How do you know you are sane or insane

[sushi]

there are alot of definitions of insanity, what

out of control thoughts and ideas, and feedback loops
unable to tell the difference between thought and reality
deviation from the norm and population
erratic behavior
imagination over active
etc

but they could just apply to any individual or someone doing drugs

if everyone categorize you are insane, are you insane?
if everyone says you are sane, are you really sane?

 

[computerhxr]

Asking for a friend?

 

[Hadoblado]

If you experience reality as consistent with itself, and face challenges to this worldview honestly and openly, there's a good chance you're sane.

 

[QuickTwist]

Impossible to tell for the individual if the individual is sane or not. We are inherently biased towards believing ourselves. Because of that, no matter how many people tell you (not to be confused with who*) you are insane, you have no reason to believe them simply at their word.

* = In rare cases some people will be able to trust someone else more than they trust themselves.

 

[Pizzabeak]

Ask other people

 

[Black Rose]

composure

 

[crippli]

if everyone categorize you are insane, are you insane?

I thought if everyone categorized you for insane, it would be the surest sign for being sane.

 

[CatGoddess]

You can't tell for sure if you're sane or insane, but if you're completely insane and have no way of knowing it, it really doesn't make a difference anymore. It's kind of like "is everything a dream?" or "is everything a computer simulation"; if you can't tell and the answer doesn't affect anything it doesn't matter. Cue kissing scene in Total Recall, a movie which my calc teacher apparently thinks is extremely fitting for me to have seen even though it's 4 decades old at this point.

Anyways, though, I think that sanity is an individual assessment of self-awareness and consistency in the world around you. Which is why I used to question my sanity when I was younger because, until you realize that people aren't entirely logical, they don't seem even remotely consistent...

Forcing treatment on somebody who isn't hurting anyone but whom others consider "insane" leaves a bad taste in my mouth, though, because I was deeply afraid of it happening to me back in the good ol' elementary school days. I mean, it was a sensible enough thing to fear, I think... I was frequently told that I was "wrong" or "crazy", I was yelled at for not being "normal", and I'm pretty sure parents don't need their children's consent to put them on meds? Yeah...

 

[lightfire]

Sane = rational being with normal range of emotions and appropriate reactivity to external stimuli or situations or things

Insane = out of the ordinary, usually used when someone is being offensive. but can insanity be used in a positive way, where someone is a genius and is able to come up with some awesome theory that changes the course of a science? I think insanity has a negative connotation though.

But then there's also a phenomenon called gaslighting where someone tries to convince you of an alternate reality where you end up feeling insane.

 

[Rook]

Step1: Take a watermelon
Step2: Dress it up in sexy clothes
Step3: Take it to the local mall fountain
Step4: Start telling people about sentient fruit and their inviolable rights. Sing a few elvis songs in a guttural voice while skipping rope. Read loudly from medical encyclopedias while masturbating

Congratulations! If you have completed all the above steps, your query has been answered.

 

[Cognisant]

Sentience is fundamentally insane.

The ship of Theseus is nothing more than the sum of its parts, whether all its parts have been replaced or not is irrelevant to the question of the ship's identity for that identity resides solely in the minds of the people who decide it.

Money has value because we're willing to exchange stuff for it, society exists because we participate in it, borders exist because we enforce them, individuality is a widely accepted delusion, reality as we know it is a universally adhered to massively multiplayer live-action role playing game.

I used to think if I worked all out I could be totally in sync with reality, that I would be truly sane and as a truly sane person I would always do the right thing because I wouldn't be fettered by any delusions, that life was a puzzle I could solve.

 

[Black Rose]

Sentience is fundamentally insane.

I do not see where this premise comes from.
I do not see why epistemologically there would be an absolute flaw in our grasping of reality.
What you are saying is that knowledge is innately impossible.

edit

No one is omniscient. minds have limits. Everyone operates under what is called "bounded rationality".

And socially constructed reality is a different reality from the individual subjective self-experience which differs from the objective (it is there independent of what the mind projects is there) reality.

societal reality
individualistic reality
ontological reality

 

[Cognisant]

What you are saying is that knowledge is innately impossible.

