Is it irrational to believe that a traumatic childhood incident can cause severe
mental problems which build up and manifest themselves fully much later?

Is it rational to believe that stress from combat can cause psychological damage
which is covered up at first but causes problems much later? Many veterans
believe it is.

Does the fact that some veterans fought in very dangerous situations with no
apparent ill effects mean that others did not suffer shell shock from less
serious exposure?

The notion that extreme stress can cause insanity, which may appear much later,
is still believed (look at accounts of holocaust survivors who committed suicide
years later). However, we no longer believe playing 8 games blindfold causes
severe stress. Many people did, and using Paulsen as a counterexample does not
make their belief illogical. The accurate statement of the belief is that playing
blindfold chess greatly increases your chance of having some form of brain
damage, not that it must always cause it.

Jerry Spinrad


In article t.com, Louis Blair writes:
| Jeremy Spinrad wrote:
|
| People are awed at blindfold chess displays, and some
| people warn that such an awesome display is very dangerous.
| Predisposition: playing chess blindfold may or may not
| be a dangerous activity.
|
| Morphy dies insane.
|
| Lends some support to the hypothesis that blindfold
| chess is dangerous. Do you believe it? It is only a
| single example, but if you already thought it might
| be dangerous, this might make your belief a bit
| stronger.
|
| _
| This does not sound "very rational" to me. Indeed
| it sounds to me like one of the classic logical
| fallacies. (A follows B. Therefore, A was caused
| by B.)

|
|
| Jeremy Spinrad wrote:
|
| As to the notion that since it occurred many years
| later, blindfold chess could not have contributed:
| how is this less believable than the notion that
| having smoked years ago can greatly increase your
| chances of getting lung cancer?
|
| _
| I seem to remember those smoking warning ads saying
| that cancer risk goes down greatly if one gives it
| up. But, apart from that, do the effects of smoking
| typically begin well after the time the smoking has
| stopped and then "escalate slowly" over a period of
| time that extends for decades?
|
| Furthermore, smoking physically introduces substances
| into the body. Blindfold chess does not.
|
| Also: Smoking is done a little bit at a time, so
| it is plausible that the damage done takes place a
| little bit at a time with no major effect noticed
| on any one smoking occasion. This is less plausible
| with an activity that took place on a small number
| of special occasions.
|
| Moreover, Paulsen did a fair amount of blindfold
| play in Morphy's day without going crazy.
|
|
| Jeremy Spinrad wrote:
|
| I feel that both believing it caused insanity
| and believing it did not were both well within
| the bounds of what a reasonable person can
| believe. Although I do not believe that the
| Atkins diet is a healthy plan, I am not about
| to say that the followers of it are being
| irrational (as I might say, for example,
| about believers in astrology; pinning down
| exactly where things become irrational is not
| so precise).
|
| One of the reasons that we realize that playing
| 8 games blindfolded is not a mental health risk
| is that we also realize that it is not such an
| awesome intellectual achievement. Reading the
| old statements about individual blindfold
| performances is amusing; they talk about how
| these feats of memory will be remembered
| throughout human history. But if we accept that
| they believed that this mental task stretched
| the bounds of human achievement, I think we
| must also accept the notion that this also
| might cause such a strain that the mind might
| break down in mysterious ways as a result of
| this.
|
| _
| It's the "mysterious ways" part of this argument
| that, in my opinion, is the big problem. Part of
| being "very rational", in my opinion, is not
| adopting beliefs for which there is no evidence
| and which require "mysterious ways" in order
| to make any sense at all.