How Bad Are Things? (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#121

Post by michaelmrose » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

ehvatum wrote: post #120

michaelmrose wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that somewhere other people have it worse has never been a valid or meaningful response to suffering. It is so facile it works on almost any level of horror. You could fallaciously say I'm sorry you had your legs eaten by bears but did you hear about joe, joe was eaten alive by ants! Your anecdote regarding your would be boot camp is probably off topic but allowing people to abrogate basic human rights so yo…

It is not facile to ask if experiencing deprivation is a necessary condition for experiencing happiness. Consider that strength training develops muscles. Does facing genuine adversity develop emotional response such that people become capable of enjoying a world of plenty?

I think the proximity and ultimate fact of death first around us and then ultimately happening to us is sufficient deprivation to appreciate life.

Suffering is more likely to stunt then enrich.

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#122

Post by mnu » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 7:13 PM UTC

Maxbunny wrote: post #98

Love the blog, but this is one of the weaker pieces. There is ABUNDANT data on this topic, which all point to the large majority of people being mostly content with their life. This result holds true even for low income countries, but not for the poorest countries. Even without looking at data, the author should consider that his patients come to him to specifically talk about their problems, and not what is going we…

He did consider this:

>I have three non-mutually exclusive theories for this:

> 1. The people who come to a psychiatrist are disproportionately the unhappiest and most disturbed. This is obviously true to some degree. But I got the same sort of people when I worked in general medicine and primary care. Even the people who come to a primary care doctor are going to be a little biased towards the sorts of conditions that produce or result from sickness, but people were still much worse off than I thought.

Later on he runs a sample of twenty people to get an idea of the type of issues others around us might be facing using the statistics he provides earlier on.

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#123

Post by ap3 » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 7:16 PM UTC

qntty wrote: post #94

kazagistar wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think privalage is contextual. It depends on you actually coming into contact with situations where it helps. - You can't be privileged in getting a promotion in a dead end job where no one gets promoted. - You can't be privileged in social acceptability if you have a mental health issue that keeps you from going outside. - You can't be privileged in educational opportunities when you had to quit high school to pay…

I think the claim of people who talk about privilege is that there is a society-wide context where being white or whatever gives you privilege. It's not like America has a white police force that discriminates against black people and a black police force that discriminates against white people. We have one police force and it's a white one (in the sense that it tends to be run for the sake of white people and embodi…

>We have one tech sector that is run (disproportionately) for the sake of white people and embodies white values.

What do you mean by “white values”?

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#124

Post by aidenn0 » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 7:17 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #119

QuadrupleA wrote: post #92

There does seem to be a certain "external things are the reason for my misery" thread through all these stories that bugs me, even though it's an interesting and well-written piece. These patients, with the exact same circumstances, could have found some peace by accepting and working within their constraints - the 70-year old woman could accept the situation with the granddaughter and find other outlets for caretaki…

Ideally she would tell the son he can go to rehab or get turned in to the authorities.

Getting turned into the authorities often doesn't really accomplish anything.

Here's a typical case:

Meth addicted neglectful mother has dozens of reports from several sources of varying credibility (e.g. reports from an ex-boyfriend are immediately discounted as likely retribution). Each time, Child Welfare Services shows up checks that there are no bruises on kid, food in the cabinet ,and a bed for the kid and then leaves.

In the good cases, CWS gets lucky and shows up while the mother is using and the child is removed. In the medium case, someone (e.g. a drug dealer or boyfriend) will hit the kid and leave a mark, which will cause a more thorough investigation that may turn up evidence of drug use. In the bad cases the kid manages to put together enough self-sufficiency to not die and will end up addicted/pregnant/dead/homeless/in jail by the time they are 18.

[edit]

Don't let the above discourage you from reporting this! The best case happens only because of reports from multiple sources force CWS to keep showing up. Almost all kids that get removed from bad situations before kindergarten happen because people care and report.

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#125

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 7:18 PM UTC

lonelappde wrote: post #110

DoreenMichele wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once, when I was whining about what a "tragedy" my life was, someone told me "Everyone thinks their life is a tragedy." That stuck with me. I consider genuinely listening to merely be good manners . I have had to learn to be more stand-off-ish because this is apparently not some universal standard of good manners. In fact, it's apparently some bizarre aberration that signals "use me" or something. All manner of peopl…

The version I heard is "If you knew X's problems, you wouldn't trade your problems for theirs." Not universally true, but goes a long way . Another aphorism is, "some people are givers, others are takers". It's a function of personality, not resources or circumstances.

