the idea of freewill. Good thing that Robert Sapolsky's new book is coming out next month on the topic!

all2 3y ago
I remember reading awhile back about a study that showed people with the flu are generally more social while the virus is spreading. There's also those nasty sugar cravings that seem to pop up when people diet, and it may be that the microbiome drives those cravings. It's a curious thing to think that the bugs in our bodies may drive our impulses.
- genewitch 3y ago
  I don't know the mechanism of the flu thing (and i have heard it, after you get infected you're more social until the virus confines you to bed), but the craving sugar thing is 100% gut biome, the grass-fed gut flora release opioids when they eat grass, which get sent, via the blood, to our brains, which make us feel good. not eating grasses means we go through opiate withdrawal!
  - Aurornis 3y ago
    > not eating grasses means we go through opiate withdrawal! That's an unreasonable exaggeration. Nobody is getting significant opioid modulation and withdrawals from their microbiome.
    - genewitch 3y ago
      And ketchup doesn't have enough nicotine in it, even when applied to potatoes, to notice!
  - reilly3000 3y ago
    This is fascinating. I wanted to know more about that but my cursory searches didn’t turn up anything except for connections between opioid use and gut microbes. It certainly feels like withdrawal!
    - genewitch 3y ago
      oh, i get downvoted every time i bring this up on any social media platform that supports downvoting. see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37129256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37129256 for example. I'm not sure where all of my research PDFs wound up over the last 20 years, but start with that DOI ( 10.1016/0014-5793(92)80414-C ) from 1992(!). There's a trend to looking into the gut for causes of certain diseases. Prior to the pandemic, there were publications that Alzheimer's, for example, was linked to gut biome. I get the downvotes, what i say goes against conventional wisdom, that all you gotta do to lose weight is "not eat so much" - but the human body is not just your brain and heart and some tooling to allow intake of fuel as food. There's a growing (and, depending on your views of "life", alarming) sense that our guts are in more control than we think. This can cause a lot of "free-willers" to get upset and be reactionary.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  > remember reading awhile back about a study that showed people with the flu are generally more social while the virus is spreading. Am I an idiot or is this clearly non-causal?
  - dylan604 3y ago
    does seem weird as the flu usually makes me sore and not want to move at all.
    - tmccrary55 3y ago
      You're probably still contagious for a while after the symptoms weaken. But thinking about it, you're also probably in a good mood at the same time. So yeah, of course you're going to be more sociable.
    - someuser2345 3y ago
      I assume the poster meant that the infected are more social before they start having symptoms
    - jacobn 3y ago
      You're probably contagious before symptom onset.
  - sp332 3y ago
    To clarify, the the claim is that individuals are more sociable when they are infected with the flu virus. These results show that there is an immediate active behavioral response to infection before the expected onset of symptoms or sickness behavior. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20816312/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20816312/
    - gruez 3y ago
      I did a quick skim and the main problems with the study are: 1. no placebo, so it's unclear whether it was actually due to the flu virus or some unrelated factor. The study admits this might be an issue, but casually dismisses it with "We looked for this, and found no such effects." 2. the "flu virus" in question is actually a vaccine. Needless to say there's a big difference between getting a flu shot and an actual flu.
- dylan604 3y ago
  the idea that a virus can change the behavior of the host to make it more likely to spread is one of those things that's beyond creepy. lots of scifi based on this, and the ones that are more subtle are much more effective than getting bit by a zombie trope.
  - _aavaa_ 3y ago
    Have I got bad news for you. This is past speculation in certain species: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/cordyceps-zombie-fungus-takes-over-ants https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/cordyceps...
    - 4gotunameagain 3y ago
      Also in humans, with the rabies virus which makes people be repulsed by water, which would limit the spread of the virus since its vector is saliva.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    I mean this is something well proven in parasitic infections. For example snails that climb to the top of plants to be eaten by birds when they are infected. Also rats that are infected that go hang about places where cats have peed so they get ate spreading the infection to cats.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      what makes you think that this is something I doubt? I can accept it happens and still be creeped out by it all the same.
  - lemming 3y ago
    This is already well established in humans for toxoplasmosis, for example. It’s a parasite rather than a virus, but it doesn’t seem crazy that a virus might do similar things.
jeroen 3y ago
Did you learn anything that helped in your recovery? I'm 1.5 years in and nowhere near a full recovery yet.
- ck425 3y ago
  Was about to ask the same. I'm one year in and had a glorious month following reinfection in August but seem to have rebounded the last week or two.
- thenerdhead 3y ago
