We really need a phrase for "appears to behave normally in regular matters and is capable of independent living, does not match other DSM symptoms, but believes insane things". It's a very common component in mass shootings.
> "appears to behave normally in regular matters and is capable of independent living, does not match other DSM symptoms, but believes insane things"
I have met a lot of people in my life who fit this criteria. Not one of them has gone on to become a mass shooter.
Saying we need a phrase to label people like this in order to _stop mass killings_ sounds crazy to me.
If you really had the option to explore the psyche of everyone to the depth necessary to check for "believes insane things" if we could even agree on what that means, I wouldn't be surprised if the test came back positive on 40-70% of the population. A strict enough test and I think we could get that number to 100%.
Isn't it a meme at this point how people win the nobel prize in one field, and then say some nutty nonsense about a completely different field? The human species is rational, insane, brilliant, stupid, compassionate and vicious, ugly and beautiful all at once. All of us.
More compassion for self and others would be my preference.
> Not one of them has gone on to become a mass shooter.
No, but with a few friends getting together, cheering them along, and feeding into their collective insanity, they could very easily get together and do something serious. Most of the insurrectionists (the people who invaded Congress, not the people who went home after attending the rally) in Jan 6th can be described as such. That network of 'friends' is critical for actually motivating them to get off their ass and act on their beliefs.
> More compassion for self and others would be my preference.
The problem is that it's much easier to violently destroy, than it is to create, and the damage that a group of angry people who believe an utterly insane thing is disproportionate.
The things they believe are quite possibly internally consistent and not insane at all, just so far outside the overton window of an ordinary person so as to sound insane. Rather, they are the fringes of the fringes of political ideology and in my view the prime cause of falling prey to these is social alienation.
DSM 5 already has this, called "Delusional Disorder":
A. Nonbizarre delusions (i.e., involving situations that occur in real life, such as being followed, poisoned, infected, loved at a distance, or deceived by spouse or lover, or having a disease) of at least 1 month’s duration.
B. Criterion A for schizophrenia has never been met. Note: Hallucinations, if present, are not prominent and are related to the delusion theme (e.g., the sensation of being infested with insects associated with delusions of infestation.
C. Apart from the impact of the delusion(s) or its ramifications, functioning is not markedly impaired and behavior is not obviously odd or bizarre.
“ Such ridicule typically will not occur after a religious conversion brings a previous non-conformist into the fold of the culture’s dominant religion.”
"None of you think the major religions teach some insane things? Okay then."
I was on the phone so couldn't type much, but my point is the concept of the collective cognitive imperative (much better explained in the book than in Wikipedia, to be fair) would answer your question by saying "it's not that nobody thinks that: it's that enough people accept those insane things to the point that 1) they don't think they're insane things, 2) you'd be an outsider (or even considered insane) if you point out the fact that they're insane things.
I'll try to give an example that would work in my cultural context (South America): someone making a rain dance during a drought would be considered by most to be something from harmlessly silly to crazy. Someone praying to the christian god for guidance or help would be seen as normal.
I was trying to understand what you meant by “insane”, but you already moved the goalposts to “implausible”, so it’s not clear to me that you even know what you’re claiming.
However, if I were to take a guess, it’s something like “people sometimes believe things without proof”. But obviously this is not true only of religious people, other people have their own creation stories – the sole difference is their’s don’t involve worship. And I agree they can’t all be right, but perhaps one of them is.
I didn't move the goal posts; I just used a slightly different word. No offense, but it's ridiculous (sorry, "insane") that I'm dealing with pushback on the point the point that religious believe things that would be considered insane if not labeled as "religion". "There's an all-powerful being that is behind everything... etc." If you're not willing to give any ground on that, then it's not a productive discussion in the first place.
What about the non-religious claim: “There’s not an all-powerful being that is behind everything”? Just as “indefensible”, just as “implausible”, just as “insane”. The sole difference is that it doesn’t involve worship, and therefore categorically isn’t “religious”.
These are axioms, you cannot derive them, you can only derive from them. Saying “my axioms are rational, yours are ‘insane’!” is frankly childish, and speaks to a deep lack of understanding of the essence of reason.
I think diagnosis is mostly made up jargon that doesn’t capture the complexity of the human experience. It is designed to itemize the human experience for bureaucratic consumption. Autism diagnosis gives access to school resources whereas weird child that prefers their own thoughts does not. Schizophrenia lets you lock up people with antisocial beliefs. ADHD lets you medicate away the natural hyperactivity of 7 year olds. Diagnosis is a form of societal control. This is different from modern schema therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy which focus on the individual experiences a person has such as their actions and thought patterns that allows them to disentangle themselves from patterns of behavior that harm them such as paranoid delusions, alcoholism, unhealthy sex, etc. but those things require lots of one on one work with a therapist.
