15 ms·

Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff

• user395929935 1y ago
  This makes good sense in my experience. I was struggling socially and academically in college so they proctored an IQ test to look for things like ADHD etc. I scored in the 98th percentile for verbal comprehension. Only 2 years later did I have my first psychosis and was diagnosed with Schizoaffective. Luckily after a few rough years I'm doing well on the lowest dose of an antipsychotic and can function in society again. But there are definitely cases of highly creative or people with strong language skills that the expression goes too far like this post suggests.
• PaulHoule 1y ago
  Why does no-one dare say "schizotypy?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizotypy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizotypy
  • crawfordcomeaux 1y ago
    It's dangerous to existing systems for people to become aware they're capable of creating/conjuring/channeling useful new voices in the mind to help learn different things. People get burned at the stake for that.
    • bad_haircut72 1y ago
      I've never ever had any symptoms of schizophrenia but the idea of trying to consciously encourage myself hearing voices is terrifying, Im sure I could send myself truly insane with probably not much effort.
      • PaulHoule 1y ago
        My belief about is that the core of schizotypy and schizophrenia is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_disorder as did Eugen Bleuler. I have a friend who is schizophrenic whose speech hardly makes sense and she is always calling people on the phone and carrying on nonsensical conversations. Somehow the general public is hung up on ‘hearing voices’ but I have never once heard a voice but under stress I (schizotypal) did once spend about six months under the influence of a ‘system of delusions’ yet stayed mostly functional, kept working, and managed to avoid getting in serious trouble. I think it is quite ordinary also for people to have a dialogue with an ‘invisible friend’ or believe that they ‘talk to God’ when they pray, the auditory hallucinations of schizophrenia seem to be something like you have a thought that you don’t think is your thought but somebody else talking, notably schizophrenics often believe that somebody is putting thoughts into them or taking thoughts out of them, see https://www.theairloom.org/mindcontrol.php https://www.theairloom.org/mindcontrol.php
        • DiscourseFan 1y ago
          It's like gang-stalking--its not that there's something being introduced, but rather that the subject sees relations that are not objective relations (like, for instance, the relation between temperature, pressure, and state change). Typically, however (and I can't imagine a case where this didn't happen), the relations are social in character--and since social relations are subjective to the extent that all the social world is not expressly a fact, it can be difficult to differentiate between an illusion and a reality: people imagine their partners are cheating on them, whether or not its true. And there are many things we do not know about the social world around us; but, statistically speaking, nobody has ever actually been gang-stalked.
          • overu589 1y ago
            [flagged]
            • andygeorge 1y ago
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              • overu589 1y ago
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                • crawfordcomeaux 1y ago
                  Hey there! Let's be friends! Too rare are there people speaking/writing past myopic American/western views here.
                • DiscourseFan 1y ago
                  Modern medicine.
              • dang 1y ago
                Please don't post unsubstantive comments.
      • WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
        > the idea of trying to consciously encourage myself hearing voices is terrifying, This is not unreasonable. It could be less awful if the voices were positive and not harsh and negative. Schizophrenics outside the US were found to have a more benign relationship with their voices. The striking difference was that while many of the African and Indian subjects registered predominantly positive experiences with their voices, not one American did. Rather, the U.S. subjects were more likely to report experiences as violent and hateful – and evidence of a sick condition. ref: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2014/07/voices-culture-luhrmann-071614 https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2014/07/voices-culture-luh...
      • crawfordcomeaux 1y ago
        I once accidentally came up with another conscious voice in my head & we decided to govern through the 12 traditions of Codependents Anonymous. She also had specific qualities I'd chosen 3 weeks prior as qualities I chose to believe I could come to embody, so that was an interesting pointer to what's possible. And as others have pointed out, it really depends what kind of programming you're carrying around. Feeling terrified of something isn't the issue...it's how you've trained to respond to terror that matters. If you lash out or avoid, yeah....don't cultivate multiple voices. If, instead, you're choosing to purge the addiction to violence & domination fairly rooted in American imperial colonial indoctrination, it's really quite something. I'm now working on bringing in 16 others as a way to better connect with different parts of the population and spread this and other blackness-embracing ways. Hearing/seeing things that aren't there has historically for the majority of humanity's time on Earth not been an issue. We can get back to living in such ways, especially since doing so can be extremely helpful.
    • PaulHoule 1y ago
      Dangerous to the autism-industrial complex and as well as the addictive stimulant industry.
      • WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
        > addictive stimulant industry. Whom I thank every day for repairing my retention processes, just enough that lessons become learning.
      • amanaplanacanal 1y ago
        Is this supposed to be some kind of diss for adhd stimulant therapy?
        • PaulHoule 1y ago
          Gotta a friend who’s 52 and has all his teeth rot out 10 years ago. He goes to Wegmans every month and comes back with a pill bottle the size of a small trashcan. He says he could get nothing done without out but I don’t see him getting anything done. Wouldn’t be surprised if will fall and break his hip 20 years early. I’ve seen plenty of those pills get diverted with outcomes like somebody stays up for 4 days and gets hospitalized so, yeah, I want to diss ADHD medication. It is clear it helps in the short term, not so clear if it helps in the long term.
          • fragmede 1y ago
            How scientific.
