[HN Gopher] I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I'd nev...
___________________________________________________________________
I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I'd never learned it
Author : danso
Score : 138 points
Date : 2021-06-18 20:31 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| peter303 wrote:
| NPR had a story about a neurologist who had a severe stroke and
| lost ability to speak or hear language for several months. She
| said her mind went silent and heard no words.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Bolte_Taylor
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I would recommend Taoism type thinking for this person because
| there needs to be acceptance that this reduced brain capacity (or
| call it brain rewiring) is the way, while possible and
| paradoxically trying to fix it at the same time.
|
| If you are super switched on and rely on that smartness as part
| of your identity that's gonna hurt when it's diminished. And you
| switch from go getter to helped person.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I enjoyed the wit and sense of humor of this piece. I have a
| serious medical condition and, yeah, perspective and priorities
| change after your life gets hit by a truck, whether literally or
| metaphorically.
|
| It can be hard to convey what that's like and that there are bad
| things but also sometimes good comes out of it and you can choose
| to embrace the good parts of it and amplify them while continuing
| to try to resolve the very real problems you have been left with.
|
| For me, this was a good read.
| pianoben wrote:
| This headline is like a bad r/nosleep title. Someday, somehow, I
| hope we move past this dumb clickbait style.
| ta988 wrote:
| Or we should just get past the FOMO and let some stuff
| unclicked and focus on things interesting for us.
| pianoben wrote:
| Personally I got over that _long_ ago; the style itself just
| irks me to see. I left Facebook to get away from attention-
| economy junk and am sad to see it show up here.
| adamrezich wrote:
| the attention economy demands it, as long as it reigns supreme
| we'll never be free from this dumb shit
| doggodaddo78 wrote:
| I think we need more obsessive and honest curation of titles.
|
| Perhaps a "launch a title change vote" feature so the
| community can fix it.
| tyingq wrote:
| It's not really new. https://www.google.com/search?q=yellow+j
| ournalism+headlines&...
| blowski wrote:
| Exactly! While most click bait has interesting titles, not
| all interesting titles are clickbait. So many people seem
| to want headlines to be merely an 80 character summary of
| the article. That's fine on articles of news - "so and so
| has died", "Country declares war on Country Y". Or in
| tutorials. But in pieces of writing we are reading mostly
| for leisure there's no reason for it to have such a matter-
| of-fact title.
|
| For me clickbait is hyper-sensationalised, usually
| misleading, and typically the article doesn't deliver what
| the title says it will. None of those three attributes are
| true of this title or article.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Also misleading...usually when people talk about "quiet mind"
| they're talking about meditation, not TBIs
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Thought it was obvious that it was meant to be a cheeky type
| of title.
| doggodaddo78 wrote:
| You think it's an article on the downsides of excessive
| patience or zen meditation, but no, TBI.
|
| As a tangent: I learned how to enter a waking ideation / guided
| daydreaming state associated with sensory deprivation without
| extreme stimuli removal. It is good for startup ideas (not that
| they're any good but for generating them), fiction novel
| outlines, and letting your subconscious out.
|
| Edit since I can't comment below right now:
|
| I'm so sorry, I learned it intuitively by spending days / weeks
| by myself without human contact or interruptions in a low
| stimuli environment. Instead of going "crazy," it's possible
| the mind can entertain and amuse itself. I think this also
| explains why kids (and adults) in very poor countries have such
| wild imaginations and are so happy when they have almost
| nothing. And, where else would magical realism arise if not
| Colombia?
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| > As a tangent: I learned how to enter a waking ideation /
| guided daydreaming state associated with sensory deprivation
| without extreme stimuli removal.
|
| Awesome. How? Any books/articles/resources that could help?
| Sr_developer wrote:
| Just think 35 "persons" voted for it. Most probably than not
| the voting is being heavily manipulated, but still.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I kind of like this title, it in my view throws shade to all
| the regurgitated desire to reach the monk/quiet mind status.
|
| And I intuitively guessed it to be about something like that,
| so didn't consider it to be clickbait per se, and the story was
| great.
| eric_b wrote:
| Yeah, I couldn't get very far in to it. Something about the
| author's tone and writing style was awkward and offputting.
| Tade0 wrote:
| To me it felt very self-centered. Like that bit about having
| the worst injury. Was it really worth pointing out?
