Response

Back in 1991, Professor German Berrios^{Reference Berrios1} suggested that delusions are not beliefs as commonly held, but rather empty speech acts with no intentional import. In this commentary, it is proposed that delusions can best be represented as states of high entropy or alternatively states of inefficient information. Incidentally, the latter would explain the tendency of delusions to resist evidence to the contrary, simply because of the fact that a high-entropy system is a system in equilibrium; hence, all potential inferences are equally probable. Moreover, in a high-entropy system, complexity tends to diminish significantly; therefore, its capacity to incorporate novelty is drastically reduced.

It may well have taken language a few thousand years to escape the omnipotent influence of the right cerebral hemisphere (superstitions, Gods, passivity, hearing voices) in order to access the realm of metaphor and consciousness,^{Reference Jaynes2} thereby acquiring some degree of complexity. However, the complexity potential could be hastily reduced in response to adversity (psychological or physiological), with a paradoxical increase in inefficient information (high entropy). It ought to be emphasised, however, that this analysis works best when it is based on the notion of language rather than the vague notion of thoughts. Psychopathology is inherently language-based and most probably an ancient phase predating the development of metaphor and complexity, not the other way round as often claimed.