            • PaulHoule 1y ago
              https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35091797/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35091797/
              • WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
                Even that very limited study didn't link stim use to poor teeth - at all. As far as study went, this was it. • Stimulant ADHD medication use in adults is associated with decreased bone mineral in the skull and thoracic spine. • No other areas of axial or appendicular skeleton showed significant differences. • There was no dose-response effect between stimulant medication use and bone mineral density. • The overall effect of stimulant medications on adult bone health is unclear. ref: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9062265/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9062265/
  • gfody 1y ago
    many people hear voices and experience symptoms of schizophrenia while managing to keep their cool and thrive amongst the nerts. hearing-voices.org is a support network for such people
• JamesBarney 1y ago
  If genes that increase schizophrenic risk increases cognitive abilities you should find people who have high polygenic scores for schizophrenia without having schizophrenia test well on these cognitive abilities. I'm not aware of any of data that shows this in a convincing matter. I think I've seen a few small studies but nothing that replicated this on a large scale. And most of the studies show they score worse on cognitive abilities. The only conclusions I've come to are one of the following. 1. They improve cognitive abilities in some way we aren't good at measuring. 2. There is something about our modern environment that is more likely to trigger schizophrenia which has more recently increased the fitness penalty these genes confer.
  • deleted 1y ago
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  • pazimzadeh 1y ago
    seems like they should be good at finding solutions which require leveraging partial information, and generating a large quantity of ideas (which can contain quality) But the optimal thing might be to have a number of more typical/boring people to filter their ideas through, and that might be hard to test experimentally
• jonahbard 1y ago
  I wonder if Autism would be even simpler to explain with a cliff-edged fitness function. Because there seems to be a high correlation between extremely intelligent people and people on the spectrum. Maybe the group of genes rewarded for high intelligence/creativity/quantitative ability also, by accidental design, inhibits social capacity.
  • hyperhello 1y ago
    Is it possible that every non-typical presentation simply tells others in society to give them space enough to develop the intellect?
    • PaulHoule 1y ago
      Maybe it does when you are an adult but it can make childhood a disaster.
  • deleted 1y ago
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  • mandmandam 1y ago
    > Maybe the group of genes rewarded for high intelligence/creativity/quantitative ability also, by accidental design, inhibits social capacity. Maybe living in a world with neurotypical people who immediately dislike you [0] 'inhibits social capacity' after years of traumatic experiences piling up. 0 - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8992906/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8992906/
• cjbgkagh 1y ago
  I think people should study the RCCX gene cluster and link to giftedness more, I have TNXB SNPs which results in hEDS, but C4 SNPs have a similar effect and is likely to result in Schizophrenia. There are some cross over symptoms such as dopamine dysregulation and flat affect. I think dysautonomia and auto-immune plays a big part. Our lifestyles are very different than they used to be and this could be exacerbating auto-immune issues and as we get better at treating auto-immune conditions I expect we'll get better at treating Schizophrenia.
  • PaulHoule 1y ago
    Is there some puzzling chronic condition that isn’t on this list? https://me-pedia.org/wiki/RCCX_Genetic_Module_Theory https://me-pedia.org/wiki/RCCX_Genetic_Module_Theory
    • cjbgkagh 1y ago
      Of course there are. I'm guessing you're insinuating two things, it's highly improbable that individuals can have this many simultaneous issues, and it's impossible for medical researchers to miss such an anomaly. The Ehlers Danlos subset is shorter but still covers a huge amount of issues (https://ohtwist.com/about-eds/comorbidities https://ohtwist.com/about-eds/comorbidities). Well there is a reason why doctors kept telling me I am a hypochondriac, but I do have a whole zoo of conditions simultaneously, and this is a pretty common state for people with hEDS and I'm on the extreme end of it. So while milder versions of it are ~2% of the population the extreme versions of it are < 1/20K. And yeah, medical researchers are in fact in the aggregate really bad at their jobs. Look how long it took to convince surgeons to wash their hands. But a lot of the genetic stuff relies on Linear Regression for GWAS which assumes independents of SNPs, otherwise you get multicollinearity problems, this is not a safe assumption and they've confused their results as confirming their assumptions. Instead of listing everything they get wrong a much shorter list is what they get right, Dr Jessica Eccles (https://x.com/BendyBrain https://x.com/BendyBrain) does great research into Long Covid and Generalized Joint Hypermobility which should put to bed the theory that GJH is benign - still good luck trying to talk a doctor out of that train of thought. If you find someone who has hEDS the odds are they have a very large number of those things and most of them don't even know the names of most of the conditions, just one or two that bother them the most. The RCCX / hEDS list is a distinct subset of all possible things, the list of all medical maladies is far longer. It becomes highly improbable that a set of people have the same set of maladies - doctors tend to chalk this up to social contagion but that doesn't bear out. Genetic and behavioral causes have distinct diffusion patterns. It's confirmable with WGS which I've done and I've encouraged many others to do and it turns out that you can indeed predict with a great deal of reliability if someone has TNXB / CYP21A2 SNPs. Unfortunately it's harder to find people who have C4 since they're likely to have schizophrenia.
