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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

#181

Post by viburnum »

tyingq wrote: post #29
viburnum wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America has nearly twice the car death rate of Canada (and Canada hardly has substantially better weather or density than America). It's crazy.

The US does rate pretty high in "traffic deaths per 100k people". But they also lead the world in how much they drive. 8,800 kilometers per capita, versus 4,300 in Canada, 7,000 in Germany and less than 1,700 in Japan. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/12/13/why-the-u-s-trails-th... I'm sure there are other factors, but that would explain most of the difference vs Canada. Twice as much driving means twice as many traf…

Driving more miles is a bug not a feature. America should aim to reduce its miles driven by 50-75% to get its deaths in line with similar countries.

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

#182

Post by fellellor »

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…

Yeah. Your recovery is still not complete it seems. All the best. Eat healthy, stay occupied, and think happy thoughts.

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

#183

Post by dave_sid »

dave_sid wrote: post #81
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…

Hey that’s me you’re talking about! Actually I dabbled a little in Swift to maybe I’m okay.

Wow. Marked down for a self depreciating joke. Good old HN, a jovial vortex.

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

#184

Post by qwerty456127 »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #133
qwerty456127 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 am merely the observer of all these Perhaps there is a mere observer, but you are not it. If you were a mere observer, then how did that observation reach your hands? Things can exist without being fundamental components of reality. A Lego house is still a Lego house, even if it ceases to be when the bricks are separated, and has no identity separate from those bricks save for what we assign it. The identity, suc…

> Perhaps there is a mere observer, but you are not it.

Sure, because I am not anything. I told this all is a simplification. And yes, this contradicts the statement that I am the observer. Whatever I could express in words is doomed to be just a simplified and corrupted model which can just give a hint but not tell "the truth" as it is. In fact the observer also can be pointed to and has a word for it in the Buddhist languages but actually (rather than epistemologically) dissociating from it is a particularly advanced step.

> A Lego house is still a Lego house

This is Zen. Of course everything is what it is but to truly realize this you have to go through the weird place of "nothing is what it seems" first. I believe a Zen master described his experience this way and that is quoted somewhere in Alan Watts' "The Way of Zen", more close to the end of the book than to its beginning. Albeit not a Zen master, I can confirm from my own experience, this actually is a path worth going rather than a simple truism hardly worth even saying as it seems first.

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

#185

Post by dang »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #97
throw9239393 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It is odd that you would make two different names just to talk up the article, yes.

You've broken the site guidelines badly by attacking another user like that. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules.

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

#186

Post by totony »

throw9239393 wrote: post #14

Really well written, especially considering the author's plight. Regarding this bit: > The day of the accident I had been working on a project to improve how homeless people are placed into shelters. I say out loud, “I don’t care about homeless people” to see how it feels. It doesn’t ring true; I do care about homeless people. I just don’t feel like working. I wonder if that's directly to do with the brain damage or…

How old are you? Are you a guy? Maybe get a blood test done for testosterone levels, I've heard TRT to be effective in treating those issues.

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

#187

Post by recursive »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #176
ishiz wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Richard Feynman in What Do You Care What Other People Think? says something similar happened with his first wife Arlene who contracted tuberculosis. If we trust his account, then it went something like this: Arlene presented with bumps on her neck and the doctors couldn't figure it out. In his free time Feynman read medical textbooks in the Princeton library, and the first thing in the book is tuberculosis, which it…

Feynman's behavior seems rather irrational in this case. If he believed the doctor was smart and competent he shouldn't have interfered. If he doesn't he shouldn't have made the assumption about what the doctor "obviously considered". As a result the doctor probably concluded he should never listen to the patients' ideas and rather always put the easiest diagnosis which also is a quite common kind of a doctor to meet…

Competence isn't yes/no.

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

#188

Post by uslic001 »

cowanon22 wrote: post #53
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…

> Like any other industry, 90% of medical “experts” are totally incompetent. I would guess it's even worse, maybe 1-5% of doctors truly understand the underlying physiology and will holistically look at all of the information. Most doctors I've met use population heuristics and published guidelines, and if you have something rare they just throw stuff at the wall instead of trying to understand it.

As a doctor I would agree. 5% of doctors are up to date and provide high quality care. 95% are not up to date and provide low quality care. Most older doctors are grandfathered in to their specialty and do not have to take their boards but once in their life when they get out of training. So some have not taken their boards in over 30 years. Doctors in the generation after the baby boomers are not grandfathered in and have to take their boards at least every 10 years if not more often now in some specialties. So If I were you look for a doctor who graduated in 1991 or later as that is the year they stopped grandfathering. I graduated medical school in 1991. I have taken my specialty boards three times already (1997/2008/2018). Now they are moving to yearly mini-updates to stay up to date as things change too much in 10 years. None of the older doctors have to do any of this additional education and testing. They are still programming in FORTRAN.

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

#189

Post by jrsdav »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #116
jrsdav wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 so…

If other languages had proper words right for these things, even the people for whom these languages were native would have to explain the words to the kids somehow. And the only ways to teach someone a word are either explain in simple concepts or point to the object and say "this is it". So having the words doesn't really help much. There actually are such words in Tibetan, Pali, Japanese, Chinese, Sanskrit, native…

> all we can do is develop and refine systems of guiding people to experience and understand these things themselves

That’s really well put. Thanks for sharing your insight.

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