  I sure did. I'm writing a book on it right now. I have a couple of posts that might help: https://jondouglas.dev/long-covid/ https://jondouglas.dev/long-covid/ (Maybe outdated at this point but tells the full journey) https://www.reddit.com/r/LongHaulersRecovery/comments/12iv4p0/done_pushing_the_boulder/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LongHaulersRecovery/comments/12iv4p... (Probably the most realistic summary) The most important thing in my opinion that I don't talk about in these posts is to stay informed on the latest research and become study/trial literate. i.e. https://www.science.org/content/article/how-seriously-read-scientific-paper https://www.science.org/content/article/how-seriously-read-s... Wishing you the best to recover.
  - cempaka 3y ago
    I think it's really a shame that aspirin is not emphasized more as a COVID and COVID-recovery treatment, given that it's known to help reduce clotting which is an important mechanism of COVID etiology. Even Biden's physician had him take it during his case.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  Would recommend CBT. e: I'm downvoted but this is one of the only treatments with best-in-class evidence for its effectiveness in treating long covid as well as CFS and IBS. The body is a complex organism.
  - jinder 3y ago
    Where is the best-in-class evidence that CBT is effective at treating long covid and chronic fatigue syndrome?
diogenes4 3y ago
> It makes you honestly question the idea of freewill. Hell two months in any psychology course will have you questioning that. We are truly biological beings first and rational agents second.
- nvahalik 3y ago
  The middle ground here seems not only theologically sound but biologically coherent as well. We have a constrained will. Free will has never and will never exist since we are finite beings. We have a _constrained_ will that is boxed in by a number of factors: time, money, biology, knowledge, circumstances, etc. Theologically, that will is also constrained by our nature. There are certain spiritual things we cannot do in the same way we cannot do certain physical things.
  - anon84873628 3y ago
    By the time your internal monologue makes a decision, the neural network for it fired long ago. Non-physical thoughts don't guide the physical processes; they are simply a side effect of it.
pixl97 3y ago
>It makes you honestly question the idea of freewill. Not eating and getting low blood sugar can much more simply answer the question of "Do I have free will, or am I a subject of my internal chemical reactions". Or, much more simply stated "You're not you when you are hungry".
- mistersquid 3y ago
  > Not eating and getting low blood sugar can much more simply answer the question of "Do I have free will, or am I a subject of my internal chemical reactions". You cannot control what you feel, but you can control your actions.
  - xpe 3y ago
    > You cannot control what you feel, but you can control your actions. I'll respond in a way that I hope is clear and relatively objective. This will take the form of an "if-then" claim nested within another "if-then" claim. IF a person (1) accepts philosophical materialism, but (2) remains agnostic as to quantum effects at macro scale THEN then the following response follows logically: It depends what you mean by "you". If you (a) mean that "you" consists of the body, including the brain; and (b) you recognize there is a physiological difference between _non-volitional_ and _volitional_ choices; then (c) yes, loosely speaking, "you" can control your volitional actions. If you think carefully, you will recognize the above assumptions also mean: - a person's surrounding context plays an essential role in shaping the kinds of actions that are available. - there are no causes other than material ones (such as a soul) You may notice I didn't use the phrase "free will" above. That is very much intentional. Even if you are a philosopher, that word is nearly impossible to use in a way with a definition that a group of people can agree on. See also: "Volition and Action in the Human Brain: Processes, Pathologies, and Reasons" by Itzhak Fried, Patrick Haggard, ... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5678016/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5678016/
    - empath-nirvana 3y ago
      I think there's two conceptions of free will, one is as you described -- a body being able to act in and of itself without any influence of an external force (beyond sensation, physical constraints, etc). That sort of punts on the question of physical determinism, where it doesn't matter if it was possible for you to have done anything other than what you did. You could be a pure clock work automaton making deterministic responses to external stimuli and still have that sort of "free will", but I don't think that would be satisfying to a lot of people. The second kind of free will, I think would be the ability to have a free choice -- that there is some immaterial entity which can act in somehow a non-deterministic way to choose its behavior, that the course of your entire life wasn't set at the big bang -- that not only can you act independently, but that your choices _matter_ and will result in a future that was not predetermined. I think that is what a lot of people would think of as free will, and it's difficult to define or logically support IMO.
exolymph 3y ago
Nerd-sniped: Free will is an incoherent idea. We don't choose our preferences, which dictate our choices. (And even supposing you can choose a preference, that's only due to the preexisting desire to have such a preference. Turtles all the way down.) What would an unconstrained choice even be? Just random, arbitrary? That doesn't sound "free" either.
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  > We don't choose our preferences As a doxastic voluntarist, I reject this notion entirely.
  - xpe 3y ago
    > Doxastic voluntarism is a philosophical view that people elect their own beliefs; that is, that subjects have a certain amount of control over what they believe Do you hold such a view as a first principle? Or did you arrive at it via consideration of other factors?
    - kelseyfrog 3y ago