• suzzer99 1y ago
  I've lost one of my best friends to what I think is schizophrenia. We don't know because she's cut off all contact with friends and family and refuses to see a doctor. It's definitely psychosis. She thinks she's in some kind of Truman show that she calls "the game". Since none of her friends or family are willing to admit to it, then we must be in on it. We don't know her full family medical history because her dad was adopted. I do know that she was "microdosing" and macro-dosing hallucinogens for years. Mostly acid and shrooms as far as I know. She followed the band Phish around with a group of friends. I can't imagine most of those shows were sober. We've also seen a few incidents of paranoia when she was under the influence of drugs/alcohol going back decades. So it feels like this was always there in some form, but maybe the estrogen was holding it back before menopause hit. I read an article about women who get schizophrenia after menopause that suggested this could be the case. Anyway, whenever I see wellness healers and the like extolling the virtues of psilocybin, I want to point out that there could be a downside. We don't know that all of her hallucinogen use over the years contributed to this. But it's certainly a possibility.
  • winrid 1y ago
    If you have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia it's starting to seem like drugs that seem harmless like marijuana (specifically THC?) can definitely bring it out. At least, that's what seemed to happen to my mother and another friend.
    • amanaplanacanal 1y ago
      I also suspect people with schizophrenia that haven't yet started showing symptoms are more likely to take drugs.
      • crazygringo 1y ago
        Based on what?
        • cjbgkagh 1y ago
• Throwaway42754 1y ago
  I have schizoaffective disorder, induced by a bad trip from marijuana. It was like the 3rd time I had tried weed, and I naively took too much. For me psychosis feels like pattern matching going on extreme overdrive, while at the same time memory goes to shit. It's truly an awful illness, and what's worse is that the current medical treatments are bad. I've been fortunate enough where I can get by on a low dose olanzapine, but for many people they simply don't work at all. Even though I'm doing well enough to function normally and hold down a good, well paying job, it's impossible to find a partner. If I were to have kids, I would have to go through one of the embryo prescreening services. I am strongly in support of these screening services - the disease is truly horrible. There has been little progress on treatments for schizophrenia, the mechanism of action of these drugs has remained the same for decades. The side effects are almost as bad as the disease, which is why so many schizophrenic stop taking them. The only novel medication recently released is Cobenfy, which I have not tried yet. Personally I am holding out hope that schizophrenia has some basis as an autoimmune disease. There was a cancer patient who had a bone marrow transplant and ended up being cured: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/schizophrenia-psychiatric-disorders-immune-system.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/schizophre...
  • ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    I have family with that. The most striking thing, is the absolute certainty of the thinking. They feel as if their thinking is crystal-clear, and that they are the only one that "sees the patterns." Currently, they're doing well. I know of others, that are not so fortunate. It seems that pot is about the worst thing that a schizoaffective/schizophrenic person can use. They are better off chewing tabs of acid. I've not used it in about 45 years, and I've heard that today's pot is a heck of a lot stronger than what I remember.
    • pfannkuchen 1y ago
      Can I ask how you are sure they haven’t had some novel insight that you just don’t currently understand? Like maybe they are bad at explaining but whatever pattern they noticed is valid? I’m not defending them as I don’t know any details, I’m just curious how you came to be certain about your assessment.
• damion6 1y ago
  Schizophrenia is genetic. So you're born with it. This makes zero sense. Maybe you mean shizo-effective which usually has to do with traumas.
  • 11217mackem 1y ago
    Nobody is born with schizophrenia.
    • thephyber 1y ago
      Parent most likely meant you are born with the predisposition for it to present when it usually does.
      • 11217mackem 1y ago
        ~10%
      • 11217mackem 1y ago
        I also happened to have a schizophrenic father. So I looked into this one a little bit :D
  • timewizard 1y ago
    Induced schizophrenia is well known. Your brain is not a machine. It's several independent chunks of meat that were assembled in situ. There are more failure modes than operational modes.
  • sakoht 1y ago
    The odd thing is that among identical twins when one has it the other has it roughly 50% of the time. Which suggests that having the generic basis still requires something external, and it is common but not too common.
• K0balt 1y ago
  Random layperson musing: I wonder if schizophrenia (or perhaps psychosis) could be in some way analogous to the LLM temperature function becoming disregulated? I mean, what is the extreme opposite of psychosis? If it is matter of degree, which it seems to be, then there is probably a tuning mechanism. Perhaps too little and you fail to account for factors that might not be apparent but might be guessed or inferred, too much, and too much seems plausible. If so it would be possible to have a great deal of different “causes” given the tight and complex coupling of biological mechanisms.
  • jackcosgrove 1y ago
    There was a theory that autism and schizophrenia were opposite ends of a spectrum, but it's fallen into disfavor. The theory went that autism produces mechanical, rigid thought patterns while schizophrenia takes free association too far. I think it is possible to be diagnosed with both schizophrenia and autism which is why the theory is not considered anymore.
    • K0balt 1y ago
      Interesting. I wouldn’t have intuited autism as being on the opposing end of psychosis, really, at least not based on my experience of both in my family.
      • bottom999mottob 1y ago
        I think your LLM temperature analogy is interesting in this deprecated dichotomy between autism and schizophrenia. One Youtuber Jreg used a breadth-first search (schizophrenia) vs depth-first search (autism) analogy when comparing the the two, but I think your temperature analogy is more apt. Higher temperature results in more disorganized thoughts like schizophrenia. And if you buy into the idea that the root of most schizophrenia is thought disorders, then this analogy implies that dialing up temperature corresponds to more signs of psychosis through speech My experience with many friends on the autism spectrum is that their speech tends to be more scripted, but I certainly don't think autism and psychosis are mutually exclusive.
