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gwern comments on Open Thread, May 19 - 25, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: somnicule 19 May 2014 04:49AM

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Comment author: gwern 22 May 2014 02:54:32AM *  11 points [-]

Bad news, guys - we're probably all charismatic psychotics; from "The Breivik case and what psychiatrists can learn from it", Melle 2013:

The court reports clearly illustrate the odd effect Breivik seems to have had on all his evaluators, including the first, in generating reluctance to explore what might lie behind some of his strange utterances. As an illustration, when asked if he ever was in doubt about Breivik's sanity, one of the witnesses stated that he was that once, when Breivik in a discussion suggested that in the future people's brains could be directly linked to a computer, thus circumventing the need for expensive schooling. Instead of asking Breivik to extrapolate, the witness stated that he “rapidly said to himself that this was not a psychotic notion but rather a vision of the future”.

It's a good thing Breivik didn't bring up cryonics.