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

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#131

Post by Confusion » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 10:25 AM UTC

jhbadger wrote: post #78

_petronius wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a really amazing book by Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (and a followup she wrote in the late 80s called "AIDs and its metaphors") which talks about this need to speak about disease as a conflict or fight, or as a foreign invasion or corruption. It's a fascinating book also because it compares the 20th century ways of talking (or not talking) about cancer with how tuberculosis was discussed in the 19th cen…

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".

An immune system that only kills cells determined to be 'non-self' would be woefully insufficient. It needs to kill cells that have become unhealthy, for instance clogged up with misfolded protein, all the time, even when those cells are clearly still 'self'.

See also my comment to ubernostrum further downthread. There is no compelling reason to frame cancer or infectious disease as a conflict or invasion. Doing so is just as reasonable as framing housekeeping as a conflict with 'foreign dirt' or an invasion of 'the outside world into your house'.

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#132

Post by dredmorbius » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 10:29 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #99

dredmorbius wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An individual completely separated from modern society would perform quite poorly. Or somewhat more poetically: No man is an island.

A small group can splinter off and survive. My arm cannot survive on its own

A small group of people is not going to survive at a modern, first-world, technological level of civilisation, providing itself with oil, coal, electricity, silicon chips, cotton, synthetics, pharmaceuticals, food, lumber, iron, steel, aluminium, glass, etc., etc.

It might manage to provide for itself at a ~1650 level of subsistence, in a favourable climate.

Modern civilisation is a team sport.

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#133

Post by snarfy » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 11:22 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 treat the symptoms because the patient is suffering, not to solve the problem.

If you have a live system bringing in millions of dollars everyday but it hangs every once in a while, do you reboot it, or attach a debugger to it while it's hung?

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#134

Post by dsego » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 11:46 AM UTC

zer00eyz wrote: post #105

dsego wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the old "if all you have is a hammer.." applies here. My father is now being treated for dementia, unknown cause, but they suspect Alzheimer's. Several months ago he was hospitalised after a psychotic break. When he was being admitted, I told the psychiatrist about my late grandfather's dementia but it went unnoticed. After several months of antipsychotics (which did remove the delusions) and antidepressants…

First of all, sorry about your father. My comment that follows is in no way trying to diminish what you have been through. Please do not take it that way. What your describing sounds a lot like team debugging and trouble shooting! Trial and error of a failed hypothesis, further testing when someone looks at the data with fresh eyes. Finally a solution, or in your case, clarity.

Unfortunately, it was the worst kind of debugging, throw drugs at the problem and see what sticks. If it doesn't work change the dosage, then some more drugs to counteract the side effects, then clean up and start over. It feels so unscientific and medieval.

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#135

Post by ubernostrum » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 12:32 PM UTC

Confusion wrote: post #130

ubernostrum wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hygie…

Except that the immune system's idea of what set of molecules to accept and what set to kill is not based on a generalized idea of what a "healthy cell" looks like -- otherwise we wouldn't have such trouble matching people for organ transplants, since our immune systems would just accept any generically healthy organ.

Instead it's dependent on the (specific to the individual) set of genes controlling the major histocompatibility complex, and so is very much a "self" ("derived from my genes") versus "non-self" ("not derived from my genes") determination.

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#136

Post by refulgentis » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 12:49 PM UTC

eternalban wrote: post #94

refulgentis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are sadly witnessing one of the darkest consequences of 9/11. It was such traumatic event for the entire society, due to its stark reminder that we weren't safe, and the modern world hadn't solved every problem, after decades of comfort. There's a feedback cycle of increased fear, leading to unrealistic demands to fix it, leading to "solutions" that are immensely amplified by the media, and the politician's justi…

> impose high economic costs The West rolled back on Habeas Corpus and here we have you lamenting over economic costs. So, who "won" again?

I was nervous writing that post, imagining someone would think of even more severe things we lost, that I surely couldn't remember everything while furiously tapping out a post, and they'd glibly refer to it as if I had forgotten the fall of Western civilization had occurred, while I only cared about money!

I told myself this was being far too fearful. Surely those reading would recognize that the absence of every other cost in the post: the lives of hundreds of thousands, mass surveillance, the Patriot act, etc, etc, etc, and recognize that I couldn't enumerate everything in a post that was already too long.

I worried more about narcissistic performance art, someone hopping in, vastly exaggerating with statements like habeas corpus was rolled back! and I had ignored it, and that seemed unlikely as well. Surely this was all manifestation of anxiety, anxiety I have to address.

