This situation strongly reminds me of the book Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson.
Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
381–390 of 421 posts
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#382Over the next 20 or so years, expect a lot of syndromes/conditions to be reclassified, as Michael Sharpe puts in the article, as "biological condition[s] that can be perpetuated by social and psychological factors.". I struggled with RSI for a couple of years until I read John Sarno's "The Mind-Body Connection" on the recommendation of someone from HN. Sarno's thesis is that many chronic pain conditions (those withou…
I think a lot of RSI is related to holding tension in your body.
The more direct physical way to "fix" it is to adopt a neutral stance with your body. Let your arms hang down neutrally at your sides without using your shoulders to hold them up. Let your wrists be supported in a good position so the strings and pulleys from your forearms to your fingers function well. Support them off the sharp and low edges of the desk at a good temperature. Let your head be balanced over your neck and shoulders instead of holding it in position with your back and head muscles.
The way to exacerbate the problem is the power through it like a new runner with shitty shoes. Ignore all of it, hold tension in your neck and back and ignore the signals your body is sending. Keep your monitor off-axis. Use a shitty mouse and keyboard. Sit at a laptop for hours and get-er-done in spite of terrible ergonomics. (Do you know there are no OSHA approved laptops?)
The exacerbate case ignores your mind-body connection.
Now, it's not "all in your head" but your head is part of the problem.
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
The conflict here is one side thinks this is some kind of political correctness scheme when in reality, IQ and race are just terribly unscientific social constructs. You'll get much less push back from something like "genetic marker found to influence spatial thinking in young children.
I think the problem is that people conflate race and genetics. Race is much more of a socio-economic marker than a genetic one. When race is correlated with some condition, it's important to first correct for socio-economic status, then environmental factors, then look at potential genetic factors. Since race is a much stronger proxy for the former than the latter.
Right. Leave the racial correlations to the sociologists. Its misleading and needlessly distracting to bring race into a genetics lab.
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As you must know, the ordinary understanding of race is based upon external appearance, primarily melanin: black, white, yellow, brown, Indian, and so on. This is exactly my point. Race means different things in different contexts. Colloquially, the word is used as you used it here. But it has other definitions, like the one I posted. All words are like this. > If you redefine race as a genetic population, then you…
'This is exactly my point. Race means different things in different contexts. Colloquially, the word is used as you used it here. But it has other definitions, like the one I posted. All words are like this.' You are being obtuse. There are not 'different' definitions of race. There is an overwhelming homogeneity in the dominant definitions of race, i.e. according to melanin. Race, on these terms, has been a major st…
It's easily to verify that there are different definitions of the word race.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(biology)
I don't think this conversation has much hope of continuing in a productive direction so I'm going to call it a day
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#385[deleted]
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#386It's same on HN, many ISPs are banned by HN moderators and all comments which don't suit the views of YC are banned here.
[deleted]
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#387Over the next 20 or so years, expect a lot of syndromes/conditions to be reclassified, as Michael Sharpe puts in the article, as "biological condition[s] that can be perpetuated by social and psychological factors.". I struggled with RSI for a couple of years until I read John Sarno's "The Mind-Body Connection" on the recommendation of someone from HN. Sarno's thesis is that many chronic pain conditions (those withou…
When I was a child, I would suffer from terrible muscle contractions in my calves. I would get a charlie horse in the middle of the night, and it would not go away completely for over a day. I couldn't put my foot flat to walk properly, and it was very painful. After about a dozen of these attacks, I noticed a pattern - they would occur on the night before something that I was dreading - a test I wasn't prepared for,…
Mind-body CAN be the causative factor. But sometimes correlation only.
A friend's wife died, and he got sick afterwards. Grief? Illness went away when he stopped eating badly (his wife had prepared most meals for him).
Of course, he had switched to a pretty bad diet, and he was older, more likely to be affected by diet.
Cramps, for example, can be often be prevented with potassium, which is in plants. Some people don't eat plants as much when they are stressed, leading to cramps.
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#388I can understand why so many chronic fatigue patients are reacting this way. My doctor once told me that during his medical training, he was taught that people claiming to be suffering from this are bonkers and must be treated as if they are psychotic. Nowadays, the evidence is stacking up that there are metabolic, viral, and neurological factors involved, and while all of these can effect alertness, they are not eve…
What percentage of patients are bonkers? What percentage would benefit from psychiatric treatments rather than non-psychiatric? It’s really hard with some conditions to get a good diagnosis and course of treatment? Being called bonkers doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to act bonkers (tweetharras someone). It’s kind of like that narcissism test where narcissists just respond that they are. I think non-bonkers people shou…
Watch this to understand the problem better : https://www.unrest.film/
And this : https://www.ted.com/talks/jen_brea_what_happens_when_you_hav...
I study neurology and metabolism. If any of these patients are delusional, its an exceedingly small fraction of them. Same goes for people diagnosed with "conversion disorder", which is the idea that they are exhausted because they are dealing with some buried repressed childhood trauma.
Some psychiatrists can have a real discussion with you about the intricacies of the hypothalamus. Others ..... really not..... they will try and deal with your systemic inflammatory problems with Fruedian psychoanalysis. Worse yet is that many patients dealing with these deep fatigue and metabolism issues have been institutionalized because people think they are just faking it.
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes...and yet, no. The brain controls the muscles that constitute your forearm. It’s not impossible to imagine that some sort of central nervous system dysfunction could make your arm go stiff. Limb rigidity is a classic symptom of Parkinson’s disease, for example, and its cause is several steps removed from motor cortex. Even the wrinkling of your fingers when they’re wet involves the nervous system: https://www.ncb…
Definitely. The now [flagged] comment I was responding to was completely over-the-top and utterly lacking in nuance hence my dismissive response of a similar nature.
Could you please not post dismissive responses even when another comment is over-the-top? Users here need to post civilly and substantively even when someone else isn't.
Also, while I have you, could you please stop creating accounts for every comment or two you post? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
HN is a community. Users needn't use their real name, but should have some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. There are legit uses for throwaways, just not routinely.
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#390I'm not sure you realise how fucking hateful you sound when you dismiss mental illness as "just in the mind".
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19378498 and marked it off-topic.