• 7heo@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    This “definition of insanity” is nothing but a meme. It has no grounds wrt neurological or psychiatric science, and also isn’t directly related to any actual symptoms of insanity.

    “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” is actually the definition of training

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      You’re also in a meme community, commenting on a meme, so while technically correct, it’s not super relevant.

      • 7heo@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        It’s not from FarCry 3. Vaas is indeed a very cool character, but it’s originally from Rita Mae Brown’s “Sudden Death” (1984, ISBN 0-553-26930-5).

          • 7heo@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Not the exact quote no. It says something about “repeating mistakes”, the actual quote doesn’t. Repeating actions isn’t nearly the same as repeating mistakes. There’s a pretty big difference.

      • macniel@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Iconic only for those who played it or randomly encountered him via meme propagation.

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I mean, Jeffrey Dahmer was universally considered insane and he didn’t “do the same thing over and over and expect different results”. He just killed and ate people over and over and expected them to taste good.

    • PapaStevesy@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      Idk, if you’re doing the same thing after your training that you were doing before, you either didn’t need training or you weren’t successfully trained.

      It’s an idiom, it’s not meant to be a clinical diagnosis. Like, yeah if you’re psychiatrist says it to you qnd tries to have you institutionalized, that’s obviously a problem. But I highly doubt that’s ever happened, certainly not in the modern age.

      Ultimately, it’s actually the same exact idea as “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it,” but in less politically correct terms.

      • 7heo@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Absolutely not. “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it” is actually correct. It’s an intelligent thing to say.

        On the other hand, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”, is both incorrect and harmful. It’s also, very dumb.

        Lemme elaborate:

        1. When you train, you are actually doing the same thing. What changes isn’t what you are doing, but how you are doing it. And you can change that, because what you are doing it with, changes. Your muscles get more mass, tone, endurance, speed, etc. Your brain creates new connections, etc.
        2. The definition of insanity is actually: “the loss of the ability to differentiate between facts, that can be empirically verified, and fiction, which cannot.”. It’s no mystery as to why the access of the masses to the Internet is causing worrying increases in the insanity the of average person. People are losing contact with reality. Literally.
        3. Doing the same thing over and over, without an appreciable difference in results, while obsessing over it, can be tangentially related to insanity, since a sane person would be able to recognize the lack of progress, but that is conflating causation and correlation, and is harmful enough in itself to be called “dumb”.
        • boonhet@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          For the training, I’d argue that you’re not trying to get different results.

          Each time, the result is minor growth in whatever your goal is, be it strength, muscle mass, or endurance, etc.

        • ThaNookLmao@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          think the meme has some grounds for truth. of course it was designed to be a dramatic speech for a scary character but it has some grounds to it: this may not be the truth but its how it feels. By doing the same thing over and over again and seeing no chance you go insane, and as such it feels like doing so is asking for insanity, thus the characters speech!

          • 7heo@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Ok, that’s interesting. But you got it backwards: what drives insane in situations where you are deprived (of feedback, or progress, etc) isn’t the lack/inability of observation, but the fact that said observation is seemingly detached from reality.

            Basically showing a sane brain that it’s insane. That renders people insane, indeed.

    • gun@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Not to mention it’s always attributed to Albert Einstein which is not something he said and not something he would ever have said. Doesn’t stop people from continuing to invoke this “definition of insanity” as if its a smart thing to say.

    • lorez@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      If you’re getting different results it’s because you’re adjusting something. That’s training.

      • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Actually when you create a hypothesis and test it and prove it out, it is meant to be 100% repeatable by anyone following the metgod. Otherwise your method or hypothesis is wrong.

        • TheActualDevil@sffa.community
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          1 year ago

          Right, but the reason you run the experiment repeatedly is to test the validity of the hypothesis. You’re looking for something different to happen. That’s the point behind rerunning the tests.

          • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Right, but if you find a difference you alter the method or hypothesis, to get repearbility. An insane person (not neccessarily crazy person, but one that doesn’t follow sane rationalizarion) will keep repeating exact same thing.

      • 7heo@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        While I’m at it, it’s the very logic at the basis of “monitoring” in computer science.

        • boonhet@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          But also if you keep running the compiler without changing any of the code hoping for the errors to be magically gone, you are insane. So there’s the same logic being applied to insanity in computer science

      • 7heo@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        It comes from Rita Mae Brown’s “Sudden Death”, which is hardly trying to disprove quantum mechanics…

          • 7heo@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Einstein’s name has also been affixed since his death to quotes from elsewhere. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,” for instance, was traced by Einstein archivist Barbara Wolff to US writer Rita Mae Brown’s Sudden Death (1983). (Source)

            Go argue with Barbara Wolff then. She seems to have got that wrong. I guess she rushed her research, being an “Einstein archivist” and all. I mean, you kinda found the right information almost immediately, right? Man, calling herself an “Einstein archivist”, and rushing to conclusion without doing her own research… the nerve of some people, right?