The terrorist inside my husband's brain • Hacker News Board

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#121

Post by ubernostrum » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 6:53 AM UTC

KC8ZKF wrote: post #81

jhbadger wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that cancer and infectious disease really are conflicts and invasions, no metaphors needed. At the cellular level you really do have cells killing cells based on recognition of whether they are not they are recognized as "self".

You are defending the metaphor by using metaphors based on the metaphor you are defending.

The other comment says this more briefly, but: it is true that the immune system draws this distinction. Every human cell with a nucleus presents a set of molecules on its surface, and immune system T cells use that to determine whether or not to trigger an immune response (where "immune response" means "kill the cell which presented an unacceptable set of molecules").

Autoimmune diseases occur when immune cells improperly categorize some "self" cells as "non-self" and trigger immune response on them.

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#122

Post by jmatthews » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 7:30 AM UTC

guelo wrote: post #26

A common failing I've noticed in complicated multi-symptom diagnoses like this disease is that doctors tend to treat each symptom individually instead of trying to connect the dots of all the symptoms. As a programmer used to debugging complicated systems it makes no sense, my first inclination when multiple things popup at the same time is to look for the underlying root cause.

Humans aren't deterministic.

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#123

Post by pm24601 » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 7:39 AM UTC

I remember all the people ( looking at you Tony Robbins) who put RW's suicide as some failing of character.

this should make it painfully clear to all those with opinions about others on the internet to STFU

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#124

Post by ianai » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 8:07 AM UTC

initram wrote: post #92

HSO wrote: post #33

This is obviously painful for the family and the fans, and I hope my words are not taken in the wrong way. But I really wish Americans (and yes, I think it's mostly Americans who have this tendency) would choose their words more carefully. If I am not mistaken, we are talking about a disease . What makes the analogy to "terrorism" apt here? For a while, everything seemed to be a "war" ("war on drugs", "war on crime",…

Have you ever lived with someone with a mental illness? I definitely see the relationship with terrorism. Terrorism thrives on fear - "will they attack today?", "Will they use some horrible method of attack?", "Will I be able to handle it?", etc. Living with someone with mental illness can strike fear into a person. "When I get home from work, will I get normal spouse, or lunatic spouse?", "Will I need to take my chi…

Very much like living with someone who was bipolar.

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#125

Post by ilaksh » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 8:30 AM UTC

This is a type of dementia, which is in fact an age-related disease. That is not to say that getting old is the main cause, but aging is simply related.

I am convinced that the only truly effective way to tackle most age-related disease (which includes most diseases that kill people) is by comprehensively acting against fundamental aging mechanisms.

http://www.sens.org/

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#126

Post by maxxxxx » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 9:08 AM UTC

guelo wrote: post #26

A common failing I've noticed in complicated multi-symptom diagnoses like this disease is that doctors tend to treat each symptom individually instead of trying to connect the dots of all the symptoms. As a programmer used to debugging complicated systems it makes no sense, my first inclination when multiple things popup at the same time is to look for the underlying root cause.

You see the same thing in nutrition and exercise. A lot of people want to boil down every issue to a single factor. Either fat is the only problem or sugar or carbs or whatever. The body is a complex system and a lot of factors have to be in balance. But I guess that's hard to communicate and work with.

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#127

Post by sangnoir » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 9:34 AM UTC

gravypod wrote: post #103

caconym_ wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this sort of thinking involves a false equivalence between computer programs and the human body. Going out on a limb I'd say that debugging is a skill that's learned in practice, not taught, so if it was as easy to "debug" the human body as it is to debug a computer program, why would computer programmers be better at debugging in their domain then doctors are in theirs? Surely doctors would have varying degr…

One reason why we might be better at debugging is doctors are penalized for "fuck it, what happens if I do..." and we are not. We get to mess with large permutations of different causes and effects, that we stimulate, in a short time while that would be unethical for medical professionals.

> One reason why we might be better at debugging is doctors are penalized for "fuck it, what happens if I do..." and we are not

I get anxious every time I have to debug live systems. Developers are lucky because we can reproduce and test fixes on non-live systems. As a bonus, we can step through the code at critical junctures and can examine the complete state of the system

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#128

Post by zo1 » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 9:51 AM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #127

gravypod wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason why we might be better at debugging is doctors are penalized for "fuck it, what happens if I do..." and we are not. We get to mess with large permutations of different causes and effects, that we stimulate, in a short time while that would be unethical for medical professionals.

> One reason why we might be better at debugging is doctors are penalized for "fuck it, what happens if I do..." and we are not I get anxious every time I have to debug live systems. Developers are lucky because we can reproduce and test fixes on non-live systems. As a bonus, we can step through the code at critical junctures and can examine the complete state of the system

When you have a large, distributed system with many moving parts, debugging no longer applies. To top that off, you in no way have a complete "view" of the state of the system and you have to piece together clues from varying parts. Taking into account the user "story" of what happened, which is usually vague.

I always liken it to being a detective trying to piece together a crime scene from incomplete clues. But now that I think about it, it's also quite a lot like trying to diagnose an illness from symptoms.

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#129

Post by stamm49 » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 9:52 AM UTC

Sorry but a medical disease has nothing to do with "terrorism". Is this just a way to grab headlines or clicks?

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#130

Post by Confusion » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 10:17 AM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #121

KC8ZKF wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are defending the metaphor by using metaphors based on the metaphor you are defending.

The other comment says this more briefly, but: it is true that the immune system draws this distinction. Every human cell with a nucleus presents a set of molecules on its surface, and immune system T cells use that to determine whether or not to trigger an immune response (where "immune response" means "kill the cell which presented an unacceptable set of molecules"). Autoimmune diseases occur when immune cells impr…

Describing the behavior of immune cells as categorizing cells in 'self' and 'non-self' is itself an example of engaging in metaphor. It's an example of anthropomorphising the behavior of cells.

You can just as easily describe the behavior of immune cells as categorizing cells into 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' and killing the 'unhealthy' cells. Suddenly the disease is not about internal conflict, but about internal hygiene. And when the immune system kills 'foreign' cells, it's not because they are foreign, but because they are found to be 'unhealthy': deviating too much from what it considers 'healthy'.

This is a simpler explanation. Apply Occam's razor: the immune system does not care about whether something is 'foreign': that's a more complex, and more precise, judgement than is needed to determine whether something needs to be killed. The broader category of 'unhealthy', deviating from the template/norm, is sufficient and that is the only thing the immune system needs to determine.