[HN Gopher] Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stem... ___________________________________________________________________ Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues Author : SkyMarshal Score : 159 points Date : 2021-06-23 17:24 UTC (2 days ago) (HTM) web link (unherd.com) (TXT) w3m dump (unherd.com) | Y_Y wrote: | They are missing the wood for the trees. Online behaviour in | general is rooted in psychological issues. Well-adjusted mentally | healthy people just participate in society normally, they don't | sit in front of a terminal for a year inventing some amazing new | way of communicating over computer networks, or expounding the | modern equivalent of Athenian philosophy on message boards, or | obsessing over entries in distributed databases. | sva_ wrote: | So what are the psychological issues that led you to write this | comment? | Y_Y wrote: | DSM-IV or real? I have a number of (diagnosed and otherwise) | mental illnesses. I also write Haskell for enjoyment, and | help people with Linux on the internet even though it | benefits me in no way. I care about mathematics and | computation more than climate change and the feelings of | people close to me. Is that ok? | jchw wrote: | Out of curiosity, have you _read_ any of DSM? I 've read | some portions of DSM-V and found it to be, on the whole, | more reasonable than it is typically given credit. Perhaps | some of that is owing to improvements made over the years, | but nonetheless. | jmcgough wrote: | I think there's some truth to this, but the trans community is a | really awkward group to try to fit into your argument. | | As a trans person, I think there's a lot of toxicity to the | online trans community, and there's certainly more prevalent | mental illness (not surprising when you deal with frequent | harassment, discrimination, being disowned by family). But trans | people act like that because they feel like they're constantly | under attack, and they have good reason to feel that way, given | the flood of anti-trans legislation. That constant vigilance is | exhausting, and as awful as it is, many of them (especially | younger people) have limited power to protect themselves so they | lash out at any perceived threat against trans people. It's | toxic, and probably creates more enemies than allies, but I | understand it. | | A more interesting example would be toxic league of legends | players. There's a few very popular, very toxic streamers (e.g. | Tarzaned) who seem like they're struggling with depression or | other issues. | loopz wrote: | Many online forums are incredibly toxic, or infested with a few | regulars that get off always being negative and bullying other | people. | | The only thing that works with bullies, is ignoring them. | | Trying to find reasons, psychological reasons, childhood | traumas or gender identity issues, seems to be a way to focus | on the behaviour and drama, instead of moving on. | tomp wrote: | Are "telling the truth" and "finding trolling humorous" also | redefined to be psychological issues? Well, then the conclusion | easily follows... | 5cott0 wrote: | What if the people acting out are actually the healthy ones? | kingsuper20 wrote: | Maybe it's just that they're normal (is 'healthy' an ableist | term?). | | You can make the argument that 'normal' people have been held | down by jus' reg'lar dudes for millennia. This is their chance | to shine. | | Have an upvote ya 'rebel. | 5cott0 wrote: | My meaning was along the lines of family dynamics. Teenager | starts acting out at school not because they're a bad kid but | because their is some unhealthy dynamic in the school or home | environment. The kid's behavior is just a symptom of | something unacknowledged and in that case the kid is the | healthy one bringing attention to the problem. Pain is your | body telling you something needs attention. | | Mild trolling and shitposting is mostly harmless and perhaps | an appropriate response to being very online and maybe a | measure of the health of an online community. | | One of the big problems though is that trolling and | shitposting can easily be weaponized into coordinated | harassment on ideological grounds (gamergate, cancelling, | etc) which can be construed as a symptom of the current | culture war and perhaps social media companies should pay | more attention to the problem. | wpietri wrote: | I"m glad to see this point made: | | > I'm not saying that all online bad behaviour is because of | mental health issues or personality disorders: lots of people are | just dickheads, and there's no need to pathologise them. | | One of the important lessons I took away from a milestone book on | abuse, "Why Does He Do That?" is that people really want to | excuse harmful behaviors as illness. When often, repeated bad | behavior happens because it works for the person in question. | HarryHirsch wrote: | Yes, there's a feedback loop, same as with alcoholism. It's | nice and good to consider alcoholism a disease, but there's a | point where the not yet completely dependent person should say | "It's not even 4 o'clock yet and there's no social reason, what | am I doing with this can of beer?" | SamoyedFurFluff wrote: | I'd like to second "Why Does He Do That?". Pointing out that | abusive husbands often only break their wives' stuff was a real | eye opener for me in examining other people who harm others or | lash out and then claim that they weren't in control. If they | don't ever harm their own things or lash out at themselves then | they're not as out of control as they claim... | wpietri wrote: | It's an incredible book, one of the most astute things I've | ever read. And the patterns apply widely. I've found it very | useful in diagnosing bad bosses. | | Once my boss's boss fired my boss and suddenly took over | managing me. After my first meeting with him, where a nominal | 30-minute chat turned into 90 minutes of berating, I walked | out wondering what the hell happened. I grabbed my copy of | "Why Does He Do That?" and quickly found him described as | abuser subtype "Mr Right". | | It was a huge relief just to be able to put the head-spinning | experience in perspective. And it let me really prepare for | the rest of my (short) tenure there. | mcguire wrote: | I would agree; "homophobes" are not _afraid_ of homosexuality. | krapp wrote: | I kind of disagree. To me, there does seem to be an element | of