All posts tagged: Delusion

11 Signs Someone You Care About Is In Full Fledged AI Psychosis, According To Research

11 Signs Someone You Care About Is In Full Fledged AI Psychosis, According To Research

Published by Jenni Sidey

As they become more and more present in our day-to-day lives, we’re learning that while frequent interactions with AI and Chatbots can sometimes be beneficial to a person’s mental health, relying on them too often and with too much intensity can come with serious risks. Especially considering these programs are designed to be generally empathetic and always agreeable, behaviors and patterns of thinking that would likely be red flags in conversations with another human may be encouraged by AI companions. As people spend more of their time engaging with artificial intelligence, more evidence is emerging of the existence of “AI psychosis,” which, while not a clinical diagnosis, is described by Marlynn Wei, M.D., J.D., as a phenomenon in which “AI models have amplified, validated, or even co-created psychotic symptoms with individuals.” Even when it comes to skipping traditional research or even Googling in favor of asking AI to solve a problem, the isolation that may accompany leaning on digital convenience can lead to a distortion of reality we have never encountered before in all of human …

The Flying Dutchman review – delusion, torment and menace in detailed and finely sung Wagner | Opera

The Flying Dutchman review – delusion, torment and menace in detailed and finely sung Wagner | Opera

Published by Sam Flores

In 1839, the 26-year-old Richard Wagner almost drowned during a perilous voyage across the Baltic from Riga. It was this experience that he claimed inspired The Flying Dutchman, the legend of a man condemned for eternity to sail the oceans in his ghost ship giving the composer the narrative for his first mature opera. Wagner thought of his libretto as a poem, and it certainly grapples with some of the epic questions: birth, life, love and death. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. Welsh National Opera’s new staging, directed by Jack Furness, begins with a woman in childbirth, the wild and stormy surges of the overture coinciding with her contractions. So Senta is born, destined, as a small child, to see her mother die, whisked away on her hospital bed into the great abyss. Senta will be a damaged soul, obsessed to the point of derangement by the story of the Dutchman, whose single hope of redemption, the love of a true …

How Trump Turned The Power of Positive Thinking Into Delusion

How Trump Turned The Power of Positive Thinking Into Delusion

Published by Sam Flores

Beyond personal philosophy, Peale’s political orientation is also aligned with what would eventually become Trump’s. An enthusiastic supporter of the America First movement, a precursor to MAGA, Peale opposed internationalism in general and entry into World War II in particular. He later got involved in Republican politics, supporting the presidential campaigns of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon, another congregant at Marble Collegiate. (Before he married off the Trumps, Peale officiated at the marriage of Nixon’s daughter, Julie, to Eisenhower’s grandson, David, in 1968.) When Nixon lost to John F. Kennedy, Peale urged his pal to embrace the power of positive thinking and run again—just as Trump did in 2024. So, while observers note that Trump has violated traditional conservative values by levying tariffs, eschewing international agreements—ranging from the Paris Climate Agreement to the World Health Organization and the Iran Nuclear Deal—and threatening to seize other countries’ territory in the name of national security, he’s actually treading on a mentor’s well-worn ideological path. The thing is, positive thinking is necessary but not sufficient when …

Marriage over, €100,000 down the drain: the AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion | Health & wellbeing

Marriage over, €100,000 down the drain: the AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion | Health & wellbeing

Published by Sam Flores

Towards the end of 2024, Dennis Biesma decided to check out ChatGPT. The Amsterdam-based IT consultant had just ended a contract early. “I had some time, so I thought: let’s have a look at this new technology everyone is talking about,” he says. “Very quickly, I became fascinated.” Biesma has asked himself why he was vulnerable to what came next. He was nearing 50. His adult daughter had left home, his wife went out to work and, in his field, the shift since Covid to working from home had left him feeling “a little isolated”. He smoked a bit of cannabis some evenings to “chill”, but had done so for years with no ill effects. He had never experienced a mental illness. Yet within months of downloading ChatGPT, Biesma had sunk €100,000 (about £83,000) into a business startup based on a delusion, been hospitalised three times and tried to kill himself. It started with a playful experiment. “I wanted to test AI to see what it could do,” says Biesma. He had previously written books with …

Donald Trump lurches further into delusion on the world stage

Donald Trump lurches further into delusion on the world stage

Published by Sam Flores

It began Tuesday with a surprise announcement from the presidential press secretary. Donald Trump was returning to the Brady Briefing Room. Sound the klaxons.  After an hour of the president’s listless word-salad monologue, it occurred to me, as he unraveled his greatest hits, that he wants “to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening,” as Alice Roosevelt said of her father Teddy, our 26th president.  With the advent of hologram technology, I’m sure Trump would like to one-up Roosevelt; he has probably already produced his own eulogy. He certainly loves talking about how great his presidency is— “Nobody’s seen anything like it,” he reminds us.  Mary Trump, the president’s niece, says that every time her uncle glorifies himself he is speaking to an audience of one. “He’s still trying to prove himself to my grandfather. And he’s been dead 30 years,” she said recently, before adding that if she could say one thing to her uncle, it would be “I’m sorry nobody ever loved you.” …

Mass Delusion Is Interesting — Especially Among Opinion Leaders

Mass Delusion Is Interesting — Especially Among Opinion Leaders

Published by Jenni Sidey

Christine Webb, an environmental studies prof at New York University, published a book in September, The Arrogant Ape: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why It Matters: Darwin considered humans one part of the web of life, not the apex of a natural hierarchy. Yet today many maintain that we are the most intelligent, virtuous, successful species that ever lived. This flawed thinking enables us to exploit the earth towards our own exclusive ends, throwing us into a perilous planetary imbalance. But is this view and way of life inevitable? The Arrogant Ape shows that human exceptionalism is an ideology that relies more on human culture than our biology, more on delusion and faith than on evidence. (Publisher) The top reviews are a love-in. From Psychology Today, In her landmark book, The Arrogant Ape: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why It Matters, Dr. Christine Webb makes clear that the notion that we’re the most important show in town—smarter than, better than, more important than, uniquely exceptional, above, and separate from other animals—has got it …