Show HN: Engineering Schizophrenia: Trusting yourself through Byzantine faults • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by rescrv » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 2:52 AM UTC

throwaway920102 wrote: post #18

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 s…

From where I sit today, I can say that I see things others don't. I have a hard time saying they aren't real, though, as experience has been a zero-knowledge proof the the commentary.

The front half of the book, up until a clear pivot chapter, is me trying to put to words a coherent schizophrenic vision; both to establish credentials and to give people a sense of what it can be like.

A common theme I've seen both in myself and in others who have spoken to me about their experience is that it's common to have a delusion that you are at the center of a religion.

Personally, I've been blessed with insights at the core of every major religion that I know more than a slight deal about. It just so happens that the episode I detail in this book has me at the center of a prophecy; It rings in my head as truth, but I don't have any proof of that truth to produce.

In the latter half of the book, I introduce a conversation with Master Yoshu that I feel is critical to the message. It would have been awkward to say, "I heard this from a voice" without the setup to give that.

Regarding your last paragraph, I think what you'll find is that life is rarely ever centered around something that you can ever adequately put to words. Even if someone is always 100% literal, their concepts will not match your concepts; labels are the source of much of our suffering, and trying to label something as example or metaphor or "not literal" already betrays that you're unable to falsify it; thus, there's something to it.

I don't want to dismiss you though: If I went through that burden of categorizing my own text, how would your life be improved?

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

#22

Post by throwaway920102 » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 1:40 AM UTC

rescrv wrote: post #21

throwaway920102 wrote: post #18

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 s…

From where I sit today, I can say that I see things others don't. I have a hard time saying they aren't real, though, as experience has been a zero-knowledge proof the the commentary. The front half of the book, up until a clear pivot chapter, is me trying to put to words a coherent schizophrenic vision; both to establish credentials and to give people a sense of what it can be like. A common theme I've seen both in…

My life wouldn't be improved at all, I mostly just wanted to get your reaction because I was curious. I have a person I care about who suffers from schizophrenia and I struggle to tell when they are exaggerating or saying something for comedic effect or hyperbole or if they are making an analogy or are saying something literal, so my question / comment was mostly to hopefully gain some perspective. I could just ask them "are you saying you literally believe X" every few minutes but it's hard to get a word in with them sometimes.

I guess the other point of my comment is potentially for your benefit in that if you want to have many people read your book, I have a fear that a large portion of potential readers will hear your story, open up the book, falsely conclude "oh this guy is still just crazy, this is a sci-fi/mythology text" and close it without reaching the parts that to me were the most interesting. But I would understand if you decide that you don't really care to change anything, just sharing in case it turned out to be helpful.

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

#23

Post by rescrv » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 8:18 AM UTC

throwaway920102 wrote: post #22

rescrv wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From where I sit today, I can say that I see things others don't. I have a hard time saying they aren't real, though, as experience has been a zero-knowledge proof the the commentary. The front half of the book, up until a clear pivot chapter, is me trying to put to words a coherent schizophrenic vision; both to establish credentials and to give people a sense of what it can be like. A common theme I've seen both in…

My life wouldn't be improved at all, I mostly just wanted to get your reaction because I was curious. I have a person I care about who suffers from schizophrenia and I struggle to tell when they are exaggerating or saying something for comedic effect or hyperbole or if they are making an analogy or are saying something literal, so my question / comment was mostly to hopefully gain some perspective. I could just ask t…

I appreciate the feedback. I can definitely see people thinking I'm crazy by the first few chapters and not getting to the good part.

I was trying (and failed) to be clever about improving your life.

What you say about exaggeration vs hyperbole vs analogy vs literal resonates with me. Have you considered they may not, themselves, have an answer to this? For example, I often throw out (hyperbolicly) really wild numbers at work that are off by orders of magnitude to illustrate what happens when stuff grows to an extreme; yet, I'm also very cautious to get precise numbers when building. My co-workers may be bothered by this (so I'll be more mindful now that I've probed for this insight), but I would like to think that hyperbole is easily detected.

Honestly, I don't know if I can help with perspective without witnessing you with your care-person. Everyone's different and the nature of the beast is you only interact with really ill people when you yourself are out of commission. I wouldn't want to generalize me onto someone else. Perhaps you just show them the post I'm replying to and ask what they think?