Isn't it odd how certain mental pathologies (ADHD, autism, psychopathy, etc.) appear to be inheritable?

[Pluto]

I've had this thought for a while now. I'm not talking about the stuff that's obviously an unintended fuck-up or the result of a reoccurring mutation (e.g. Downs Syndrome). Obviously not all inheritable traits are necessarily beneficial – evolution doesn't work that way – but the sheer ubiquity of these conditions means that they had to provide some sort of benefit in prehistoric times, either to the individual or to their clan group, otherwise they would've disappeared or become vanishingly rare by now. Or perhaps they are an unintended side effect of something that does provide a lot of utility.

For psychopathy/sociopathy, it is obviously just a matter of some game theory. A small amount of individuals may derive a lot of utility out of being selfish... just as long as not too many members of a species do. Other Cluster B personality disorders seem to function on the same principle.

But for other mental conditions, it's not so obvious. There's a lot of room for fun speculation!

Autism seems to create individuals who are mostly alienated from the social fabric of the clan, but who can provide non-standard skills. Stuff like the autistic hyperfixation on collecting things and information. In a preliterate world, autistic cavemen might've served as knowledge repositories for the entire clan. A decrease in sociality and a higher interest in tinkering with things can also prompt some technological innovations.
I remember hearing of a study that shows that people with ADHD are potentially much better at foraging, and I think I can see that. ADHD people also act as sort of anti-autists, in the way they seem to abhor routine and sedentarism, which is obviously beneficial (in moderation).
Paranoia and neuroticism are also beneficial in moderation. Gotta stay on edge!
And schizophrenia... Who the fuck knows? Might be an unintended consequence of our capacity for imagination?

I think I would've liked evolutionary psychology, if only it didn't present itself as a 'science'.

 

[Pluto]

Sorry I killed the thread btw.

It was never alive to begin with.

 

[CabinHearted]

It was never alive to begin with.

It's okay, I'm here to shit up the thread

And schizophrenia... Who the fuck knows? Might be an unintended consequence of our capacity for imagination?

I'm honestly not sure on schizophrenia either but there are certainly people who have some degree of it, in the same way that some people have a degree of the tism. My thinking is that perhaps they served as out of the box thinkers in the same way that autists do, and things like autism, adhd, psychopathy, and schizophrenia all exist on the same continuum, with a strong bell curve towards normie-ism. Except instead of functioning as a more effective forager, or information repository, they'd be more like the 'sage' types? Definitely more of a crap shoot than something I've actively thought about, but it's an interesting though experiment for sure.

I'd like to think that for the most part 'minor mental illness' is just a byproduct of how society currently functions. I'm not a huge fan of social interaction personally, and I'm pretty comfortable spending days in isolation. I've mentioned it off-handedly to co-workers before and most people just don't seem to understand that for me, it's easy to self-regulate without having others around. In modern society where social interaction is frequent and a marker for success, it means people with a predisposition towards self-isolation aren't as successful.

However, what if you were to have those same personality traits, disposition, or whatever you'd like to call it, say, three hundred years ago? Wouldn't it be helpful if one of your community members were able to go into the field with the sheep for a week at a time, and be unaffected by the isolation? There are also people who are particularly sensitive to loud noises, flashing lights, and over stimulation, if someone like that lived in a small village, or tribal setting, you probably wouldn't be able to pick them out from the group.

I suppose if I have a point in saying any of this, it's that for the most part, I see a lot of the minor/super common, mental illnesses of today as a by-product of us still running with hardware not built for this modern society. The more severe ones are just sitting to the more extreme edges of that mental illness bell curve.

 

[Pluto]

Except instead of functioning as a more effective forager, or information repository, they'd be more like the 'sage' types?

Yeah, I can kinda see it. It's part of that whole weird thing about how religion and language seem to have co-developed simultaneously. Like that one weirdo who came up with this theory that before the Axial Age people tended to think dialectically, i.e. not recognizing the voice in their heads as 'themselves', but rather as a semi-external thing that only gave them instructions. It's almost certainly bullshit, but just shows how weird things were back then.
I wouldn't really go for "sage" but maybe a shaman figure instead? Someone who can link tangible phenomena to the 'spirit world'? Although up until medieval times it was a distinction without much of a difference. Prophets and oracles were a staple in the ancient/classical world, and history is littered with these esoteric figures who are described going through "ecstatic episodes" or whatever.
Unfortunately we won't be able to really test or confirm any this until a time machine is invented.