      Do you mean to ask if someone can choose not to be a doxastic voluntarist? You can't choose to be a doxastic voluntarist as much as you can't choose not to be one. One can only become one involuntarily.
      - xpe 3y ago
        Ah, now this is getting fun. > Do you mean to ask if someone can choose not to be a doxastic voluntarist? No, I did not. :) My question remains: "Do you hold such a view as a first principle? Or did you arrive at it via consideration of other factors?" If you look closely, you can see my question doesn't assume choice was/wasn't involved. Simply how you got there.
        kelseyfrog 3y ago
        I decided to change my preferences and it worked. It's simply evidentially true.
gejose 3y ago
The parent comment mentions Robert Sapolsky and I can't resist linking a talk where he explores various physical and environmental factors that influence human actions - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRYcSuyLiJk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRYcSuyLiJk If anyone finds the video above interesting, also check out his Behavioural Biology lecture series on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C... His upcoming book can be found here - https://www.amazon.ca/Determined-Science-Life-without-Free/dp/0525560971 https://www.amazon.ca/Determined-Science-Life-without-Free/d...
WesternWind 3y ago
Prior to getting into tech, I had an internship at the NY State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) where I did work helping people developing assessment tools for schizophrenic prodromes (people before they develop schizophrenia), as they were working on a predictive assessment questionaire. Basically they were looking for risk factors but also to predict who might actually develop the disease imminently among those at risk, because if you monitor folks at risk, folks who might have subclinical symptoms, and can know who is going to have a psychotic break, you can manage and control it and have much better outcomes. The largest predictive factor of folks who were at increased risk of developing schizophrenia is if they have a family history of it as I recall. Stress, in a variety of forms, is also a big factor. However the reason I write is because I remember that late fall and winter conception of the individual has been shown to create a small but statistically significant increase in the likelihood of developing the disease. It's unclear exactly why, but one theory is that increased risk of viral infection for the mother during certain stages of pregnancy may be a factor. Teasing apart these sort of facotrs, even to the extent possible often requires complex multivariate analysis of general and clinical populations and either time based or retrospective analysis of risk factors. Even then the mechanisms are fairly opaque. Covid infection may lead to increased understanding of psychotic and subpsychotic disorders, but it's more likely to simply complicate any analysis; just teasing apart the actual effects of the disease and the stress that results from the social changes necessary to contain it, in terms of development of mental illness, may not be fully possible.
- whats_a_quasar 3y ago
  Related: "Treating the Prodrome", a discussion about early treatment of schizophrenia and some speculation about possible mechanisms. [1] This sort of work is very exciting to me! Treating schizophrenia early seems like a win for everyone - less of an impact on the individual, less of a need for antipsychotics, and less societal impact. I've also seen some speculation about a prodrome for major depression, with a period characterized by anxiety or agitation before a full episode. Early detection of psychiatric episodes seems like a really ripe approach. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/09/20/treat-the-prodrome/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/09/20/treat-the-prodrome/
- 3y ago
mock-possum 3y ago
Could you tell the story of what experiencing schizoid symptoms was like? I’m always curious!
- thenerdhead 3y ago
  I have a number of blogs that somewhat include these feelings: https://jondouglas.dev/little-dark-age/ https://jondouglas.dev/little-dark-age/ https://jondouglas.dev/the-stress-of-life/ https://jondouglas.dev/the-stress-of-life/ https://jondouglas.dev/save-your-soul/ https://jondouglas.dev/save-your-soul/ https://jondouglas.dev/obsessive-compulsive/ https://jondouglas.dev/obsessive-compulsive/ https://jondouglas.dev/love-of-fate/ https://jondouglas.dev/love-of-fate/ https://jondouglas.dev/from-the-ashes/ https://jondouglas.dev/from-the-ashes/ Lots of depersonalization, heightened nerves, low lows, and desire to be alone. If you've ever read Leo Tolstoy, the best description is in his novella "The Death of Ivan Ilyich".
hinkley 3y ago
There was a medical article the other day that popped up where a daughter received the first kidney transplant without life-long anti-rejection drugs. Instead they reprogrammed her immune system to see her mother's tissue as self instead of foreign body. She was on anti-rejection meds for months instead of life. I presume so they could test whether their plan worked or not. If they can do that for life or death situations, I have hope that we can refine the process for other auto-immune diseases that are everything from lifestyle threatening up to life-threatening. My issues are middle of the list, but if arthritis had a solution other than immunosuppression while I still have cartilage, that would make me so happy. And I'd really like to be able to eat croissants and baklava again, if that can be arranged.
hotnfresh 3y ago
> It makes you honestly question the idea of freewill. Good thing that Robert Sapolsky's new book is coming out next month on the topic! Watching someone go through certain kinds of dementia can have a similar effect. Simplify the input and make situations repeatable (from their perspective) on very-short timeframes and it’s hard not to notice how much we behave like automatons. It’s being able to hold a lot of context that makes us seem like we’re ordinarily not, I reckon.

