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time_management, I admire your courage and understand your need to post this subject here on HN. Though your motive is to create a real debate around the subjec
by okeumeni 18y ago
time_management, I admire your courage and understand your need to post this subject here on HN. Though your motive is to create a real debate around the subject of mental problem, some of us go through every day, I don’t think HN is the right platform to do this; here is why.
Mental illness in general is a very complex topic, unlike headache, flu or any other disease; it is not something the regular person (the healthy person) understands. Those who have never suffer from any form of mental problem tend to think that it is a philosophical problem; they think that by thinking too hard they can somehow come up with an explanation of a solution.
I also have to agree that Hackers community seems to be one with a high ratio of people with some sort of mental disorder. I have suffered from depression myself and all through my career many of people I met had some sort of mental problem.
- time_management 18y agoMental illness is a "hacker's topic" because it requires mental "hacking" in order to flourish in spite of it, and I'd imagine there's a large number of successful "mind-hackers" on this forum.
- okeumeni 18y agoI agree with your vision of mental illness as a "hacker's topic" if you think of hackers as a high ratio community. I don’t agree to the fact that it requires "Hacking" to deal with this very serious issue. Hacking is just a way to alleviate effect of it on the daily basis. Again your calling a debate on a subject most people don’t even understand on a public forum, I don’t think this is productive to people with real issues. I have been there I know what I’ am talking about.
- time_management 18y agoBy "hacking", I mean using medication, therapy, cognitive-behavioral approaches, meditation, etc. to deal with the mind's inefficiencies. I don't mean the narrower sense, which is coding. People post neuro articles to this site all the time. I'm not going to get into the debate over what mind is, but the brain is essentially a computer.