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

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

#391

Post by econ » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 12:45 PM UTC

wat10000 wrote: post #388

rahimnathwani wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it were in DSM-5-*, would that mean it's a standalone disorder? I haven't read much psychology, but this article suggests a lot of psychological diagnoses are just labels for symptoms: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2025/02/06/the-mind-in-the-whe... Imagine that your car breaks down and you bring it to a mechanic and he tells you, “Oh, your car has a case of broken-downness.” You’d know right away: this guy ha…

What a terrible analogy. Diagnosing a car with “broken-downness” would be like a mental health professional diagnosing you with “bad.” Diagnosed aren’t always great, but they’re not that ridiculous. Still down a bit and you’ll find plenty of vagueness with mechanics. “You have a bad tie-rod end.” Ok, cool. What caused that, why did mine fail when my buddy’s didn’t, how can I avoid this? Shrug. Once you’ve got it down…

Things can be that ridiculous and still be our best effort.

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

#392

Post by wat10000 » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 12:47 PM UTC

WorkerBee28474 wrote: post #82

deanCommie wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except they weren't really "support systems" i mean they were, if you got lucky. If you were neurotypical; if you bought in to the local religious sect's particular flavour and embraced it wholeheartedly; if you followed the other local cults of sports fandoms; if you were lucky enough to either have family without their own trauma that didn't take it out on you OR decided to repress it in exactly the same way that t…

> it's why there's now suddenly an influx of ADHD and Autism diagnosis - because in the past anyone outside of the norm who wasn't lucky to do one of the things above was simply ignored, beaten, or died. I think you're understating how well those people were incorporated into society. My grandfather was born in the 20s and was described as quite "high strung", was amazing with technology, would repair anything, and e…

Sounds like the lesson from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer: deviation from the norm will be punished unless it’s exploitable.

Would your grandfather have been so well integrated if his problems had not been offset by such ability?

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

#393

Post by zug_zug » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 12:48 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #89

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

Disorders are labels for things which significantly negatively impact people’s lives. Thinking of them in terms of a spectrum generally means stretching a label past the point of meaning.

Well, if you're approaching this as a hard-scientist that's not the case (for psychology).

Because "disorder" may be on a spectrum, because "negative" and "impact" may be on a spectrum. Conditions like depression follow a bell-curve, there's no clear line between depressed and not, and we can draw a line in the sand, but statistically there's no justification for where that line falls.

One way to try to draw a line is "the point at which a certain intervention is no longer effective."

For example studies find CBT therapy reduces depression scores for depressed people ~.8 standard deviations (for a while).

But why not try CBT therapy on happy people? Maybe it's even more effective on people who are already happy. Well the reason why not is likely just because of the clumsy nature of healthcare -- interventions are thought of as "treatments" for "conditions", even though that lens doesn't always make sense.

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

#394

Post by dogman1050 » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 12:54 PM UTC

wat10000 wrote: post #382

imetatroll wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simultaneously funny and sad. I wonder when alcoholism will get a front row seat during zoom meetings (or even IRL meetings). "Can't help it hick I'm an alcoholic". I think a lot of societal change these days can be summarized by the idea that self-labeling is seen as transforming something into "everyone else's problem".

As the great philosopher Hedberg once said, alcoholism is the only disease you can get yelled at for having.

Mitch Hedberg was a genius.

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

#395

Post by zug_zug » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 1:01 PM UTC

aoki wrote: post #228

jjani wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 20 years ago (in 2005), did anyone voluntarily, happily label themselves autistic, without any disgnosis, outside of such psych classes (outliers for obvious reasons)? The “Aspie programmer” meme has been around since the turn of the century (at least) https://www.wired.com/2001/12/aspergers/ I’m pretty sure people made reference to it when I was at Cal in the 90s but I can’t prove it. (The prevalence of social awk…

Exactly. If anything I think the vast majority of us engineers under-diagnose ourselves for where we fall on that spectrum (which is probably the safe career and social move in the millennial generation).

Almost every day of my whole career I've worked with people who were missing social cues and being disliked because they were misunderstood. I think an engineer is MUCH more likable if they genuinely say "Sorry if I'm loud, and I don't mean to interrupt, sometimes when I get excited I accidentally do this, I don't do it because I think my ideas are better than everyone else's."

Now obviously if somebody exaggerates a trait they don't have, says it in a self-important way, and isn't remorseful at all about the effect it has on people around them, and isn't trying to change it that's a shame.

But frankly imo the balance of that in software is I've met 1/2 in my whole career who came across as self-important about their conditions, versus against maybe 20% (dozens and dozens) weren't able/willing to communicate their oddities.

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

#396

Post by gadabout » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 1:08 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #374

nradov wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sarcastic. Only people who are ignorant about history believe that things are really bad today. If you live in an industrialized country that isn't in the middle of a shooting war then things are objectively pretty awesome compared to the average conditions that humans have endured.

Only ignorant people think individuals can find comfort in averages. Recently I heard Neil Degrasse Tyson saying that people came up with averages more recently than with calculus. It's not something people find relevant naturally.

> Recently I heard Neil Degrasse Tyson saying that people came up with averages more recently than with calculus. It's not something people find relevant naturally.

Whoa now. That may be true within a strict scope of the "arithmetic mean" definition of "average", however, the idea of average as a 'concept' is much older. As an easy example, early references to agrarian yields (crop farming and how much food they produce) talk about average size of crop harvests, etc. Early tablets from Mesopotamia talk about average yield size, and those are dated 700ish BC.

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

#397

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 1:19 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #101

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…

> - 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…

[deleted]

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

#398

Post by Lewton » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 1:23 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #301

Walf wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do or do not, there is no "try". If you know you have to leave home at 7:00 AM to avoid being late then just set an alarm at that time. When it goes off then walk out the door, even if you're in the middle of some other task. Like if you're brewing coffee then just unplug the machine and leave: no coffee for you today. Don't allow yourself the opportunity to get distracted. Simple.

I’m not arguing against your basic point as I completely agree arriving on time is my own responsibility, but when I do what you suggest, i forget my house keys lol

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

#399

Post by Retric » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

zug_zug wrote: post #393

Retric wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disorders are labels for things which significantly negatively impact people’s lives. Thinking of them in terms of a spectrum generally means stretching a label past the point of meaning.

Well, if you're approaching this as a hard-scientist that's not the case (for psychology). Because "disorder" may be on a spectrum, because "negative" and "impact" may be on a spectrum. Conditions like depression follow a bell-curve, there's no clear line between depressed and not, and we can draw a line in the sand, but statistically there's no justification for where that line falls. One way to try to draw a line i…

> there's no clear line between depressed and not

There’s a meaningful line in the sand for treatments with major side effects. CBT therapy may be “fine” for normal people, but the most effective treatment for depression is ECT which has major side effects. Including a ~1 in 50k chance of death.

Saying something is a bell curve distribution is an approximation, it doesn’t mean there’s actually a continuous function out to infinity and negative infinity.

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

#400

Post by stevenAthompson » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

machinawhite wrote: post #356

nradov wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

AHDH is an actual diagnosed disability. If I have to take meds that would leave you tweaking for 3 days then employers better allow me being late sometimes.

> better allow me being late sometimes

That would depend on the jobs requirements, wouldn't it? In some roles that might be a complete deal breaker. For example, anything customer/client facing. If you can't perform the jobs duties with reasonable accommodation, maybe you should find another job?

Similarly, if you are 3 feet tall you'll likely never be the worlds slam dunk champion. Not even if they provide you with a step-stool. It's not your fault, or the employers. Sorry, I guess.