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Worst injury out of the family, and I'd definitely agree
| with her. I definitely throughout the story was able to
| imagine myself being in her position and how dreadful it
| would be. I think self centered is totally fine, since it's
| her shitty circumstances that could really happen to
| anyone.
|
| Losing your intelligence could very well be one of the
| scariest things.
| robocat wrote:
| Perhaps due to her head injury - I was surprised at how
| readable it was and just presumed she had significant help
| editing it (although that is unclear, perhaps not).
| maydup-nem wrote:
| On the contrary, I enjoyed it and read the whole thing with
| interest.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| I felt like after reading the first paragraph, everything
| afterwards was just the same, written differently over and
| over again.
| hownottowrite wrote:
| My mother died from a traumatic brain injury. She fell down the
| basement stairs in the middle of the night and smacked her head
| on the floor. They tried to fix her up at the hospital but as is
| common with TBI her brain began to swell.
|
| They tried trepanation. It did not work.
|
| She went brain dead. I was half a world away at work. My father
| made me make the decision. The doctors pulled the plug on her
| 52nd birthday.
|
| That was 20 years ago this very year.
|
| I do wish they'd put a warning on these types of articles.
| elwell wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear that; that's so sad.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| I truly sympathize with this woman--an injury of this nature
| dramatically alters your perspective on life. I had a small brain
| injury about 2 months ago; I never got a diagnosis from my high
| powered neurologist but we suspected it was related to covid.
| Thankfully I recovered after about a month. The symptoms of brain
| injury can be incredibly weird. I'm in touch with people who no
| longer experience emotions; who lost their internal monologue. My
| weird symptom was that I would get headaches and light
| sensitivity after sex.
|
| It's interesting. You find out that most of the people you
| thought cared about you actually don't. You find out that most of
| the things you cared about don't actually matter. You find out
| that the neurologists that were supposed to save you are actually
| just wasting MRI time to write bullshit papers to pad their CV.
| Even if they wanted to help you, they don't really know anything
| about the brain, and are dozens of breakthroughs away from
| getting there, and the few medications at their disposal can't
| change the reality that neurons don't heal or regenerate, and
| you'll have to make do with fewer of them. The world moves on
| without you and it doesn't care if you recover or not. If you
| were smart, you desperately try to avoid being lumped in with
| "stupid people", knowing how little respect people have for that
| population. You realize how much your intelligence factored into
| your ego and identity. It's not your fault after all. This isn't
| who you are. It's just an injury. But eventually you come to
| terms with the fact that your brain really does define who you
| are, and maybe you accept that or maybe you don't.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Reading the author's description of waking up in a hospital bed
| reminded of when I found myself waking up in one. I felt like I
| was peeing the bed and was embarrassed about it. I couldn't move
| or look much, so I was exploring with my hands to "assess the
| damage" and wondering how I was going to explain wetting the bed
| as an adult to _whoever_ when I discovered the good and bad news.
| Good news - I hadn 't wet the bed. Bad news - I had a catheter.
|
| The author's brain injury, of course, is much more unsettling.
| But, if the old you has died, then it's not coming back. May as
| well make the best of the new you.
| megablast wrote:
| Cars are so incredibly destructive to society, in so many ways.
| But most people are so blase about them.
| viburnum wrote:
| America has nearly twice the car death rate of Canada (and
| Canada hardly has substantially better weather or density than
| America). It's crazy.
| tyingq wrote:
| The US does rate pretty high in "traffic deaths per 100k
| people".
|
| But they also lead the world in how much they drive. 8,800
| kilometers per capita, versus 4,300 in Canada, 7,000 in
| Germany and less than 1,700 in Japan.
|
| https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/12/13/why-the-u-s-trails-
| th...
|
| I'm sure there are other factors, but that would explain most
| of the difference vs Canada. Twice as much driving means
| twice as many traffic deaths per capita.
|
| Edit: Yes, I agree the US has work to do either way.
| occz wrote:
| Seems like something that should be rectified - the
| entirety of american society should be redesigned to reduce
| the amount of driving required.
| throwaway4pooxi wrote:
| Or we should continue to iterate and improve.
|
| You assume all the driving is required, a lot of driving
| is leisure.
|
| I do agree that cities should stop blowing tax payer
| money that should be spent on public transportation
| (looking at you 80 billion cali train)
|
| But I support a fragmented society where towns are
| connected by highways and interstates and trucks and cars
| can travel freely.
|
| Most of the disdain for cars come from city slickers
| burnt by traffic and lack of parking.
|
| It's a scaling problem, not a car problem. Fix your
| politicians.
| leoedin wrote:
| But even if you look at road deaths per billion km driven,
| the US still scores 7.3 - more than twice Norway's 3, or
| the UK's 3.4, and still a fair bit more than all those
| other countries.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffi
| c...