Not impossible, just arbitrary, for instance my height is 1.85m but the meter is an arbitrary unit of measurement and height is an arbitrary measure of scale, my weight, width, volume, density, etc are all equally valid measurements, and equally contrived.

 

[Happy]

How you responded to this saga would be a pretty good indication:

The Random Thoughts Thread

multi track listening x---d

www.intpforum.com

 

[moody]

Don't let words define your thinking or what you can think about.

There is no professional definition of insane. My working definition of "insane" : When sensory input in the brain is malfunctioning and causes a person to exhibit manipulative behaviors. It is never the conscious "you" part that's damaged, but the tools you have to work with.

I've gotten sick for years without detection, because I had thought all of my symptoms were my fault. I was so obsessive over my work and every part of my day to survive. When it was at it's worst, I began to allow myself to entertain the idea that something may be compromising me.

Someone could have very well called me insane, if they knew how I was functioning. Yet, most were completely unaware anything was up because they didn't see me struggling and I acted normal enough to them. But we're not considered sick or impaired until other people can see and diagnose our problems.

 

[moody]

there are alot of definitions of insanity, what

out of control thoughts and ideas, and feedback loops
unable to tell the difference between thought and reality
deviation from the norm and population
erratic behavior
imagination over active
etc

but they could just apply to any individual or someone doing drugs

if everyone categorize you are insane, are you insane?
if everyone says you are sane, are you really sane?

eh, too many variables in perception to categorize people as "sane" or "insane." I've been asked if i was high many times in conversation. I tell them that is just my brain, and I appologize to them if they have to do drugs to have a creative thought. They don't like that....

 

[Pizzabeak]

I don’t know (colloquially), I might analyze all the posts in this thread first. I have a lot to say about this topic and my book, coming out soon, touches on this so there’ll be more in that either way; a somewhat fascinating topic that has been being discussed since early man.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

If you've lived for some years and acted according to your own thoughts without messing up your life, you can infer statistically that you are "sane" in the sense that you are acting adequately rationally. But by simply doing a-priori reasoning about your own mind, I don't think it's possible to conclude either way.

 

[Bertrand Russell's Barber]

I like the way psychiatrists define it nowadays: You are sane if you are outwardly functional.

Some would say that you also don't hold odd beliefs etc. To that I say, fuck that.

You gotta be functional, yes. But why? So that you can have the freedom to do your thing.

So appear sane but in your own time, be insane. Have ideas that people will ridicule you for but then go ahead and test those ideas. (while maintaining outward sanity) When you have empirical evidence that some idea works, throw it out to the world. Let them give you whatever you fancy in return for it.

Or don't and laugh at the rest of them in their misery.

 

[sushi]

i think it comes back to Deacarte's demon hypothesis , some guy/evil genius planting illusions and false beliefs regarding reality to your brain.

 

[ZenRaiden]

The term sane and insane doesnt really reveal a whole lot. What they really want to know in psychiatry is how you function or what way you are dysfunctional.

Several things are important. Ability to tell real from imaginary. To know what is real.
To be able to build functioning relationships.
To be able to learn and process new information in practical manner.
But essentially none of these things necessarilly make super sane or insane.
They are just ways of looking at life.
Now you may question reality on philosophical basis or just plain reject reality in favour of some hallucination or imagined world or whatever, but there are plenty people who have lot of imagination or hard time keeping up with reality and that doesnt always translate to insanity.

As with everything is matter of degree.
Your question however has no meaning since you didnt bother to define the parameters of sanity or insanity.
When people use these words they usually are just plain judging other people on the basis of their own subjective parameters. At least when it comes to everyday language.
Also being eccentric doesnt mean being insane although there are plenty people who would say some eccentric quality qualifies as form of insanity.