• subpixel 1y ago
  Schizophrenia can coexist with extreme levels of intelligence and lucidity. A schizophrenic member of my family argued in divorce court that her husband, a leading physician at one of the most famous medical institutions in the world, was secretly involved in outrageous nefarious activities. The stories were all fiction but she was so convincing that the judge awarded her a ruling in the divorce that ruined her husband financially and took an emotional toll.
  • blueprint 1y ago
    I wouldn't exactly call it intelligent to lie to a court ;) Perhaps another descriptor would be more precise? For that matter, can one be "truly lucid" if one lies in such a manner?
    • barrenko 1y ago
      Lucidity is a feeling let's say. And the stuff you feel it "about" does necessarily mean that the stuff is legit. Or to quote Moby Dick ~ "Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form..."
    • sethammons 1y ago
      People lie in court all day every day. If you think everyone is being honest, you are delusional and must not be truly lucid. Note, I don't question your lucidity. But hope it shows the fallacy of your logic train.
    • ryanjshaw 1y ago
      People with schizophrenia are often not lying, they really believe the bizarre things they say. How do you know what your brain is telling you is true?
  • renewiltord 1y ago
    An alternative explanation is that the judge was stupid.
• alganet 1y ago
  Completely anectodal: Right after the time I was diagnosed (~36), I started to become weirdly good at some stuff. Music, for example. I've been playing for almost two decades and couldn't progress after a certain level. This changed almost overnight, and I started to learn new instruments very quickly (now I play guitar, bass, drums and piano). I'm not a genius at them, it's not what I'm trying to say. It's just that the pace at which I learn is very different from when I was younger, I can do things I never imagined being able to do. Somehow, I also acquired some ambidextry. This might be due to learning the instruments. I now can write with both hands (not at the same time, dominant hand is still faster and more acurate). I also developed a second, completely different handwriting (now I have two "fonts" I can use naturally). I got worse at dealing with people. Everyone seems to be in a haze from my point of view, and it discourages any kind of meaningful relationship. I can pretend though. I am highly skeptical of the idea that any genetic component is involved in all of this (my father was ambidextrous though, but he acquired it in childhood), it seems purely psychological. I am also skeptical about the stereotypical triggers people often associate schizophrenia to. Last year I was reading about Havana Syndrome. That was the thing that most resonated with the kinds of psychotic events I had. Weird sounds and voices that seem to come from nowhere, dizziness, balance problems, insomnia, headaches. By the time I got to a doctor, these effects were not there anymore (they last a very short time, at least for me). I was diagnosed by describing them to the psychiatrist. Since the first episode, it has happened again a handful of times. I have learned since that Havana syndrome is not a thing anymore, but there are no official explanations other than "it's likely to be psychogenic". I also wouldn't qualify for it (apparently, only diplomats and spies had it).
  • jongjong 1y ago
    Could be age related. I could never play a musical instrument until my mid thirties. Nobody in my family could. My wife found a Ukulele which was left on the side of the road and which was in good condition and took it home. I started playing just randomly tugging strings to understand the sounds and I kept doing that maybe 10 to 30 mins a day for about 2 months and the tunes became less and less random and now I can improvise full 1 to 2 minute melodies on the spot with multiple strings. I don't need to plan the melody ahead of time I just pick a few notes that go well together then I pick some starting notes and I just intuitively know how to join them together into a full piece. It's like when I play some notes, my fingers themselves resist certain bad notes and whatever note I end up choosing (high pitch or low pitch) seems to work out every time.
• daft_pink 1y ago
  After reading this article, I’m really curious how you would model all kinds of other reproduction reducing behaviors that have become popular in recent years and how they many generations it will take them to be squeezed out of our culture. Like say taking care of a pet instead of having a kid in Korea.
  • sandspar 1y ago
    One plausible explanation is that birth and childhood have become much less dangerous. Before 1900, children with poor genes died; since 1900, children with poor genes survive and have children of their own.
    • rixed 1y ago
      My understanding of high child mortality rates in the past is that it has little to do with genetics, and more to do with infectious diseases and poor hygiene.
• zingababba 1y ago
  Julian Jaynes' theory is always interesting to think about. I self-diagnosed myself as schizophrenic in my late teens and I still stand by my diagnosis 20 years later. I do believe it is a spectrum though and the degree to which one is schizophrenic is not static, and I don't think it's even necessarily a bad thing.
  • anonymars 1y ago
    I assume you mean the bicameral mind / consciousness?
• absurdo 1y ago
  As expected a lot of the comments here are anecdotes. I’m assuming there exists a class of highly technical articles that get posted regularly that incite ancillary discussion, but no real contribution involving the article. For me, I don’t like that this is about a mathematical model. I don’t want a mathematical model. I like the theory, and I think it’s interesting. I don’t need further digressions into a model. I want to see the real thing. Prove it, replicate it, codify it.