[deleted]

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#126

Post by alexashka » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 7:33 PM UTC

throwayEngineer wrote: post #12

What should humanity do? The big hitters are Drug addiction and Chronic Pain. I don't have a solution for drug addiction, but I can't blame our generation for not finding a solution. No generation has, and given caffeine addiction, it's extremely hard for others to help with. Chronic Pain needs to end. Between Doctors of Physical Therapy and medications, there are little reason for people to be experiencing chronic p…

Humanity shouldn't do anything.

The simplest solution to both of your problems on a societal level is assisted suicide.

It's not the solution, it's a solution, that many people would take.

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#127

Post by aidenn0 » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 7:33 PM UTC

psweber wrote: post #80

tmaly wrote: post #53

I always try to remind myself that everyone is fighting their own battles. If someone cuts me off while I am driving, I come up with alternate explanations. Maybe that person really has to use the bathroom etc. Rather than think a person is just being evil. Something I have noticed before, the physical demeanor of people you see walking around you has a psychological effect on yourself. Many years ago this came up in…

I started using that approach in late adolescence as I was discovering that everyone has an internal world that I can't understand. I tried to give people the benefit of the doubt and operate under the assumption that there is an underlying reason for hostile behavior. Over the years, I got seriously burned personally and professionally by malicious people that I made excuses for in my head. It hardened my heart and…

> Now I've come full circle. I'm back to your approach, but I play more defensively. People likely have a reason for being malicious that is out of their control. I don't need to judge them, but I do need to protect myself and my loved ones.

Yeah, if I get killed by someone who was not malicious, I'm just as dead as if I get killed by someone who was. To use the aggressive driver example: I don't need to be angered or insulted by someone cutting me off, but if I end up near them down the road, I'm going to try to change lanes or otherwise try to not end up near them.

I think the main thing is to not be angered by the (assumed) maliciousness. I've seen people generate a lot of anger because they assume every slight is intentionally aimed at them: they cut me off just to piss me off; they didn't wave back because they hate me &c.

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#128

Post by dang » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10799124

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#129

Post by rland » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

DisruptiveDave wrote: post #32

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #6

In my experience this is very true upon simply becoming the kind of person who is open to listening to others. The vast majority of people you've run into have had huge difficulties in life, or are affected by people close to them who have huge difficulties in their lives. People tell me I'm a wonderful listener due to my lack of judgement on their problems (more than once, people, including my therapist, tell me I'd…

> but really I've internalized the idea that everyone is living a life less than what they hoped their life would be to various extents and that there is also a near infinite combination of ways to achieve this effect such that no one can be dismissed for their misery in any respect without also dismissing the "legitimate" misery of a wide swath of people. There's a downside to this logic, one of the enabling sort. I…

This is how a therapists' training distinguishes them from a friendly ear. It's very hard to get through the pattern of behavior that you describe, because the combination of empathy and pragmatism required to facilitate growth requires a fine balance. Too much pragmatism will push away the self-victimizing friend, and too much empathy will never facilitate growth.

Professional therapists often fail in this, which is one way that people can see a therapist for years and never make progress on their issue.

Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)

#130

Post by reroute1 » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 7:56 PM UTC

threwawasy1228 wrote: post #86

reroute1 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'"White males are privileged" is a reasonable statement to make with plenty of evidence to support it.' Is it though? I think you're going to need to be a lot more specific than that to make a reasonable statement. You can try to support your original statement, but that's so vague it could mean whatever you want.

I saw a recent statistic on the talent.works blog that might be interesting to this discussion. They had a sample size of around 6-10k and found that women had a much higher interview rate than men, at all levels of experience, and across multiple categories of industry. Here is the graphic related to their article. [0] But on that same dataset it was found that Asians and Whites get more disproportionately more job…

This data is interesting, but in the blog post the judgment made about it(or heavily suggested) that it's due to stereotypes and discrimination is a very broad stroke and it can't all be attributed to that. Maybe that is a part of it, but how much and in what specific cases? That is the hard part.

And aside from that employment is one dimension of 'privilege'. How could you possibly calculate all the privilege across a human life... there are endless dimensions