8 ms·
Occam's razor would lead to this summary: person finds out that the apartment was built on a former toxic waste site, gives themselves a panic attack. Of cours
by nzmsv 6y ago
Occam's razor would lead to this summary: person finds out that the apartment was built on a former toxic waste site, gives themselves a panic attack.
Of course, there is always the possibility that her unit was somehow special, but it's incredibly unlikely. Statements like "how would they know I was looking into it" and " and "why would they offer me to break the lease with no penalty" further strengthen the mental health angle.
This isn't to make fun or diminish the author's concerns. It's just that one root cause is much much more likely and really should be investigated first. I hope she has someone caring in her life to look into that angle.
Edit: happy to burn some karma on this in case this helps someone get help for a loved one. Mental health issues are excruciatingly hard to deal with and I have first hand experience. It sucks when you realize that to help someone you have to go against their wishes.
This one seems pretty clear cut. The landlord wishing that she would go away is a conspiracy? She talked about this for weeks and is surprised someone thought she may have looked at the environmental reports? And lastly, everyone in the neighboring units is totally fine.
And by the way, I am not saying "she is crazy". I am saying "look into both possibilities". I am happy to see that the comment at the top with the most votes is saying the exact same thing.
- rini17 6y agoDownvoted as this is pure gaslighting. There is plenty of objective evidence.
- wait_a_minute 6y agoI can’t downvote yet since not enough karma, but upvoted you.
- refulgentis 6y agoWouldn't say there's plenty, and for sure accusing the poster of "pure gaslighting" is way overboard: VOCs are a broad category, off the shelf monitoring equipment, and surveying the environmental remidiation plan, do not a full tale make. Hence, why OP wrote the post...they still don't have answers or help...
- rini17 6y agoAnd how does that warrant suggesting mental health issue?
- batch12 6y agoSuggesting a mental health issue in response to an article isn't gaslighting. Gaslighting is a specific type of psychological attack against someone.
- raychail10 6y agoYou’re taking all the evidence that she has gathered, saying it means nothing and are instead blaming the victim...my bad, last time I checked, that was gaslighting.
- batch12 6y agoI didn't say anything like this or about the article at all. I was just commenting that the term "gaslighting" has a specific definition and the term is being misused.
- batch12 6y agoTo be gaslighting, doesn't this have to be communicated to the person and therefore abuse?
- rini17 6y agoOkay. Then what is the correct term if it's communicated not directly to that person but toward public? Defamation?
- refulgentis 6y agoI believe defamation, or "communicating false statements about a person that injure their reputation" doesn't apply either. I believe your criticism is describing that the poster didn't reaffirm/"yes, and" the author, but rather, posited an alternative explanation. I would call this "tone deaf" if it was a person they had a personal relationship with, "gaslighting" if it occurred repeatedly and they were lying in service of attempting to manipulate the author, and dead serious, not being sarcastic, the worst I could call it in this situation is "disagreeing".[1] I'm really struggling to come up with something that satisfies the requirement that we describe the person you originally replied to negatively, since neither psychological manipulation of the individual or lying are involved. Being primed to describe this situation as either of those might be throwing me off, I'm curious if you have a lengthier explanation that can give us some color as to what part of the comment you're trying to describe [1] Personally, I wouldn't call it disagreeing, because I got the sense from the article that the author believes they've done all they can with off-the-shelf tools and a laymen's analysis of planning documents, and they wrote up the post _specifically_ because they needed more help, hopefully from institutions, to find the explanation
- echlebek 6y agoI'd say it was unnecessarily dismissive.
- hahajk 6y agoThe problem is that Occam’s Razor will always point to panic attacks in cases where the underlying issue doesn’t immediately show up on imaging/blood work. In this case, though, her neighbor allegedly found lead in the water.
- amluto 6y agoWhich is likely unrelated. Lead in the tap water comes from older buildings with inappropriate plumbing materials [0] or potentially from a colossal screw up with modern construction. Or maybe from a really horrible water utility, but SF does not have that problem. It has nothing to do with contamination of the site.
- ricardobayes 6y agoI think lots of houses in Europe have lead in the tap water though... Because they are old and changing the pipes in the building costs a lot. I took a measurement in a downtown Budapest flat we rented and it came back 10x the limit. The water had no odor, discolor or taste.
- detaro 6y agoExcept the order of events is described the other way around?
- wizzwizz4 6y agoOccam's Razor says she had magical pre-cognitive powers that allowed her to get hysterical before she took the readings. Because woe betide we not dismiss her.
- nzmsv 6y ago... because memory is perfect and people never create false memories when faced with cognitive dissonance. Yup.
- wizzwizz4 6y agoWow! She has the incredible power to hallucinate paper trails into reality, retroactively altering the course of history‽ Amazing. (Hate to ask, but did you read the article? She was getting medical treatment well before she got air quality readings.)
- nzmsv 6y agoCorrection: we have her claim that she got medical treatment, a graph she made, and a selfie with some medical equipment. We don't have independent proof of anything. And yes, I did read the article. If this paper trail ever surfaces I'll happily take back everything I said.
- wizzwizz4 6y agoYou've changed your claim from “she's delusional” to “she's deceiving us”. The latter claim is much more credible… but quite a lot of the things she wrote are independently verifiable, and I haven't seen anyone saying “that's not true!”, so…
- galangalalgol 6y agoShe also had asthma, so if that unrecovered tank of chemicals was just affecting her unit, and no one else in that unit had asthma, they might not have sufficiently severe symptoms to notice. It seems quite possible.
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