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

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

#451

Post by arcfour » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:32 PM UTC

93po wrote: post #412

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…

i would encourage everyone to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. you interact with these people in passing, they deal with themselves all the time. you might find them grating or difficult to work with, and that's fair, but i would hope people wouldn't extend "i dont like this person" to "I dont believe this person has a disability and they're making it up and i assume this because i dont like them" neurodiverge…

You think that society now, more than ever, punishes this after what we've been discussing—numerous instances of people glorifying it and (attempting to) excuse poor behavior through it?

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

#452

Post by acheron » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:43 PM UTC

wat10000 wrote: post #443

nradov wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a meaningless claim, devoid of any evidence. At most points in human history there were decent reasons to think we were near the peak. And yet with some occasional temporary valleys, average human living conditions continued to improve.

At most points in human history, the global economy was not so tightly integrated, and major powers didn't have the ability to devastate the globe in an afternoon. There is a significant meaning to my claim, which is that it's unconvincing to make exactly the sort of "it has always worked out before" argument that you're making here.

The current time is not special just because it's when you're alive.

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

#453

Post by stevenAthompson » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:43 PM UTC

intended wrote: post #253

typewithrhythm wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the specific services in an area: everything from subsidised legal access to medications, to access to accommodations in schools seen as favorable (private environments to take tests, or extended deadlines). Some areas have specific assistance to parents of children with a diagnosis. Some have easier access to disability support services and payments.

What about diagnoses in countries which do not have any of these support systems?

This is a really great question. I checked.

Turns out that the poorer a nation is, the less reported autism they have. That could be because there is no benefit to the diagnosis or it could be because they have less healthcare in general and a real diagnosis can easily take 4-8 hours of clinical time.

Interesting either way.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9386174/

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

#454

Post by wat10000 » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 7:04 PM UTC

acheron wrote: post #452

wat10000 wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At most points in human history, the global economy was not so tightly integrated, and major powers didn't have the ability to devastate the globe in an afternoon. There is a significant meaning to my claim, which is that it's unconvincing to make exactly the sort of "it has always worked out before" argument that you're making here.

The current time is not special just because it's when you're alive.

Conversely, the current time isn't like the past just because it immediately follows the past.

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

#455

Post by archsurface » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 7:13 PM UTC

If you're getting downvoted you still have a personality.

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

#456

Post by const_cast » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 7:40 PM UTC

ViktorRay wrote: post #438

watwut wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern treatments do actually treat alcoholism like a disease. The one that cant be cured, but can be managed. It is trying to remove the shame from the equation, because it is not a productive emotion. It makes people postpone and avoid steps necessary for treatment.

Yes but the issue here is that treatments exist for alcohol use disorder and that one cannot use the simple presence of alcohol use disorder as an excuse to dodge accountability. And yet people are using things like "time blindness" as excuses.

I think socially it's because addiction is stigmatized heavily. Despite having real psychological disorders that fuel it, addiction is still largely viewed as self-inflicted. Of course this stigma doesn't come out of nowhere - people who are addicts almost always devolve into dangerous and asocial behavior. If someone is an asshole who stole 50 bucks from you to shoot up, it's easy to think they're a heroin addict because they're an asshole. But really it's the other way around.

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

#457

Post by const_cast » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 7:43 PM UTC

samdoesnothing wrote: post #389

kingkongjaffa wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting point. Western society has basically built a hyper capitalist system that creates individualistic consumers, but has failed to hold individuals accountable to minimum standards. The bar has never been lower and we just sort of amble on as a lonely, isolated society so long as the stock market grows quarter to quarter.

No that is ridiculous. Stop blaming capitalism for every problem in the world, it just makes you look childish. Especially when it comes to alcoholism. As if the soviet union was a bastion of soberness with a high bar or something.

> Stop blaming capitalism for every problem in the world, it just makes you look childish.

Economics is intertwined with every other study. We can't pretend socio-economics isn't real, social interactions fuel the economy and the economy influences our social interactions.

Also, making connections to way capitalism might fuel addictive disorders, such as, say, talking about advertising of alcohol and tobacco, does NOT mean that we are saying communism is perfect. Communism fuels disorders in other ways. It's actually quiet childish to take any analysis of capitalism as a praise of communism. It's the sort of "team sport" mentality you see in politics among the most uneducated and reductive among us.

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

#458

Post by BobaFloutist » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 7:47 PM UTC

blueflow wrote: post #347

sometimes_all wrote: post #248

When I was young, unsure about myself, and frequently derided when I stated my preference for quiet evenings instead of going out and meeting people, I grasped at the notion of "introversion" the moment I found it. It made my feelings and preferences legitimate during a time when I perceived that people were telling me that I was wrong for being that way. Now, more than two decades later, after a bit more life experi…

You opened up how you feel about a thing and your parents derided you for it. Did it change you? No, but it surely made you feel like shit. This is a social deficit in your parents, and asserting yourself as "introverted" is the workaround.

It's funny how op was primarily complaining about how annoying it is to have a load of assumptions dumped on them and you read their post, assumed the derision they described came from their parents, and made it about that rather than the point they were trying to express.

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

#459

Post by const_cast » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 7:48 PM UTC

rf15 wrote: post #194

zug_zug wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an odd presumption there... It sounds like you're presuming those who put a label on themselves don't want to change themselves at all; one could also imagine that those who put a label on themselves want to change themselves most of all

Those who see and believe that there's a label to parts of them can easily believe that they're "helpless", and "that's just the way I am"

> "helpless", and "that's just the way I am"

These don't mean the same thing. You can be the thing you are and not be helpless. For example, if you have ADHD that's just a part of who you are. That doesn't mean you can't take medication or form processes to help yourself and mitigate the effects of ADHD.

Also, in my experience, people who choose to never label themselves are not better off. They typically do have some sort of condition, sometimes multiple, and they actively choose to do nothing about it because they're in extreme denial.

I see this with parents all the time. "My kids doesn't have ADHD! Stop trying to label him!". Okay great, but little Timmy is about to flunk out at fucking third grade. Let's do something about it.

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

#460

Post by const_cast » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 7:54 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #226

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…

The word “disorder” is loaded, but it is interesting to also look through the lens of the Social Theory of Disability. For the rise in diagnoses for autism, ADD, gender dysphoria, eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia etc. Just as we now view the historical labeling of women as suffering from “hysteria” as a systemic failure, not a personal pathology, we should interrogate whether current diagnostic regi…

I think comparing LGBTQ+ identifications with mental illness is dangerous. Not too long ago we were quick to lump homosexuality in with these, despite the fact homosexuality is more of a state of being evidenced by real-life actions people willingly take. That being, sex with the same sex.

Transgender people often suffer gender dysphoria. You're correct that it's possible that gender dysphoria might be a downstream effect of society. Namely, we are an extremely gender-segregated society. There's truly only one way to be a man, although there are multiple ways to be a woman. People feel forced and confined to a very small subset of behavior and self-expression.

Existing between genders is, unfortunately, untenable. Society is just not built for that. But existing as the opposite gender seems to be perfectly doable. I'm not saying that it's that simple and all transgender people would disappear if we live in a society with no gender roles or expectations, but certainly they heavily feel the pressure of those gender roles and expectations.