Manic Oppressive

From PVCPVCCPVCCCP

The bad news: I'm bipolar.
The good news: Everyone is bipolar.

Let me explain... I guess I don't mean bipolar like the actual disorder. I'm not saying that people who have bipolar disorder don't have a problem. I just mean that I, like everyone else, exhibit the symptoms of bipolar disorder at times. I think that these symptoms explain a great deal about how humans think and process information.

So here's my theory of bipolar disorder:
Being a functional human requires the ability to process a great deal of information very quickly. Sight, sound, touch, chemical responses... etc etc. The only way to do this is shortcuts.

Your brain generates models of the outside world based on the data you collect. It uses those models to interpret new data and uses that new data to revise the model. Yes... revise, not recreate. The problem with this is that your brain also uses those models to choose what data to collect. Yep... you guessed it... feedback loop fail.

Bipolar disorder is the manifestation of the turbulence inherent in poorly controlled feedback systems. You have your world-view. You're supposed to be collecting a good sample of data to revise that world-view so that it changes smoothly. Well... too bad you don't and when some contradictory data slips in that crushes your world-view, you get utterly pwned. Now you have to recreate your world-view in a very short amount of time, based on the limited data you can collect at the time, which will probably be the negative stuff.

The severity of bipolar disorder varies greatly from person to person. I read a bit about it on Wikipedia and found this interesting tidbit. Basically, creative people tend to have problems with bipolar disorder. Correlation does not equal causation. But it is a big fucking hint.

So in my model of model generation... what could possibly make your turbulence more severe? Well whenever your models systemically diverge from reality (i.e. it is a biased estimator,) you're in deep shit. Poor data sampling gets you data that is not necessarily representative of reality. Aggressive extrapolation in model generating leads to models that don't necessarily fit the data. Both of these sound like problems creative people have.

To kick it old-school MBTI stylie... it appears that extroverted intuitives (ENTP, INTP, ENFP, INFP) are the most likely to have bipolar disorder. I would bet a zillion bucks that sensers don't have much of problem with bipolar disorder.

These issues with poorly controlled feedback seem to apply to a lot of complex systems. Economies suffer from business cycles. Extinctions tend to happen as mass extinctions. etc. etc.

Just an interesting connection... not to be taken seriously until I publish :-)