all2 3y ago

I remember reading awhile back about a study that showed people with the flu are generally more social while the virus is spreading. There's also those nasty sugar cravings that seem to pop up when people diet, and it may be that the microbiome drives those cravings. It's a curious thing to think that the bugs in our bodies may drive our impulses.

genewitch 3y ago
I don't know the mechanism of the flu thing (and i have heard it, after you get infected you're more social until the virus confines you to bed), but the craving sugar thing is 100% gut biome, the grass-fed gut flora release opioids when they eat grass, which get sent, via the blood, to our brains, which make us feel good. not eating grasses means we go through opiate withdrawal!
- Aurornis 3y ago
  > not eating grasses means we go through opiate withdrawal! That's an unreasonable exaggeration. Nobody is getting significant opioid modulation and withdrawals from their microbiome.
  - genewitch 3y ago
    And ketchup doesn't have enough nicotine in it, even when applied to potatoes, to notice!
- reilly3000 3y ago
  This is fascinating. I wanted to know more about that but my cursory searches didn’t turn up anything except for connections between opioid use and gut microbes. It certainly feels like withdrawal!
  - genewitch 3y ago
    oh, i get downvoted every time i bring this up on any social media platform that supports downvoting. see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37129256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37129256 for example. I'm not sure where all of my research PDFs wound up over the last 20 years, but start with that DOI ( 10.1016/0014-5793(92)80414-C ) from 1992(!). There's a trend to looking into the gut for causes of certain diseases. Prior to the pandemic, there were publications that Alzheimer's, for example, was linked to gut biome. I get the downvotes, what i say goes against conventional wisdom, that all you gotta do to lose weight is "not eat so much" - but the human body is not just your brain and heart and some tooling to allow intake of fuel as food. There's a growing (and, depending on your views of "life", alarming) sense that our guts are in more control than we think. This can cause a lot of "free-willers" to get upset and be reactionary.
whimsicalism 3y ago
> remember reading awhile back about a study that showed people with the flu are generally more social while the virus is spreading. Am I an idiot or is this clearly non-causal?
- dylan604 3y ago
  does seem weird as the flu usually makes me sore and not want to move at all.
  - tmccrary55 3y ago
    You're probably still contagious for a while after the symptoms weaken. But thinking about it, you're also probably in a good mood at the same time. So yeah, of course you're going to be more sociable.
  - someuser2345 3y ago
    I assume the poster meant that the infected are more social before they start having symptoms
  - jacobn 3y ago
    You're probably contagious before symptom onset.
- sp332 3y ago
  To clarify, the the claim is that individuals are more sociable when they are infected with the flu virus. These results show that there is an immediate active behavioral response to infection before the expected onset of symptoms or sickness behavior. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20816312/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20816312/
  - gruez 3y ago
    I did a quick skim and the main problems with the study are: 1. no placebo, so it's unclear whether it was actually due to the flu virus or some unrelated factor. The study admits this might be an issue, but casually dismisses it with "We looked for this, and found no such effects." 2. the "flu virus" in question is actually a vaccine. Needless to say there's a big difference between getting a flu shot and an actual flu.
dylan604 3y ago
