Update 21-Sep-09

21/09/09 05:43 [Monday]
Last night I got my ‘blackdensity’ prog debugged to do without error what I have now got it doing. As I have mentioned in previous notes on my website, the prog is finding a suitable value for dParam from a scan presented in greyscale which is presumed to represent a document of text. The basic methodology involves counting fragments for the ‘ideal’ value of the grey-value ‘cutoff’ distinguishing black from white, for a range of trial values for dParam.What I got the prog doing last night was to perform the computation I have just explained briefly, for a number of different resolutions imposed on the greyscale scan. The scanner has supplied an image 1460 pixels in height (by 1024 wide) (and I am using a resolution as regards greyscale of 0 .. 255). To ‘impose’ a resolution corresponding to a document height of (say) 500 simple averaging of greyscale is used through the VB function PaintPicture. Obviously the processing the prog does to find values for dParam and ‘cutoff’ takes longer for higher resolution.
Whether the processing is rendering anything useful (and in nature such processing would, if ‘useful’, decrease the probability of termination of the organism doing the processing and thereby increase the probability of its propagating its genetic composition down the generations) can be estimated by noting whether the fragmentation resulting when the fittest values for dParam and ‘cutoff’ have been found corresponds to analysis of the greyscale field (the scanned ‘document’) into a helpful number of blocks of comparable size. In fact for the resolutions the prog tried (up to a height of 400 cells) nothing helpful resulted. The reason is the scan I was using on this occasion was from a somewhat ‘technical’ book published originally in the 1950s, and in those days publishers (and readers) did not shrink from packing text tightly in a format little different from small-print legal documents.






















Thinking further how this type of processing would be useful in nature if a similar situation arose in which the visual information was packed so densely that it could not be processed in any meaningful manner with a single glance, it seems to me this follows: the response of the organism in such a situation would involve shifting the gaze or equivalently ‘zooming’ the attention onto a smaller portion of the visual field in such a way as to reduce the quantity of information in the presentation requiring processing. In the context of reading a document of text a human reader would follow taught conventions, that is in English he would zoom his attention initially at the top of the document and at the left-hand side, and have expectations of an arrangement of text in horizontal lineages.
To briefly bring in the subject of schizophrenia what I would mention is that with schizophrenic brain wiring the reader (or any schizophrenic taker-in of information in any equivalent context) is not led to respond in a successful way to the fed-back demand to reduce the quantity of information up for processing. He is all the time floundering in a sea of excess information from which he can escape only by fleeing (that is, not by restricting his attention there and then in the context he finds himself in). Finding himself in a quiet and/or familiar environment he has less need to flee.
In the context I find myself in (trying to get this computer prog advanced) the way to go is to guide the zooming of attention which the prog must engage in through the principle of locating blocks of text in a scan which may represent a page in a newspaper or magazine. One little practical point I may mention here is that in locating blocks of text a human reader does not only consider the outline (that is, looking for horizontal lineages) but also samples from small subregions of the visual field thrown up from automatic pre-processing done by packets of neurons within the retina, and in this case helpful if they report the presence of blocks looking like letters of the alphabet.

18/08/08 07:07 [Monday]

