> I used to work [as a psychiatrist] in the business district of San Francisco, meaning I got to see a lot of very high-functioning people with mental disorders. I was constantly surprised how many people - while genuinely suffering from their conditions - also seem to be succeeding partly because of them. The bipolar programmer who is nonfunctional half the year, but his company keeps him on anyway because he codes at an absolutely superhuman level of brilliance while manic. The obsessive-compulsive cybersecurity expert who finds weaknesses everybody else missed. The endless line of autistic people succeeding in math-heavy jobs, exactly the way the stereotypes would predict.
>
> When I was in medical school, the joke (not really a joke) was that everyone with ADHD went into emergency medicine. I've since treated a couple of doctors with ADHD, and sure enough they are all in emergency medicine. But now I'm in the Bay Area, and the joke is that everyone with ADHD founds a startup. [...] though I should also mention just how disproportionately people with ADHD become salespeople. [...]
>
> (If it weren't for medical confidentiality laws, I think I could make a fortune running a combination psychiatric clinic / employment agency. [...] It'd be great!)
There seems to be a strategy of warping your views to match those of the dominant male in your household be it husband/father/son. Maybe this is a workable strategy that can be employed to great effect.
I think this is one of those cases of survivorship bias. You're not counting all of the crazy people who end up living in cardboard boxes. The husband's eventual good fortune was essentially random chance--he could just as easily have not been hurt, or died, or the community could have turned against him.
Certainly I see your argument--being just a little neurologically different can make people seek out underused economic niches, or to see connections others don't, or in this case, to believe their own nonsense. But being crazy tends to have a negative effect on competence and organization, which tends to have a negative effect on running a business or amassing wealth.
I remember a study I saw several years ago about the association between mental illness and reproduction in men and women, and basically everything was associated with a lower than average fertility rate except depression and maybe anxiety in women. (I don't remember if those were above average, or merely normal, but clearly they are not really in the same category of psychiatric illness as the others.)
Of course there could still exist a sub-category of people with sub-clinical levels of mental illness for whom tiny doses are actually good.
IIRC, a study on domestic violence among the Ache found that how violent a man was toward his wife *wasn't* correlated with how violent he was toward other men. Wife-beating was disproportionately done by low-status men, whereas high-status men were more prone to violence against other men.
It's possible that the fitness of various personality oddities depends not only on the nature of the local culture but on the frequency of those oddities. I once considered that all societies contain the devout, the believers, the doubters, the unbelievers, the scoffers, the mockers, and the blasphemers with regard to religion. This despite that one's degree of religiousity has a strong genetic component. But it's possible that it's a "balanced polymorphism", there are optimal proportions in a smoothly-working society and there's a selective advantage for being a type that happens to be under-supplied in your local situation. (Society needs a lot of believers in order to be smoothly-working but it also needs freethinkers to get around beliefs that happen to be counterproductive in unusual situations.)
> "Whatever psychological properties Gengis Khan had, they (probably) made him extremely reproductively successful."
There's an entire industry about this: "By the classical definitions of evolutionary fitness, Genghis Khan is among history's elite. The Mongolian ruler reportedly sired hundreds of children with a great variety of women—a feat of genetic propagation which echoes even today in the 8% of Asian men who still retain a nearly identical version of Genghis's Y chromosome."
My general observation is that the more of a 'misfit' (in society) a person is the more intelligent they need to be to survive and reproduce.
While they are not crazy, I am struck by the intelligence of groups such as the Huguenots and Jews who were discriminated against for their aberrant beliefs. Those who stuck with their beliefs had to be both resilient, or just plain stubborn, and more intelligent than most in order to survive. Those who weren't didn't contribute to the gene pool.
I have wondered what could possibly be adaptive about schizophrenia. Why does it persist? Then I wonder if the genes that lead some individuals to create grossly distorted realities in their minds are connected to the ability to be creative.
>[Faye] worked as a herbalist. When she started that business, she saw herbs just as supplements to ordinary medical care. But after the car accident caused her severe migraines, she came to believe wholeheartedly in the power of alternative, magic-style treatments
By "magic-style treatments" do you mean herbs again? Because herbs aren't exactly magical. They contain actual chemicals that have actual effects on the body. If there's any reason not to trust them, it's because said chemicals come in too small a concentration to have a big enough effect on the condition (depending on the herbs in question, I guess). They are not the same as reiki.
