Knowledge that could drive people insane--possible? Real (or fictional) examples?

[Koxinga]

I'm midway through the first season of Fringe, and please don't spoil it for me. But it brought to mind a bit of a trope that dates back at least to Lovecraft: the idea that there are things that Man Was Not Meant To Know, and unwise dabbling in forbidden knowledge could drive a person insane. (It also reminds me of one of the creepiest Twilight Zone episodes I ever saw: "Need to Know".)

Do you think such a thing is possible?

Has such a thing ever occurred?

(And not the main point, but are there other fictional stories like the above? For the sake of a good chill . . .)

[shijinn]

the vague knowledge of when and how you'd die.

[KneadToKnow]

Fictional examples galore.

Warning: TV Tropes link.

[Koxinga]

Originally Posted by KneadToKnow

Fictional examples galore.

Warning: TV Tropes link.

You did that on purpose, didn't you?

(The link says "FORBIDDEN")

[KneadToKnow]

Originally Posted by Koxinga

(The link says "FORBIDDEN")

That's on your end. Works fine for me.

Oh, and FWIW, there is a "Real Life" folder at the bottom of the linked page. For when, you know, you can get to it.

[phreesh]

People have been legitimately influenced by what they've read and become obsessed with hidden meanings or a deranged take on reality. I recently listened to a podcast where a man read about the philosophy of 'reality' and found it impossible to discern reality from his dreams. He could only trust the things he physically touched at that moment and had to be hospitalized for years to learn to trust that the world was real. The book was a trigger for these thoughts, but I don't think you could say he was driven insane by the book.

It seems to me that these were people ready to become insane (or were already insane) and a book was a convenient anchor for that insanity. They weren't driven insane by that single book.

[benbo1]

How complicated but fragile we all are - so many anomalies show up in MRIs & CTs, it's a wonder anyone can live 'normally'. Especially when learning the interdepenence of the various systems, and all that can go wrong - if it was possible to unlearn, I wish I could. It ain't like I sit around all day obsessing - but when getting a headache or stomachache, realizing there's a 99% chance it's ok - there's always that 1%. Unless ur a doctor, ignorance is bliss.

[Mangetout]

Langford's Basilisks are a fictional example.

[divemaster]

Originally Posted by Koxinga

(And not the main point, but are there other fictional stories like the above? For the sake of a good chill . . .)

Read Stephen King's The Jaunt for "other fictional story" that provides a good chill. It can be found in Skeleton Crew.

SPOILER:

"Longer than you think, Dad! It's longer than you think!"

[Bass Chick]

The recipe for Soylent Green?

[Simplicio]

Not to junior mod, but would people please remember to spoiler box any forbidden, mind destroying secrets so those of us that want to retain their sanity can still participate in the thread. Thanks

[control-z]

I think humans (and many other animals) are remarkably adaptable. Sure there may be some that can't cope or adapt, but most would be fine in time.

[Trinopus]

When I was quite young, I read Heinlein's short story "They."

Ruined my life!

(Good story... Read it, oh do!)

A friend of mine watched the movie "Alien" at a tender age, and it screwed him up pretty badly. This isn't a case of "abstract knowledge," though, but of a pretty gruesome horror movie. Still, it is a form of knowledge...

I've heard people argue, seriously, that if the world were to receive a signal from intelligent life in another solar system, that many people here would "go insane" from the knowledge. I just don't see why. It would be interesting, maybe even disturbing, but crazy-making?

[divemaster]

Originally Posted by Trinopus

I've heard people argue, seriously, that if the world were to receive a signal from intelligent life in another solar system, that many people here would "go insane" from the knowledge. I just don't see why. It would be interesting, maybe even disturbing, but crazy-making?

Well look what happened to Cate Blanchett in the latest Indiana Jones movie. If an alien race agrees to share all its secrets, you'd better decline!

[bobot]

H.P. Lovecraft has lots of stories about people being driven mad after glimpsing/realizing supernatural things.
Check out pretty much anything by him. (IMHO At The Mountains Of Madness is a great one.)
Warning, he's kind of an early 20th century "Anglophile", which is a nice way of saying "kind of a racist." Not like: KILL THE STRANGERS!. More along the lines of a disrespectful treatment of those unlike him. Again, IMHO.

[Trinopus]

Lovecraft is definitely the prime example of this sort of thing...but his stories also loosely imply that there are telepathic effects that augment the insanity. It isn't just knowing that Nyarlathotep exists, but the waves of mental emanations radiating from Nyarlathotep that fry your brain.

I consider that cheating, frankly. I'd rather go with the knowledge itself being dangerous. Like the Monty Python business about a joke that's so funny, people laugh themselves to death when they hear it.