the idea that a virus can change the behavior of the host to make it more likely to spread is one of those things that's beyond creepy. lots of scifi based on this, and the ones that are more subtle are much more effective than getting bit by a zombie trope.
- _aavaa_ 3y ago
  Have I got bad news for you. This is past speculation in certain species: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/cordyceps-zombie-fungus-takes-over-ants https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/cordyceps...
  - 4gotunameagain 3y ago
    Also in humans, with the rabies virus which makes people be repulsed by water, which would limit the spread of the virus since its vector is saliva.
- pixl97 3y ago
  I mean this is something well proven in parasitic infections. For example snails that climb to the top of plants to be eaten by birds when they are infected. Also rats that are infected that go hang about places where cats have peed so they get ate spreading the infection to cats.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    what makes you think that this is something I doubt? I can accept it happens and still be creeped out by it all the same.
- lemming 3y ago
  This is already well established in humans for toxoplasmosis, for example. It’s a parasite rather than a virus, but it doesn’t seem crazy that a virus might do similar things.

jeroen 3y ago

Did you learn anything that helped in your recovery? I'm 1.5 years in and nowhere near a full recovery yet.

ck425 3y ago
Was about to ask the same. I'm one year in and had a glorious month following reinfection in August but seem to have rebounded the last week or two.
thenerdhead 3y ago
I sure did. I'm writing a book on it right now. I have a couple of posts that might help: https://jondouglas.dev/long-covid/ https://jondouglas.dev/long-covid/ (Maybe outdated at this point but tells the full journey) https://www.reddit.com/r/LongHaulersRecovery/comments/12iv4p0/done_pushing_the_boulder/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LongHaulersRecovery/comments/12iv4p... (Probably the most realistic summary) The most important thing in my opinion that I don't talk about in these posts is to stay informed on the latest research and become study/trial literate. i.e. https://www.science.org/content/article/how-seriously-read-scientific-paper https://www.science.org/content/article/how-seriously-read-s... Wishing you the best to recover.
- cempaka 3y ago
  I think it's really a shame that aspirin is not emphasized more as a COVID and COVID-recovery treatment, given that it's known to help reduce clotting which is an important mechanism of COVID etiology. Even Biden's physician had him take it during his case.
whimsicalism 3y ago
Would recommend CBT. e: I'm downvoted but this is one of the only treatments with best-in-class evidence for its effectiveness in treating long covid as well as CFS and IBS. The body is a complex organism.
- jinder 3y ago
  Where is the best-in-class evidence that CBT is effective at treating long covid and chronic fatigue syndrome?

diogenes4 3y ago

> It makes you honestly question the idea of freewill. Hell two months in any psychology course will have you questioning that. We are truly biological beings first and rational agents second.

nvahalik 3y ago
The middle ground here seems not only theologically sound but biologically coherent as well. We have a constrained will. Free will has never and will never exist since we are finite beings. We have a _constrained_ will that is boxed in by a number of factors: time, money, biology, knowledge, circumstances, etc. Theologically, that will is also constrained by our nature. There are certain spiritual things we cannot do in the same way we cannot do certain physical things.
- anon84873628 3y ago
  By the time your internal monologue makes a decision, the neural network for it fired long ago. Non-physical thoughts don't guide the physical processes; they are simply a side effect of it.

