The Wetware

This is an idea I have discussed briefly before, buthere ' s a real scientist discussing the relationship between the complexity of the human brain and it ' s likelihood of failure. We tend to take ourselves for granted but we ' ve found that what seem to us to be our simplest capabilities are so far impossible to model or emulate with computers. Just making a plan to get through the next hour, let alone life, is a unique capability of Homo sapiens.But the danger is that when this astonishingly capable machine goes awry, it can go spectacularly wrong. Dr. Paz refers to mental illness, specifically ADHD, anxiety, depression, PTSD and autism, but of course schizophrenia can get a lot weirder. People can know for certain that they are being controlled by radio waves from Mars or have ideas that don ' t translate into any sense the rest of us can make of them.But I ' m more interested here in malfunctions that aren ' t necessarily associated with diagnosable mental illness. In some cases, psychiatrists will attach a diagnostic label to these but they are not diseases in the same sense as measles or atherosclerosis. The person with the " disease " may not suffer at all or think that she or he needs to be cured or fixed in any way. The " disease " is only a problem for the rest of us. This is true of some of people who are diagnosed with a personality disorder, but many of these disorders are not really coherent sets of characteristics. They are diagnosed by deciding that a person ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs