I think this is one of those things where it seems totally fine to you but in reality it activates some kind of intrinsic biological limit that you aren’t even aware of. I FEEL like I would easily conquer the nothing box by just doing a lot of great thinking. But scientifically, I kind of doubt that I really could. It’s like if someone challenged me to eat only celery for a year. I might have the willpower to do it, but biologically I may just die. Now I don’t think the nothing box would kill me, but I can imagine it making people go crazy for sure.
solitary confinement is recognized as torture, and that’s probably for a good reason. I’ve also had personal experience in psychiatric hospitals with people who had to be confined, and while their being there is probably due to every available professional being entirely hopeless with them, the confinement definitely doesn’t help the situation. even the ex-director of the NIMH, thomas insel, finds in “healing: our path from mental illness to mental health” that a lot of mental healthcare is actually social and communal care, not cold hard medicine. where medicines fail, you can still treat a patient with kindness and patience, integrate them into their community, make friends, have good daily experiences. you can still give them a human touch. all that heals people to some extent, and solitary confinement is exactly the opposite of it.
I think this is one of those things where it seems totally fine to you but in reality it activates some kind of intrinsic biological limit that you aren’t even aware of. I FEEL like I would easily conquer the nothing box by just doing a lot of great thinking. But scientifically, I kind of doubt that I really could. It’s like if someone challenged me to eat only celery for a year. I might have the willpower to do it, but biologically I may just die. Now I don’t think the nothing box would kill me, but I can imagine it making people go crazy for sure.
You’re right, you’d go crazy, check out this vid of VSauce doing it for three days. https://youtu.be/iqKdEhx-dD4
solitary confinement is recognized as torture, and that’s probably for a good reason. I’ve also had personal experience in psychiatric hospitals with people who had to be confined, and while their being there is probably due to every available professional being entirely hopeless with them, the confinement definitely doesn’t help the situation. even the ex-director of the NIMH, thomas insel, finds in “healing: our path from mental illness to mental health” that a lot of mental healthcare is actually social and communal care, not cold hard medicine. where medicines fail, you can still treat a patient with kindness and patience, integrate them into their community, make friends, have good daily experiences. you can still give them a human touch. all that heals people to some extent, and solitary confinement is exactly the opposite of it.