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> He is surely very evidently mentally ill. I agree and upvoted your post. But can I just say that it is super-reddit to diagnose someone based on your B- unde

by flomo 22d ago

> He is surely very evidently mentally ill. I agree and upvoted your post. But can I just say that it is super-reddit to diagnose someone based on your B- undergrad psych classes. We should go back to the classics like "he went off his rocker!", or "he's totally unhinged!" or "completely delulu!" (of course the people who know, know, and they shouldn't tell you.)

deleted 21d ago
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elevation 21d ago
> it is super-reddit to diagnose If I see a person with a broken bone protruding from their arm, I don't need an undergrad med-terms class to know "this person needs medical attention" even if I am not qualified to render it. Similarly, there are certain thresholds of human behavior that indicate mental illness -- you don't have to be licensed to treat it in order to recognize that there is a serious problem.
- pibaker 21d ago
  I wonder if GP would change his mind if he had witnessed Matt posting through the lawsuit in this very own website.
  - flomo 20d ago
    Just for the record, I did see him posting on HN, and he seemed highly motivated by $$$ (and pride). He certainly seemed rational, other than the fact he shouldn't have been posting here. Businessman makes bad business decision and doubles-down. Not quite insanity.
- paimapi 21d ago
  actually interpreting the DSM-V and running diagnostics is exclusive to clinically trained psychologists and psychiatrists. even LCSWs are remiss to offer a 'diagnosis' after years of talk therapy with a client. most official diagnoses happen within a matrix describing a cluster of symptoms paired with an eval of severity and impact on life, and a battery of tests that have been empirically and rigorously validated as my wife (who does have an MD and specializes in psychistry) is fond of saying when people ask her to diagnose someone she doesn't know, "Sometimes people are just weird" it could be that the guy here is just very burnt out and stressed and his healthier coping mechanisms aren't working so he's resorting to worse ones you can be empathetic to that without calling someone 'mentally ill'
  - pibaker 21d ago
    Why are people so eager to gatekeep who gets to call others mentally ill? I don't understand it. I don't have to be a doctor to say that someone who is constantly coughing and having a fever is sick, nor do I have to be a doctor to call someone with no legs disabled. What's different about mental illness? I don't disagree that there might be more subtle cases that are hard to tell by a lay person. But Matt is not like that. You are free to read his posts from the WP Engine lawsuit, including his post on hacker news, or his prior posts from some tumblr moderation drama. To me, the consistency and degree of his actions crosses the boundary of "bad day at work" and lands firmly in the "crazy guy in the park screaming at squirrels" territory. In fact, I'd argue that if he doesn't have tech wealth and was instead working a more traditional white collar job he might have already ended up just like that.
    - deleted 20d ago
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    - gregory23 20d ago
      becase most people are not qualified to distinguish mental illness from emotions, stress etc, and obviously you are not either. A broken, protruding bone is obviously broken and protruding; you see it with your eyes and you know that it's broken. Mental illness is much tougher to diagnose because you're looking at symptoms, not the actual brokenness. You said it yourself - you are a layperson, not a doctor, which confirms that you are nowhere near qualified to diagnose mental illness. Your "argument" stinks of ad hominem.
    - mebizzle 20d ago
      Because some people would go insane without having an external authority to appeal to; the extant systems of academia and qualification create an "objective" truth these peoples' psyches can cling to.
      - 20d ago
- kelnos 19d ago
  Hard disagree. Physical ailments like the one you describe are indeed simple to armchair-diagnose, but psychological problems are not that. Even for physical issues, there's a lot of grey. A bone protruding from an arm is one thing, but how about, say... a rash? Could be lots of things. An ephemeral pain with little or no visual manifestation? Who knows. Why do you think that mental illness is necessarily a protruding bone and not a rash or an ephemeral pain?
qlte 21d ago
They did not in fact diagnose anything, "mental illness" is not a specific condition in the DSM. You'd have a valid point if they confidently stated he had bipolar disorder or something.
- chiefalchemist 21d ago
  Yes, buy NPD *is* in the DSM. While I'm not a mental health professional (read: I can't diagnose with any authority), I would still say that Mullenweg consistenly exhubits many / most of the symptoms of classic NPD. NPD = Narcissistic Personality Disorder
- kelnos 19d ago
  Sure, it's not, but it's a term used to describe a wide collection of conditions that are in the DSM. In some ways, asserting that someone has "a mental illness" is worse than saying they have something specific, like bipolar disorder. It's lazy and dehumanizing, and takes away their agency.
triceratops 21d ago
"Mentally ill" is just a polite way of saying "out to lunch". I like the old phrases too - so much more color. But whatever man.
- philistine 21d ago
  He's as crazy as a coocoo clock.
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JumpCrisscross 20d ago
> it is super-reddit to diagnose someone Saying someone is showing signs of mental illness isn't a diagnosis. It's saying someone looks like they need medical attention. That's a fair thing for a layman to say. > We should go back to the classics like "he went off his rocker!", or "he's totally unhinged!" or "completely delulu!" These are, in some senses, less compassionate than saying someone needs help getting back to who they once were.
- kelnos 19d ago
  > Saying someone is showing signs of mental illness isn't a diagnosis. It's saying someone looks like they need medical attention. That's fair if the target is someone you know and interact with personally. Lazy armchair diagnoses from internet posts is something entirely different.
skeeter2020 20d ago
Similarly I've stopped saying "It's crazy that..." and changed it to "It's wild that ..." What do you call it when tamer words are more impactful? Example: I've found "Dum-dums" > "stupid idiots". Is it because they're less triggering for emotional responses to the words themselves?
Brian_K_White 18d ago
"it is super-reddit to diagnose someone based on your B- undergrad psych classes" It is super-HN to inflate something and then object to the inflated fabrication, and to throw stones while living in a glass house.