I woke up about a quarter to five with no indication that I had suffered hypnotising words. I have been getting a number of things done, all connected with, or certainly originating from, my website, that is in the main getting more of the stuff back up (eg from the 1970s) which formerly was available to my readers online. However, the latest thing doing has been copying from a DVD archive (Archive C1) onto my Vaio - now the computer most in use at home - because in looking at the layout (paragraph spacing again) of my website diary as it was in 2005 and 2006 and recalling that when I wrote the first version of my Rich Text Editor in June 2006 - the risperidone then having declined in its effect on me for some reason to do with us being more in Kingswinford than in Bassetlaw (Nottinghamshire) - the only way I found to space paragraphs was to insert between paragraphs containing text, empty font-size 8 pt paragraphs, I was thinking back to how my website was when it started as an AOL Homepage in 2003 and then turned into colinbrough.co.uk sometime in 2004. Archive C1 comes from my days on AOL around 2004 when I used to visit Bristol and was on friendly terms with Caroline.
Reflections have been brought back by saying all that, and particularly in relation to 2006 when I think I misinterpreted the playing-up of Dawn’s son’s stomach problem (so that eventually he had an appendectomy at Bassetlaw Hospital). I believed the reason it was done was to obtain from me commentary on the psychological aspects of it, that is Dawn’s concern for the well-being of her son, or even over-concern to tell the truth. Since 1980 I have presumed (rather conceited possibly) that the Experimenters were wanting my ideas on the human mind. After all, this was one of my main interests in the 1970s, following on naturally from the flourishing of my introspective nature on emergence from adolescence.
On the other hand part of the attempts in 2004 to ‘run me down’ and, I suppose, cause me to lose confidence in myself (one part of it was to try to embarrass me in AOL chat-rooms regarding my sexual naiveté and also to disparage what I thought I knew about the mathematical theory of clustering, going so far as to put up in the chat-room an expert who researched such topics at university but who to my dismay would not explain to me his ideas or his own knowledge: I had thought I might learn, but ‘the Authorities’ as they were then turning into weren’t interested in helping mankind or the general level of scientific knowledge: what they were after was me in a mental ward to be kept under wraps since I was no longer in the control - or under the ‘guidance’ - of Barbara, and Caroline had proved too volatile a potential guide or controller); as I say one part of the disparagement was in the autumn of 2004 to let me know through online conversations that I understood next to nothing about conventional psychology. Again, I think I come out rather well: it is an advantage not to know the erroneous ideas of conventional ‘psychological theorists’, and certainly to entirely disregard conventional psychiatry. Therefore (this is my argument, what I am on about here): it was not the case that those running the show - those giving directives to the usual staff at Bassetlaw that I should be medicated when in the ordinary course of things everybody would have known I need not be - were interested in my ideas on the human mind. What they were after was to get me in the grips of treatment on a psychiatric ward. It is, I must say, difficult to maintain a cool understanding of what must be the case, when I develop great fear based on the wrongs perpetrated against me, wrongs which have included medicating me excessively with antischizophrenic drugs at the behest of people who had unethical reasons for insisting: reasons which I cannot but continue to believe were to do with covering-up the wrongs preceding, in a kind-of avalanche of error upon error which became (in my view) not error but immorality and probably criminality.
In 2004 when I was detained at Bassetlaw mental unit a student doctor quite happily showed me pictures of various forms of restraint - patients in Eastern Europe in metal cages, set against methods involving subduing with injected medication - and asked me which I should prefer in case at some future date I needed to be restrained. Psychiatrists are trained up to expect this sort of thing, that patients will need to be restrained. Readers will understand my view, which is that almost all schizophrenic patients would not be in any way aggressive but for being restrained (that is held in imprisonment) and being given restraining drugs which more often than not give rise to a rebound of resentment if they are ceased.
Thinking back with more detail: I could almost regard the approach to me when I was initially compelled to have an injection while in detention at the end of 2005 as an act of provocation. Whether the person or people who had given directions that I should be compelled had in mind the possibility that my immense fear might cause me to blow up in violent resistance I do not know, but there was an independent nurse standing by as an observer (and of course on hand to subdue me if I had become violent in my terror). Again, I can’t see any justification for the provision of heavy police when I used to visit police stations to complain in 2007. I would not regard that as provocation since I regard the system which is the police as a fair system, even if there are occasional rogue officers, but the people misleading the police to the effect that I might become violent possibly didn’t realise this. They misunderstand practically every aspect of my personality and my behaviour, I must say, yet (presumably) they are people trained in psychiatry in well-regarded positions (presumably working for the Mental Health Act Commission).
Furthermore, I still cannot find any justifiable reason for trying to bar my attempts to publish the facts through my website. This started in 2004 when I was thrown off AOL seemingly for spamming, by sending numerous emails trying to expose what I had suffered through ‘The Experiment’. More recently an attempt was made to interfere with my choice of website host company. My attempts to alert Microsoft to the substitution of their websites through our Virgin Media internet connection with counterfeits have been stymied because the Royal Mail has acted in a very odd manner.
Jedenfalls, these reflections originate as I say out of Archive C1, in which (I mention) McAfee Security (on free trial with the Vaio) has detected Potentially Unwanted Programs derived through AOL the presence of these programs explaining the failure of computers I have had from the Packard Bell EasyNote (October 2006) onwards. It is regrettable that Norton Internet Security has never satisfactorily resolved this problem, so I am pleased to recommend McAfee as far and away superior to the possibly more widespread Norton.

