I just want to express the opinion that closing that thread was wrong.
I have myself been psychotic as the result of pain and confusion, and I wanted to get outside opinion, because my inside opinion was that I was experiencing pain and confusion.
It is possible that some of the opinions offered here would be from sociopathic trolls, but in the main I think we would have got sane rational responses.
Nothing else to say here.
It definitely wasn’t appropriate for GQ but could have been moved to IMHO.
On the other hand, I’m not sure how productive such a thread could have been. I’m generally of the opinion that if a thread isn’t breaking any rules and otherwise isn’t causing a problem that you leave it alone, so I wouldn’t have called for it to be closed. But at the same time it doesn’t bother me that it was closed.
I guess what it boils down to is, if someone posts that they are in a computer simulation and says up front they know that others won’t believe them, why are there here? What is the point?
ETA: It might have been helpful to link to the thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=884819
Colibri’s initial (and, of course, only) response was a completely true, rational, and helpful answer to the OPs problem. Whether it was sufficiently meaningful to the OP to trigger them to actually talk to a professional IRL, I don’t know.
It’s likely that if the thread had stayed open it would have attracted a number of other true, rational and helpful posts on the OPs problem. It might also have attracted some jerks. Whether the presence of the first outweighs the danger of the second, is a judgement call. If it were put to a vote then, yeah, I’d personally vote for “open until and unless jerk responses actually become a problem”. But I’m not a mod. Or a mental health professional.
I gave the OP the benefit of the doubt in assuming they were having some actual mental problems, rather than trolling. But we simply are not a place to offer therapy for whatever that person was experiencing. (I have some experience in this as well, since my father, aunt, and cousin were all schizophrenic, and my long-time girlfriend was bipolar.) The only valid response to that OP was to tell them to seek professional help. I’m sure a lot of the responses would have been sympathetic, but I also think that mocking or other detrimental responses would have been probable.
Maybe the OP who started that thread really is a computer simulation. A bot whose programming was sufficiently self-referential to lead it to suspect that it might be a bot.
At best, the thread would have required close monitoring by a mod. I didn’t feel that the potential benefits outweighed the odds of jerkish responses.
If the person truly believed they were in a computer simulation - how would reaching out to unknown people thru the computer be of any help?
Obviously, there was no logic involved. None of the described symptoms suggested being in a computer simulation. Instead, a feeling of being controlled by outside forces, as the poster described, is a typical symptom of schizophrenia.
While I think it could have made for an interesting thread, someone in that bad a mental condition not thinking clearly, who knows what damage could have been done by even one thoughtless post. Probably not a good idea to play around with that, because of the potential for the person to harm themselves or others, they need to seek medical and psychiatric help.
For one, a belief means they aren’t 100% sure, so reaching out on the chance they are wrong makes sense–and doing so online means you have some anonymity so you aren’t embarrassed. For another, nothing about being in a computer simulation inherently means that the other simulated beings couldn’t provide help in coping with said realization.
And that’s assuming that they believe everyone inside is simulated. They could also believe that one or more real minds have been placed in a simulated environment, ala the “brain in a vat” question (or the linked brains in a vat question).
That said, I don’t think that’s the situation with the OP of that thread, as Colibri said. What they described didn’t actually fit their hypothesis. It sounds more like they just reached for a term to describe what they were feeling. In that way, “computer simulation” is equivalent to “alien abduction,” “implanted device,” “secret experiments,” etc.
My 2¢: That was pretty much the [del]best[/del] only possible response; minimizing the risk of harm being done (even unintentionally) has to be the Prime Directive when encountering someone in such a fragile state. Hippocrates and all that.
Well, we have several schizophenics here. I can tell you from personal experience that there’s no reason to assume a schizophrenic can go somewhere else (e.g., somewhere of a medical nature) and get more useful communication and feedback than what is available here.
Now perhaps you don’t wish our community to be inundated with people whose posts contain no logic and are embued with a sense of bieng controlled by outside forces. I sympathize completely with that, having waded through my share of “determinism vs free will” threads, not to mention “is our consciousness an illusion” threads, etc
I loved this movie, but felt that Linda Hamilton was woefully miscast.
This is not a policy statement for the SDMB. It is solely a personal opinion.
We are absolutely not the place for the genuinely mentally ill. At least not for those whose mental illness is not under some form of control. We’re not mental health professionals, nor are we any form of therapist. Such treatment requires subtlety and nuance and the potential for disaster for those who need help who try to get it here is far too high.
We are pretty good at what we do, and we have many professionals here. But, by and large, we’re amateurs and amateurs should not engage the mentally ill in any professional way. There’s just too much harm that can be done. As for actual professionals here? In large, you’ll note they stick to generalities. I couldn’t help someone with their investments this way - and in truth I’m forbidden to do so by law - just as a doctor or lawyer on the SDMB is justifiably cautious in providing advice in their field. One just can’t know enough to provide real assistance through this format.
That isn’t exactly an argument in favor of getting advice from non-professionals. I have spent many many hours in the company of schizophrenics and know it’s difficult to impossible to communicate effectively with someone who is delusional, even at first hand and if you know them well. I can also tell you from personal experience that my father’s condition was improved considerably by professional treatment between when he was diagnosed about 1956 and passed away in 1994.
In the case of physical illness do we not tell people to go see a doctor immediately?
We do. Or at a minimum we steer people away from giving medical advice beyond the barest level.
It used to be policy to automatically close all threads asking for medical or legal advice. Some years ago we began to move them to IMHO instead, to emphasize that no one should rely on any advice from a free message board for serious issues. However, in this particular case, since the OP was clearly not merely looking for advice but delusional, I felt it was better to close it.
I completely understand the application in this specific context, a new poster expressing, possibly honestly, delusions, but this statement disturbs.
We have had regular long term posters here going through serious mental health crises, not yet well controlled. In some cases I think the support they’ve received here, not in any professional capacity but as a peer group even if it is a virtual community one, was helpful.
In this specific instance leaving the thread open may have given someone an opportunity to offer some links to specific resources, such as a link to the National Alliance for Mental Health (NAMI) support page with links to local chapters and real world resources, or even just the phone number (800-950-NAMI).
This was (potentially) a lost opportunity to get someone to the help they were asking for.
FWIW I just sent a PM with the link and phone number.