From: Kragen Sitaker (kragen@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Jan 02 2001 - 16:17:06 PST
Tony Finch writes:
> It isn't that implausible: it's evident that in certain cases (i.e.
> epilepsy) inputs to the brain can stop it from working properly.
> However epilepsy is considered to be a bug.
How about torture? Sensory deprivation and sleep deprivation seem to
be pretty effective techniques for turning ordinary, sane people into
pathetic lunatics, and PTSD would seem to be a fairly permanent, if
intermittent, analogue.
Then there's the ordinary everyday kind of stuff; for example, I've
found that having a TV running in the room distracts me sufficiently
that I can't read or write anything of significance, and have a hard
time carrying on a conversation with other people. I may be buggier
than the average person in this respect, but I think everyone suffers
from the same bug to some degree. Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron story
uses it to dumb down people who are too smart. Similarly, sufficient
sustained pain seems to be pretty effective at making people grumpy and
short-tempered.
--
<kragen@pobox.com> Kragen Sitaker <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
Perilous to all of us are the devices of an art deeper than we possess
ourselves.
-- Gandalf the White [J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Two Towers", Bk 3, Ch. XI]
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