Recent letter to West Midlands Chief Constable

27 July 2008

The Chief Constable
West Midlands Police
Lloyd House
Colmore Circus
Queensway
Birmingham B4 6NQ

Dear Chief Constable

Because the post office clerk when I posted the following to you at the Merry Hill shopping centre yesterday (26 July) typed in the wrong postcode for the Special Delivery bar-code, I am sending another copy, as below:

I wrote to you on 7 July 2008 explaining that (almost certainly) our bungalow had been entered improperly about 26 June 2008 or 27 June 2008 when we were away (each of those dates) in London. The perpetrators had introduced contamination into bottles of water we had in stock causing us a most unpleasant ‘tummy bug’ problem on drinking some of the water, including diarrhoea. I requested you to ensure police investigated my complaint more vigorously than police have in the past. A letter I received from DI Magee saying he did not regard my request as a complaint appears genuinely to be in answer to my letter to you, and therefore I am writing this further letter to point out the difficulties I face which I believe the police ought to help counter.
There is a widescale organisation whose main purpose has entailed causing problems to myself (and my wife since I got married three years ago) the most severe of which are caused by drugs foisted on us (I use the term foisting). I do not believe the people foisting the drugs understand the hardship the drugs cause me: or certainly in the past they have not. Because of unwillingness of the police to investigate the improper measures this organisation takes I myself need to go to extraordinary lengths costing me money, time and effort, to try to defend myself (and my wife) mainly from ingestion of unwanted drugs. The difficulty I face is further increased by (as I mentioned) the wide scale of the influence of the organisation I am speaking of. (Also, of course, the fact that statements such as these might be interpreted by people without full knowledge - unless they investigate fully - as symptoms requiring treatment with antipsychotic drugs is not a help to me and in the past has created great fear in me, that is fear of being administered antipsychotic drugs these drugs having some of the worst effects any drugs do have on me.)
As an example of the difficulty I face additional to difficulties another person in Britain might face were he in a similar position to my own but the organisation foisting the drugs having less widespread power: I have tried to set up a website anthonydewarmondlivesat36abittellroad.org.uk and after working initially (for about one day) it is no longer accessible (when I last checked). The reason, I have absolutely no doubt, is influence brought to bear on the website hosting company I use - 123-reg.co.uk - by the organisation I am speaking of. It may be that the website has been barred for a reason which if I knew it I would agree with (possibly so as not to prejudice the minds of potential jurors if the man Armond is ever brought to justice) but as things stand I cannot be sure. If I were to pursue what on the face of it is the obvious course - asking 123-reg to rectify the matter - I would run up extra costs in money, time and effort, these costs unfairly thrust on me. And as I say, it might be that the reason for the interference with the usual procedures at 123-reg is a reason I would agree with anyway.
What I should be able to do - given that the police do not have resources or otherwise are unwilling to protect me from on the face of it illegal intrusions - is go to a solicitor and expect him to assist me in putting to rights this problem in my life. As I explained in my letter to you of 7 July, solicitors I have approached in the past (such as Rose, Williams & Partners of 2 Waterloo Road Wolverhampton) have not been willing to give me reasonable help because they have been told in advance (by representatives of the organisation I am speaking of) that I am mentally unsound and it would not be worth their while to take me on as a client.
To repeat briefly what I said in my letter of 1 May 2008: over a number of decades I was treated improperly for mental illness. The basis of my diagnosis (of schizophrenia) was behaviour which I had exhibited for which I was not myself responsible because I was affected by drugs I was given without my foreknowledge or consent. There has been evidence quite recently that these allegations I make are accurate. I must regard those perpetrating these crimes (as on the face of it they are) as wholly lacking in moral sense, to pursue this course knowing how difficult it will be for me to convince those who should help me (not only the police but my MP, and solicitors I might wish to engage) of the truth of such wild-sounding accusations.
With my letter of 7 July I annexed evidence that the Royal Mail has over decades been treating mail sent to me, and from me, in a special manner, and in the 1970s (in the 1970s certainly) this resulted in cash sent to me going missing.
In conclusion I repeat my request that police should be more vigorous in assisting me to put a stop to the interference in my life, especially that which involves the foisting on me of drugs to which I have a very unpleasant reaction.
Yours sincerely
Colin Barrass-Brough
barrass-brough.blogspot.com