"Whatever psychological properties Gengis Khan had, they (probably) made him extremely reproductively successful."
You point this out, but it probably made him very unlikely to be successful, but the lucky convergence of his traits and his life situation made it work - we don't know about the lives of the 9,999 others with the same traits who didn't make it. If we executed everyone who didn't win the lottery, in a few generations we'd conclude look back and conclude that playing the lottery was a great strategy! This is where reversion to the mean and iterated strategies over generations matters - if GK's madness-adjacent traits were truly revolutionarily useful (and not just mostly bad, but sometimes one-in-a-million lucky,) and heritable, then his kids, who inherited 50% of them, should experience better reproductive outcomes. And certainly modern genetics reveals that may be the case.
I am not sure Gene's.... uh...... genes..... (for madness) will be as successful.
I feel this hook "Madness is adaptive" is completely misguided. What is happening is that people are worlding, world-building if you will as a type of social niche construction, and this urge and need to build some sort of psychic shelter (with other, against and/or witholding from others) is so strong that even if "mad" then worlding will be done (in the name of X if necessary), very much like people who are mad still breathe and eat. This story is an example of survivorship bias (as well of the urge to world/morally). Look, the mad one's get through. And the story of worldbuilding from those who do not? More on this POV at by "why we should" substack, but more originarily at https://www.academia.edu/40978261/Why_we_should_an_introduction_by_memoir_into_the_implications_of_the_Egalitarian_Revolution_of_the_Paleolithic_or_Anyone_for_cake
The creative aspect of madness is over-rated. It is a silly meme.
Scott Alexander has a relevant anecdote:
> I used to work [as a psychiatrist] in the business district of San Francisco, meaning I got to see a lot of very high-functioning people with mental disorders. I was constantly surprised how many people - while genuinely suffering from their conditions - also seem to be succeeding partly because of them. The bipolar programmer who is nonfunctional half the year, but his company keeps him on anyway because he codes at an absolutely superhuman level of brilliance while manic. The obsessive-compulsive cybersecurity expert who finds weaknesses everybody else missed. The endless line of autistic people succeeding in math-heavy jobs, exactly the way the stereotypes would predict.
>
> When I was in medical school, the joke (not really a joke) was that everyone with ADHD went into emergency medicine. I've since treated a couple of doctors with ADHD, and sure enough they are all in emergency medicine. But now I'm in the Bay Area, and the joke is that everyone with ADHD founds a startup. [...] though I should also mention just how disproportionately people with ADHD become salespeople. [...]
>
> (If it weren't for medical confidentiality laws, I think I could make a fortune running a combination psychiatric clinic / employment agency. [...] It'd be great!)
Love this post. I think there is a connection between Gene/Faye and David/Lupe:
https://people.com/david-archuleta-hell-again-lyrics-mom-left-mormon-church-reaction-8621943
There seems to be a strategy of warping your views to match those of the dominant male in your household be it husband/father/son. Maybe this is a workable strategy that can be employed to great effect.
I think this is one of those cases of survivorship bias. You're not counting all of the crazy people who end up living in cardboard boxes. The husband's eventual good fortune was essentially random chance--he could just as easily have not been hurt, or died, or the community could have turned against him.
Certainly I see your argument--being just a little neurologically different can make people seek out underused economic niches, or to see connections others don't, or in this case, to believe their own nonsense. But being crazy tends to have a negative effect on competence and organization, which tends to have a negative effect on running a business or amassing wealth.
I remember a study I saw several years ago about the association between mental illness and reproduction in men and women, and basically everything was associated with a lower than average fertility rate except depression and maybe anxiety in women. (I don't remember if those were above average, or merely normal, but clearly they are not really in the same category of psychiatric illness as the others.)
Of course there could still exist a sub-category of people with sub-clinical levels of mental illness for whom tiny doses are actually good.
IIRC, a study on domestic violence among the Ache found that how violent a man was toward his wife *wasn't* correlated with how violent he was toward other men. Wife-beating was disproportionately done by low-status men, whereas high-status men were more prone to violence against other men.
I wonder if the Yanomamo were different here.
It's possible that the fitness of various personality oddities depends not only on the nature of the local culture but on the frequency of those oddities. I once considered that all societies contain the devout, the believers, the doubters, the unbelievers, the scoffers, the mockers, and the blasphemers with regard to religion. This despite that one's degree of religiousity has a strong genetic component. But it's possible that it's a "balanced polymorphism", there are optimal proportions in a smoothly-working society and there's a selective advantage for being a type that happens to be under-supplied in your local situation. (Society needs a lot of believers in order to be smoothly-working but it also needs freethinkers to get around beliefs that happen to be counterproductive in unusual situations.)
> "Whatever psychological properties Gengis Khan had, they (probably) made him extremely reproductively successful."
There's an entire industry about this: "By the classical definitions of evolutionary fitness, Genghis Khan is among history's elite. The Mongolian ruler reportedly sired hundreds of children with a great variety of women—a feat of genetic propagation which echoes even today in the 8% of Asian men who still retain a nearly identical version of Genghis's Y chromosome."
But once that was discovered, people have been hunting for other such men. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/other-men-who-left-huge-genetic-legacies-likes-genghis-khan-180954052/ "Ten Other Men Left Genetic Legacies So Huge They Rival Genghis Khan’s; A new study shows that 10 other men founded large Y-chromosome lineages"
My general observation is that the more of a 'misfit' (in society) a person is the more intelligent they need to be to survive and reproduce.
While they are not crazy, I am struck by the intelligence of groups such as the Huguenots and Jews who were discriminated against for their aberrant beliefs. Those who stuck with their beliefs had to be both resilient, or just plain stubborn, and more intelligent than most in order to survive. Those who weren't didn't contribute to the gene pool.
I have wondered what could possibly be adaptive about schizophrenia. Why does it persist? Then I wonder if the genes that lead some individuals to create grossly distorted realities in their minds are connected to the ability to be creative.
>[Faye] worked as a herbalist. When she started that business, she saw herbs just as supplements to ordinary medical care. But after the car accident caused her severe migraines, she came to believe wholeheartedly in the power of alternative, magic-style treatments
By "magic-style treatments" do you mean herbs again? Because herbs aren't exactly magical. They contain actual chemicals that have actual effects on the body. If there's any reason not to trust them, it's because said chemicals come in too small a concentration to have a big enough effect on the condition (depending on the herbs in question, I guess). They are not the same as reiki.
Shawn wasn't mad at all, just a bully. You admit this yourself when you say he is ordinary.
Please stop using mental illness as a stand in for evil.
"Whatever psychological properties Gengis Khan had, they (probably) made him extremely reproductively successful."
You point this out, but it probably made him very unlikely to be successful, but the lucky convergence of his traits and his life situation made it work - we don't know about the lives of the 9,999 others with the same traits who didn't make it. If we executed everyone who didn't win the lottery, in a few generations we'd conclude look back and conclude that playing the lottery was a great strategy! This is where reversion to the mean and iterated strategies over generations matters - if GK's madness-adjacent traits were truly revolutionarily useful (and not just mostly bad, but sometimes one-in-a-million lucky,) and heritable, then his kids, who inherited 50% of them, should experience better reproductive outcomes. And certainly modern genetics reveals that may be the case.
I am not sure Gene's.... uh...... genes..... (for madness) will be as successful.
I feel this hook "Madness is adaptive" is completely misguided. What is happening is that people are worlding, world-building if you will as a type of social niche construction, and this urge and need to build some sort of psychic shelter (with other, against and/or witholding from others) is so strong that even if "mad" then worlding will be done (in the name of X if necessary), very much like people who are mad still breathe and eat. This story is an example of survivorship bias (as well of the urge to world/morally). Look, the mad one's get through. And the story of worldbuilding from those who do not? More on this POV at by "why we should" substack, but more originarily at https://www.academia.edu/40978261/Why_we_should_an_introduction_by_memoir_into_the_implications_of_the_Egalitarian_Revolution_of_the_Paleolithic_or_Anyone_for_cake
The creative aspect of madness is over-rated. It is a silly meme.