Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I'm a shut-in. This is my story

fighttheurgetofade.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 239 posts

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#201

Post by nitrogen »

RyanZAG wrote: post #99
unconed wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I identify with huge portions of this post. And if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that I don't think like most other people. I don't mean "my ideas are better" or "I have superior reasoning skills". I mean "the tools that I use to reason about the world are not the same that most people appear to use". It's the only logical explanation for the fact that several popular ways in which humans commun…

You're trying to paint the picture that everyone else thinks the same way, but you're completely unique and think your own way. Would it not be more likely that everyone thinks in their own way, based off of their own experiences? We all have the same hardware - amazingly complex/simple neural links. We all have different inputs, which means we all think differently. This isn't the important part - the important part…

You're trying to paint the picture that everyone else thinks the same way, but you're completely unique and think your own way. Would it not be more likely that everyone thinks in their own way, based off of their own experiences?

It seems quite believable that there is a multidimensional Gaussian distribution of thinking styles, and people at the edge of one or more dimensions can legitimately say that they don't think like most others.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#202

Post by nitrogen »

sliverstorm wrote: post #107
unconed wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I identify with huge portions of this post. And if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that I don't think like most other people. I don't mean "my ideas are better" or "I have superior reasoning skills". I mean "the tools that I use to reason about the world are not the same that most people appear to use". It's the only logical explanation for the fact that several popular ways in which humans commun…

I think it is important to distinguish here; you do not necessarily think differently from other people. You LEARN differently, which is VERY COMMON. Supporting anecdotal evidence: I usually learn best with written words and supporting visualizations. My mother and youngest brother on the other hand are highly visual, and have an awful time with written words. They need imagery. This is all contrasted to the auditory…

Learning and thinking are different processes, and it's conceivable that one person can have different learning and thinking styles. The way you've capitalized LEARN and italicized think leads me to suspect that you're restating a simplification that I've heard from some friends, and I thus assume is taught in introductory college psychology classes as one of those "lies we tell children."

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#204

Post by Natsu »

guizzy wrote: post #143
sliverstorm wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure the "inner voice" is just a metaphor to describe a concept. I, too, do not hear a voice echoing in my head as if God was speaking inside my skull. I have a train of thought that I could directly translate to spoken words, but is not actually in words. It is more abstract; I shuffle around ideas. Sometimes I will speak aloud to myself when I'm trying to disassociate to find a new viewpoint, but that's…

As someone with a very dominant "inner voice", I have to say that, at least to me, it is exactly as having a voice echoing in my head, constantly. More precisely, I happen to think exclusively in dialogues. I imagine talking to a person, and I hear the conversation I would have with that person in my head, and their counterpoints. It gets tiring. Recently I've taken up drawing; when I draw my head is finally quiet.

I mostly do that too, but I can switch. For example, to trying to process everything visually, perhaps wandering through familiar places in my mind (or listening to familiar voices/songs).

Or you can turn it all off and focus entirely on your senses themselves. This can be interesting when, for example, you imagine something in contact with your body as a part of yourself. Do that to your car, for example, then you start to pay more attention to exactly how your wheels grip the road and you have a more intuitive feel for where every part of the car is in relation to you.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#206

Post by intended »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #50
groby_b wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I can't find a good professional, so using professional help is useless" - that is an odd conclusion to come to. Yes, many shrinks suck. It sucks dealing with them. I'll still shout "Find professional help" if that's what it'll take for that person. And that's the case here. You(OP) don't go and write a whole long screed how you'd like to be left alone to then justify said screed on a site like HN without actually,…

(Upvoting you just to move your comment above jpxxx's blithering stupidity.) I can't tell from your comment if you think I'm the author, but just FYI, I'm not. > I'll still shout "Find professional help" if that's what it'll take for that person. And that's the case here. OK, here's the thing, and it's really the only point I care to try to make here: telling someone to find professional help is not helpful. In fact,…

Sup.

What you've said is something I understand and its a nice angle on an issue I haven't seen in this particular way in a while.

I'm on the opposite side of your stand. I've seen far too many people "Help". In all cases, the damage they cause casually is far greater than if they just said "you need help, get a doctor!"

So (1), in general saying "hey you need to get to a professional" is the least bad thing people can say, and for the sake of the sufferer, this is all I can hope for.