10/08/08 18:51

I have been thinking along these lines: given that State-run organisations (such as local councils) and organisations which are nominally independent but have a history as Nationalised Industries (notoriously BT) are permitted to defraud me of money, or take money in what on the face of it is fraud, I conclude that I am - and Dawn also is now - a ward of the State and our money is not genuinely our own. This is somewhat frightening in that the State has such power, and it is wielded (as far as I now understand it) by the Mental Health Act Commission in its application to me and us. In the past the officials wielding the power have been permitted to carry on in the lackadaisical way I now understand is commonplace in mental healthcare in Britain, and have misunderstood practically every aspect of my behaviour. This explains things which have baffled me supremely in recent months: for example a comment from a fellow-traveller actor engaged (one of many on the train that day) by the Mental Health Act Authorities to play a part in trying to get me under official treatment (that has been ultimately the aim, it seems clear) which indicated the ‘thinkers’ trying to guess what I might do thought I might abscond to somewhere in the distant north on that occasion (or at least they felt it was not out of the question).
The situation has been complicated by concealing from me that this was the case: that I was a ward of the State and did not have complete control over my own life. Therefore I have wasted effort trying to prove (for example) that the supposed fine imposed in 2004 by Kidderminster Magistrates was a sham (no points being put on my driving licence in a case where they should have been). I do not know if the concealment was mainly for my supposed benefit (not to send me loony to think such interference was being perpetrated) or more to save the Government embarrassment (because it does seem ludicrous if such a large amount in resources is spent on ‘looking after’ me as a supposed mental patient who suffered misfortune from Armond’s perpetrations in the 1980s). I suspect it is the latter and this explains the endeavours to silence my publishing the facts, which entailed last autumn making national newspapers unavailable to me by phone from Nottinghamshire.
It has been hopeful for me since improperly detaining me under the Mental Health Act has been ruled out (seemingly), being replaced by just plain silly attempts to get me to report myself as ill on the basis (for example) that there were an inordinate number of cars driving round the roads of Kingswinford a month or two back. The silliness of these attempts shows up to me, and surely it must to others with sense - so long as my message is no longer being put a stop to by the Mental Health Act Commissionaire censors - that those running the mental healthcare system in Britain are unfit. I hope I can put a good construction on the continuance of the expenditure on what I will still call The Experiment, that is that the justification now is that so much is being learnt from the perpetrations of the Mental Health Act Commission and its associates, psychiatrists in the NHS.

Most recent letter to Ian Pearson MP

28 July 2008

Ian Pearson MP
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA

Dear [Constituency Office Manager]

Thank you for your reply of 23 July 2008 to my letter to Mr Pearson of 19 July. Today (Monday 28 July 2008) I received your letter and one also dated 23 July 2008 (last Wednesday) signed by [an Office Administrator] promising a reply from Mr Pearson to my letter of 19 July.

When I wrote my letter of 19 July I was in a state of confusion and no doubt this explains why I do not myself have paper copies of the letter (another possibility is that my copies have been stolen since our home has been entered without permission recently, a matter I have complained about to West Midlands police). The reason for my state of confusion was that I had again suffered ingestion of drugs supplied by trickery: that is I was spiked. I think it most important that I be helped with this difficulty in my life, certainly by the police (and I urge Mr Pearson to use his influence with West Midlands Police) and by Mr Pearson directly.

You mention two separate issues I have raised but in fact there are several outstanding issues Mr Pearson is looking into on my behalf.

My confusion of 19 July led me to conflate two complaints I have raised about the British postal service. I thank Mr Pearson for the advice in his letter of 24 June 2008 but point out that writing to Royal Mail to find out if a letter sent First Class Recorded (or Special Guaranteed Next Day) has been delivered would entail foolish delay; besides which the statistics lead me to suppose any such letter to Royal Mail might well be lost in the post.

