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Jan. 13th, 2011
Crazy People
Jan. 13th, 2011 12:59 pmReacting to this claim that's been doing the rounds and annoying me on Twitter:
"You can't predict how crazy people will react -- that's the definition of crazy."
Um... No, it isn't. That's random, which is an entirely different thing. I am not a psychiatrist, and there are several people on my f-list who are probably better qualified to comment on this, but my understanding is that mentally-ill people don't go around rolling a d100 to decide what they're going to do next.
People act according to their interests, beliefs, circumstances, and their modes of thought. In mental illness some of those modes of thought may be dysfunctional (which in turn can lead to strange beliefs) but this doesn't turn them into human dice. If anything, my impression is that it's more likely to do the reverse: severe mental illness can lock people into some very predictable (and harmful) patterns.
Of course, mentally-ill people are unpredictable (at the individual level) until you know those things about them. This is because people are unpredictable until you know those things about them. To cover that gap, we tend to make some default assumptions about what people want and how they think, but those assumptions are often wrong even for sane people. (Look at the figures for 'intimate partner' homicides and other domestic violence to see what I mean; it's hard to think of a bigger error of judgement than mistaking your future killer for a good partner.)
I think the main appeal of this fallacy is that it enables the Crazy Person Escape Clause: if you can pretend that causality stops as soon as a Crazy Person gets involved, that's your get-out-of-jail-free card. It means you don't have to think about the unpleasant possibility that something we did could have encouraged the Crazy Person to act that way, or wrestle with the difficult philosophical question of whether we're responsible for the consequences of our actions when they're mediated by a Crazy Person - neither of which are questions that can be settled in a glib little tweet.*
In short, it's lazy and sloppy, a position adopted because it leads to convenient answers rather than one based on evidence.
*And BTW, I don't say that the answers to either of those questions has to be "yes". Only that if you want to have an opinion on issues like this, you should at least put in the effort of THINKING about these things rather than leaping for an excuse not to.
"You can't predict how crazy people will react -- that's the definition of crazy."
Um... No, it isn't. That's random, which is an entirely different thing. I am not a psychiatrist, and there are several people on my f-list who are probably better qualified to comment on this, but my understanding is that mentally-ill people don't go around rolling a d100 to decide what they're going to do next.
People act according to their interests, beliefs, circumstances, and their modes of thought. In mental illness some of those modes of thought may be dysfunctional (which in turn can lead to strange beliefs) but this doesn't turn them into human dice. If anything, my impression is that it's more likely to do the reverse: severe mental illness can lock people into some very predictable (and harmful) patterns.
Of course, mentally-ill people are unpredictable (at the individual level) until you know those things about them. This is because people are unpredictable until you know those things about them. To cover that gap, we tend to make some default assumptions about what people want and how they think, but those assumptions are often wrong even for sane people. (Look at the figures for 'intimate partner' homicides and other domestic violence to see what I mean; it's hard to think of a bigger error of judgement than mistaking your future killer for a good partner.)
I think the main appeal of this fallacy is that it enables the Crazy Person Escape Clause: if you can pretend that causality stops as soon as a Crazy Person gets involved, that's your get-out-of-jail-free card. It means you don't have to think about the unpleasant possibility that something we did could have encouraged the Crazy Person to act that way, or wrestle with the difficult philosophical question of whether we're responsible for the consequences of our actions when they're mediated by a Crazy Person - neither of which are questions that can be settled in a glib little tweet.*
In short, it's lazy and sloppy, a position adopted because it leads to convenient answers rather than one based on evidence.
*And BTW, I don't say that the answers to either of those questions has to be "yes". Only that if you want to have an opinion on issues like this, you should at least put in the effort of THINKING about these things rather than leaping for an excuse not to.