by flomo 22d ago

deleted 21d ago

[deleted]

elevation 21d ago

> it is super-reddit to diagnose If I see a person with a broken bone protruding from their arm, I don't need an undergrad med-terms class to know "this person needs medical attention" even if I am not qualified to render it. Similarly, there are certain thresholds of human behavior that indicate mental illness -- you don't have to be licensed to treat it in order to recognize that there is a serious problem.

pibaker 21d ago
I wonder if GP would change his mind if he had witnessed Matt posting through the lawsuit in this very own website.
- flomo 20d ago
  Just for the record, I did see him posting on HN, and he seemed highly motivated by $$$ (and pride). He certainly seemed rational, other than the fact he shouldn't have been posting here. Businessman makes bad business decision and doubles-down. Not quite insanity.
paimapi 21d ago
actually interpreting the DSM-V and running diagnostics is exclusive to clinically trained psychologists and psychiatrists. even LCSWs are remiss to offer a 'diagnosis' after years of talk therapy with a client. most official diagnoses happen within a matrix describing a cluster of symptoms paired with an eval of severity and impact on life, and a battery of tests that have been empirically and rigorously validated as my wife (who does have an MD and specializes in psychistry) is fond of saying when people ask her to diagnose someone she doesn't know, "Sometimes people are just weird" it could be that the guy here is just very burnt out and stressed and his healthier coping mechanisms aren't working so he's resorting to worse ones you can be empathetic to that without calling someone 'mentally ill'
- pibaker 21d ago
  Why are people so eager to gatekeep who gets to call others mentally ill? I don't understand it. I don't have to be a doctor to say that someone who is constantly coughing and having a fever is sick, nor do I have to be a doctor to call someone with no legs disabled. What's different about mental illness? I don't disagree that there might be more subtle cases that are hard to tell by a lay person. But Matt is not like that. You are free to read his posts from the WP Engine lawsuit, including his post on hacker news, or his prior posts from some tumblr moderation drama. To me, the consistency and degree of his actions crosses the boundary of "bad day at work" and lands firmly in the "crazy guy in the park screaming at squirrels" territory. In fact, I'd argue that if he doesn't have tech wealth and was instead working a more traditional white collar job he might have already ended up just like that.
  - deleted 20d ago
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  - deleted 20d ago
    [deleted]
  - gregory23 20d ago
    becase most people are not qualified to distinguish mental illness from emotions, stress etc, and obviously you are not either. A broken, protruding bone is obviously broken and protruding; you see it with your eyes and you know that it's broken. Mental illness is much tougher to diagnose because you're looking at symptoms, not the actual brokenness. You said it yourself - you are a layperson, not a doctor, which confirms that you are nowhere near qualified to diagnose mental illness. Your "argument" stinks of ad hominem.
  - mebizzle 20d ago
    Because some people would go insane without having an external authority to appeal to; the extant systems of academia and qualification create an "objective" truth these peoples' psyches can cling to.
    - 20d ago
kelnos 19d ago
Hard disagree. Physical ailments like the one you describe are indeed simple to armchair-diagnose, but psychological problems are not that. Even for physical issues, there's a lot of grey. A bone protruding from an arm is one thing, but how about, say... a rash? Could be lots of things. An ephemeral pain with little or no visual manifestation? Who knows. Why do you think that mental illness is necessarily a protruding bone and not a rash or an ephemeral pain?

qlte 21d ago

They did not in fact diagnose anything, "mental illness" is not a specific condition in the DSM. You'd have a valid point if they confidently stated he had bipolar disorder or something.

chiefalchemist 21d ago
Yes, buy NPD *is* in the DSM. While I'm not a mental health professional (read: I can't diagnose with any authority), I would still say that Mullenweg consistenly exhubits many / most of the symptoms of classic NPD. NPD = Narcissistic Personality Disorder
kelnos 19d ago
Sure, it's not, but it's a term used to describe a wide collection of conditions that are in the DSM. In some ways, asserting that someone has "a mental illness" is worse than saying they have something specific, like bipolar disorder. It's lazy and dehumanizing, and takes away their agency.

triceratops 21d ago

"Mentally ill" is just a polite way of saying "out to lunch". I like the old phrases too - so much more color. But whatever man.

philistine 21d ago
He's as crazy as a coocoo clock.
- deleted 21d ago
  [deleted]

JumpCrisscross 20d ago

> it is super-reddit to diagnose someone Saying someone is showing signs of mental illness isn't a diagnosis. It's saying someone looks like they need medical attention. That's a fair thing for a layman to say. > We should go back to the classics like "he went off his rocker!", or "he's totally unhinged!" or "completely delulu!" These are, in some senses, less compassionate than saying someone needs help getting back to who they once were.

kelnos 19d ago
> Saying someone is showing signs of mental illness isn't a diagnosis. It's saying someone looks like they need medical attention. That's fair if the target is someone you know and interact with personally. Lazy armchair diagnoses from internet posts is something entirely different.

skeeter2020 20d ago

Similarly I've stopped saying "It's crazy that..." and changed it to "It's wild that ..." What do you call it when tamer words are more impactful? Example: I've found "Dum-dums" > "stupid idiots". Is it because they're less triggering for emotional responses to the words themselves?

Brian_K_White 18d ago

"it is super-reddit to diagnose someone based on your B- undergrad psych classes" It is super-HN to inflate something and then object to the inflated fabrication, and to throw stones while living in a glass house.