• bettercallsalad 1y ago
  As someone who is currently dating someone with history of psychosis, I have vested interest. 90% of the time she is truly the most amazing, compassionate, full of life and thoughtful person one can ever meet. Then there are times when it’s truly awful. She can barely sleep at all, leaves house without telling anyone seemingly thinking the presence of third person around. And she strongly feels others around are judging her hard, giving non verbal communication. It’s truly awful. I didn’t know to the full extent her symptoms when we started dating. But one thing that was clear was she could barely sleep at night. Or sleep too long. There was no “normal sleep cycle”. Over the time, some triggers are noticeable. Places with crowds, bright lighting, or sometimes stress at work. Aripaprazole so far seems to be holding up, no one knows for how long. I hear meds become resistant at some point. I don’t know what future holds. Kids are probably not an option. Although she very much wants it.
  • Natsu 1y ago
    Did you ever check for sleep apnea? The tests for it can be done at home now if anxiety would otherwise be a concern.
  • nandomrumber 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • idiotsecant 1y ago
      Did you just suggest that lactating might cure schizophrenia?
      • Dilettante_ 1y ago
        Big Pharma doesn't want you to know this /j
      • nandomrumber 1y ago
        Did you just suggest that hormones don’t play a roll in mental health?
  • 1y ago
• sakoht 1y ago
  The article suggests a possible model where the schizophrenia is an extreme linear progression. But the inability to find a culprit genes suggests something more complex. It is possible that there are is a group of genes that all have variations that confers benefit, but when those variations are all together negative effects occur. That makes the positive variants overall beneficial, and keeps them in the gene pool. This is why it is dangerous to presume that when we correlate genetic variants with disease and then presume they should go away. In fact, nearly any inherited disease that has survived may be conferring value to other individual when in proper partnership with other genetic profiles.
  • FollowingTheDao 1y ago
    This is true for every population. For instance, the price of protecting many African populations from malaria is sickle cell disease. But I think environment plays a bigger role in modern society to increase the risk of mood disorders than genetics alone.
• discoutdynamite 1y ago
  For your consideration: the theory of "Positive Disintegration" developed by Kasimir Dabrowski does help to explain the capacity and reality of schizotypal disorders. The easiest way to explain it, is that human brain potential for "over-excitation" leads to personality development; this is natural and human. The stages of personality development are not guaranteed to succeed and proceed correctly. Most cases of schizophrenia may be a result of failed re-organization, or a failure to develop the final, executive, function. In cases of "arrested development," this process may be delayed till later in life. This is the so-called mid-life-crisis, which also can fail, and then you get adult onset schizophrenia. This is all emerging research thats usually locked up in foreign language journals. Almost no medicine to be sold here, AMA and APA are not interested...
• boston_clone 1y ago
  Very worth it to read the follow up research paper that moves away from this cliff-edge hypothesis, highlights other ambiguities, and attempts some self-correction. https://www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/the-evolutionary-genetics-of-schizophrenia https://www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/the-evolutionary-genetic... In any case, a fascinating read and well-worth it to explore the linked citations, especially by Crow and Nesse.
• FollowingTheDao 1y ago
  The problem with this whole line of thought is that the human environment since the neolithic period has changed. It also does not take into account the huge amount of human relocation that’s taken place over the last 200 years. For example, we have a large number of Africans that are now living in climate that are much colder than what they evolved to live in. The same as truth for northern Europeans, who lived in cold, cloudy climate now living in sunny, warm climates. Does anyone hear really think that that wouldn’t affect the populations mental health? We know schizophrenia genes are almost always risk genes, meaning their polygenic, or they don’t cause schizophrenia, and everyone who carries the genetics. There are a very few number of cases of people who carry genes that directly caused schizophrenia. So it’s quite possible that schizophrenia did not exist as frequently as it does in the modern world, a world filled with pollution, stress, drugs, aldehydes, bad food, and on and on and on. But let’s just take migration. It is a well-known risk factor for schizophrenia. See the paper below. https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1176/appi.ajp.162.1.12 https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1176/appi.ajp.162.1.... So no schizophrenia is not the price we pay for mine poison near the edge of a cliff, it’s the price we pay for technology. The technology that enabled not only all the wonderful things to get, but also all the horrible things that come with it. I had schizoaffective disorder, and I have essentially cured it. But I really can’t say it’s a cure because what was happening was there was a Mitch match between my genetics in my environment. It’s like curing yourself from celiac by not eating wheat. Celiac is only a disease if you eat wheat. So I am one of these involuntarily relocated people because of capitalism. My great great grandparents on my mother side were Sami and I still carry those genetics. Changing my environment and changing my diet changed my life. Frankly, I’m tired of these articles saying that there’s no cure for mental illnesses and it’s just a price we pay.
  • bottom999mottob 1y ago
    I'm curious how you've cured your schizoaffective disorder? Diet?
    • FollowingTheDao 1y ago
      I’ve made a very long reply to another comment that explains everything. As well as I can at least.
• drgo 1y ago
  Is it possible that the pro-schizophrenia genes persist because they offer other (non-neurological) benefits, e.g., lower risk of cancer? Siblings of patients with schizophrenia are less likely to develop cancer, and in several studies these patients had lower risk of developing cancer despite higher prevalence of smoking.
  • FollowingTheDao 1y ago
    There’s no such thing as a “pro schizophrenia genes”. There are only genes that increase the risk of schizophrenia, and this is probably due to environmental variables. Exchanging a risk for cancer for a risk of schizophrenia is not a win-win situation. You’re just switching one set of risk genes for another.
