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eli_sennesh comments on Rationality Quotes December 2013 - Less Wrong
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Think of PCP-driven berserkers flipping cars with their mere, ordinary human strength, fully unleashed without regard to injury or death, and you've got some notion of the problem posed by a delusional man who thinks he's Samson.
Do you have evidence that car flipping really happens?
There is at least evidence that people who think they are Samson can tear out the bars of their windows to escape a mental ward.
That evidence seems to be hearsay, so really weak. Must have been weak bars too.
Presumably in the same spirit, when treating mental patients who think they're Superman, expose them to glowing yellow rocks. That said, does this sort of thing actually work in real life?
Reinforcing their beliefs might work for making them even more insane.
Honestly, it would surprise me if either of those strategies worked (or failed) as one might naively expect, since I mostly expect pathological delusions to involve some seriously atypical connections between observations and conclusions. But I bet there's people on LW with experience in the field, or at least who have read up on case studies.
I used to have a wrestling coach that used the very un-PC term "retard strength" to refer to the ability of an opponent to apply lots of force from angles you wouldn't think they could a priori (as a compliment, not a slur).