Again, I might buy the effect of some highly intense visual stimulus that could harm someone. Like watching some really hideous transformation -- people morphing into centaurs or worse -- much worse -- that could unbalance me. (I've never seen "Alien" and damn well never will!) But simply knowing that, say, centaurs exist on Mt. Helicon? Um...cool!

[TriPolar]

The sound that will break the record player. For you kids it's the sound that will break you iTunes thingy.

Not every device can make a sound which causes self destruction, and I doubt there's any evidence that any thought can destroy a human brain. Still, I knew a person who's son died in car accident, and he was never the same person after that. Total destruction, no. Lifelong damage, it can happen.

[tellyworth]

There are plenty of things on the internet that cannot be unseen, no matter how much you might wish it could. Do they count?

[Koxinga]

Depends. Are you now insane?

[Senegoid]

Example from fiction other than Lovecraft:

Star Trek episode where they are transporting an alien ambassador from somewhere to somewhere. (Sorry, don't remember the episode title.) The ambassador is a life form so utterly alien to humans that the very sight of him (it?) drives a human instantly deathly insane. (And Spock was not immune either, as it played out.) The audience got some brief glimpses -- the ambassador apparently resembled some sort of large glob of slime mold, but very brightly sparkly, and resided in a smallish box with a lid that could be opened, but you dast not!

One defiant crewman dared to peek and went stark raving shrieking mad, and died within a few minutes.

The story line required that, at one point, Spock needed to do a mind meld and become one with the ambassador. He wore special protective goggles, but forgot to put them on again when it came time to un-meld, so he went sort of crazy too.

The ambassador had a mysterious human traveling companion, a mutant natural-born mind reader who was raised as a Vulcan so she could learn to mentally filter out the cacophony of hearing everyone else's thoughts in her mind. She was also mysteriously able to look at the ambassador safely. Turned out in the end that was because

SPOILER:

she was blind. And she was able to do Vulcan mind-meld tricks to cure Spock.

Wait a minute, I just remembered the episode title. "Is There, In Truth, No Beauty?"

[KneadToKnow]

Originally Posted by Senegoid

Wait a minute, I just remembered the episode title. "Is There, In Truth, No Beauty?"

No commas. Just "Is There In Truth No Beauty."

Originally Posted by MemoryAlpha

The episode title is from a poem by the 17th century English poet and clergyman George Herbert, from his poem "Jordan (I)", line 2: "Who says that fictions only and false hair/ Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty?"

linky

[Jragon]

I think if you found out some insane conspiracy was, without a doubt, true, but so thorough the chances of getting anybody else to believe you are slim*, you could go pretty insane if the conspiracy were insidious enough.

* I leave the circumstances under which you can find out such an elaborate conspiracy exists with no way for anybody else to figure it out up to you.

[osme]

''The Great God Pan" by Arthur Machen

[Gatopescado]

Eh, nevermind.

[Quimby]

It's an old thought experiment that I have read elsewhere but let's say you woke up one day and someone told you you weren't still in the universe you were in the day before but the only difference was the shape of a single leaf on a single tree on the other side of the world.

That would seem okay at first but you would get consumed by the fact that this was your real home and if there was that change what else would be different going forward to the point where you would be driven crazy.

[cmyk]

I think if I were told, with absolute certainty, that someone was going to kill me in my sleep in the near future,* but I didn't know when, and despite any measures I took against it, they'd find a way around, I believe I would become paranoid to the degree of obsession/insanity.

Of course, there is no way someone could guarantee with absolute certainty they'd succeed, but I think even a very good chance would bring on the paranoia.


*handwaving away the specifics.

[TriPolar]

Originally Posted by Quimby

It's an old thought experiment that I have read elsewhere but let's say you woke up one day and someone told you you weren't still in the universe you were in the day before but the only difference was the shape of a single leaf on a single tree on the other side of the world.

That would seem okay at first but you would get consumed by the fact that this was your real home and if there was that change what else would be different going forward to the point where you would be driven crazy.

I think there's Heinlein story like this. Some guy realizes that he's in a artifical universe of some kind, and when he starts to think he's actually insane he'll notice something that's a little bit wrong.

[billfish678]

Haven't a few mathematician/science types kinda driven themselves crazy thinking about their problems of interest a bit too hard? Not quite the same thing I guess.

[msmith537]

Originally Posted by Koxinga

Do you think such a thing is possible?

Has such a thing ever occurred?

I could tell you...BUT YOU WOULD GO MAD WITH INSANITY!!