    • ekaryotic 1y ago
      >Exchanging a risk for cancer for a risk of schizophrenia is not a win-win situation But it can be though. Consider a population that works with carcinogens like coal. due to capitalist class structures, they cannot leave their occupation, so a gene that would increase their survivability would be a great help.
      • dustbunny 1y ago
        Schizophrenia is far more likely to prevent you from reproducing than cancer, because schizophrenia hits way earlier.
        • FollowingTheDao 1y ago
          Yes, this is what I was going to comment, and adding that it was funny they used a coal miner as an example since my family side that has the mood disorders were all coal miners in central PA.
    • 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
      > There are only genes that increase the risk of schizophrenia I think that's what GP was saying? > You’re just switching one set of risk genes for another. I think... that's what GP was saying?
• voidhorse 1y ago
  The cliff theory is an interesting one. I don't have any kind of schizo propensity, to my knowledge, but I did, for a brief period of my life, have what I call a "firemind" experience. During that period I spent an unhealthy amount of time alone. I also spent tons of time reading. During that time the ability of my brain to free-associate seemed to absolutely explode. I felt like I could see a pattern or form a connection between almost anything whatsoever. I read symbolism in everything. The few times I did see friends during that time, I remember them being kind of shocked at the callbacks, linkages, etc. that I was able to fire off instantaneously at the board game table. My brian no longer works like this. I underwent several lifestyle changes and it seemed to really rewire me. I'm much more logical in my thinking now, but it's taken practice, and the shift was gradual. Every now and then I kind of miss the "semiotic aptitude" I had in those days, but I wonder if I was really just teetering on the edge of a cliff. Maybe a few more months of isolation would have pushed me over the edge.
• boardwaalk 1y ago
  Though it doesn’t mention it by name exactly, I think a related idea for systems that are optimized close to a point of phase change is “the edge of chaos” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_chaos https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_chaos
  • gsf_emergency_2 1y ago
    Trading stability for agility, basically? https://www.humanfactors.lth.se/fileadmin/lusa/Sidney_Dekker/articles/2006/TR2006-03_PastEdgeofChaos.pdf https://www.humanfactors.lth.se/fileadmin/lusa/Sidney_Dekker...
• bryanrasmussen 1y ago
  >The persistence of schizophrenia is an evolutionary enigma how much schizophrenia is actually going to manifest in peak procreating years?
  • throw-qqqqq 1y ago
    I have two relatives with schizophrenia. Both had onset in their mid 20s.
    • bryanrasmussen 1y ago
      yeah but a sizeable part of the discussion here has been about women with menopause starting to show schizophrenic behaviors. So that might be a significant amount of the schizophrenic cases in the population.
      • throw-qqqqq 1y ago
        > So that might be a significant amount of the schizophrenic cases in the population I dont think they are. Most are diagnosed in their teens or early twenties. Women slightly later than men. Women diagnosed in their menopause are not a majority of diagnosed schizophrenics; far from. I understood that part as merely a curiosity.
        • bryanrasmussen 1y ago
          OK, I just figured if there were specific large groups of schizophrenics that manifested outside of prime procreative years that it might be a reason for it to not be such an evolutionary mystery. Of course it was unlikely this was the case as surely some of the people claiming evolutionary mystery would have thought of it and ran the data.
  • rozab 1y ago
    Reproductive fitness does not end as soon as offspring are born. Maximising the likelihood of genetic continuation is a lifelong endeavor.
• cageface 1y ago
  Maybe this could explain why mental illness & creativity seem to be so closely related? Just as one example, James Joyce's daughter was schizophrenic.
  • kayodelycaon 1y ago
    Mental illness and creativity are not closely related. There is correlation but mental illness is not required for creativity. According to Wikipedia, creative people are 25% more likely to have a mental illness. As for why so many bipolar people are famous, manic episodes can be very productive. For myself, being bipolar has given me several lifetimes of perspective to inform my writing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity_and_mental_health https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity_and_mental_health
    • andrewflnr 1y ago
      > Mental illness and creativity are not closely related. There is correlation What do you think a correlation is if not a relationship? No one said it was "required".
      • kayodelycaon 1y ago
        Yeah. I wasn’t clear. I do not believe that 1 and 1.25 is considered “close”. There’s absolutely a correlation, enough to be causation. But it doesn’t make mental illness a primary factor in creativity in modern society.
    • bumby 1y ago
      Not my area of expertise, so it should be taken with a boulder of salt, but there are other studies that seem to indicate a much higher correlation. Part of the problem may be that “creative” is a nebulous term. One Swedish study found that people with artistic backgrounds have a 1.9x likelihood of developing schizophrenia and 1.62x odds of developing bipolar disorder. I suspect (with nothing to support it) that there is a range where people with mental illness are able to interpret the world differently than normies (and thus make connections that normies do not), but also a point where that perception gets so out of joint that they can no longer function in reality. So in the former case, it may help in creative pursuits, but the latter may hamper it.
• woodpanel 1y ago
  Interesting article. Also a good amount too high above the paygrade for me to decipher all concepts in it, but as someone who had close contact with schizophrenics a lot, I was missing one aspect in particular: All schizophrenics I know didn’t start as obvious psychopaths, but rather have their personal „cliff“ usually around an age associated with hormonal changes (eg early twenties, menopause). So in other words the negative selection effects aren’t there until after reproduction.
  • deleted 1y ago
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• storus 1y ago
  Isn't it due to synaptic pruning going wrong, a sort of off-by-one error of a gene tagging synapses for deletion?
• HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago
  Genetics is messy - as I understand it most genes don't code for a single thing, so assuming evolution is "selecting for schizophrenia" that only implies that there is an evolutionary benefit to some of the things controlled by the same gene(s) that control schizophrenia, that outweighs the disadvantage of schizophrenia. Homosexuality is interesting from this perspective too - common enough that evolution has to be selecting for it, yet basically fatal to reproduction, so what are the benefits that evolution is selecting for? Is it advantageous to groups, or maybe the same genes confer an individual benefit to non-homosexuals?
  • no_wizard 1y ago
    I always wondered if it was natures check on overpopulation. I know that is controversial to say, but it seems most fitting on its face
    • HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago
      My best guess it that there is a societal/group benefit in reducing aggression (maybe not unrelated to they way our closest DNA match, Bonobos, function). I don't think we're at the point yet, and certainly not in last few million years of evolution, where overpopulation is an issue, and since evolution is all about (collectively) creating the largest next-generation population, this isn't the way I would expect to see increased competition for resources to play out.
    • missedthecue 1y ago
      Do rural populations have lower rates of homosexuals as a % of offspring? How would nature "know" we are overpopulated and bias towards homosexuals?
  • Fraterkes 1y ago
    For evolution to “select” for homosexuality, wouldn’t it have to be hereditary in large part? As far as I can tell, to the extent that theres any evidence for that the effect of genes on sexuality is kinda limited
• natnat 1y ago
  This reminds me of the "Natural engagement pattern" sketch that Mark Zuckerberg made about facebook content back in 2018: https://www.facebook.com/notes/751449002072082/ https://www.facebook.com/notes/751449002072082/ Content gets more engagement as it gets closer to the "policy line" of getting banned, and in a competitive information environment (an engagement maximizing algorithm) you end up with a lot of content close to the border of what's allowed.
  • aspenmayer 1y ago
    Facebook is hostile to archive sites, so I am quoting this link for discussion purposes: https://pastebin.com/S4bWZpma https://pastebin.com/S4bWZpma
• Mistletoe 1y ago
  > Let’s say schizophrenia is associated with a 50% loss of reproductive fitness in 1% of the population (and there is no offsetting benefit in the rest of the population), then it would take roughly 180 generations to cut the rate in half and about 560 generations to reduce it to one-tenth of its original value (Mitteroecker & Merola, 2024). We’ve had a comparable number of generations since the Neolithic era, but as far as we know, the prevalence of schizophrenia has not decreased in the manner anticipated. What if the number we experience now IS 1/10 of what it used to be? Would explain a lot of religious talking to God in the past.
• scotty79 1y ago
  Do you think schizoid personality disorder has actually anything in common with schizophrenia, apart from aptitude and even preference for social isolation?
• tempestn 1y ago
  This is fascinating, and makes me wonder if human intelligence itself is such a cliff edge trait. For most of human history our advanced intelligence has obviously been a benefit, but now we see, as people and societies become wealthier and better educated (both correlated with intelligence), their reproduction rates drop precipitously. Perhaps we've overshot the intelligence cliff and evolution is now gradually pulling us back. (Evidence of this would be less intelligent people having more children on average than more intelligent ones.)
  • staunton 1y ago
    Humanity is changing so quickly nowadays, biological evolution most likely doesn't matter at all anymore, at least for the kind of questions and time scales you're discussing.
    • heavyset_go 1y ago
      Humanity is still subject to evolutionary pressures. We are "natural" and what we do is "natural", and if something like our environment were to drastically change as an evolutionary pressure, selection would absolutely happen. Consider a change in environment where, for example, oxygen levels drastically drop. That might make living at altitude deadly for those who don't have genetic adaptions to high altitude living. As an extreme example, in ~500 million+ years when the sun starts expanding, you can bet natural selection will finish off non-extremophiles that aren't living deep within the Earth.
      • staunton 1y ago
        Sure, I never claimed otherwise. What I'm saying is that evolution matters across large timescales. By contrast, I believe the topics I was commenting on concern timescales where effects of biological evolution are negligible compared to the effects of memetic evolution. Thus, biological evolution doesn't matter at all for predicting what will happen (or is happening right now) to humanity, unless predicting so far into the future as to be completely futile speculation (imagine someone 200 years ago wondering how biological evolution might affect humanity during the next couple thousand years).
