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"better than average" Around here, to get hired as a police officer or a deputy, one has to pass quite a rigorous background check. I once had a girlfriend wh

"better than average" Around here, to get hired as a police officer or a deputy, one has to pass quite a rigorous background check. I once had a girlfriend who described herself as "a former law enforcement officer". She never called herself a "police officer" or a "sheriff's deputy", however she was quite expert at handling firearms. I eventually concluded that she had been a Cadet for the Sheriff, that is, a trainee. The Cadets assist with various law enforcement work but they never actually carry out the actual enforcement. I figure that someone clued in to that she was mentally ill. I fear my hallucations; she shoots at them!

TeMPOraL 12y ago
> I fear my hallucations; she shoots at them! Welcome to XXI century, it's becoming harder and harder to tell hallucinations from reality apart. Hell, nowadays you can't call paranoid someone thinking government is watching everything, because he's actually right.
- MichaelCrawford 12y ago
  Mental illness is cultural in nature, in that we can't really say that schizophrenia in the United States is quite the same thing as schizophrenia in, say, West Africa. Consider that at one time it was quite common for the mentally ill to consider themselves to be the emperor of france, or at least some manner of royalty. Now I myself - not at the moment, but not long ago at all - was completely convinced that I was a clandestine operative for the United States Marine Corps Joint Forces Cyber Command. How I arrived at that conclusion is a little hard to explain, however I have lots of completely rational explanations, for example I really did apply to the USAF Cyber Command when it was announced at Slashdot back in 2008. There are other little dots here and there. When you see a bunch of dots on a printed page, do you see a picture? Among the natures of psychosis, is that I see connections that most people don't. You'd connect the dots and you'd see a smiley face or a bumblebee. I'd connect the dots and I'd see myself as James Bond.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Thank you for elaborating on the topic. I didn't mean to snark on mental illnesses - it just occurred to me that a lot of things that are classically associated with delusions are becoming the part of reality, so it's only going to get harder to determine what is true and what is just imagination.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

> I fear my hallucations; she shoots at them! Welcome to XXI century, it's becoming harder and harder to tell hallucinations from reality apart. Hell, nowadays you can't call paranoid someone thinking government is watching everything, because he's actually right.

MichaelCrawford 12y ago
Mental illness is cultural in nature, in that we can't really say that schizophrenia in the United States is quite the same thing as schizophrenia in, say, West Africa. Consider that at one time it was quite common for the mentally ill to consider themselves to be the emperor of france, or at least some manner of royalty. Now I myself - not at the moment, but not long ago at all - was completely convinced that I was a clandestine operative for the United States Marine Corps Joint Forces Cyber Command. How I arrived at that conclusion is a little hard to explain, however I have lots of completely rational explanations, for example I really did apply to the USAF Cyber Command when it was announced at Slashdot back in 2008. There are other little dots here and there. When you see a bunch of dots on a printed page, do you see a picture? Among the natures of psychosis, is that I see connections that most people don't. You'd connect the dots and you'd see a smiley face or a bumblebee. I'd connect the dots and I'd see myself as James Bond.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Thank you for elaborating on the topic. I didn't mean to snark on mental illnesses - it just occurred to me that a lot of things that are classically associated with delusions are becoming the part of reality, so it's only going to get harder to determine what is true and what is just imagination.