pixl97 3y ago

>It makes you honestly question the idea of freewill. Not eating and getting low blood sugar can much more simply answer the question of "Do I have free will, or am I a subject of my internal chemical reactions". Or, much more simply stated "You're not you when you are hungry".

mistersquid 3y ago
> Not eating and getting low blood sugar can much more simply answer the question of "Do I have free will, or am I a subject of my internal chemical reactions". You cannot control what you feel, but you can control your actions.
- xpe 3y ago
  > You cannot control what you feel, but you can control your actions. I'll respond in a way that I hope is clear and relatively objective. This will take the form of an "if-then" claim nested within another "if-then" claim. IF a person (1) accepts philosophical materialism, but (2) remains agnostic as to quantum effects at macro scale THEN then the following response follows logically: It depends what you mean by "you". If you (a) mean that "you" consists of the body, including the brain; and (b) you recognize there is a physiological difference between _non-volitional_ and _volitional_ choices; then (c) yes, loosely speaking, "you" can control your volitional actions. If you think carefully, you will recognize the above assumptions also mean: - a person's surrounding context plays an essential role in shaping the kinds of actions that are available. - there are no causes other than material ones (such as a soul) You may notice I didn't use the phrase "free will" above. That is very much intentional. Even if you are a philosopher, that word is nearly impossible to use in a way with a definition that a group of people can agree on. See also: "Volition and Action in the Human Brain: Processes, Pathologies, and Reasons" by Itzhak Fried, Patrick Haggard, ... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5678016/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5678016/
  - empath-nirvana 3y ago
    I think there's two conceptions of free will, one is as you described -- a body being able to act in and of itself without any influence of an external force (beyond sensation, physical constraints, etc). That sort of punts on the question of physical determinism, where it doesn't matter if it was possible for you to have done anything other than what you did. You could be a pure clock work automaton making deterministic responses to external stimuli and still have that sort of "free will", but I don't think that would be satisfying to a lot of people. The second kind of free will, I think would be the ability to have a free choice -- that there is some immaterial entity which can act in somehow a non-deterministic way to choose its behavior, that the course of your entire life wasn't set at the big bang -- that not only can you act independently, but that your choices _matter_ and will result in a future that was not predetermined. I think that is what a lot of people would think of as free will, and it's difficult to define or logically support IMO.

exolymph 3y ago

Nerd-sniped: Free will is an incoherent idea. We don't choose our preferences, which dictate our choices. (And even supposing you can choose a preference, that's only due to the preexisting desire to have such a preference. Turtles all the way down.) What would an unconstrained choice even be? Just random, arbitrary? That doesn't sound "free" either.

kelseyfrog 3y ago
> We don't choose our preferences As a doxastic voluntarist, I reject this notion entirely.
- xpe 3y ago
  > Doxastic voluntarism is a philosophical view that people elect their own beliefs; that is, that subjects have a certain amount of control over what they believe Do you hold such a view as a first principle? Or did you arrive at it via consideration of other factors?
  - kelseyfrog 3y ago
    Do you mean to ask if someone can choose not to be a doxastic voluntarist? You can't choose to be a doxastic voluntarist as much as you can't choose not to be one. One can only become one involuntarily.
    - xpe 3y ago
      Ah, now this is getting fun. > Do you mean to ask if someone can choose not to be a doxastic voluntarist? No, I did not. :) My question remains: "Do you hold such a view as a first principle? Or did you arrive at it via consideration of other factors?" If you look closely, you can see my question doesn't assume choice was/wasn't involved. Simply how you got there.
      - kelseyfrog 3y ago
        I decided to change my preferences and it worked. It's simply evidentially true.

gejose 3y ago

The parent comment mentions Robert Sapolsky and I can't resist linking a talk where he explores various physical and environmental factors that influence human actions - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRYcSuyLiJk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRYcSuyLiJk If anyone finds the video above interesting, also check out his Behavioural Biology lecture series on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C... His upcoming book can be found here - https://www.amazon.ca/Determined-Science-Life-without-Free/dp/0525560971 https://www.amazon.ca/Determined-Science-Life-without-Free/d...

