Daddy isn’t coming back • Hacker News Board

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#21

Post by staticautomatic » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

SapporoChris wrote: post #3

I have a black thought on this. I would be happy if someone corrected me. When something breaks, sometimes we repair it, sometimes we throw it out. The more valuable the item, the more we will spend to fix it. However even with the most valuable items, we sometimes reluctantly decide that it is broken beyond repair. Are people like this? Are some simply too broken to fix? I feel awful thinking this, but I wonder if t…

I think the answer must be an unequivocal yes, because there are people who exhaust all of their options for intervention and then kill themselves.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#22

Post by laurent92 » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

podgaj wrote: post #10

I have schizoaffective bipolar disorder, and aspergers. I was making $130,000 a year as a network engineer at Cisco in 1999 before I became too sick to work anymore. Right now I am homeless living in my van with a transmission about to go. I have attempted suicide three times already. I keep thinking about doing it again. No one wants to provide me the best medicine, stable housing. I make $1700 on disability but I c…

I hope my question won’t wake up anything, and please accept my apologies if they do.

- What hopes did you have when you were younger?

- What did it look like when you started failing?

- Do you think a different turn of events would have avoided that?

I feel like I was on the high path up to 25 years old, I’m earning now, but I’m getting inexorably rid of my friends, one after another. I’d like to know where I’m at…

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#23

Post by wizzwizz4 » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 9:50 PM UTC

monkeybutton wrote: post #13

lazypenguin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Objectively, it's possible to be "too broken" to be fixed (e.g. acute blunt force trauma, malignant tumor, etc.) where the only "fix" is palliative care. Although, I think technically we would say: "too broken to fix based on our CURRENT tools, knowledge and resources". It's an interesting thought experiment to think about how advanced can we become where anything is fixable?

Mental illness is not contagious and it is not entirely learned either. By fixing it, you are changing the physical substrate of the mind. Did you fix anything at all? Or did you destroy one mind and create a new one in its place.

Ignorance is not contagious and it is not entirely learned either. By teaching anyone anything, you are changing the physical substrate of the mind. Did you fix anything at all? Or did you destroy one mind and create a new one in its place.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#24

Post by ellyagg » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

    Statistics also suggest that, singularly among illnesses, people with schizophrenia fare better in the developing world, where the rates of remission are higher.

It's because developing countries are low-compliance societies. Humans weren't evolved to live in high-compliance societies and a lot of us don't care for it at all. Some of us get by. Others don't.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#25

Post by philwelch » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

SapporoChris wrote: post #3

I have a black thought on this. I would be happy if someone corrected me. When something breaks, sometimes we repair it, sometimes we throw it out. The more valuable the item, the more we will spend to fix it. However even with the most valuable items, we sometimes reluctantly decide that it is broken beyond repair. Are people like this? Are some simply too broken to fix? I feel awful thinking this, but I wonder if t…

It's a hard question to ask about mental health, but it seems like an obvious conclusion when it comes to physical health:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay...

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#26

Post by edmcnulty101 » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

SapporoChris wrote: post #3

I have a black thought on this. I would be happy if someone corrected me. When something breaks, sometimes we repair it, sometimes we throw it out. The more valuable the item, the more we will spend to fix it. However even with the most valuable items, we sometimes reluctantly decide that it is broken beyond repair. Are people like this? Are some simply too broken to fix? I feel awful thinking this, but I wonder if t…

This is ultimately a nature vs nurture debate.

Are humans the way they are due to their inherent 'nature'? Are they genetically set in stone, programmed and minimally changing from a set point(like an object)?

Or are human's the way they are by 'nurture' and does their environment influence their essence and with a changed external environment they can change as well?

Science seems to believe it's a bit of both. Look at twin studies and epigenetic expression of schizophrenia for examples.

The issue I see with your argument is that it assumes that human's are like objects and therefore heavily 'nature' based.

I think science leans towards more of a balance of nature and nurture.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#27

Post by neolefty » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

SapporoChris wrote: post #3

I have a black thought on this. I would be happy if someone corrected me. When something breaks, sometimes we repair it, sometimes we throw it out. The more valuable the item, the more we will spend to fix it. However even with the most valuable items, we sometimes reluctantly decide that it is broken beyond repair. Are people like this? Are some simply too broken to fix? I feel awful thinking this, but I wonder if t…

I think that is a fine question to ask in this forum. Maybe not a question that people in the situation described can handle of course!

Related may be "Too broken to imagine (myself) being fixed." Which is probably more of a failure of imagination (and possibly of support) than a reality.

And then you get into what does "fixed" mean, vs "good", in a _person_ ...

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#28

Post by valenaut » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 9:53 PM UTC

ellyagg wrote: post #24

Statistics also suggest that, singularly among illnesses, people with schizophrenia fare better in the developing world, where the rates of remission are higher. It's because developing countries are low-compliance societies. Humans weren't evolved to live in high-compliance societies and a lot of us don't care for it at all. Some of us get by. Others don't.

What do you mean by high/low compliance?

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#29

Post by anonporridge » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 9:53 PM UTC

micromacrofoot wrote: post #20

jstx1 wrote: post #9

Knowing that you're at high risk of suicide or have other serious mental health problems is also a good reason to avoid having kids. This isn't directed at the author of the article or their partner; it's how I think when I plan my own life.

There are a lot of mental health issues that make this level of self-awareness and future planning incredibly difficult.

Perhaps a good reason to keep elevating the socially approved age to reproduce?

By the time you're in your 40s, you likely have a good idea of whether or not you're a stable enough mind to commit to the minimum 20 years required to uplift a new human adult.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#30

Post by rossdavidh » Wed, Nov 17, 2021, 9:54 PM UTC

SapporoChris wrote: post #3

I have a black thought on this. I would be happy if someone corrected me. When something breaks, sometimes we repair it, sometimes we throw it out. The more valuable the item, the more we will spend to fix it. However even with the most valuable items, we sometimes reluctantly decide that it is broken beyond repair. Are people like this? Are some simply too broken to fix? I feel awful thinking this, but I wonder if t…

There are, certainly, medical situations where we cannot fix it, and we let them go. In fact, most of us will meet our end in such a way, eventually. The difficult thing about mental illness, is that we know so little about how it works (and much of what we think we know is incorrect), so that the solution might be really close at hand, but we haven't found it yet.

We know when someone's physical health, for example a rapidly spreading cancer, has passed the point of no return. We don't understand mental health well enough to know that. In rare cases, of course, like brain damage from trauma that leaves the person in a vegetative state, we know that it will never get better, but in cases like this article I don't think we ever know one way or the other.