Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#181

Post by codezero » Thu, May 09, 2013, 3:27 AM UTC

bjhoops1 wrote: post #83

codezero wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am actually really curious, in what ways is it rewarding outside of loving anyone else?

I can't say it's more rewarding on the whole, but I didn't want people to think that it is less rewarding. However, there is also a bit of an effect where someone you care about is not particularly thoughtful, so when they do go out of their way to be kind or help you out, it feels especially good and shows that they really do care about you. If that makes sense..

Thanks for sharing, I'm sure your brother is better for having you there to support him.

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#182

Post by evanb » Thu, May 09, 2013, 3:30 AM UTC

bjhoops1 wrote: post #65

betterunix wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that a child will not be brought to a therapist for following the rules; only a child who violates rules too frequently will ever see the inside of a psychiatrist's office. A child who always does what they are told will be rewarded , and will likely be rewarded further if their reaction to their rewards is, "What are my next set of instructions?"

This reminds me of a poem my favorite Math professor used to share, about a little boy who was always instructed exactly how to draw a picture of a flower: http://home.bresnan.net/~cabreras/theboy.htm

Harry Chapin has a song called "Flowers Are Red" that is essentially a retelling of this poem.

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#183

Post by jasallen » Thu, May 09, 2013, 3:31 AM UTC

bjhoops1 wrote: post #128

jasallen wrote: post #40

It truly help a lot when you read things like this. I'm 36 years old now, and have learned to live pretty successfully in society. But as a child that wants to explore and innovate (or for that matter just understand the rules I'm following), it often feels impossible to live in a society that has a rigid set of expectations. One common refrain from childhood: "If only he would apply himself..." well, of course, I ac…

I'd be curious to hear about your experiences in the Corps as an anti-authoritarian sort. I nearly joined the Marines myself out of college but decided that I was not well suited for it.

Well, I think there is a lot of confusion in this thread: confusing people who genuinely have serious problems with those to whom the author was referring, those who are simply differently suited than the majority.

I'd like to think that I'm the latter overall, so, frankly, I didn't fit in, and I didn't do terribly well, but its mostly a non-story (with regards to anti-authoritarianism - in other ways I have plenty of stories). I was average, I mostly tolerated the authority because the threat of not doing so was a little more than I could bear, and I got the hell out as soon as I could. Then I was lucky enough to be a smart guy during the original dot-com bubble and found my way back into the company of people I was more comfortable with.

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#184

Post by jasallen » Thu, May 09, 2013, 3:35 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #142

jasallen wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...the bulk of collective social value is produced by people following the pack/tribe" This is stated as fact, but is the most contentious statement you could possibly make. In fact, I would argue that nearly every 'hero' character from both real history and mythology/fiction (which speaks to our cultural 'beliefs' sometimes better than our actions which are as guided by fear as belief) are quite the antithesis. Our…

> Our heroes are heroes because it takes something more to innovate than it does to join. "Heroes" have vastly greater impact on the imagination than they do on the GDP. > You also use the hyperbolic phrase 'loners, outliers, and dropouts' That was click's phrase, not mine. > innovator, an inventor, an individual None of those things are coextensive with anti-authoritarian/anti-establishment, which is what this threa…

You think anyone in in research and academia has a clue what real 'authoritarianism' is?

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#185

Post by gdsimoes » Thu, May 09, 2013, 3:53 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #38

gdsimoes wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read two Einstein's biographies and I have come to the conclusion that if he was born today he would probably be a college drop out. Some people say that geniuses always survives life hardships, but the fact that there are no new Einsteins (or Maxwells, Plancks...) seems to show this isn't true.

> Some people say that geniuses always survives life hardships, but the fact that there are no new Einsteins (or Maxwells, Plancks...) seems to show this isn't true. No new Einsteins, Maxwells, and Plancks? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Phys...

Every year someone will win the Nobel prize and that doesn't mean they are great like most of the early winners. And I'm not the only one who thinks like that. I remember Freeman Dyson saying something like that in article.

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#186

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 09, 2013, 4:02 AM UTC

Stratoscope wrote: post #141

Stratoscope wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a type of poetry called "free verse". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_verse http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-free-verse-po... Here is the classic story of a Real Programmer, written in free verse: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html This story was originally written in prose, and it apparently got converted to free verse more or less by accident as it was bounced around mailing lis…

Another way to put it, I suppose you could say, is that the difference between prose and free verse is the number of lines.

[deleted]

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#187

Post by thisrod » Thu, May 09, 2013, 4:17 AM UTC

gdsimoes wrote: post #22

tokenadult wrote: post #6

I don't like this article's groundless speculation about Albert Einstein, who is used as an unwilling poster child for dozens of causes without support in Einstein's actual biography. I have carefully read Einstein's longest autobiographical writing, and cite it on my personal website, http://learninfreedom.org/Nobel_hates_school.html and while it is indisputable that Einstein blew off some of his school homework, it…

I read two Einstein's biographies and I have come to the conclusion that if he was born today he would probably be a college drop out. Some people say that geniuses always survives life hardships, but the fact that there are no new Einsteins (or Maxwells, Plancks...) seems to show this isn't true.

