Being schizophrenic does not mean that the brain/mind is "AWOL". Schizophrenics endure experience like the rest of us. The idea that the insane have "no mind" is an old-fashioned, dehumanizing idea which should not be tolerated even on HN where everyone is of course young, healthy and overconfident. (!)

I was thinking about this just the other day, the term "demented" literally means "with mind removed".

Actually it means "out of one's mind"

Huh. So it does, thanks for that!

...as a tangent, I'm impressed and slightly weirded out by the fact that I googled for "etymology demented" and it answered directly with an etymological tree for the word. Google's getting smarter.

>> "Just because he's paranoid schizophrenic"

Was this confirmed somewhere? I can't find any evidence with a quick search and I saw some of his interviews during the presidential campaign (he was running from the libertarian nomination I think) and he seemed ok.

I think a lot of that stems from his reported behavior in Belize. I think it was reported he was high on something on the occasions of some of his reportedly bizarre behavior. From my recollection.

Yeah that's my recollection as well. I presume the parent has something to back up the claim though as it's not a term you throw around lightly.

Most probably they did throw in fact it around lightly, but (carelessly) didn't intend to. I'm always very careful to not throw around medical (particularly psychiatric) diagnoses because I'm not trained for that. Instead I prefer to describe the symptoms I perceive and phrase it as my personal perception (aka, own it). At very most I might say "that guy might have some autistic tendencies ..." and almost always qualify it with "... but that spectrum is so vague, forget the label and just assess him on his particular quirks like the individual he is".

Anyway, not to distract this discussion into a further tangent, I think the best way is to charitably read it as "paranoid schizophrenic episode" (which is kind of fair, yes?) and the "mind AWOL" remark as hyperbole, without reading too much behind it. It was a setup to the post's main point anyway, the anecdotal part.