In psychiatry the issue is the level of complexity they are dealing with. Each person is different. Each brain has some slight or major variance. Some brains are way too different either due to genetics or something else. I mean there are lot of defects and forms of deviations from the norm that are well beyond trivial and yet these people are often not considered insane by psychiatrist. Even highly dysfunctional people can be lablled as something and psychiatrist will never consider the term insane.
The issue with psychiatry is that psychological issues often require longterm solutions with longterm observations and the psychiatric industry as I call it often works like machinery where people are observed and labelled by concepts with certain degree of tradition. So many people are labelled and simply tracked and pilled on basis of some concept with out a single meaningful level of nuance or circumspection. Whatever the case you can basically walk in to psychiaters office tell them something stupid and random and walk out of the office with a diagnosis that is as off mark as it can get. Either way assessing psychological qualities of humans is still rather esoteric and difficult and while psychiatrist and psychologist are very skilled and adept at knowing how the human mind works it is not that easy to simply look and observe someone in very short span of time and be capable of being exact and always right. Probably, because human mind is rather complex and has many varieties and flavours to it. I mean most humans have somewhat overlapping cognitive landscape, but even so a slight variation in the processing can completely off set a observation no matter how thorough it was.

 

[Rose_everdene]

In all honesty, there is no true way of knowing if you are sane or insane, characteristics will line up with yours or others people's definition of what Is sane or insane is, but how do you disifer which definition of sane or insane is the closest one to reality, so most of the time ur just going off ur own ideas or experiences to understand which on you are.

 

[moody]

I don’t know (colloquially), I might analyze all the posts in this thread first. I have a lot to say about this topic and my book, coming out soon, touches on this so there’ll be more in that either way; a somewhat fascinating topic that has been being discussed since early man.

Ohhhh you’re publishing a book? Congrats, that’s awesome!

 

[Pizzabeak]

I don’t know (colloquially), I might analyze all the posts in this thread first. I have a lot to say about this topic and my book, coming out soon, touches on this so there’ll be more in that either way; a somewhat fascinating topic that has been being discussed since early man.

Ohhhh you’re publishing a book? Congrats, that’s awesome!

Yeah sure. I decided to sell my words instead of just posting stuff online for free that you don’t have to pay for, since it didn’t do what was really intended.

 

[Black Rose]

Insanity is a reaction to reality breaking its own rule. You do not know what is real no more and the hardline is you base reality on magical thinking so excessively that you are actively insane. You truly believe green shoes will cure cancer. sanity is separate from active magical thinking where you entertain ideas instead of holding them ontologically as facts:

“Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'

I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!”


Insanity is a lack of ontological skepticism and reasoning. Going into your own little word and not coping with this difference in the real world. Some say the world is sick and this makes people go insane as a result. How do you get out? Spiral inward to get away from society's sickness. Or your sickness.

 

[rlnb]

Society decides who is sane/insane. You may have weird things happening inside you head, but if you act 'normal' , you will be considered sane. And you may have perfect tranquillity on the inside but if you act out of order, you will be called insane.

 

[Pizzabeak]

Society decides who is sane/insane. You may have weird things happening inside you head, but if you act 'normal' , you will be considered sane. And you may have perfect tranquillity on the inside but if you act out of order, you will be called insane.

It’s basically what you say. People can also coerce things out you or force things such as entrapment or instigating things you never agreed or to and wasn’t your fault. If you get into impossible scenarios, wherein you’re explaining or have to explain anything, if you go for uncharted territory the amount of things you could potentially say, so to speak, or sounds you could utter in any language, might be a dangerous amount for said society as it could make you look schizophrenic if channeled in that way.

 

[moody]

I don’t know (colloquially), I might analyze all the posts in this thread first. I have a lot to say about this topic and my book, coming out soon, touches on this so there’ll be more in that either way; a somewhat fascinating topic that has been being discussed since early man.

Ohhhh you’re publishing a book? Congrats, that’s awesome!

Yeah sure. I decided to sell my words instead of just posting stuff online for free that you don’t have to pay for, since it didn’t do what was really intended.

Very true. I think the difference is: When people read a book, they can't send you ill-formed hate-messages after every sentence. But online, they can. Plus, people just react on the internet, the vast majority of the time. When people read, they've chosen to read that book and will take more time to think about it.

 

[lightfire]

I am the most sanest person ever. I am so sane you wouldn't even believe it. That is how sane I am. Please believe me.

 

[caitlinwaters]

I am the bestest most insanest person alive yet guess I am sane for admitting that
who knows that line is just blurry to me now

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