WesternWind 3y ago

Prior to getting into tech, I had an internship at the NY State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) where I did work helping people developing assessment tools for schizophrenic prodromes (people before they develop schizophrenia), as they were working on a predictive assessment questionaire. Basically they were looking for risk factors but also to predict who might actually develop the disease imminently among those at risk, because if you monitor folks at risk, folks who might have subclinical symptoms, and can know who is going to have a psychotic break, you can manage and control it and have much better outcomes. The largest predictive factor of folks who were at increased risk of developing schizophrenia is if they have a family history of it as I recall. Stress, in a variety of forms, is also a big factor. However the reason I write is because I remember that late fall and winter conception of the individual has been shown to create a small but statistically significant increase in the likelihood of developing the disease. It's unclear exactly why, but one theory is that increased risk of viral infection for the mother during certain stages of pregnancy may be a factor. Teasing apart these sort of facotrs, even to the extent possible often requires complex multivariate analysis of general and clinical populations and either time based or retrospective analysis of risk factors. Even then the mechanisms are fairly opaque. Covid infection may lead to increased understanding of psychotic and subpsychotic disorders, but it's more likely to simply complicate any analysis; just teasing apart the actual effects of the disease and the stress that results from the social changes necessary to contain it, in terms of development of mental illness, may not be fully possible.

whats_a_quasar 3y ago
Related: "Treating the Prodrome", a discussion about early treatment of schizophrenia and some speculation about possible mechanisms. [1] This sort of work is very exciting to me! Treating schizophrenia early seems like a win for everyone - less of an impact on the individual, less of a need for antipsychotics, and less societal impact. I've also seen some speculation about a prodrome for major depression, with a period characterized by anxiety or agitation before a full episode. Early detection of psychiatric episodes seems like a really ripe approach. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/09/20/treat-the-prodrome/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/09/20/treat-the-prodrome/
3y ago

mock-possum 3y ago

Could you tell the story of what experiencing schizoid symptoms was like? I’m always curious!

thenerdhead 3y ago
I have a number of blogs that somewhat include these feelings: https://jondouglas.dev/little-dark-age/ https://jondouglas.dev/little-dark-age/ https://jondouglas.dev/the-stress-of-life/ https://jondouglas.dev/the-stress-of-life/ https://jondouglas.dev/save-your-soul/ https://jondouglas.dev/save-your-soul/ https://jondouglas.dev/obsessive-compulsive/ https://jondouglas.dev/obsessive-compulsive/ https://jondouglas.dev/love-of-fate/ https://jondouglas.dev/love-of-fate/ https://jondouglas.dev/from-the-ashes/ https://jondouglas.dev/from-the-ashes/ Lots of depersonalization, heightened nerves, low lows, and desire to be alone. If you've ever read Leo Tolstoy, the best description is in his novella "The Death of Ivan Ilyich".

hinkley 3y ago

There was a medical article the other day that popped up where a daughter received the first kidney transplant without life-long anti-rejection drugs. Instead they reprogrammed her immune system to see her mother's tissue as self instead of foreign body. She was on anti-rejection meds for months instead of life. I presume so they could test whether their plan worked or not. If they can do that for life or death situations, I have hope that we can refine the process for other auto-immune diseases that are everything from lifestyle threatening up to life-threatening. My issues are middle of the list, but if arthritis had a solution other than immunosuppression while I still have cartilage, that would make me so happy. And I'd really like to be able to eat croissants and baklava again, if that can be arranged.

hotnfresh 3y ago

> It makes you honestly question the idea of freewill. Good thing that Robert Sapolsky's new book is coming out next month on the topic! Watching someone go through certain kinds of dementia can have a similar effect. Simplify the input and make situations repeatable (from their perspective) on very-short timeframes and it’s hard not to notice how much we behave like automatons. It’s being able to hold a lot of context that makes us seem like we’re ordinarily not, I reckon.