[cmyk]

The Jaunt by Sephen King, as mentioned above, is a great one for fiction: Living with only your unblinking consciousness, trapped in blackness within your own mind, with no escape for a billion billon years... ::shudder::

Also, can forget what Cobb did to his wife Moll in the movie Inception.

[Typo Negative]

The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unp..._Jonathan_Hoag

[msmith537]

Inception has another fictional example. Although it was less of a "revelation" than it was an idea planted in someone's mind.

Pantalone's character from The Matrix had a bit of trouble dealing with his new reality.

In The Adjustment Beureu, Emily Blunt had what I imagine would be a pretty realistic reaction to walking through a door in Soho and ending up in Yankee Stadium and then Liberty Island.


IRL, I doubt there is any bit of knowledge that would cause people to "go mad from the revelation". People are pretty adaptable. Although there are obviously occassions where people develop depression, anxiety, PTSD or other mental health issues from certain events or information.

Originally Posted by cmyk

The Jaunt by Sephen King, as mentioned above, is a great one for fiction: Living with only your unblinking consciousness, trapped in blackness within your own mind, with no escape for a billion billon years... ::shudder::]

IIRC, something like that was supposed to happen to Zaphod in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books. Except all that happened was he came out realizing what he always suspected - he was a pretty great guy!

[mlees]

There was a science fiction short story I read way back in the 70's. I don't remember the author or the title.

Humans had been genetically manipulated (not sure by who) to go insane when they try to explore or understand physics beyond a certain point (roughly 20th century tech).

Somehow, this one scientist knew this, and also predicted some kind of global war or attack, and worked himself to insanity, essentially sacrificing himself, in developing an impenetrable force field to protect cities from WMD's. (He was succesful.)

[Dallas Jones]

Originally Posted by Trinopus

When I was quite young, I read Heinlein's short story "They."

Ruined my life!

(Good story... Read it, oh do!)

Originally Posted by Typo Negative

The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unp..._Jonathan_Hoag

Originally Posted by TriPolar

I think there's Heinlein story like this. Some guy realizes that he's in a artifical universe of some kind, and when he starts to think he's actually insane he'll notice something that's a little bit wrong.

And in the Heinlein story "Methuselah's Children", Slayton Ford, the former administrator of Earth meets the beings inside the temple on the first planet they try to land on, and finds that they are actual gods, or very advanced beings, inside that see the inhabitants of the planet as pets. He goes quite insane for awhile.

[cmyk]

I'm actually just now getting around to reading The Man Who Folded Himself, only 2/3 of the way through right now (as Time Travel fiction is one of my favorite genres, I'm shamed to admit), and one of the versions of Daniel Eakins...

SPOILER:

Goes insane due to the logical conclusion of the power of time travel, he concludes he's destined to rule the Universe, and is God. Other temporal versions of himself catch on to his delusions, and lock him away in a psych ward indefinitely, taking away his belt

[Gray Ghost]

A couple of my favorites in the genre are:

Charlie Stross's Laundry Series. Basically, Cthulhu is real and mathematics is how you contact him. Alan Turing was in on it. And so on... Great fun.

Larry Niven's Draco Tavern story, "The Subject Is Closed." 5 pages. Go read it. The rest of the Draco stories are usually pretty good too.

SCP-231. The rest of the site is hit or miss, but well done, if you like X-Files type of stories. Isn't there a Doper or two who've contributed entries?

[Rodgers01]

You know those brain teasers/riddles in which one person presents an odd situation and then everyone has to ask questions till they figure out what it's all about? For example, I present the image of a man dead in the middle of a field holding a small piece of straw, and you have to ask questions till you unravel that

SPOILER:

he jumped out of a hot air balloon to lighten the load so that his companions could escape over a mountain, etc.

Well, the crux of one of those puzzles is that an old sailor orders some meat dish in a restaurant, takes one bite then goes insane and kills himself. You are supposed to figure out that

SPOILER:

he was previously stranded on a desert island with some people who always fed him what they claimed was goat meat - or parrot meat, or whatever meat it is he later orders in the restaurant. In fact they were feeding him human flesh, which he only realizes once he finds out what real goat meat tastes like, upon taking that one fatal bite. This knowledge drives him to insanity and suicide.

[gracer]

My SO is a philosopher, and we know quite a few philosophers (I mean the real kind, not ethicists or metaphysicists). They are all pretty severely depressed. All of them. I've seen it happen so many times, and I really think there is strong connection. Not quite the same thing as crazy perhaps, but similar, I think.

[cmyk]

Originally Posted by gracer

My SO is a philosopher, and we know quite a few philosophers (I mean the real kind, not ethicists or metaphysicists). They are all pretty severely depressed. All of them. I've seen it happen so many times, and I really think there is strong connection. Not quite the same thing as crazy perhaps, but similar, I think.