I've spent, or once HAD spend, an inordinate amount of time listening to people, both with and without unusual issues. I Listened in the way I learnt I would want to, with focus, concern, and no judgement.

I would still tell people to go get to a doctor.

But, I would never let it come across as a shut down or a brushing off. "hey, this is a question I can't answer for you. I believe someone with training and experience would be able to help you with this better than I could. The last thing I want to do is say something and make your life harder."

(I believe this can be put better, preferably without any of the "I")

So it comes down again to the kind of person listening on the other end. From what I can tell, this will always be someone who isn't cut out for the job, especially if you are depressed.

In all practicality saying "you need to see a doctor" is the average least bad thing that can happen to them.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#207

Post by nitrogen »

sliverstorm wrote: post #108
crntaylor wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a voice in my head. When I learnt from reddit discussions that most people experience their inner thoughts as an inner monologue, I was flabbergasted. If I heard a voice, I would think I was going insane. I think that's pretty normal. A quick poll of the other three people in the room reveals that none of us experience an 'inner voice'. It's more like a stream of associations, some of which might involve…

I'm pretty sure the "inner voice" is just a metaphor to describe a concept. I, too, do not hear a voice echoing in my head as if God was speaking inside my skull. I have a train of thought that I could directly translate to spoken words, but is not actually in words. It is more abstract; I shuffle around ideas. Sometimes I will speak aloud to myself when I'm trying to disassociate to find a new viewpoint, but that's…

I'm pretty sure the "inner voice" is just a metaphor to describe a concept.

I have both a strong inner voice (which is not perceived as a "voice of God" but more like speaking without uttering) and a weaker mind's eye, and a mind's ear (I can listen to songs I know with what seems like perfect reproduction, though it's definitely perceived as internal rather than external in origin). I also have peripheral awareness of other inputs into my thought process. I sometimes have ideas present themselves all at once, as though several words are silently present in the back of my consciousness, or as abstract notions, or as connections between components in a system. In the end, though, my thoughts don't feel "official" until I've serialized them into a linguistic stream, or at least given the mental images a good "look". This makes reading slower, as I have to read the words at roughly a spoken pace, but I still experience vivid imagery, and occasionally wonder how I ended up back in my house when I take a break from a really good book ;-).

For me, writing is definitely slower than thought. When I first attack a problem, dozens of concepts, edge cases, and other considerations will "come at me" from all corners of my mind. For me writing my ideas down isn't about brainstorming, but calming the storm.

I'm curious what my mental model of my mental model looks like in terms of neuronal connections. I'm also curious how many people are curious about their own thought processes. This discussion thread on HN has been very interesting, as we've seen comments from many different types of minds, all capable of expressing in verbal form their different ways of perceiving thought.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#208

Post by nitrogen »

com2kid wrote: post #182
sillysaurus wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figured much the same way with mind's eye; much like my thoughts, I "visualize" in a very abstract fashion. I don't see the object, I just know it. So there are in fact people, who see it? I do. I don't really know what to say about it, so if you have any specific questions, feel free. I'll try to explain what it's like. Example: when I see a math expression x times y, I mentally see a rectangle with side length la…

Example: when I see a math expression x times y, I mentally see a rectangle with side length labeled "x" and perpendicular labeled "y". So understanding (x+h) (x+h) = x^2 + 2xh + h^2 was totally natural for me. It's not abstract symbols to me, it's pictures in my head. I see a tiny square in the upper right labeled "h^2", and a big square in the lower left labeled "x^2", and two rectangles along the edges labeled "xh…

Does "FOIL" (first outer inner last) or the distributive property make more sense for your understanding of the expansion of (x+h) * (x+h) in algebraic terms? One thing I love about math is how there are different ways of representing the same concepts -- geometric, algebraic, etc. I wonder if this is because different mathematicians in history had different thinking styles, and paved the way for us modern folk to learn math in the format that works for our own unique minds.

Re: I'm a shut-in. This is my story

#209

Post by berlinbrown »

hjay wrote: post #27

I don't have much to comment on this, as I myself am an introvert and somewhat of a shut-in. But after reading up to "I guess I'm kinda different.", I couldn't stand it and had to use Developer Tools to change the background color and font color. Still feeling some discomfort in my eyes and it feels like the text is burned in front of me.

I did copy paste into gedit.

A for effort.

Post reply on HN