Thank you for showing that fear wasn't unfounded.

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#137

Post by wreft » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 12:56 PM UTC

HSO wrote: post #49

wreft wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the sad Zeitgeist of our time notwithstanding" This sounds like one of those sentences that sound deep but don't mean anything. Can you explain?

I didn't mean to be pompous. My native tongue is German and I didn't know a better word than Zeitgeist for what I wanted to say. I feel that language in general is being used in a different way today than even just a few years ago. Admittedly, I don't have objective measures for this but I know I am not alone in this assessment. Even the Economist recently ran a feature about this lamentable phenomenon.

Thank you. I wasn't trying to be rude either and really appreciate the response!

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#138

Post by gravypod » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 1:15 PM 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

I'd debugged live systems that where for side projects. One such example was a game server who I wrote a few thousand lines of code for. All with no test suite, all with no other eyes inspecting it, absolutely no documentation, and all with a usually incomplete git history.

I had about 2-4 systems talking to each other for this project (that's counting the system that I wrote that works as a plugin/module loader and all of it's plugins as 1 system).

It's a relic from my past that I'm glad I left behind. Editing plugins live, writing everything in usually the one or two days of free time I had between school engagements, and a few other tricky things that happened, this was probably one of the most funny projects I worked on.

By the end of it, I had two config file formats for pretty much everything, I opted out of using the right tool for the job most cases, and I kept having to upgrade hardware which was a pain in the ass since I didn't have any setup instructions since I made the damned thing.

Following is a list of everything that's public.

https://github.com/gravypod/StarmadeWrapper

https://github.com/gravypod/StarmadeWrapper-API

https://github.com/gravypod/StarmadeDebugging

https://github.com/gravypod/Checkers

https://github.com/gravypod/Starmade-Log-Reader

https://github.com/gravypod/StarmadeWapper-Panel

https://github.com/gravypod/StarmadeWrapper-Claim

https://github.com/gravypod/StarmadeWrapper-Warps

https://github.com/gravypod/Starmade-Map

It was quite a bit of a mess and I can definetly agree, debugging live systems, debugging distributed systems, and debugging unverified/untested/undocumented systems is crap too.

I'm pretty sure that being a doctor is the same as this except thousands of times worse. The amount of times I've messed up when working on my spaghetti plate was more then I can count and I'm pretty sure the human body is more slopily put together then my leaning tower of crap.

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#139

Post by Grangar » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 1:47 PM UTC

medion wrote: post #38

This piece was particularly haunting for me, having watched my father go through almost the exact same thing, including the PD diagnosis, lots of confusion about what was wrong with him, etc. LBD is a horrific - the hallucinations are utterly terrifying to watch someone go through. My father did not commit suicide, however I have often thought that I wish he had, his decline has been so rapid and horrible - witnessin…

I don't want to come across as crass, but have you considered euthanasia? My father has lived through brain cancer for 9 years until he opted for that, before that he was waiting for something like a heavy cold to take him. Thing is, if you don't go outside the house anymore you have a very low chance of getting sick.

Re: The terrorist inside my husband's brain

#140

Post by refulgentis » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 2:53 PM UTC

reddytowns wrote: post #80

refulgentis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are sadly witnessing one of the darkest consequences of 9/11. It was such traumatic event for the entire society, due to its stark reminder that we weren't safe, and the modern world hadn't solved every problem, after decades of comfort. There's a feedback cycle of increased fear, leading to unrealistic demands to fix it, leading to "solutions" that are immensely amplified by the media, and the politician's justi…

I think it's less because of fear, and more because of hate and anger that drives people to act the way they do and the laws after 9/11. Yes, everyone claims the new laws are to "keep people safe", but they all seem to follow the same pattern of trying even harder to catch criminals, punish them more when we've caught them, and lower the standard of evidence necessary for conviction. After all, most people in the USA…

Frankly, I'm too lazy to find a citation, but IIRC (99% sure) revelations from Al Qaeda documents have included that they knew exactly what they were doing, and the plan was to strike fear and cause economic costs – they viewed it as a response to ever-decreasing availability of funds and a recognition they didn't have the backing of enough civilians or soldiers to do something as ambitious as found a nation.

ISIS' founding logic was Al Qaeda failed, and surely that was because it wasn't ambitious enough, and not pure enough. The solution was to rebase on fundamentalism and use the remnants of the Iraqi army to create a safe space for a caliphate to rule.

Of course, I'm offering absolutely nothing to back my assertions here, so it's fair to ignore this. :)