The more significant complaint I had hoped Mr Pearson would help me with was that the British postal service (that is, Royal Mail: whom it is not possible to sue in law, I believe) has been treating mail sent to me and from me in a special way, since the 1970s. There is good evidence one result of this in the 1970s was that cash sent to me by relatives went missing: that is, it was stolen. I have not heard from Mr Pearson’s office yet whether he can help with this difficulty I face.

I must say I find it unsurprising that Nottinghamshire Healthcare have not yet troubled to reply to Mr Pearson’s letter to them. You promise the matter will be chased.

Thinking more clearly now than when I suffer ingestion of unwanted drugs (as I had on 19 July) I see my letter to Mr Pearson of 10 May 2008 was received - despite no acknowledgment from his office (unless, as I enquired, the acknowledgment had been lost in the post) - as its result was that Mr Pearson wrote to Nottinghamshire Healthcare. My letter of Friday 9 May 2008 (sent Special Guaranteed Next Day delivery) has still not been acknowledged, although the Royal Mail website said it was delivered Tuesday 13 May (being posted on a Friday the guaranteed date shown on the receipt was Monday 12 May for delivery). This letter was the first in which I pointed out to Mr Pearson that counterfeits of Microsoft websites had been supplied via our Virgin Media internet connection.


I have gone to great lengths to inform Microsoft of this misuse (in the shape of Microsoft Business Solutions of Microsoft Campus - Thames Valley Park - Reading - Berks RG6 1WG: since I discovered, having to go to the trouble and expense of a personal visit to London to find out, that an address given for ‘Microsoft Limited’ in Kelly’s Industrial Directory is a mistake). If I do manage to get the information to Microsoft I think they will be most concerned at such a threat to the accountancy value of Goodwill in their business, apart from ordinary moral considerations of fair play. The enclosures with my letter of 19 July to Mr Pearson gave details of both the counterfeit websites and my endeavours to write to Microsoft. My most recent letter to Microsoft Business Solutions was posted 19 July 2008 alongside my letter to Mr Pearson (and on this occasion the post office clerk was able to validate the Microsoft postcode, a thing previous post office workers have never managed to do): I show a screenshot from the Royal Mail website purporting to show the delivery which I would call a joke were the question not so grave.

In my letter to Mr Pearson of 30 April 2008 I mentioned a matter I drew to the attention of the police, that is the diversion of phonecalls made in June 2007 using our then Virgin Media landline to the West Midlands police non-emergency number so that when I thought I was speaking to police I was not in fact. A reply dated 2 May promised matters raised in my letter would be taken up and a reply from Mr Pearson follow. I conclude the mention in your recent letter of a ‘response from the police’ (or rather, the absence of a response) is a reference to Mr Pearson’s pursuit of culprits interfering in 2007 with our Virgin Media phone connection. I do find it confusing though that you mention two separate issues I raise, when the difficulties intruded into my life cover many more issues than two.

The most significant difficulties I face, as I have striven to convey to Mr Pearson, derive as a result of the improper treatment - and in particular the drug treatment - I was made to have over a period of decades following a diagnosis erroneously made by a psychiatrist formerly working for the NHS in Dudley, called Anthony Dew Armond. The diagnosis he placed on me was of schizophrenia, and much of the ‘spiking’ I have had to suffer has involved auxiliary workers - presumably not knowing the harm they do - trying to get antischizophrenic drugs into me, a variant of the abhorrent but widespread practice of families of schizophrenic patients tricking the patients into taking food with drugs hidden in it. This practice is encouraged by some psychiatric workers. Myself I cannot understand how professionally trained carers can imagine that deceiving an already suspicious patient will have any good outcome. I daresay some would argue that underfunding of mental health provision results in staff making use of shortcut practices to get things done more easily. I read that in the United States difficult children are kept subdued with these same drugs, that is antipsychotics which block the neurotransmitter dopamine. Whether it is so in the case of children in Britain I do not know, but certainly from what I have seen myself staff in NHS psychiatric facilities are over-enthusiastic to use such drugs on adult patients. In cases of mistaken diagnosis such as my own the result of compulsory administration of dopamine-blocking drugs, unremittingly year after year, is complete waste of the patient’s time and even of his life. Some more thoughtful psychiatrists - again, from what I read it is mainly in the States - recommend drugs holidays for psychiatric patients every so often so that it can be seen if continuing administration of drugs is absolutely necessary.

