Personality Constructs...?

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Okay, I wasn't sure whether to post about this or not. But it's a good part of the reason that my psychiatrist initially said I was psychotic and stuck my on Risperdal.

From a young age, I have been extremely imaginative. I can create very detailed worlds, plots, and characters in my head, and remember them for a very long period of time. For everything I saw, I could make a story - and with each story I made, I expanded upon those which came before. I could create epics inside my head.

At about middle school age, 12ish I believe, this had advanced to such a point that the characters in my head attained a kind of self-awareness. They were not truly multiple personalities; they knew that I had created them and that their "memories" were false. Some were unable to cope with that knowledge, and I gradually stopped "updating" these, allowing them to return to a state of... well, dormancy. Eventually, all that would remain of them were a few key fundamentals, and they could be reshaped into a new character.

The personality constructs I currently have are much more advanced than those primitive attempts. They have their own thought patterns, emotions, opinions & interests. I can allow them to be "in control" - which is basically a state in which I cease processing new data as it pertains to myself and the other constructs, so that only the "control" construct and myself have true situational awareness, and only the construct is responding to that awareness.

By processing data, I mean the sensory input that I receive and then subsequently react to. For all input that I receive, I determine my own reaction, and also - like a program running in the background - determine the reaction my constructs would have if they were in my place. This is how they manage to become extremely extremely complex.

Now, here is the part where I attempt to explain why this is not psychosis. It may require a bit of knowledge about computers, the brain, and the quest for artificial intelligence.

We, as a species, have been trying to achieve artificial intelligence for quite some time. Our first attempts were crude; we simply wrote a program full of rules and responses. Your basic "if-then" statements. The problem with this was that the program could only respond to the situations it was programmed for - it couldn't generate the "then" part of an "if" statement.

The "if-then" approach has not been completely discarded, but there simply is no computer with the speed, capacity, flexibility, and sensory capabilities needed to store, process, and retrieve such information. The current general consensus is the "bottom-up" approach; attempt to structurally recreate the human brain, substituting processors for neurons, and then either strengthening or weakening various connections and pathways to form learning. This idea is generally called the neural net. The problem with this approach is that we cannot create processors that are small enough, interconnected enough, fast enough, and power efficient enough to replicate the computational abilities of the human brain.

Most scientifically-oriented individuals agree that artificial intelligence - or at least, an indistinguishable mimicry of it - is theoretically possible, if the technology existed.

So... my reasoning/theory is, why couldn't artificial intelligence be achieved using an actual, biological human brain....? Perhaps an abnormal brain...? Maybe an ASD brain, with different processing abilities and connections than the NT brain...?

Some savants perform mathematical, musical, artistic, or other tasks that no NT brain could possibly handle. Why, then, would it be unreasonable to assume that such an unusual brain could not perform to the level required for the generation of a multiple intelligence?

I would be very interested to hear opinions about this theory, from those trained in computer programming, psychology, or related fields of study. And *everyone's* opinion, should they feel generous enough to share it!

- the main point of confusion for me is that I am not in any way disconnected from reality, and do not really fit the criteria for psychosis, given that I am completely aware of how these constructs came to be, and their current state of existence.

Actually, if you have personalities that are in conflict, where they aren't simply representations of YOU, that IS MPD! And ANYONE can do THAT! That is NATURAL intelligence.

As for artificial intelligence, YEP. The computers today could do that, right down to mimicing the voice, and possibly something similar to walking. The problem is NOT the "if then" that is a standard construct that every animal, etc... on the planet does. The problem is WHERE, WHEN, WHAT, HOW! YEP, the hardware is there, but I doubt the software ever will be. You need someone smart enough to do it, and they will probably be smart enough NOT to do it. Also, processing video and, to a fair degree, audio, is complicated.

The human brain has to do FAR more than any robot will likely be expected to ever do. Humans have to track objects through triangulation to determine distance/angle. Robots can use technology developed in the seventies to do the same thing with less effort. Humans have to move a lot of muscles, and shift the center of balance just to stand, and a robot could have 3 wheels. A human apparently has a huge parallel network that is almost digital to control muscle movement with retained and controlled tension. A robot could use stepper motors, and have just one input. Humans have to do a lot of gyrations to do simple calculations. Computers now have FPUs to make that simple. The HARD part is the ability to quickly tie needs and knowledge together to get the WISDOM to do things in the proper way. Computers have LOTS of knowledge, but currently NO wisdom.

It sounds like to me that you think you have something like artificial intelligence programs swarming around in your brain neural net.

I wonder myself of the possibility that a brains' personalities could somehow be fragmented or programmed or taken and then re-programmed.

The brain may also be modified chemically and physically but those both question ethics: but much of psychiatry does seem like a secret operation to learn how to program human brains' along with psychology and their psychological laws based on culture formation.

There are technologies out there like the magnetic pulse stimulation or some other modifier of the brains' electricity. I am not sure how that applies to the brains' personality.

You know how they have those "experiamental" electrical pulse generators implanted deep withing the brain for stuff to treat symptoms like severe tourettes syndrome?:

What if we could take that technology one step further? But I have to stop myself from carrying on with those thoughts because then I would be called a madman.

Wow...I recognize what you are speaking about.
I was told - at one unfortunate point in my life - that I was either schizo or had MPD.
It is neither. rather, a construct of personalities not unlike the way you described your constructs.
However, with me, I was failing that social thing that NT parents are so keen to see their offspring develop...it was easier to create for them a personality that they liked and who responded to them the way they wanted.
Whereas your personality constructs were running inthe background, I (meaning the primary personality) was what ran in the background.
From the age of 7 until I graduated high school, two personalities that I created were the interfaces I used with the 'normal' world. It was so easy, and their own personalities so developed, that I failed to integrate at the primary level whatever it was those personalities could do.
However, by the time I was 25 I was sorely aware that neither had developed past the teen years and I was painfully out of sync again with people around me.
A new fellow came on the scene and is my principal functioning personality with the public. Having integrated the complete array of observed and memorized body gestures, it was easier for awhile. But now, I just turned 48 and have not a clue what to do since I neglected to find people who are in their 40s and 50s to model his personality on...and my primary personality is still under developed at a chronological age that would make me appear even more strange than I do at present.
I am told I am trying to stay 'young' by acting the way I do. But thatsnot it. Even today, the people I could call friends are all 15 or more years younger than me.
At present, I am researching the behavioral attitudes of older Americans. I hope to be able to further develop my existing constructs in order to age (or act like my age) more appropriately...but things are not looking very good.