fear behind homophobia, and homophobes often act as if | "the gay" is something they can catch like a disease, or be | talked or tricked into. It's practically a stereotype for | homophobes to present as hypermasculine in order to avoid | doing or saying anything that might be perceived as "gay." | Some men won't even wipe themselves out of fear that the | sensation of toilet paper on their buttocks will turn them | gay. | | And that's not even getting into political and culture fears | like male-to-female transgender people "trapping" men into | having sex with them, or using the "wrong" bathrooms, or the | extreme right-wing fears of a "gay agenda" to undermine | traditional Christian-oriented culture, or "feminizing | chemicals" being added to the water (the whole "gay frogs" | thing) to increase the homosexual population and emasculate | male aggression and military readiness. People even argue | that homosexuality presents a threat to human evolution | itself, despite being present in many known (and not extinct) | animal species and likely humanity's own evolutionary | ancestors as well as humanity itself. | mcguire wrote: | " _" feminizing chemicals" being added to the water (the | whole "gay frogs" thing) to increase the homosexual | population and emasculate male aggression and military | readiness..._" | | Actually that part is kinda true. A fair bit of the | effluent from paper mills, say, are estrogen analogs. | taneq wrote: | This whole trope of recasting "anti-X" as "X-phobic" is | something that really irks me. Maybe there's a group of | closeted X who doth protest too much, but there's generally a | much larger group of people who are just assholes to X, and | trying to spin it as "they're just _afraid_ of you " smacks | too much of the old "the bullies are _just jealous_ ". No, | often it's not jealousy, it's just people being assholes to | targets they think can't fight back. | verytrivial wrote: | Trolls create anger and conflict and conflict drives engagement. | But that is as nothing compared to the engagement you get from | public spectacles of righteous indignation. Social media breeds a | special sort narcissistic positive feedback loop and it turns out | a very small amount of validation is all that is required to set | people off. | | But trolls usually know they're trolls. On the other hand take | for example Twitter user Oli London [1]. I can no longer tell | parody from sincere in this "influencers" persona, but wow, does | it drive engagement. Is this guy ok? There are thousands of | accounts cheering him/them and many others on. | | [1] https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV | [deleted] | techrat wrote: | To say it succinctly... | | Psychopaths like psychopaths. | | https://www.psypost.org/2018/10/study-psychopaths-are-attrac... | gverrilla wrote: | that's a very positive and progressive profile imho | shoto_io wrote: | This is... I don't know. I lack words to describe it. | [deleted] | bellyfullofbac wrote: | Hah, if he's willing to get botox in his lips he's probably | being sincere. Or, maybe it's just some sort of video editing | magic? | | A lot of online interaction is based on "If I can prove how | this person is terrible, then I can be happy because I've | proven to myself that I'm a better person.". Well, a glance at | this Twitter account makes me feel better, because I'm certain | he's a very unhappy troll, because people looking for offense | wherever they turn surely will find them, and he's probably a | very unhappy person because he feels he's been offended every | day. Ah, that sweet persecution complex! | gnull wrote: | You don't even have to look at extremes like Oli London (thanks | for the link, them/they/kor/ean are awesome!) for an example. | In the past few years, whenever I hear about something new | American wokes are suggesting or something Trump said, most of | the time I can't guess whether I'm being trolled or not. | [deleted] | exolymph wrote: | Relevant classic post: Most of What You Read on the Internet is | Written by Insane People, | https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most... | | ^ previously on HN twice, | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18881827 and | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25600274 | jchw wrote: | "Insane" is mostly meant in jest here, not to imply that heavy | contributors are mentally ill. The examples they picked out are | pretty ridiculous but are also the biggest outliers. The real | point here is that <1% of the users account for ~99% or so of | the consumed content. Which is interesting in its own right. | exolymph wrote: | I think "insane" in both contexts mainly denotes being a | cognitive outlier. | jchw wrote: | Ah, but "insane" is not used by the article - the term | "psychological issues" is, to imply some kind of mental | unwellness. | | OTOH, the Reddit post explicitly clarifies: | | > Edit: I guess my tone-projection is off. A lot of people | seem to be put-off by my usage of the word "insane." I | intended that as tongue-in-cheek and did not mean to imply | that any of them literally have diagnosable mental | illnesses. I have a lot of respect for all of the | individuals I listed and they seem like nice people, I was | just trying to make a point about how unusual their | behavior is. | | Unusual behavior? Yes. However, I think you can see how | that would not fall into the same bucket as the implication | of "psychological issues." This nuance is likely why people | have grown to dislike words like "insane" and "psychopath," | since these unintentional connections might warp people's | perspectives. | mioasndo wrote: | Psychology is pseudo-science, and the term 'psychological issues' | has about as much meaning as 'brain ghosts'. | dang wrote: | Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to | HN. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | mioasndo wrote: | Sorry mister. I must have brain ghosts. | derefr wrote: | Just because you can't identify what's going wrong to make | someone's car have unresponsive steering (the _etiology_ ), | doesn't mean you can't precisely identify the car as having | unresponsive steering (the _symptoms_.) | | Psychology is just fine at recognizing _symptoms_ (and | complexes of symptoms that go together, a.k.a. "syndromes") -- | and also very good at treating symptoms/syndromes, such that | they go away. | | