Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels • Hacker News Board

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#281

Post by taneq » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:41 AM UTC

dsubburam wrote: post #165

Aurornis wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves to give a name/form to a problem, they’ll take it. This one is widespread among the young people I’ve worked with recently. It’s remarkable how I can identify the current TikTok self diagnosis trends without ever watching TikTok. There’s a widespread belief that once you put a label on a problem, other people are not allowed to criticize you for it. Man…

This parallels the debate about free will and determinism. If you were in the determinist camp, believing that all that one does was predetermined by prior environmental causes, could you still hold people responsible for their actions? Hobart makes a convincing argument that you can: "Fatalism says that my morrow is determined no matter how I struggle. This is of course a superstition. Determinism says that my morro…

In a deterministic universe, the future is still affected by (and can be improved by) shaming people for behaving poorly, even when they have a predisposition towards such behaviour. Think of it like integral windup in a PID controller. The feedback provides an error signal that accumulates to (in most cases) move the person's outputs in a direction that will reduce the poor behaviour. Eventually their brain will start predicting the negative feedback and alter its outputs to produce more acceptable behaviours.

Whether this is best described as "learning", or as "internalised ", or as "trauma", is left to the reader.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#282

Post by js8 » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:50 AM UTC

theusus wrote: post #264

jazzyjackson wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very curious as to how you come to the conclusion that 'stress' has increased. I don't suppose it's that the world is more stressful, WWII, cold war, a thousand famines throughout history, what makes us so stressed that we can't cope in some way that we used to be able to cope?

We just suffered at that time and prayed. Today we suffer and work together.

Also people used to smoke and drink a lot of alcohol. So it's possible that stress has objectively decreased, yet subjectively increased, as we are more aware of it.

But yeah it's an interesting question, and with the Internet as well. The 1980s world I grew up in as a kid (in Czechia) was more dangerous than the Internet-focused world of today; yet young people seem to be more stressed by the latter.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#283

Post by verisimi » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:57 AM UTC

9dev wrote: post #271

verisimi wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Applying formal-sounding nomenclature does not transform accountability like you’re suggesting. "You have an unlicensed condition, citizen!"

That's not what they said. Whether your condition is diagnosed or not, it's your responsibility to take care of it. If you're chronically late, you should set timers or write notes or whatever helps—whether you've got class-A ADHD and take meds or just assume there's something wrong with your sense of time. Just saying "I'm time blind, sorry not sorry, deal with it" is not an appropriate reaction to causing trouble t…

You're missing my point. I'm not trying to deal with the 'conditions' that individuals or groups say they have. My point is that if a group says a person has a condition it's considered real, but if an individual says so, it's not. It's a point about deferring to authority over what is existent or not.

Who defines conditions, says that ADHD is real, for example? It wasn't in earlier generations. The are terms of social (group) art - special names that are generally accepted as meaningful.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#284

Post by jl6 » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:58 AM UTC

Walf wrote: post #234

marsten wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't that time blindness is a fake issue. The problem is that many people incorrectly self-diagnose as suffering from conditions like time blindness. Which they do for a variety of reasons: To externalize accountability for why they're late, to feel special, and so on. A comparison is the large number of people who claim "gluten sensitivity" and maintain special diets. Now there are serious medical condi…

That's half my point, which is why I lead with agreement on that very problem, i.e. people self-diagnosing when they shouldn't. The top-level comment seems to attribute all such people who identify with those symptoms as doing so because of a trend.

Most wacky things start with a kernel of truth, so yes, the real tragedy here is people with a genuine psychological issue getting drowned out by a wave of trenders. The trenders denounce medical gatekeeping as exclusionary, but it’s also what protects resources for the genuinely needy, and what protects them from unnecessary medicalization.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#285

Post by tonyedgecombe » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:59 AM UTC

jaredklewis wrote: post #146

zug_zug wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting because there are two diametrically opposed ways to interpret what you said One is - everybody thinks they have disorders, so just ignore that feeling it'll mess with you. The other is - everybody thinks they have minor version of disorders, because we all do, we live on continuums, and therefore we should probably all think about it more

> The other is - everybody thinks they have minor version of disorders, because we all do, we live on continuums, and therefore we should probably all think about it more What if the first part of this is true (we all have a smattering of disorders), but thinking about them more just makes things worse?

There is even an argument that putting a label on something will allow them to think less about it. They can put it away in a box rather than continually beating themselves up over it.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#286

Post by satisfice » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 7:01 AM UTC

card_zero wrote: post #90

satisfice wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not the clothes I wear, but personality is not "clothes." If personality were clothing then removing it would be a simple and painless matter, after which you would be interacting with the world "without personality." This is absurd. You can't have no personality. All you can do is replace a personality with a different personality. Your personality is the totality of patterns by which you present yourself to th…

Yes. Language, for instance. Why don't you engage with the world honestly and speak in your real language, instead of one you've learned?

Excellent point!

Some of my language patterns come from watching and interacting with my stepfather. He was big man with a loud voice and an iron work ethic. I didn't get along with him when I was a kid-- in fact had to leave home after threatening his life-- but as I became a man I decided that I was going to force the world NOT TO IGNORE ME. So I tried on his tough-talking, Navy veteran persona and found that it fit me. Now I'm 275 pounds and have a loud voice and I know how to use it.

I'm not PRETENDING to be something I'm not. I am using a style of interaction that fits the "real me." I AM a man, and I SPEAK as a man. And my template for manliness is my stepfather. At the same time I'm also an intellectual, and I adopted certain patterns from my biological father. I also borrowed patterns from the writings of C.S. Lewis and Tolkein. Sometimes I channel Gandalf and sometimes Boromir.

Children have become adults in this way since a million years ago. There's nothing false about it.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#287

Post by fzeroracer » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 7:07 AM UTC

jjani wrote: post #187

parpfish wrote: post #63

Decades ago in my first abnormal psych course, the prof warned us that there was an almost iron-clad law that students will immediately start self diagnosing themselves with “weak” versions of every disorder we learn about. In my years since then, it has absolutely held true and now is supercharged by a whole industry of TikTok self-diagnoses. But there are a few things we can learn from this: - if you give people th…

> But there are a few things we can learn from this: > - if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves that makes them feel unique, they’ll take it. This is almost the opposite of what we can learn about this, and the article does a great job at pointing that out. It's a very recent social phenomenon. Yes, that contradicts your abnornal psych class, but think about it. 20 years ago (in 2005), did anyon…

> Let alone 100 years ago. Let alone the massive differences between different regions/cultures in desire for uniqueness, both historical and uniqueness.

100 years ago we used to often arbitrarily decide what mental conditions people have and then proceed to extract out parts of their brain to try and fix it to disastrous effects.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#288

Post by nradov » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 7:10 AM UTC

molochai wrote: post #229

nlawalker wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intersection of this with employment, specifically, seems hairy to me. Is time blindness a disability that requires accommodation? To what extent, and who decides? If not, what makes it different from other disabilities that do get accommodation or some kind of protected status? (These are meant to be rhetorical questions, but I’m sure someone has a direct answer, so I’d be interested in that too, because I reall…

JAN[1] says "time management" is a disability (limitation, in their words) that requires accommodation. [1] https://askjan.org/limitations/Managing-Time.cfm?csSearch=10...

Employers only have to provide accommodations for actual diagnosed disabilities. And even then legally required accommodations only have to be reasonable. If the job fundamentally requires showing up for meetings and completing assignments on schedule then employers don't need to allow disabled employees to be late.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#289

Post by Auracle » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 7:13 AM UTC

Walf wrote: post #222

nomdep wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you know you have time blindness and you still arrive late it is worse, because you knew it will happen and did nothing to prevent it

Sorry, but you clearly have no idea what it's like to actually deal with this, at all. If I try to be on time to things, I will be stupidly early, or still think I have time to do tasks A & B before doing C, because they invariably take more or less time than I estimate. Or I start doing tasks X & Y, because I'm easily distracted, you know because it's a deficit in attention. Don't trivialise what you don't understan…

Oh, come on.

“It takes me 15 minutes to get to my destination. I should leave 5 minutes earlier than I need to in case there’s traffic or whatever.”

Set an alarm for 20 minutes before you need to get there, and leave when it goes off. Done.

I will absolutely trivialize it because everyone I’ve ever known that’s like that simply leaves at the time they’re supposed to already be somewhere. Or yes, they get distracted and start working on stuff that they know will take 30 minutes when they need to leave in 10. Thankfully we all have mini computers in our pockets that tell us exactly how long it takes to get somewhere that can also easily set alarms.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#290

Post by nradov » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 7:14 AM UTC

verisimi wrote: post #283

9dev wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what they said. Whether your condition is diagnosed or not, it's your responsibility to take care of it. If you're chronically late, you should set timers or write notes or whatever helps—whether you've got class-A ADHD and take meds or just assume there's something wrong with your sense of time. Just saying "I'm time blind, sorry not sorry, deal with it" is not an appropriate reaction to causing trouble t…

You're missing my point. I'm not trying to deal with the 'conditions' that individuals or groups say they have. My point is that if a group says a person has a condition it's considered real, but if an individual says so, it's not. It's a point about deferring to authority over what is existent or not. Who defines conditions, says that ADHD is real, for example? It wasn't in earlier generations. The are terms of soci…

In the USA it's mainly the American Psychiatric Association which defines whether ADHD or any other mental health condition is real.

https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm