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NancyLebovitz comments on Fixedness From Frailty - Less Wrong
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Are there good self-tests for sanity?
I read an account some years ago by a woman who'd gone through withdrawal from steroids. She had an elaborate hallucination of secret agencies setting up a communications center in her hospital room.
She said that it never occurred to her during the hallucination to do a plausibility check.
If it never occurred to her to do a plausibility check, that's strong evidence that given insanity, you will not check for sanity; not that it's impossible to check for sanity.
Forming a strong precommitment to test your sanity when certain unlikely events occur seems like an even better idea given that it usually doesn't even occur to people.
I suppose you can test for consistency but not much else. If you're processing a consistent stream of signals, how would you be able to differentiate stream A from A', where A is reality and A' is a hallucination consistent with your past? That said, checking for consistency should be enough.