• Animats 1y ago
  "The persistence of schizophrenia is an evolutionary enigma. It is a disabling psychiatric condition that reduces the likelihood of having children, and yet it has roughly 1% lifetime prevalence worldwide. Traditional evolutionary hypotheses, such as those invoking kin selection, mutation-selection balance, and evolutionary mismatch don’t quite explain this." Much the same could be said for gayness. If it were genetic, it should have been eliminated by evolution by now. Which suggests that it's not. There are some differences in incidence of schizophrenia in populations.[1] Birth order matters, slightly, with prevalence higher for firstborns. (This is the reverse of homosexuality and left-handedness.) Migrants have higher rates of schizophrenia than non-migrants. Women vs. men, about the same. Rural vs. urban, about the same. What the original paper suggests is that they didn't discover anything significant. It's more like a discussion of feedback control problems near a cliff, but by people who don't know about that part of control theory. The title is overly dramatic for the results. [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020141 https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
  • hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
    > Much the same could be said for gayness. If it were genetic, it should have been eliminated by evolution by now. Which suggests that it's not. There are very plausible explanations for the genetic basis of gayness. One is that being gay is essentially a "byproduct" of higher fecundity in women - I'd have to search for the study, but gay men with sisters tend to have sisters with more kids than the norm. The other is the "guncle" hypothesis (which is related to the previous one). While gay men and women do not have their own biological children (at least through gay relationships), they are able to spend additional resources on their nieces and nephews. Anecdotal obviously, but it certainly worked this way in my family. As a guncle I helped pay for my niece's education (and was happy to do so because I don't have to care for children of my own ).
  • yorpinn 1y ago
    "My intuition doesn't explain something, therefore my prejudice is justified." Evolutionary psychology functions better as a tool to present one's prejudices as neutral and without ideology or politics than it does for explaining the world.
• ninetyninenine 1y ago
  Homosexuality is a similar prevalent trait.
  • Aeglaecia 1y ago
    gay uncle theory is good enough of an explanation for me personally
    • ninetyninenine 1y ago
      Never held water for me. There's no evidence that gay uncles expend the majority of their time raising the offspring of others in the family. In fact the gay uncle is behaviorally driven to do things that are evolutionarily detrimental. Like spending time mating, flirting and being with other gay men. I don't really see gay men abandoning all of that to care for a nephew or something like that. Take Sam Altman for example. He's not spending time caring for other kids in his immediately family. He's sinking time into getting rich from openAI and snogging his current partner. The gay uncle gives about as much of a shit about nephews in the family as the straight uncle which is virtually for all intents and purposes: zilch.
      • Aeglaecia 1y ago
        maybe theres a reason religion represses gay people, without the pressure of raising their own offspring there is 0 barrier to overt hedonism. lacking the opportunity to live this way and instead existing under a system of morality, the energy of gay people would naturally be inclined towards taking care of their own family, especially when a sibling dies in battle or by disease
        • ninetyninenine 1y ago
          They must participate in capitalism or trade and other activities that help survival. I don't think it just switches to doing favors.
          • 1y ago
• janalsncm 1y ago
  > They computed a polygenic risk score for schizophrenia for each participant, calculated by summing the weighted effects of thousands of risk alleles. I am not an expert by any means, but this analysis only makes sense if we assume there is a strictly linear relationship between alleles. It will not capture nonlinear relationships.
• 8bitsrule 1y ago
  R.D. Laing was saying the same things 50 years ago. " We must remember that we are living in an age in which the ground is shifting and the foundations are shaking. I cannot answer for other times and places. Perhaps it has always been so. We know it is true today. In these circumstances, we have all reason to be insecure. When the ultimate basis of our world is in question, we run to different holes in the ground; we scurry into roles, statuses, identities, interpersonal relations. We attempt to live in castles that can only be in the air, because there is no firm ground in the social cosmos on which to build." "Sanity today appears to rest very largely on a capacity to adapt to the external world — the interpersonal world, and the realm of human collectivities. As this external human world is almost completely and totally estranged from the inner, any personal direct awareness of the inner world already entails grave risks."
• r33b33 1y ago
  If you have caution and paranoia about potentially being schizophrenic, does that mean it's less likely to manifest due to extreme self-awareness? I have been diagnosed with BPD, psychosis (sometimes) and depression, but I think I'm too aware when it comes to shizhophrenia.
• zahlman 1y ago
  > For instance, if schizophrenia risk genes were not under positive selection, we would expect them to be purged from the gene pool over thousands of years.... Let’s say schizophrenia is associated with a 50% loss of reproductive fitness in 1% of the population (and there is no offsetting benefit in the rest of the population), then it would take roughly 180 generations to cut the rate in half and about 560 generations to reduce it to one-tenth of its original value (Mitteroecker & Merola, 2024). We’ve had a comparable number of generations since the Neolithic era, but as far as we know, the prevalence of schizophrenia has not decreased in the manner anticipated. ... Okay, but you already acknowledged that > The process will be slow, but it will happen (this is not the same as saying schizophrenia itself can be eliminated, since it is highly polygenic and the pool of risk genes is not static). So how do we know that modern-day schizophrenia isn't caused by a different set of genes? Maybe the Neolithic ones have been dying out from the gene pool, but new ones have consistently managed to keep replacing them. New genes can start contributing to the incidence of schizophrenia right away; even if they're otherwise neutral, they but won't die out due to the marginal effect on schizophrenia incidence for a very long time (much longer than the calculation above - since each one is, as we already established, causing only part of the loss in reproductive fitness). They don't need to be under positive selection, unless I've misunderstood something.
• Raphell 1y ago
  I know someone who had a clear psychotic break and still hasn't fully recovered. The scariest part wasn't when he lost control. It was that he truly believed everything made perfect sense. The more you tried to care for him, the more he thought you were acting and trying to manipulate him.
• rbanffy 1y ago
  Don't we see something similar with how very smart people seem to be prone to fall for conspiracy theories?
• deleted 1y ago
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• tonymillion 1y ago
  Schizophrenia is the price we pay for owning a Cat https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38041862/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38041862/