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He devoted the last few years of his life attempting to prove himself wrong by sharing his property and belongings with the homeless, only to become more depres

He devoted the last few years of his life attempting to prove himself wrong by sharing his property and belongings with the homeless, only to become more depressed when some of them stole from him and he was eventually evicted. No wonder his biography is called The Price of Altruism. As one of the most important figures in the last forty years of evolutionary theory, he would make an excellent addition to this list of geniuses with bizarre beliefs: http://kruel.co/2014/05/30/highly-intelligent-and-successful-people-who-hold-weird-beliefs/#sthash.N53BYtps.GK0qdgmj.dpbs http://kruel.co/2014/05/30/highly-intelligent-and-successful... For me, stories like this symbolize the incredible compartmentalization of the brain - we can think with complete clarity about the focus of our intellectual passions, and still not have a clue about the rest.

whybroke 11y ago
While one can develop strange beliefs in fields one knows little about, it does sound like he in particular may have been suffering from Schizophrenia. The inability to function, the depression you describe and (at the risk of courting trouble for criticizing religion) his report of visions and extreme religious convictions are pretty overwhelming indicators. Mind you, a diagnosis at a distance is obviously tenuous but it's pretty clear his problems we more likely biological than caused by generosity. There are after all hundreds of billionaires who give away vast percentages of their wealth and do not fall into a deathly depression over it.
0359B02149AB 11y ago
I don't agree with that, on the compartmentalization of the brain. Some of what we think in one compartment of the brain can work concurrently in another part of the brain, which can cause us to make all sorts of irrational leaps of reasoning that we abstract over and call logic or rationalization. It's pattern matching, and some people get too carried away with it, because that pattern matching is typically what initially marked them as intelligent by everyone else, and it works, most of the time, except when we have paradoxes, which we just cover up with more symbolic logic, because we'd prefer to explain logic with more logic, than explain it with common sense. Some people can think with perfect clarity and be seen as crazy by everyone else, just because people seem to want to observe things that way. I mean, consider how the homeless who stole from this man may think. Many patterns of which to reason with, none of which are purely mathematical or logical. I mean, on one hand, we use these things we've been taught mark intelligence and cunning, half truths dressed up in eloquent, alluring, and rhetorically deceptive wording, the rhythm and tempo of each sentence. On the other hand, it's only the correlation between the Harvard 4.0 GPA and being fascinated with the random dreams and images one's mind presents to oneself day to day. You don't have to literally hallucinate in order to become convinced that your hallucinations are real. That's often a problem with language - day to day, we think some of it literally exists, and it doesn't (or we at least can not prove that it does). I don't know what George Price symbolizes, because I don't pretend to understand him. But it gives me something to think about that is new.

whybroke 11y ago

While one can develop strange beliefs in fields one knows little about, it does sound like he in particular may have been suffering from Schizophrenia. The inability to function, the depression you describe and (at the risk of courting trouble for criticizing religion) his report of visions and extreme religious convictions are pretty overwhelming indicators. Mind you, a diagnosis at a distance is obviously tenuous but it's pretty clear his problems we more likely biological than caused by generosity. There are after all hundreds of billionaires who give away vast percentages of their wealth and do not fall into a deathly depression over it.

0359B02149AB 11y ago

I don't agree with that, on the compartmentalization of the brain. Some of what we think in one compartment of the brain can work concurrently in another part of the brain, which can cause us to make all sorts of irrational leaps of reasoning that we abstract over and call logic or rationalization. It's pattern matching, and some people get too carried away with it, because that pattern matching is typically what initially marked them as intelligent by everyone else, and it works, most of the time, except when we have paradoxes, which we just cover up with more symbolic logic, because we'd prefer to explain logic with more logic, than explain it with common sense. Some people can think with perfect clarity and be seen as crazy by everyone else, just because people seem to want to observe things that way. I mean, consider how the homeless who stole from this man may think. Many patterns of which to reason with, none of which are purely mathematical or logical. I mean, on one hand, we use these things we've been taught mark intelligence and cunning, half truths dressed up in eloquent, alluring, and rhetorically deceptive wording, the rhythm and tempo of each sentence. On the other hand, it's only the correlation between the Harvard 4.0 GPA and being fascinated with the random dreams and images one's mind presents to oneself day to day. You don't have to literally hallucinate in order to become convinced that your hallucinations are real. That's often a problem with language - day to day, we think some of it literally exists, and it doesn't (or we at least can not prove that it does). I don't know what George Price symbolizes, because I don't pretend to understand him. But it gives me something to think about that is new.