Delusion, Disease and Art

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...

History of Morgellons disease: from delusion to definition

Morgellons disease (MD) is a skin condition characterized by the presence of multicolored filaments that lie under, are embedded in, or project from skin. Although the condition may have a longer history, disease matching the above description was first reported in the US in 2002. Since that time, the condition that we know as MD has become a polemic topic. Because individuals afflicted with th...

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...