Live data from Hacker News

I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

theatlantic.com

61–70 of 189 posts

Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#61

A few years ago I got some kind of brain illness. Doctors were unable to come up with a strong diagnosis, which is apparently quite common for such cases. One of the effects of the illness was that I essentially became stupid. I couldn’t focus on anything (even trivial activities like watching television), I couldn’t compose emails, I would get disoriented easily. It was absolutely terrifying not knowing whether or n…

I honestly believe that the dumbest software developer is smarter than the average doctor. Look at how they prescribe drugs for the side effects of other drugs. Imagine coding a software patch to fix a bug introduced by another patch.

> Imagine coding a software patch to fix a bug introduced by another patch.

But this is very common! Far from mocking my fellow developers, I'll be the first to admit I've been guilty of this many times.

Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#63

Cars are so incredibly destructive to society, in so many ways. But most people are so blasé about them.

Does anyone else feel like it's almost always a pickup truck? This article^[1] that I found a while back claims occupants of a car are 2.5 times more likely to die in a collision with a pickup truck than another car. It's an atrocity, and it's insane to me that it's almost totally absent from the public discourse. ^[1] https://www.iihs.org/topics/vehicle-size-and-weight

There are no reasonable pickup truck safety regulations in the US. Pickup trucks are simply not safe vehicles for other individuals around them. Some are so large that you can't even see small children in front. [0]

The front of most pickup trucks is literally a flat wall, whereas most cars and SUVs have to design for potential pedestrian impact and whatnot. If you get hit by a pickup truck you will be pancaked, but if you get hit by a modern car you have a chance of surviving.

You can thank lawmakers acting on the whims of corporate lobbyists for this. [1] It makes my blood boil, how our elected representatives so casually throw away lives of their citizens.

90% of pickup truck owners don't actually need their pickup trucks, but are allowed to buy and drive these incredibly dangerous vehicles regardless. In turn, this causes an escalating arms race - everyone else feels the need to buy an SUV or other large vehicle. Vehicles get heavier, bigger, and deadlier. The cycle continues.

Part of the issue is that it's part of the self-image of red-blooded American manliness to own a pickup truck. It's ridiculous and childish, but owning a pickup truck is seen as cool and macho throughout large swaths of the country. It will be almost impossible to pass safety regulations against pickup trucks thanks to this population.

[0]: https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/the-hidden-danger...

[1]: https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?cycle=2020...

Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#64

> Of all the injuries we suffered, mine is the worst. My brain injury has shaken my confidence in my own personality, my own existence. I don't exist. That's the secret. This concept took me years to grok but now I know.

That's not really very useful. Of course you exist! You share sufficiently many properties with other things that we would say “exist” that it is more useful to consider you extant than non-existent. What you mean might be a more useful, meaningful concept, but what you've said is kinda nonsense. If you don't exist, who wrote this comment? I'd be interested if you could elaborate.

> If you don't exist, who wrote this comment?

The hands. Driven by the chemical phenomena taking place in the brain given the information it had been fed previously. Both the hands and the brain and the memories are mine but not me. The same way my finger is (I won't be less me if I loose it, neither I will if I loose a memory of something, even of my name) and my car is. I am merely the observer of all these but ok, then where this me which "merely is" is then? Nowhere because whatever a thing within my body or personality I could point to is mine. Where will that me go when I die or when the universe collapses into a singularity and booms in a next big bang - nowhere, which is exactly where it is now. Because it doesn't exist.

This is a very rough simplification though (in fact the hands, the memories etc aren't even mine if everything else in the world isn't). I had to digest this for years and observe this, excuse me for some nonsense, from different angles inside the multi-dimensional space of pure non-verbal semantic experiences perception. This can be a long way to develop this ability and I am not sure many are ready to go this way. No, I'm not a heavy psychedelic abuser, nor a new-age loon, nor depressed, nor psychopathic, I am sober, enthusiastic, generally Okay, happy and compassionate and the realization of the above only made me even more of these and helped me through the hard times.

The first step is to observe it (a pure meaning without words) when you know exactly what you want to say but can't recall a proper word in any of the languages you speak.

If I were to seriously rationalize this I would say nobody writes the comment, it is an emergent structure resulting from a very complex fractal system. Whoever is not really into this but feels curious and wants an easy explanation watch the Dr. Sapolsky's lectures on emergence in his behavioral biology course on YouTube.

Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#65

A few years ago I got some kind of brain illness. Doctors were unable to come up with a strong diagnosis, which is apparently quite common for such cases. One of the effects of the illness was that I essentially became stupid. I couldn’t focus on anything (even trivial activities like watching television), I couldn’t compose emails, I would get disoriented easily. It was absolutely terrifying not knowing whether or n…

I'm so sorry this happened to you and I'm glad you are starting to feel at least somewhat back to your old self. I definitely understand where this opinion of docs is coming from as there are definitely some incompetent docs out there but don't you think that your opinion is largely based around an anecdotal experience that is probably pretty abnormal? Medicine as a field is still pretty unscientific in a lot of ways…

> Is that really the doctors fault?

It seemed that most of the doctors I had to deal with were incompetent either because they were lazy or stupid. Realistically maybe they were just overworked, but the effect was the same. I’m not really interested in assigning “fault” here - that’s just a factual observation I made.

Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#66
post #11
post #2

This headline is like a bad r/nosleep title. Someday, somehow, I hope we move past this dumb clickbait style.

Yeah, I couldn't get very far in to it. Something about the author's tone and writing style was awkward and offputting.

Perhaps due to her head injury - I was surprised at how readable it was and just presumed she had significant help editing it (although that is unclear, perhaps not).

Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#67

A few years ago I got some kind of brain illness. Doctors were unable to come up with a strong diagnosis, which is apparently quite common for such cases. One of the effects of the illness was that I essentially became stupid. I couldn’t focus on anything (even trivial activities like watching television), I couldn’t compose emails, I would get disoriented easily. It was absolutely terrifying not knowing whether or n…

Was there anything you did that helped you get better?

Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#68
post #15
post #10

To de-clickbait this article: the author had a traumatic brain injury which eliminated her racing inner monologue.

perhaps ... which temporarily impaired her executive function.

It might not be temporary. Doctors told her that it might come back, but it might never be at full power as before.

Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#69

A few years ago I got some kind of brain illness. Doctors were unable to come up with a strong diagnosis, which is apparently quite common for such cases. One of the effects of the illness was that I essentially became stupid. I couldn’t focus on anything (even trivial activities like watching television), I couldn’t compose emails, I would get disoriented easily. It was absolutely terrifying not knowing whether or n…

> 1. Like any other industry, 90% of medical “experts” are totally incompetent. Yeah, I've come to the same conclusion. When I was a kid it took 2 years to diagnose my, frankly quite textbook, hypothyroidism. Know who first diagnosed it? A friend of my mother's who worked the toll booth at the airport. Her dog had it, you see, so she recognized the symptoms. My mother had to go full Karen mode on a doctor to get them…

Yep, if you really want someone to think hard about your condition, a hospital is the wrong place to go. And a lot of doctors will become defensive when they realize you’ve put more thought into it than they have.

Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#70

A few years ago I got some kind of brain illness. Doctors were unable to come up with a strong diagnosis, which is apparently quite common for such cases. One of the effects of the illness was that I essentially became stupid. I couldn’t focus on anything (even trivial activities like watching television), I couldn’t compose emails, I would get disoriented easily. It was absolutely terrifying not knowing whether or n…

Did you also hear a sound like a bass guitar string snapping when this happened?
Post reply on HN