Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Crazy Interpretations

My apologies guys, I have a little catching up to do...

Our discussion in class got me thinking about what defines people as crazy. We mentioned something about how it depends on whether one can convince other people of what we believe. This isn't surprising really since crazy is clearly a subjective term that basically means that someone is interpreting some bit of information differently than we are. In this way it often can mean simply a view different from the majority. As I mentioned before, our brains are good at picking out patterns but the way they are ultimately interpreted can be influenced by a lot of things. If an experience is something broad that most people encounter, there's generally an already agreed upon interpretation that will influence the way it gets labeled by a person experiencing it for the first time. If a person is very reclusive though, like many of these mathematician characters, they might miss out on being influenced by the usual majority interpretation of things and instead come up with something "crazy". Of course the majority interpretations are usually based on a lot more experience than one person can have and are therefore probably more "correct" in the end.

4 comments:

Crista Beck - Dating Coach and Matchmaker said...

My definition of someone crazy is someone who has mental illness. I think this crazy mathematician thing is just a stereotype. I bet some mathematicians have mental illness, but so do all the other professions.

Crista Beck - Dating Coach and Matchmaker said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
christo said...

yeah that's an interesting thought... except i think the truth would probably be more of combination of the recluse and the rest of society.. because again it's another way of looking at things....if i'm looking at one side of a building and you're looking at the other side, the combination of both of what we see would be closer to the reality of the whole building than what just one of us see

christo said...

as for mental illness.... mental illness i think is more subjective than most people think.... it's not like cancer or anything really physical.. though physical problems can be caused by or cause "mental illness". Mental illness comes about mainly from the thoughts we think... all of us have been through some sort of mental breakdown when stress and the worries we put on ourselves cause us to lose perspective and a real sense of reality and i think this is what happens in some form or another with all mental illnesses, except they just become more permanent because you never come out of the temporary "insanity". I think labeling such mind frames as "mental illness" might hurt more than it helps because it makes people think that they have a disease, which makes them feel more helpless and out of control when really what they need is to learn more control.....hope u understood all that i feel like i'm rambling