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Show HN: Engineering Schizophrenia: Trusting yourself through Byzantine faults

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Re: Show HN: Engineering Schizophrenia: Trusting yourself through Byzantine faults

#15

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Thanks for sharing that, Robert, and good luck!

I have close family with schizoaffective disorder, which is very close to schizophrenia, and have a couple of acquaintances with schizophrenia.

One of them is a chap that has chosen to take the “John Forbes Nash Jr” approach, and eschew medication. In his case, it has been effective. He’s a bit odd, to talk to, but otherwise, does fine. He's married, with a couple of beautiful kids, and has a good career.

I do find it annoying, though, that he pressures others to do the same. My family member desperately needs their meds, and can’t function, without. I think it has to do with how the condition manifests.

Another acquaintance also desperately needs their meds. A few years ago, they spent a few months, where they tried going off them, carefully, and assisted by doctors, personal research, discipline, diet, and exercise. Also, they had our full support (friends and family). We all wanted it to work.

It didn’t work. We watched them slowly disintegrate, until they damn near committed suicide, and were forced to go back.

Each case is different, but they hold in common, a total devastation of normal life.

Re: Show HN: Engineering Schizophrenia: Trusting yourself through Byzantine faults

#16

Post by rescrv »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #15

Thanks for sharing that, Robert, and good luck! I have close family with schizoaffective disorder, which is very close to schizophrenia, and have a couple of acquaintances with schizophrenia. One of them is a chap that has chosen to take the “John Forbes Nash Jr” approach, and eschew medication. In his case, it has been effective. He’s a bit odd, to talk to, but otherwise, does fine. He's married, with a couple of be…

I appreciate you sharing.

My understanding is schizoaffective disorder is one of four categories of schizophrenia. I think people often use them interchangeably.

Medication can be tricky because when it works it seems increasingly unnecessary and often has side effects of its own.

I hope no one reads my book as a substitute or prescription to avoid medication on their path. To each their own, but it's not what I'm advocating for.

Thank you again!

Re: Show HN: Engineering Schizophrenia: Trusting yourself through Byzantine faults

#18

Post by throwaway920102 »

I read parts of this and found them quite interesting! One of the annoying things about schizophrenia is when someone you care about is in treatment/remission/managing their symptoms, if they use metaphor or symbolism or other similar linguistic devices it can be hard to tell if they are doing that - intentionally using metaphor/symbolism/imagery to make a point, or if they are veering off into a strange delusional statement and something you think is meant to be metaphor is actually written or spoken literally.

I had a similar reaction when first skimming this book in that some of the sections sort of looked almost like allegory or something similar to allegory, but I wasn't sure if it was an artistic/linguistic device or if it was something resultant from schizophrenia.

Do you care to comment about that OP? EG: Metropolis chapter (page 10) through page 19 (Yoshu Prophecies). FWIW my takeaway was to have the charitable view that given your ability to even write this book, these sections are a depiction of some of those psychosis period for some illustrative purpose. But I have a small question in my head about it.

I understand it must be a burden to do have do so, but I wonder if you'd find that others would understand you more if you loudly prefaced usages of these sorts of techniques with their announcement. EG: "This is a metaphor, but _____" or "Here's an example:", or "I don't mean this literally, but ____". Dunno what the preface would be for these parts of the book, and I like I said I skimmed because I'm supposed to be at work rn.

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