|
| Yes, the US drives more. But there's also room for
| improvement compared to the safest countries.
| caconym_ wrote:
| Does anyone else feel like it's almost always a pickup truck?
| This article^[1] that I found a while back claims occupants of
| a car are 2.5 times more likely to die in a collision with a
| pickup truck than another car.
|
| It's an atrocity, and it's insane to me that it's almost
| totally absent from the public discourse.
|
| ^[1] https://www.iihs.org/topics/vehicle-size-and-weight
| xvector wrote:
| There are no reasonable pickup truck safety regulations in
| the US. Pickup trucks are simply not safe vehicles for other
| individuals around them. Some are so large that you can't
| even see small children in front. [0]
|
| The front of most pickup trucks is _literally a flat wall,_
| whereas most cars and SUVs have to design for potential
| pedestrian impact and whatnot. If you get hit by a pickup
| truck you _will_ be pancaked, but if you get hit by a modern
| car you have a chance of surviving.
|
| You can thank lawmakers acting on the whims of corporate
| lobbyists for this. [1] It makes my blood boil, how our
| elected representatives so casually throw away lives of their
| citizens.
|
| 90% of pickup truck owners don't actually need their pickup
| trucks, but are allowed to buy and drive these incredibly
| dangerous vehicles regardless. In turn, this causes an
| escalating arms race - everyone else feels the need to buy an
| SUV or other large vehicle. Vehicles get heavier, bigger, and
| deadlier. The cycle continues.
|
| Part of the issue is that it's part of the self-image of red-
| blooded American manliness to own a pickup truck. It's
| ridiculous and childish, but owning a pickup truck is seen as
| cool and macho throughout large swaths of the country. It
| will be almost impossible to pass safety regulations against
| pickup trucks thanks to this population.
|
| [0]: https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/the-hidden-
| danger...
|
| [1]: https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?cycle=
| 2020...
| apozem wrote:
| They really are. I'm reminded of George Miller, who created and
| directed the Mad Max movies. Those movies are about how cars
| are terrifying death machines that shred human bodies. Miller
| said he was "inspired" after working several years as an ER
| doctor, seeing the damage firsthand.
| prvc wrote:
| To de-clickbait this article: the author had a traumatic brain
| injury which eliminated her racing inner monologue.
| _rpd wrote:
| perhaps ... which temporarily impaired her executive function.
| Aerroon wrote:
| It might not be temporary. Doctors told her that it might
| come back, but it might never be at full power as before.
| ggm wrote:
| At the other end of the scale, unrelated to severe trauma I truly
| believe we don't come back from anaesthesia entirely the same. I
| have no scientific basis for this belief, it's just how I feel
| about the experience of waking up from anaesthesia twice.
|
| The "who am I" in this article is strong. Who is asking the
| questions? Is it the same "me" from before time? The other one,
| knew what parmesan looked like.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| A family member last year had a psychotic episode that lasted a
| couple months where they lost contact with reality and became a
| different person (undiagnosed schizophrenia).
|
| After their care, they said the hardest thing is understanding
| who they were, and who they are now (since the medication does
| change their personality somewhat).
| draw_down wrote:
| "Sure my family just died in a car wreck but more importantly, it
| sucks that Donald trump is president"
| antisthenes wrote:
| It's eerie how accurately she describes some of the symptoms. My
| injury, about a year ago was less severe, but also resulted in
| TBI. I think in a way our inner monologue is responsible for our
| creative side and for our ability to plan things in advance.
|
| What sucks the most (for me) is not being able to judge how bad
| it actually is:
|
| I don't know how much executive/planning function was lost. I
| don't know much of my sense of smell was lost (nose/sinus injury)
| I don't know when, if ever, my creativity will come back. I don't
| know how bad my short term memory now is, just that it's worse. I
| don't know if the brain fog is permanent or just a result of what
| now seems to be constant insomnia. I don't know if people are
| going to keep expecting me to get back to 100% or if I should
| tell them to expect less of me now. I struggle for words
| frequently.
|
| I was planning on taking an IQ test, but what would it tell me if
| I don't have a baseline pre-injury to compare it to?
|
| People like her have it very tough. TBI sufferers don't really
| wear it as a badge, and 99.9% of the time they look perfectly
| functional and normal from the outside.
|
| But the battle we fight inside can sometimes be exhausting and
| very depressing.
| throwaway205826 wrote:
| A few years ago I got some kind of brain illness. Doctors were
| unable to come up with a strong diagnosis, which is apparently
| quite common for such cases.
|
| One of the effects of the illness was that I essentially became
| stupid. I couldn't focus on anything (even trivial activities
| like watching television), I couldn't compose emails, I would get
| disoriented easily. It was absolutely terrifying not knowing
| whether or not my mind would come back. At the time, I would have
| preferred having a disease like cancer because at least I would
| know what I'm dealing with. Eventually I did start to get better.
| Like the author, I think I'm probably not quite back to who I was
| before getting sick.
|
| A couple things I learned from my interaction with the medical
| system - 1. Like any other industry, 90% of medical "experts" are
| totally incompetent. 2. The state of diagnostics is pretty
| abysmal. So much of medicine is completely nonscientific
| guesswork. Most doctors aren't even aware of the latest
| diagnostic developments in their own fields. Think about the
| people you know who learned Java in college and then never
| learned another programming language; chances are, your doctor is
| that kind of person.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| They do like mentioning The Art Of Medicine when it's not a
| simple ailment, or treatment failure. And I get it.
|
| It might be the only profession I know of that can still bill
| though. They make sure they are paid.
|
| I do get the difficulty of the profession. I know most
| treatments are Placebo cures. It's a weird profession. Or, we
| still know very little, especially ailments that affect the
| brain.
| monoideism wrote:
| > . Like any other industry, 90% of medical "experts" are
| totally incompetent.
|
| 100% correct. I'm dealing with some serious health issues the
| past year (multiple worsening chronic conditions, in and out of
| hospital, lost 30 lbs in 3 months, etc). And yeah, the vast
| majority of them are idiots who know nothing more than to pull
| out a (often dangerous) pharma that addresses a single symptom.
| And forget treatment - I was just hoping for a firm diagnosis.
| But they hem and haw, and don't seem at all up to date with the
| latest research. You're on your own.
| codingwageslave wrote:
| I've been trying to tell people this. It's always met with
| ridicule
| ashton314 wrote:
| First, my sincere condolences. That is terrifying.
|
| > Think about the people you know who learned Java in college
| and then never learned another programming language; chances
| are, your doctor is that kind of person.
|
| Ooof. That is a really good analogy.
| garenp wrote:
| Was there anything you did that helped you get better?
| throwaway205826 wrote:
| Hard to say what actually helped, but two high-impact low-
| cost behavioral changes I made (and stuck with) were a strict
| ketogenic diet and regular heavy exercise (mixture of cardio
| and weight training). Ketogenic diet has a lot going for it -
| besides being a nice elimination diet (in case your problem
| is some kind of dietary autoimmune condition or food allergy
| or something), it also treats a lot of possible metabolic
| conditions. Exercise as well. I'm sure resting (mentally)
| helped but I didn't have much choice there - resting was the
| only activity I could really do, and even that I couldn't do
| very well.
| skadamou wrote:
| I'm so sorry this happened to you and I'm glad you are starting
| to feel at least somewhat back to your old self. I definitely
| understand where this opinion of docs is coming from as there
| are definitely some incompetent docs out there but don't you
| think that your opinion is largely based around an anecdotal
| experience that is probably pretty abnormal? Medicine as a
| field is still pretty unscientific in a lot of ways. To me it
| feels like docs are like alchemists before the discovery of the
| atom/modern chemistry. They're doing the best they can with the
| tools at hand but their field has some fundamental gaps in
| knowledge. Is that really the doctors fault?
|
| That's just my two cents. Obviously this doesn't do much to
| help folks dealing with poorly understood illnesses but I hope
| it helps balance out the "all doctors are idiots" opinion that
| sometimes comes up in threads like this.
| throwaway205826 wrote:
| > Is that really the doctors fault?
|
| It seemed that most of the doctors I had to deal with were
| incompetent either because they were lazy or stupid.
| Realistically maybe they were just overworked, but the effect
| was the same. I'm not really interested in assigning "fault"
| here - that's just a factual observation I made.
| nradov wrote:
| Are you qualified to evaluate competence in that field?
| What specific criteria did you use?
| lrem wrote:
| Idiots is the wrong word. They've achieved a state of the art
| knowledge. An idiot wouldn't get there. The problem is, most
| of them stopped at that. And state of the art moved on.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| >> 1. Like any other industry, 90% of medical "experts" are
| totally incompetent.
|
| I would need data to accept this, not anecdote. There is a
| tendency for smart people to think they know better than
| experts.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Did you also hear a sound like a bass guitar string snapping
| when this happened?
| rmah wrote:
| First, I'm so sorry you're going through this illness and hope
| that you make a full recovery.
|
| But I think that, to some degree, your feelings about the
| medical profession is a reflection of just how good medicine is
| these days. People go to the doctor _expecting_ an accurate
| diagnosis and a treatment or cure. And, to be fair, 80% of the
| time, that 's what they get. It's hard to overstate just how
| much of a radical shift in expectations this is.
|
| Just a century ago, a compound fracture could be a death
| sentence. People randomly got sick a just dropped dead. Going
| to a doctor _might_ , _maybe_ , if you were _lucky_ , fix what
| ailed you. Hell, just two centuries ago, doctors as we think of
| them today simply did not exist. Three centuries ago, people in
| Europe were routinely bled to balance the humors.
|
| Biological systems are mind-numbingly complex. All the simple
| stuff has been figured out -- and if they are diseases mostly
| eradicated. Even so, I think that people's expectations of what
| doctors do is a bit... off. 99% of doctors are not scientists
| -- they are human body mechanics. And that means they mostly
| focus on common problems. Because, you know, they're common.
|
| And neurological conditions are some of the most difficult to
| diagnose. Imaging techniques like MRI or CT often show no
| problems. Exploratory surgery is _highly risky_ and also
| usually have no benefit. To extend the mechanic analogy,
| imagine going to your mechanic and saying "my car's GPS system
| is sluggish. sometimes. What's wrong?" and then expecting them
| to figure out what's wrong without being able to look "under
| the hood" of the computer system. All they can is use the GPS
| system and observe its behavior. That's essentially what
| neurologists have to do quite often. Tough job.
|
| The good news is that there are doctors who engage in research.
| And they are, by trial and error, improving the state of the
| art of medicine. Does this knowledge get propagated to all
| other doctors rapidly enough? Probably not. But the knowledge
| dissemination is probably better today than ever before too.
| Obviously things can be improved. As pretty much anything can
| be improved. It just doesn't seem very helpful to spout
| "doctors are idiots" as some other posts seem to do.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| It's amazing that you made this name and another, both posting
| a comment in this thread one minute after creation talking
| about how great this article is while lots of other people in
| the thread are calling it terribly written clickbait.
| throw9239393 wrote:
| I also made a throwaway account to make a comment here. I
| also said the article was well written. I am an HN regular,
| but didn't want my medical problem tied to my HN account
| name.
|
| Is it that odd that we might have polar opposite views on the
| article? Or that having a somewhat similar experience to the
| author, that I might view the article differently than you
| do?
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| It is odd that you would make two different names just to
| talk up the article, yes.
| ROARosen wrote:
| ... Or maybe the commenter is not interested in announcing
| their medical history under their "real" (nik)name.
| teh_infallible wrote:
| I honestly believe that the dumbest software developer is
| smarter than the average doctor.
|
| Look at how they prescribe drugs for the side effects of other
| drugs. Imagine coding a software patch to fix a bug introduced
| by another patch.
| the_af wrote:
| > _Imagine coding a software patch to fix a bug introduced by
| another patch._
|
| But this is very common! Far from mocking my fellow
| developers, I'll be the first to admit I've been guilty of
| this many times.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| What's wrong with prescribing a drug for a side effect of
| another drug?
|
| If you get cancer, the treatment you get can cause very many
| side effects which in turn can potentially be alleviated by
| other type of medicine. What would your suggestion be? Not to
| treat the patient at all?
| StavrosK wrote:
| You have no idea how much technical debt there is in the
| average body. There's much more technical debt in the body
| than there is technology in the world.
|
| The two systems aren't remotely comparable in complexity.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| That's at least partly about how medicine gets monetized.
|
| Imagine a world in which you got paid for patches instead of
| being paid by the hour. Patches on patches would likely
| proliferate.
| kevinmgranger wrote:
| > Imagine coding a software patch to fix a bug introduced by
| another patch.
|
| This happens all the time.
| JoBrad wrote:
| This was sarcasm, right? I'm not one of the old-timers by any
| stretch, but I've seen plenty of code that compensates for
| workarounds introduced by poor planning or hastily-cobbled
| code.
| dave_sid wrote:
| Hey that's me you're talking about! Actually I dabbled a little
| in Swift to maybe I'm okay.
| thrwawy06182021 wrote:
| I also am suffering from something similar. I have the working
| theory it's from extreme burnout but do not know for sure. I
| would tremendously appreciate if you shared what you found to
| help?
| throwaway205826 wrote:
| It's hard to say what actually helped, but I tried a bunch of
| behavioral changes. Two I've stuck with are significantly
| increased exercise (half an hour plus of intense exercise
| every day) and a strict ketogenic diet. Even if they didn't
| do anything at all for my primary condition, they've resulted
| in totally orthogonal improvements to my life. A couple
| months of rest (didn't have much choice there - I couldn't do
| anything else). I also used nicotine gum as a behavioral
| reinforcement drug to help "rehabilitate" myself on the way
| back to health, and THC to help me sleep.
|
| FWIW, I think it's unlikely my problem was burnout - I had a
| number of viral-characteristic physiological symptoms such as
| digestive problems, coughing, and heart palpitations, and I
| would be surprised if they had a purely neurochemical cause -
| but in either case hopefully some of these behaviors could
| help.
| cowanon22 wrote:
| > Like any other industry, 90% of medical "experts" are totally
| incompetent.
|
| I would guess it's even worse, maybe 1-5% of doctors truly
| understand the underlying physiology and will holistically look
| at all of the information. Most doctors I've met use population
| heuristics and published guidelines, and if you have something
| rare they just throw stuff at the wall instead of trying to
| understand it.
| b5n wrote:
| If you have any questions or attempt to have a discussion
| most doctors assume a 'where did you go to medical school'
| mentality, proceed to type your symptoms into an app, and
| then simply regurgitate the output.
| temikus wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear this has happened to you and I do hope you're
| only going to get better.
|
| State of diagnostics is indeed very poor, esp. in a field like
| Immunology. It took 2 years and 4 doctors to find what was
| wrong with me and how to treat it. I had to scour medical
| journals for treatment suggestions and then press on my doctors
| to try it. Sigh.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > 1. Like any other industry, 90% of medical "experts" are
| totally incompetent.
|
| Yeah, I've come to the same conclusion. When I was a kid it
| took 2 years to diagnose my, frankly quite textbook,
| hypothyroidism. Know who first diagnosed it? A friend of my
| mother's who worked the toll booth at the airport. Her dog had
| it, you see, so she recognized the symptoms. My mother had to
| go full Karen mode on a doctor to get them to order the simple
| blood test that would confirm it.
| lupinglade wrote:
| Same conclusion here as well.
| throwaway205826 wrote:
| Yep, if you really want someone to think hard about your
| condition, a hospital is the wrong place to go. And a lot of
| doctors will become defensive when they realize you've put
| more thought into it than they have.
| data_spy wrote:
| Not sure if true, but whenever I've had a foreign born
| doctor, they tended to be better in my experience.
| tyingq wrote:
| Same for me. Slightly bulging neck. Itchy calves. Dry skin.
| Lethargy. Took years before anyone ran the relatively simple
| TSH test.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| With doctors, you are your own doctor and the doctors you see
| are subcontractors. First appointment is a job interview.
| That's the best way to think of it IMO. I guess I'm
| privileged to have the money to do this.
|
| Google helps you know what it could be, but you need to do a
| fair bit of research and critical thinking.
|
| Unfortunately if you are sick this is the last thing you want
| to do!
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| While I have no particular position, my brother is a molecular
| biologist and bioinformatics guy who has been published in
| nature, featured in NYT, etc. A true scientific nerds nerd, and
| he endlessly ridiculed the poor science and poor scientific
| understanding of people on the M.D. track that he interacted
| with in labs while he was doing research.
|
| I do have this anecdote from deep personal experience though...
| pediatric cardiologists working at research hospitals are some
| of the kindest, most compassionate, honest and respectful
| people I have met. Everyone tends to treat children with
| condescension and patronization (and I feel safe to extrapolate
| that toward their views of people in general), but those
| doctors seem to know that as a child you've been weighed... or
| maybe they just comes from a place of true compassion and pity,
| people underestimate the importance of compassion, kindness and
| listening by doctors.. especially as issues become more
| complex.
|
| I do think AI assistance is going to make a large difference in
| medical diagnostics work even if reality hasn't caught up with
| the hype yet.
| gwittel wrote:
| > poor science and poor scientific understanding of people on
| the M.D. track
|
| Definitely a thing. At least historically, research is not a
| big part of a MD program in the US. MD/PhD programs are where
| its at -- Basically you do a few years of med school, then
| PhD, then finish MD. Its a very long haul. After which you
| usually go into Postdoc research or medical residency.
|
| The best doctor I ever had was incredibly perceptive and
| compassionate. What did she teach in med school? How to work
| with patients (i.e. bedside manner). She moved on to head
| palliative care, another area where empathy is key.
|
| Like any other profession doctors span a range of competency.
| There is an old joke: What do you call the person who
| finished last in medical school? Doctor.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| I remember former fellow students telling how they corrected
| medical students' practical physics internship assignments.
| Apparently the statistical rigour is much lower. On the other
| hand, I guess in pure natural sciences you work with much
| more indirection and have zero results nowadays unless you
| use a lot of tools. Probably there aren't that many medical
| conditions that can be treated in-depth based on first
| principles but I think concluding that whole medical science
| can be replaced by an AI assistant might be a bit far-
| fetched. Compassion is probably under-estimated indeed. Some
| people with serious conditions prefer to be treated at
| objectively less sophisticated yet less industrialized
| facilities.
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| I also think "concluding that whole medical science can be
| replaced by an AI assistant" is far fetched. I hope that
| wasn't what you took away from my comment.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| It's a bit of a misunderstanding of the role of doctors as
| well IMO. Apart from a small fraction of them they aren't
| scientists or researchers and aren't supposed to be. And the
| human body is complex, problems can arise which can't easily
| be understood. The expectation that every doctor is House and
| we'll each get millions of dollar of diagnostics is wrong.
| There's also a reason why experiments in science require an
| awful lot of preparation and rigor that doesn't exist in the
| happenstance of the real world. No AI is going to solve for a
| lack of information or confounding factors that make
| understanding what's happened impossible.
|
| I had a heart attack nearly six weeks ago despite being
| healthy, fit and having no chronic health issues. They kept
| me in hospital for five days after I got a clot squished by a
| stent. I've come back negative for basically everything bar
| some immune disorder tests I'm waiting on the results of. The
| fact I've not heard probably means those were negative as
| well. So I got this fatal blood clot and the medical staff
| absolutely knocked it out of the park in terms of working out
| what the acute issue was, dealing with it without undue
| distress (seriously a PCI is magic) and my care and
| rehabilitation afterwards has been great. But I'll likely
| never know why it happened.
|
| The other side of that is I end up on a standard cocktail of
| medication despite having a normal blood pressure, normal
| cholesterol and so on. Essentially the drug regime seems
| calibrated for the average heart attack patient which is
| someone older with chronic problems. I had a rash as a side
| effect and the doctors swapped a med and I'm fine again. How
| did they know what to change of the six meds? I guess
| experience and wider statistical analysis in the medical
| community. It worked!
| throw9239393 wrote:
| Really well written, especially considering the author's plight.
|
| Regarding this bit:
|
| > _The day of the accident I had been working on a project to
| improve how homeless people are placed into shelters. I say out
| loud, "I don't care about homeless people" to see how it feels.
| It doesn't ring true; I do care about homeless people. I just
| don't feel like working._
|
| I wonder if that's directly to do with the brain damage or not. I
| survived a particularly rough "you're gonna die" type cancer. And
| I have similar issues with depression, motivation,
| procrastination, and so on. Which I know sounds counter-
| intuitive. I survived, and the physical aftermath isn't really
| bad. So I should be grateful versus depressed, right? I have
| tried a variety of depression meds over the 5 years that have
| passed. I really can't tell if any of them work. I suppose partly
| because I'm not despondent really...just mostly unmotivated. None
| of them changed that.
|
| Anyhow, just to say that near-death experiences, even without
| physical damage to the brain, seem to have mental consequences.
| PKop wrote:
| The book "Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging" discusses similar
| dynamics with returning combat troops, and others that have
| lived through war or extreme challenging scenarios. The
| surprising finding is it's not the memory of the event that
| causes PTSD/depression, but returning to "normal" modern,
| atomized and isolated life of relative peace and stability..
| and losing the excitement, adrenaline/thrill of events arguably
| humans have been adapted to thrive in: challenges and
| struggles, especially alongside a group of people facing same
| challenge together. Many people have been polled as being
| happier in for example war time London facing bombing raids,
| death and destruction, than peacetime after WW2. It's a good
| read.
| [deleted]
| zrail wrote:
| I survived a not terribly life threatening form of cancer. Two
| people in my family died of worse forms in that same year.
|
| Things haven't quite been the same since.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > Of all the injuries we suffered, mine is the worst. My brain
| injury has shaken my confidence in my own personality, my own
| existence.
|
| I don't exist. That's the secret. This concept took me years to
| grok but now I know.
| tux1968 wrote:
| I have good news for you. Ignoring the small chance that you're
| actually a figment of my imagination, I can confirm you
| actually do exist.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| I can confirm your existence and the parent's existence.
| koo6 wrote:
| I can confirm your non-existence.
| elwell wrote:
| Your confirmation isn't proof.
| sumnole wrote:
| I've been thinking that I'm the only one I know for sure
| 'exists'
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| That's not really very useful. Of course you exist! You share
| sufficiently many properties with other things that we would
| say "exist" that it is more useful to consider you extant than
| non-existent.
|
| What you _mean_ might be a more useful, meaningful concept, but
| what you 've _said_ is kinda nonsense. If you don 't exist, who
| wrote this comment? I'd be interested if you could elaborate.
| aj3 wrote:
| They where probably saying that "I" doesn't exist as brain
| doesn't really work that way and inner voice/narrator is just
| illusion.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > If you don't exist, who wrote this comment?
|
| The hands. Driven by the chemical phenomena taking place in
| the brain given the information it had been fed previously.
| Both the hands and the brain and the memories are mine but
| not me. The same way my finger is (I won't be less me if I
| loose it, neither I will if I loose a memory of something,
| even of my name) and my car is. I am merely the observer of
| all these but ok, then where this me which "merely is" is
| then? Nowhere because whatever a thing within my body or
| personality I could point to is mine. Where will that me go
| when I die or when the universe collapses into a singularity
| and booms in a next big bang - nowhere, which is exactly
| where it is now. Because it doesn't exist.
|
| This is a very rough simplification though (in fact the
| hands, the memories etc aren't even mine if everything else
| in the world isn't). I had to digest this for years and
| observe this, excuse me for some nonsense, from different
| angles inside the multi-dimensional space of pure non-verbal
| semantic experiences perception. This can be a long way to
| develop this ability and I am not sure many are ready to go
| this way. No, I'm not a heavy psychedelic abuser, nor a new-
| age loon, nor depressed, nor psychopathic, I am sober,
| enthusiastic, generally Okay, happy and compassionate and the
| realization of the above only made me even more of these and
| helped me through the hard times.
|
| The first step is to observe it (a pure meaning without
| words) when you know exactly what you want to say but can't
| recall a proper word in any of the languages you speak.
|
| If I were to seriously rationalize this I would say nobody
| writes the comment, it is an emergent structure resulting
| from a very complex fractal system. Whoever is not really
| into this but feels curious and wants an easy explanation
| watch the Dr. Sapolsky's lectures on emergence in his
| behavioral biology course on YouTube.
| antihipocrat wrote:
| When you say you don't exist are you referring to your
| sense of self identity? i.e your ego, the feeling that your
| mind and body and all of your senses, emotions, thoughts
| and memories are a distinct entity?
|
| This idea is very interesting, and not considered strange
| in philosophy (ego death) and is also prevalent in
| Buddhism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatt%C4%81
| jrsdav wrote:
| I've found this concept is near impossible to share without
| sounding, well, like you put it, "a new-age loon".
|
| We haven't really developed a system or language that
| succinctly expresses the nature of self or experience
| (well, I only know English. Perhaps other languages lend
| themselves better). For me, I find the simplest terms to be
| the most profound way of capturing what you said, but when
| I say them out loud to someone who hasn't climbed the same
| "context mountain" I probably sound like someone you would
| encounter at a drum circle in a public park (which I find
| nothing to be wrong with, I should add!).
| mypalmike wrote:
| Can you expand on this a bit?
| brodo wrote:
| The Buddists call it
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatt%C4%81 Anatta. In
| psychonautics it's called ego death. It can be frightening, but
| for me it is a hopeful, unifying and happy idea.
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _Have I always been bad at finding things? Maybe? There are
| limits to how well an injured brain can scrutinize an injured
| brain._
|
| This is something I've worried about ever since I was a teenager.
| If something happens to my mind, how will I know? The answer I've
| come up with is that you can't fully know, but my best bet is to
| "reason on paper".
|
| Externalize the facts and opinions (write them down or say them
| out loud) and then run logic on them using some explainable
| algorithm. Basically, do it like we do math: the numbers and
| figures on paper will allow anyone to continue where you stopped.
| Even if you forget what you were doing or you can't do large
| scale abstract reasoning, because you've written it down, you can
| do it piece by piece.
|
| When I suffered what seemed to have been a "ministroke"
| (basically a stroke that solves itself) my cognitive abilities
| were obviously affected. I seemed to operate basically only on
| short term memory - several seconds at a time. Anything that
| happened before that seemed to fade from memory. Saying out loud
| what I wanted to do and then continuously repeating it out loud
| enabled me to do more complex tasks. Unfortunately, I had no
| sense of danger from it.
|
| Writing (typing), however, was not really possible. I knew what I
| wanted to write, but it became "slurred". I hadn't considered
| that before. I even recognized myself that what I wrote was
| difficult to decipher, but somehow I just couldn't type out the
| words correctly.
|
| I still think that reasoning on paper or out loud is your best
| bet in these situations.
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