But from my own point of view the help I would like from Mr Pearson is to instigate an investigation of the circumstances of my mis-diagnosis, involving Armond and any others who had complicity.

I thank you for your help and look forward to hearing from Mr Pearson soon.

Yours sincerely

Colin Barrass-Brough

Enc
barrass-brough.blogspot.com
anthonydewarmondlivesat36abittellroad.org.uk

Recent posts are available

at www.barrass-brough.org.uk/July 2008.

17/07/08 04:46 [Thursday]

A condition I might describe as over-excitement now as I get going regarding my business for the day is almost certainly due to stimulant drugs still in my metabolism from yesterday, rather than due to any substances in the cup of coffee I drank getting on for an hour ago.

17/07/08 05:13

It strikes me that in the note I have inserted into yesterday’s diary as Thursday 17/07/08 03:18 I was too extravagant in my suppositions (made so by stimulant drugs which in the past hour or two have worn off more). All there is pretty firm evidence of is the capability to interfere by wireless with USB-connected peripherals, and possibly only through the USB ports at the rear of the DIXONSXP tower unit. I still find this hypothesis slightly more convincing than that Dawn and I were taken advantage of by hypnosis on returning home yesterday evening and the preceding evening.

Because I feel fairly certain the drugs affecting me now were not introduced by such advantage-taking on our return home yesterday evening but were in the milk earlier, and possibly at the time it was bought from Morrisons Wellington (Shropshire), it may be that the drugs I was objecting to yesterday (Wednesday) early morning were also not introduced on our return home Tuesday night but rather were in drinks or food we bought that day. The most sensible choice of villain to point the finger at, given what has happened in the past and the fact that the railways are more or less once again under State control, is the enterprising Pumpkin railway station buffet chain.

Although Morrisons is far and away superior to the likes of Tesco, if we only shop at Morrisons then when we are on our way to some perhaps remote destination it can be presumed well in advance that we are going to do our shopping at the Morrisons there. Hence some randomisation giving favour to Sainsbury’s or Asda (or Waitrose, Iceland or Spar, or even Lidl or Heron, but not under any circumstances Tesco) will be desirable.

What I have against Tesco is that the day I had my appointment with solicitors Rose, Williams & Partners of 2 Waterloo Road Wolverhampton to try to get the facts of the abuse done to me over twenty-five years put before Solihull Magistrates, Tesco sold me food or drink containing antischizophrenic drugs to still me and reduce my acuity.

Spawn of Satan I now number three:

(1) Armond
(2) Those running drugs factories
(3) Tesco.

17/07/08 06:37

However ‘psychological theorists’ like to dress it up to increase their seeming value as experts, confidence is feeling sure what to do, that is it is absence of doubt. The best way to theorise of it is in the terms I use, of processing capacity set against the processing requirement. If you can think clearly (and quickly) enough to know what to do in a given situation - a more, or less, demanding situation, that is demanding of ‘decision-making’ and in a loose sense ‘stressful’ - you feel confident. If you are uncertain and there is delay while you hum and hah and try to make up your mind, then that is unconfidence. It has little to do with surface appearance.

In respect of the latter too, I find that if people can see you know what you’re about and understand the ins and outs of it, and particularly if you can use that knowledge and understanding to help them (which is easy if it costs you next to nothing in distraction from what you are doing anyway), then even if you look a complete buffoon they like it and give you a high approval rating.

I think there’s something in the coffee. It may be caffeine.

17/07/08 06:54

The again rather Socialist idea that ‘psychological theorists’ seem to have, that anyone can do anything, is (as I think I have said before) mistaken. Most people however much they practised and read and otherwise garnered advice could not play tennis to the standard of say John McEnroe. The reason is McEnroe had certain components in him (still does I suppose although somewhat altered by time) - that is components in the physical universe, comprising not only things like muscle fibre but more significantly neurons and synapses in the relevant parts of his CNS (and particularly, large numbers of synapses, eg serving the retina), which on average people do not have. Such is confidence: to have large numbers of synapses serving that in which one’s confidence is well-founded (rather than brash and specious, like that suggested frequently by ‘psychological theorists’).