Einstein was lucky as well as smart. He was a curious kid while the cracks in the foundations that Newton laid were growing too wide to ignore; he graduated just as the whole structure collapsed. The things he and his contemporaries built in its place still stand, and they didn't leave room to build beside them. By mid century, not even Einstein could do what Einstein did.

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#188

Post by setrofim_ » Thu, May 09, 2013, 4:42 AM UTC

JacksonGariety wrote: post #162

bjhoops1 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a poem my favorite Math professor used to share, about a little boy who was always instructed exactly how to draw a picture of a flower: http://home.bresnan.net/~cabreras/theboy.htm

Does anyone know why the alternative version on that page has an unhappy ending and the original version has a happy ending? (See the footnote at the bottom of this page: http://home.bresnan.net/~cabreras/theboy.htm ) Who wrote the alternate? Why would the author approve of one but not the other?

Both versions highlight the importance of a nurturing environment to the development of a child. However, the original version is about a child finally finding an environment in which his creativity can thrive; the alternative version is about a child's creativity being stifled during his early development to the point where it is unable to thrive even once he is in an environment that allows, and even encourages, it. Thus the alternative version also demonstrates the lasting damage that may result, and so is more effective at conveying the message of the poem.

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#189

Post by fancyketchup » Thu, May 09, 2013, 4:59 AM UTC

thecoffman wrote: post #77

alan_cx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Many people want to keep firearms to keep the power of the government in check," Really? Are you sure its not just a case of guns being ingrained in American culture and make the owners feel all macho and strong, and that any old excuse is good enough to argue that they should be allowed to keep huge pointless arsenals of weaponry? I mean, from what I can tell, such people are generally on the right of politics, and…

It is sad that the sort of bigoted opinions you're espousing here are what us firearms enthusiasts have to endure. It has nothing to do with machismo, nothing to do with Obama, and nothing to do with birther garbage. The right to bear arms is a right of last resort. Its the right that protects all others and, as such, it is the _most_ essential right. As for naming incidents in the last 100 years where armed resistan…

I'm curious how you suppose armed conflict would have helped Americans of Japanese descent during World War 2. Even in Los Angeles and San Francisco they were a minority, and were viewed with suspicion by much of the rest of society (Americans of German descent mostly gave up speaking and writing in German, despite being a plurality). It would have been almost trivial for the government to eliminate sympathetic feelings in the rest of the population by simply issuing propaganda saying that resistance by Japanese-Americans was actually a guerrilla campaign on behalf of the Empire of Japan.

So then what? Japanese-Americans give up all their possessions and live the hills? Where would they get food, guns and ammunition? After the war, there would be no way for them to reintegrate into society.

As for the Black Panthers, I would argue that images of them carrying weapons in the media did more harm than good to their cause. Today few people remember them as a community service organization and most remember them as a sort of quasi-terrorist death squad. A recent presidential candidate was even intimated to have had some sort of nebulous association with them as a way of tarnishing his reputation (though I hear he won anyway).

So I'm underwhelmed by arguments that guns are going to stop a tyrannical government. They may stop one that is completely inept, but a government with even modest propaganda resources will have no trouble playing one group of citizens against the other. Firearms enthusiasts aren't going to be portrayed as 'freedom fighters' by the media: They will be called 'terrorists' or 'cop killers.'

Not that I'm against gun ownership (though I don't personally own one). I just don't live under the misapprehension that it's going to magically 'solve government.'

Re: Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

#190

Post by setrofim_ » Thu, May 09, 2013, 5:29 AM UTC

LekkoscPiwa wrote: post #130

I had a teacher in High School who was a genius. He wanted us to think independently. One time he assigned a homework to the class where each of us had to study a mental illness of our choice. Mine was narcissism. And we had to go to a psychologist or psychiatrist, pretend that we have the disease and the task was to be convincing enough to get diagnosis. More than 80% of students passed. We were all officialy crazy…

> And we had to go to a psychologist or psychiatrist, pretend that we have the disease and the task was to be convincing enough to get diagnosis.

That sounds like very interesting homework, and the results were certainly informative. Such experiments are not without risk though. IIRC there was a researcher that conducted a similar experiment -- got some volunteers with no history of mental illness go into some psychiatric institutions and fake some symptoms. The majority of them were able to get admitted with just that. The problem was getting them out afterwards. Apparently some institutions were reactant to discharge the "patients" even after they have been informed of the experiment. (I can't recall the name of the researcher unfortunately, but this experiment is described in Jon Ronson's "The Psychopath Test"). Once you're labeled as "crazy", proving that you're not can be difficult, even if your behavior does not differ from that of "normal" people.

> That's the problem with psychology or psychiatry [...] It's a complete and total joke.

Please don't group psychology and psychiatry together. The former is a legitimate field of study (whether psychology technically qualifies as a "science" is debatable), the latter, is, as you say, largely a joke (at least, in the US). Please also note that the appalling state of psychiatry today should not be taken to mean that all mental disorders are bull -- there definitely are very serious mental disorders, and people do need to seek help if they are suffering from them.

EDIT: Found the book.

The researcher was talking about is David Rosenham:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

Also, I was wrong when I said that the hospitals were told about the experiment -- it was a condition of the experiment that the patients needed to get out "on their own", though they didn't exhibit any of the symptoms after the initial interview, and were acting completely "normal" during their stay.