Probably due to the very strong, profound and real conclusion that there is no point to life. As subjective and special as we seem, everything is ultimately doomed to absolute oblivion.

*sigh* I think I'm gonna draw the drapes now and sleep....

[Chimera]

One of the things I have seen that causes mentally unbalanced people to crack even further is the gulf between Reality and the way people insist on seeing the world. It's a control thing, demanding that reality conform to our insistence on how it should be. If the two are far apart but the person refuses to accept and acknowledge this, the mind...diverges.

This is sort of the way the whole Cthulhu insanity causing knowledge works. You think reality is one way, suddenly you learn it is completely different. Now reasonably, you'd only really go crackers if you were unable to reconcile the change from one to the other, which I suppose is quite possible in fanatics and control freaks - people who with such a strong insistence that Reality is THIS (and ignoring all contrary evidence).

[Miller]

Originally Posted by msmith537

IIRC, something like that was supposed to happen to Zaphod in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books. Except all that happened was he came out realizing what he always suspected - he was a pretty great guy!

No, that was something different: the Total Perspective Vortex was a machine that would show you exactly how important you were in the grand scheme of the universe. Such hard knowledge of one's own insignificance would usually drive people insane. IIRC, Zaphod survives because he's actually in a VR universe created specifically for him - making him the most important thing in the virtual universe.

[billfish678]

The universe is finite? WTF does that mean/imply?

The universe is infinite? Argggghhhh

Time has a begining and or an end? Arggghhh

Time is infinite? Argggggghhhh

I've pretty much decided if I become an old coot in a nursing home these concepts will drive me batty towards the end if I start to get obsessed with them. That and fracking black holes.

[mlees]

Originally Posted by mlees

There was a science fiction short story I read way back in the 70's. I don't remember the author or the title.

Humans had been genetically manipulated (not sure by who) to go insane when they try to explore or understand physics beyond a certain point (roughly 20th century tech).

Somehow, this one scientist knew this, and also predicted some kind of global war or attack, and worked himself to insanity, essentially sacrificing himself, in developing an impenetrable force field to protect cities from WMD's. (He was succesful.)

Found it! All hail the Great Wikipedia!

Asimov's Breeds There a Man...?. linky

[Max Torque]

Huh, I just posted about this story in another thread, now I get to bring it up again. From the Harlan Ellison short story "Grail": the appearance of your one true love. Not her name, not where she lives, not even whether she is alive or yet unborn. The certain knowledge that you have a perfect love, that you are worthy of it, and that you will never attain it.

[gaffa]

The "Church" of Scientology claims that learning the content of their OT III course without proper preparation will drive one insane.

Note: This is the piece of really mediocre SF featured in the "Trapped in the Closet" episode of South Park.

[Pushkin]

Originally Posted by Koxinga

Do you think such a thing is possible?

Has such a thing ever occurred?

I've no idea how to Google quickly and accurately enough, but there's a quote somewhere attributed (I think) to Henry Kissinger on how being given clearance to view the most secret information can be a maddening thing.

First you feel great knowing all manner of things you didn't before. Then you feel frustrated at not having know them and so made decisions before that you certainly wouldn't now. Then you have to speak to people with lesser clearance and you have to take pains not to give away what you know.

Not exactly a single thing that would drive you mad, but a frustrating way in which to think.

[Martian Bigfoot]

Originally Posted by shijinn

the vague knowledge of when and how you'd die.

-Somewhere in the next twenty to thirty years.
-It will probably involve chocolate.

[Gray Ghost]

Was Cassandra mad, before the Greeks came?

For RL, I can imagine that being a scientist who knows that the Dinosaur Killer is coming, or that the Pinwheel Star decided to go off, would eat at a person. Inconstant Moon is a favorite of mine for a fictional example of that kind of knowledge, and what it does to people.

[Trinopus]

Originally Posted by osme

''The Great God Pan" by Arthur Machen

Thank'ee! Just downloaded it and will read it. (These may be the last sane words I write...)

Originally Posted by Dallas Jones

And in the Heinlein story "Methuselah's Children", Slayton Ford, the former administrator of Earth meets the beings inside the temple on the first planet they try to land on, and finds that they are actual gods, or very advanced beings, inside that see the inhabitants of the planet as pets. He goes quite insane for awhile.

Four for Heinlein. Toss in "All You Zombies," which is pretty crazy-making, and the son-of-a-gun gets five! Damn effective writer, he was!

[Pushkin]

Originally Posted by shijinn

the vague knowledge of when and how you'd die.

The absolute knowledge of when and how others would die can be quite depressing.