Delusion and Dream

Low-income Homeownership: American Dream or Delusion?

This paper is a critical analysis of recent US policy to promote low-income homeownership. It examines the ideology and assumptions buttressing this policy, evidence on the effects of low-income homeownership and the viability of homeownership as a strategy for low-income families. Evidence suggests that the prospect for sustained growth in low-income homeownership may be limited. Research does...

Libido and Delusion

Hope, optimism and delusion

Optimism is generally accepted by psychiatrists, psychologists and other caring professionals as a feature of mental health. Interventions typically rely on cognitive-behavioural tools to encourage individuals to 'stop negative thought cycles' and to 'challenge unhelpful thoughts'. However, evidence suggests that most individuals have persistent biases of optimism and that excessive optimism is...

Varieties of confabulation and delusion.

INTRODUCTION Different types of confabulation or false memory can arise from brain disease. There are competing explanatory theories for the mechanisms underlying confabulation. Recent literature has attempted to relate the notion of delusion to that of confabulation. METHOD A brief review of the literature relating to these ideas. RESULTS The varieties of confabulation or false memory that...

Delusion, Survival, and Intelligent Agents

3 This paper considers the consequences of endowing an intelligent agent with the ability to modify its own code. The intelligent agent is patterned closely after AIXI with these specific assumptions: 1) The agent is allowed to arbitrarily modify its own inputs if it so chooses; 2) The agent’s code is a part of the environment and may be read and written by the environment. The first of these w...