I must say it is a good Capitalist notion, that each component has a different - a complementary - part to play in division-of-labour arrangements. Some neurons are better suited to responding to light while others do better at causing muscles to contract. Some of them though towards the front are very flexible and can do all sorts of things, switchably (not at the same time but in a multiplexing mode).

Caffeine is good stuff.

I MUST NOT APPEAR TOO HAPPY BUT WILLIAM GATES III DESERVES CREDIT

15/07/08 11:10 [Tuesday]

Many readers will be free to click on http://www.anthonydewarmondlivesat36abittellroad.org.uk

But sadly perhaps not those in psychiatric care.

15/07/08 09:14 [Tuesday]

The image links to today's LinkPage.

10/07/08 04:33 [Thursday]

[Click here for the full text of this morning’s diary.]

The structures of thought I am speaking of were maintained over a long period in the above cases and in similar cases, that is they were capable of being set aside for the purpose of leading a day-to-day life but were always ‘in the back’ of the mind and resumable in the more detailed form as occasion allowed. This was a prerequisite to sorting out such involved structures into the coherence (that is, having entire internal consistency within themselves) which made them acceptable on public presentation and indeed gives confidence they are ‘correct’ that is that, insofar as they are supposed to, they correspond with reality.

These structures of thought were embodied in neural structures in the brains of their creators of the type I have recently been mooting as depending on neural-loop style arrangements. This type of semi-permanent memory is used to set up internal models for such purposes as (in adolescence) answering examination questions and (in more practical life) maintaining an internal plan of one’s location as one moves about even in unknown territory. The arrangements which permit their maintenance depend on transmission across synapses of dopamine as I know because they are defeated in myself when I am given dopamine-blocking drugs. For example I completely lose my ability to maintain the internal plan of my geographical location at any time I am in less familiar territory.

Needless to say these neural structures are located in the frontal brain in man and come into use only from the time of adolescence. They are present in only a rudimentary form if at all in other animals (for example it is possible apes have them in rudimentary form). It seems to me that the functions called seriatim functions must correspond with those implemented using these structures of resumable semi-permanently remembered internally envisaged models of parts of the world (or as-if of parts of the world, in that the models can be used for abstract purposes such as in mathematics and chess when they are divorced from immediate connection with any structures in the physical universe, of tangible matter or time or space).

Experiments with rats trained in conventional mazes which were then converted to mazes of canals having to be swum convinced theoreticians who had previously hypothesised that learning a maze involved merely learning a sequence of muscular operations which got the animal from start to finish, that it was not so and that the rats in fact must have an internal model of spatial arrangements. Needless to say rats achieve this without a seriatim process.

An adult human being could learn a maze - walked or swum - much faster, the reason being he could set up an internal model ‘by an effort of will’, a model which (consisting of the type of neural structure spoken of above) could be discarded afterwards if no longer needed. Giving dopamine-blocking drugs would interfere with this ability, reducing the human to needing like the rat to practise sufficiently often over a sufficient period, to embody the knowledge of the maze in synapses which had permanently adapted to form a model of that specific maze.

Needless to say I strive my best to evade being given dopamine-blocking drugs because I dislike in the extreme having the ability taken from me to form such semi-permanent models of the world and its parts. I find it a matter for bitter regret that developers of these drugs, as well as those prescribing them in practice, have not taken sufficient care to determine adequately this effect they have. I find it very difficult to believe that anyone treated with these drugs will not suffer the debilitation I am speaking of. In practical terms the debilitation I have suffered of this nature over the years, given the unusual circumstances of the foisting on me of the drugs, has led to my not being employed in any capacity I would otherwise have been fit for and might have benefited from (as well as benefiting the economy). I regret the legal framework which permits such drugs to be compelled on people in disregard of their attempts to complain when they cannot understand (I myself have not until now) what the nature is of the debilitation they have to complain about. I regret any legal framework allowing people’s freedom to be taken from them without absolute need.