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

theatlantic.com

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

#71

Post by mewpmewp2 »

teh_infallible wrote: post #39
throwaway205826 wrote: post #13

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.

What's wrong with prescribing a drug for a side effect of another drug?

If you get cancer, the treatment you get can cause very many side effects which in turn can potentially be alleviated by other type of medicine. What would your suggestion be? Not to treat the patient at all?

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

#72

Post by throw9239393 »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #38
throwaway205826 wrote: post #13

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…

It's amazing that you made this name and another, both posting a comment in this thread one minute after creation talking about how great this article is while lots of other people in the thread are calling it terribly written clickbait.

I also made a throwaway account to make a comment here. I also said the article was well written. I am an HN regular, but didn't want my medical problem tied to my HN account name.

Is it that odd that we might have polar opposite views on the article? Or that having a somewhat similar experience to the author, that I might view the article differently than you do?

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

#73

Post by StavrosK »

teh_infallible wrote: post #39
throwaway205826 wrote: post #13

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.

You have no idea how much technical debt there is in the average body. There's much more technical debt in the body than there is technology in the world.

The two systems aren't remotely comparable in complexity.

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

#74

Post by rmah »

throwaway205826 wrote: post #13

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…

First, I'm so sorry you're going through this illness and hope that you make a full recovery.

But I think that, to some degree, your feelings about the medical profession is a reflection of just how good medicine is these days. People go to the doctor expecting an accurate diagnosis and a treatment or cure. And, to be fair, 80% of the time, that's what they get. It's hard to overstate just how much of a radical shift in expectations this is.

Just a century ago, a compound fracture could be a death sentence. People randomly got sick a just dropped dead. Going to a doctor might, maybe, if you were lucky, fix what ailed you. Hell, just two centuries ago, doctors as we think of them today simply did not exist. Three centuries ago, people in Europe were routinely bled to balance the humors.

Biological systems are mind-numbingly complex. All the simple stuff has been figured out -- and if they are diseases mostly eradicated. Even so, I think that people's expectations of what doctors do is a bit... off. 99% of doctors are not scientists -- they are human body mechanics. And that means they mostly focus on common problems. Because, you know, they're common.

And neurological conditions are some of the most difficult to diagnose. Imaging techniques like MRI or CT often show no problems. Exploratory surgery is highly risky and also usually have no benefit. To extend the mechanic analogy, imagine going to your mechanic and saying "my car's GPS system is sluggish. sometimes. What's wrong?" and then expecting them to figure out what's wrong without being able to look "under the hood" of the computer system. All they can is use the GPS system and observe its behavior. That's essentially what neurologists have to do quite often. Tough job.

The good news is that there are doctors who engage in research. And they are, by trial and error, improving the state of the art of medicine. Does this knowledge get propagated to all other doctors rapidly enough? Probably not. But the knowledge dissemination is probably better today than ever before too. Obviously things can be improved. As pretty much anything can be improved. It just doesn't seem very helpful to spout "doctors are idiots" as some other posts seem to do.

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

#75

Post by jrsdav »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #64
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I've found this concept is near impossible to share without sounding, well, like you put it, "a new-age loon".

We haven't really developed a system or language that succinctly expresses the nature of self or experience (well, I only know English. Perhaps other languages lend themselves better). For me, I find the simplest terms to be the most profound way of capturing what you said, but when I say them out loud to someone who hasn't climbed the same "context mountain" I probably sound like someone you would encounter at a drum circle in a public park (which I find nothing to be wrong with, I should add!).

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

#76

Post by data_spy »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #55
throwaway205826 wrote: post #13

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…

Not sure if true, but whenever I've had a foreign born doctor, they tended to be better in my experience.

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

#77

Post by mewpmewp2 »

pianoben wrote: post #2

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

I kind of like this title, it in my view throws shade to all the regurgitated desire to reach the monk/quiet mind status.

And I intuitively guessed it to be about something like that, so didn't consider it to be clickbait per se, and the story was great.

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

#78

Post by throwaway205826 »

thrwawy06182021 wrote: post #49
throwaway205826 wrote: post #13

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 also am suffering from something similar. I have the working theory it's from extreme burnout but do not know for sure. I would tremendously appreciate if you shared what you found to help?

It’s hard to say what actually helped, but I tried a bunch of behavioral changes. Two I’ve stuck with are significantly increased exercise (half an hour plus of intense exercise every day) and a strict ketogenic diet. Even if they didn’t do anything at all for my primary condition, they’ve resulted in totally orthogonal improvements to my life. A couple months of rest (didn’t have much choice there - I couldn’t do anything else). I also used nicotine gum as a behavioral reinforcement drug to help “rehabilitate” myself on the way back to health, and THC to help me sleep.

FWIW, I think it’s unlikely my problem was burnout - I had a number of viral-characteristic physiological symptoms such as digestive problems, coughing, and heart palpitations, and I would be surprised if they had a purely neurochemical cause - but in either case hopefully some of these behaviors could help.

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

#79

Post by ggm »

At the other end of the scale, unrelated to severe trauma I truly believe we don't come back from anaesthesia entirely the same. I have no scientific basis for this belief, it's just how I feel about the experience of waking up from anaesthesia twice.

The "who am I" in this article is strong. Who is asking the questions? Is it the same "me" from before time? The other one, knew what parmesan looked like.

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

#80

Post by mewpmewp2 »

Tade0 wrote: post #59
eric_b wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

To me it felt very self-centered. Like that bit about having the worst injury. Was it really worth pointing out?

Worst injury out of the family, and I'd definitely agree with her. I definitely throughout the story was able to imagine myself being in her position and how dreadful it would be. I think self centered is totally fine, since it's her shitty circumstances that could really happen to anyone.

Losing your intelligence could very well be one of the scariest things.

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