the word for beliving everyone else is a robot

[nightsxz]

the word for beliving everyone else is a robot

I'm trying to find the word like arachnaphobia is the fear of spiders. I'm trying to find out what the word is for believing everyone besides your self is a robot and not alive. And then believing that you are the only living being in all infinity. So please tell me what that word is.

 

[GuyNwah]

There's prosopagnosia, "face blindness". That's the inability to recognize faces. More common than you'd think.

Not being able to relate to your own body is depersonalization. It's a common symptom of depression and panic disorders. Not being able to recognize that things in the world are real is derealization.

Capgras' delusion is believing that a person has been replaced by a robot or some other kind of impostor; Fregoli's delusion is believing that several people are the same person in various disguises (named after Italian actor Leopoldo Fregoli, a quick-change artist).

There's also Cotard's delusion. That's believing you are, more or less, a zombie: dead, decomposing, or missing body parts. It may cause you to believe that you are immortal, or that everybody else is dead.

And there's Truman Show delusion, the belief that everything around you is staged and you are being filmed all the time. Psychiatrists don't recognize this as different from other delusions of persecution.

Or you could take dimethyltryptamine (DMT, ayahuasca) and see imaginary elves. They've been reported by a number of DMT users. This is illegal unless you are a member of an ayahuasca-using indigenous religion. I'm not advocating it.

Capgras' delusion may be closest to what you are looking for. But it usually pertains to a loss of ability to recognize people well known to you for who they are. It doesn't quite describe a delusion where you believe just everybody is a robot. That sounds like it could be a kind of derealization, or even an unusual form of Cotard's delusion.

These delusions are signs of serious neurological or psychiatric problems. They have caused people to kill themselves or persons dear to them. But it doesn't always turn out badly. One fellow believes his wife has been replaced by an impostor. They've been carrying on an affair since 2008 and are doing just fine. Another woman believed the patient in the next bed was her husband. She was pleased that he no longer snored.

 

[username_3643957]

I'm...not sure if there's a word for that.

You should make one up, and submit it to Webster to see if they'll put it into the Dictionary.

 

[nukeheal]

I never heard about that particular delusion. But I can see such mental state develop these days. Low self-esteem, depression and fear makes people really vulnerable to all sorts of things.

 

[Aditya]

I have seen many such including some which guy posted but that is completely new to me. I wonder if there are people who fear that.

 

[GuyNwah]

On further reflection, I still think it sounds most like Capgras. It's characteristic of Capgras that you:

1. See (or hear) someone known to you.
2. Don't experience the emotion you would normally have.
3. Resolve the conflict by unconsciously deeming the person an impostor, or a robot.

But this only happens with persons (or sometimes animals or objects) known to you. When you see a stranger, there's no missing emotion, no conflict to resolve, and thus no delusion that they're a robot or somebody they aren't.

It's scary. It's even scarier for the people a person suffering from Capgras' delusion rejects or even turns violent against.

These delusions are called, as a class, delusional misidentification syndromes. In a cyberpunk world where self-identity is called into question, you could expect them to be part of cyberpsychosis.

 

[dragonbird]

Solipsism?
It doesn't make everyone else robots though, just not real people.

 

[GuyNwah]

Yeah, solipsism (as a delusion) is the delusion that nothing is real; everything exists only in your mind. But not that the people around you have been replaced by (real) robots.

It's still interesting, because it occurs in conditions of extreme isolation, from space travel to having your brain extracted and maintained in a vat. Having your mind uploaded could be an event that results in psychological solipsism.

 

[dragonbird]

I'm surprised we don't have a word yet for thinking that nobody you talk to online is a real person.

 

[Aditya]

I'm surprised we don't have a word yet for thinking that nobody you talk to online is a real person.

haha you have a point there, or maybe there is and we don't know it yet

 

[GuyNwah]

This got me to thinking: A number of movies do make a serious effort to portray mental illness, A Beautiful Mind being a recent example. But movies where a character has a genuine delusion that a person has been possessed, is being impersonated, has been replaced by a robot, etc. must be few. It's more common that an antagonist tries to lie to the hero or heroine that he or she is a victim of such an impersonation. Can anybody think of a movie where such a delusion is honestly held by one of the characters?

 

[primaryunit]

I'm not sure what the term for believing everyone else is a robot is, it's probably some form of psychosis, but I believe the term for robot phobia is Frankenstein complex.

 

[GuyNwah]

I'm not sure what the term for believing everyone else is a robot is, it's probably some form of psychosis, but I believe the term for robot phobia is Frankenstein complex.

You're right: fear of robots is "Frankenstein complex" (Asimov, in "Little Lost Robot") or "Grimwade's syndrome", coined as an inside joke by the writers in the 14th season of Doctor Who.

The phenomenon that underlies fear of realistic humanoid robots is the "uncanny valley" (coined by Masahiro Mori, but actually first described a century earlier by Ernst Jentsch ("On the Psychology of the Uncanny")). Jentsch was in turn influenced by Hoffmann's story "The Sandman", which features the robot doll Olimpia.

 

[dragonbird]

This got me to thinking: A number of movies do make a serious effort to portray mental illness, A Beautiful Mind being a recent example. But movies where a character has a genuine delusion that a person has been possessed, is being impersonated, has been replaced by a robot, etc. must be few. It's more common that an antagonist tries to lie to the hero or heroine that he or she is a victim of such an impersonation. Can anybody think of a movie where such a delusion is honestly held by one of the characters?

Did "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" come to a definite conclusion on the matter? I haven't seen it, but I gather that this is the theme.

There's plenty of non-supernatural detective stories that have the bad guy as someone who wrongly thinks that others are possessed/aliens/fake, but as the "twist" for the protagonist? I can't think of one. It would make a great concept though - a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers where the bodies were not, in fact, snatched.

 

[GuyNwah]

Did "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" come to a definite conclusion on the matter? I haven't seen it, but I gather that this is the theme.

There's plenty of non-supernatural detective stories that have the bad guy as someone who wrongly thinks that others are possessed/aliens/fake, but as the "twist" for the protagonist? I can't think of one. It would make a great concept though - a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers where the bodies were not, in fact, snatched.

Because of the religious validation that's too often given to delusions of demonic possession, it's in its own class of crazy, and it's often hard to say who the crazy are and who are the sane. "Emily Rose" is a good example of it. The ending to "Emily Rose" intentionally leaves the question of whether she was actually possessed by demons unanswered. In the real-life case it was based on, Anneliese Michel had epilepsy, and her parents and two priests managed to convince themselves and her that she was possessed by several demons. It is likely, though unproven, that she acted out, not delusions of her own but those that were pressed upon her by her family and the priests. After she was tortured through 69 exorcisms and starved to death under the priests' "care" and the refusal of her family to seek medical attention, they were convicted of negligent homicide.

But yeah, I'm thinking reverse "Stepford Wives", reverse "Body Snatchers", different twists on "Vertigo" and "Laura". The common thread in impersonation movies is that the antagonists try to convince the protagonist that he is insane when he believes he has exposed the deception. This frequently makes for suspenseful, satisfying drama. But you should be able to make a successful drama out of a case where the protagonist believes his loved ones have been replaced by robots and they have to convince him that they are who they really are; this is not such an uncommon occurrence in real life.

 

[dragonbird]

I like it - Stepford Wives Revisited. The story of a delusional serial killer, told through his eyes.

 

[primaryunit]

The phenomenon that underlies fear of realistic humanoid robots is the "uncanny valley" (coined by Masahiro Mori, but actually first described a century earlier by Ernst Jentsch ("On the Psychology of the Uncanny")). Jentsch was in turn influenced by Hoffmann's story "The Sandman", which features the robot doll Olimpia.

Very interesting, thank you. I hadn't read The Sandman.

 

[ChaosWolf1982]

I'm surprised we don't have a word yet for thinking that nobody you talk to online is a real person.

Yes we do. It's called "My mother". While I'm not 100% sure she actually DOES believe it, she has more than once referred to my friends online as "not real".

 

[kingbrendarr]

Yes we do. It's called "My mother". While I'm not 100% sure she actually DOES believe it, she has more than once referred to my friends online as "not real".

I have a friend online that I have known for years and she still calls me "not real" at times

 

[zeithri]

This is awfully familiar.
When I was growing up, I had a lot of detatchment towards everyone. To me, they felt different. I felt that I was the only one who actually acted like I thought. The only one who was actually alive so to say, so to put it easy. Everyone else was just like robots. They acted the same, they did the same stuff, they liked the same stuff and so forth.

Now, having grown up I still feel this way but I know the cause of it. They're all normal and I'm not
These days, I wish I was a robot instead and everyone else was 'alive'. Sweet irony?
Probably not what irony is.