However, what if you were to have those same personality traits, disposition, or whatever you'd like to call it, say, three hundred years ago? Wouldn't it be helpful if one of your community members were able to go into the field with the sheep for a week at a time, and be unaffected by the isolation? There are also people who are particularly sensitive to loud noises, flashing lights, and over stimulation, if someone like that lived in a small village, or tribal setting, you probably wouldn't be able to pick them out from the group.

Ok this is where I've got to politely but firmly disagree. Reading up on life in premodern societies made me realize just how insanely isolated we in the modern world are. People who live in (post)industrial countries are extremely atomized compared with earlier times.
People would used to work together, eat together, sleep together, bathe together, even take shits together. Everything was crammed. Having your own room was a privilege afforded only to the extremely wealthy, and even then, they almost never actually slept in it alone (before it turned into a honorific/legalistic position, medieval chamberlains were the people – often eunuchs – who were charged with sleeping alongside the king in his chambers. Literally: chamber-lie-in). Privacy was almost unheard of.

I guess the shepherd example could be considered, and I don't really know about about it, but I suspect people would rarely go out shepherding alone. You'd probably want someone to have your back if a wolf or a lion shows up, or even if you just sprain your ankle or something.

 

[4d1]

perhaps they are an unintended side effect of something that does provide a lot of utility.

I think that they are just patterns in thought that have ended up dysfunctional with the current method of civilisation. As others here have said, I also agree that perhaps autism/ADHD/schizophrenia were useful as advisors in the tribe when there were less man-made distractions around to exploit such things. There was no mass media to sidetrack people who were good at foraging or engineering/building things, and anyone hearing voices would be considered spiritual rather than debilitated.

The outlook of them as a disease is only because in the modern day people are expected to live a "normal" that is not inherently utilitarian for survival, it's utilitarian for control, but primarily profitmaxxing and power by sociopath types (who also probably served as utilitarian in the tribe-organisation means, and now have constructed such as system that is too big to end as they have learnt from the countless other systems in history to craft one so technologically advanced it's too big to grasp for the average person).

Because we have strayed and evolved our tools and civilisation far beyond the primal natural means that these traits which used to be good are now no longer "beneficial" in the survival sense when it comes to finding partners and reproducing, hence why they appear as a disease to normal people who are more like cattle and can just go along with what their told. I don't think it's as deep as selective breeding from up top, but I feel like in a society where "normal" is watching the sports game and working 9-5 whilst clubbing and scrolling TikTok, these types of outliers who probably don't do these things are naturally going to be less tolerated by "normies" because inherently they pose a threat to the order and legitimacy of the money-making regime of the sociopath types.

However, another semi relevant idea that I'm not sure has much validityy to it other than speculation, but have thought about a lot regarding this topic is that as a result of technology, we have shifted from genetic inheritance to memetic inheritance, where ideas can play as much of a role as genes and thus imbue such mental/ideological "diseases" into people. The whole mental health scene online can be very dodgy for making people believe they are "mentally ill" or have whatever autism/ADHD/etc because it's a trendy thing to label yourself as, and the vagueness of the symptoms means that it's a) easy to diagnose and b) never curable because such symptoms are just the human condition. Which then brings me back to it being beneficial for sociopath people like Big Pharma or those WEF degrowthers/depopulation retards.

I feel like it's a deep rabbit hole that isn't just as simple as "it was once beneficial" but I think that theory definitely holds some truth in conjunction with it?

 

[cone]

The idea that schizophrenia must be secretly providing some benefit is misguided, I think. Some things are shit but we just never evolved something better. It's not so bad that you can't get by with it (indeed many people don't have symptoms until after adolescence and by then maybe you've already had a kid) so it doesn't get selected against heavily enough to drown it out of the population.

Interestingly, our perception and experience of these traits is also corrupted by the environment we live in. In the USA people with schizophrenia are viewed as suffering from it, usually because they are suffering and their hallucinations are negative. In other countries, e.g., third-world place, people with schizophrenia often report their hallucinations as positive - they hear voices that make them laugh or that they find comforting, in contrast to the American schizos whose voices tell them to kill themselves or do heinous shit.

 

[Pluto]

Interestingly, our perception and experience of these traits is also corrupted by the environment we live in. In the USA people with schizophrenia are viewed as suffering from it, usually because they are suffering and their hallucinations are negative. In other countries, e.g., third-world place, people with schizophrenia often report their hallucinations as positive - they hear voices that make them laugh or that they find comforting, in contrast to the American schizos whose voices tell them to kill themselves or do heinous shit.

Oh yeah completely forgot about that angle.

Further proof that there's an evil spirit possessing America

 

[punisheddead]

But for other mental conditions, it's not so obvious. There's a lot of room for fun speculation!

Autism seems to create individuals who are mostly alienated from the social fabric of the clan, but who can provide non-standard skills. Stuff like the autistic hyperfixation on collecting things and information. In a preliterate world, autistic cavemen might've served as knowledge repositories for the entire clan. A decrease in sociality and a higher interest in tinkering with things can also prompt some technological innovations.
I remember hearing of a study that shows that people with ADHD are potentially much better at foraging, and I think I can see that. ADHD people also act as sort of anti-autists, in the way they seem to abhor routine and sedentarism, which is obviously beneficial (in moderation).
Paranoia and neuroticism are also beneficial in moderation. Gotta stay on edge!
And schizophrenia... Who the fuck knows? Might be an unintended consequence of our capacity for imagination?

I think I would've liked evolutionary psychology, if only it didn't present itself as a 'science'.

I think you're looking at it the wrong way thinking that it's primarily a hereditary thing, I think that it can be hereditary but also caused by other external factors. Those with parents of said illnesses might not be born with the illness but might get it during development due to other external or social factors or it might get exacerbated.

Most of these illnesses are also on a spectrum and while mild to moderate autism provides some benefits, debilitating autism wouldn't and if it was mainly a hereditary trait those with debilitating autism would have been bred out. Same goes for really bad cases of ADHD and bad forms of schizophrenia. For many of these illnesses we aren't even really sure if they truly existed in the past and it's tough to say if they or their more extreme forms aren't caused by many "features" of the modern world. The early man didn't have high processed foods, widespread pollution, persistent and irrational stress, microplastics, wasn't bombarded with artificial lights, wasn't physically inactive all the time, wasn't as asocial and much more. As much as humans like to pretend that we know how these things truly work we really don't, we know if they won't kill you right now, it's a blind guess what it can cause during your lifetime and especially during development.

While there is evidence that mental illness has to some form always existed, but before seen as demonic possession or some shit like that, only during more modern periods is there evidence of it reaching extremes at such numbers. On the topic of that, if it was mainly hereditary it would have also been stomped out during the times of earlier Europe and even before as we know that those with severe mental illness we're treated anything but kindly.

I think that as if with for example a physical deformity it's a roll of the dice. If lets say there's a 50% chance to get adhd but you roll the 50% to not get it you might be exposed to something else that could cause it during development. For example, there have been studies showing that those exposed to more pollution during their developmental ages are more likely to develop adhd traits, so maybe you were lucky on the die and got mild or no ADHD but your parents smoked like chimneys or you grew up in a mining town or had lead pipes so your brain got screwed up either way.

So all in all I think that it's just specific ways that your brain can get screwed up and while it could be/could have been useful in certain situations and they can be hereditary I don't see that as the main reason these illnesses still exist today.

I could be wrong tho, I ain't no scientist.

In the USA people with schizophrenia are viewed as suffering from it, usually because they are suffering and their hallucinations are negative. In other countries, e.g., third-world place, people with schizophrenia often report their hallucinations as positive - they hear voices that make them laugh or that they find comforting, in contrast to the American schizos whose voices tell them to kill themselves or do heinous shit.

Kinda like how in the western world it's common to dream of your teeth falling out while in Africa you might dream of snakes. As much as the modern scientist might hate to admit there probably is a cultural aspect to it all too. But say that and you'll get reactions ranging from "racist" to "well if Africa is so good why don't you go and live there", somehow less useful then just not saying anything.

 

[Pluto]

For many of these illnesses we aren't even really sure if they truly existed in the past

There are some people in history who're suspected of autism, at the very least. That 19th century guy who lived without speaking with anyone is the most 'obvious' example but there are others, it's just that no serious academic is willing to go and retro-diagnose historic figures like that.

I also have this personal theory that Louis XVI had Asperger's.

And, my own grandpa is almost certainly autistic.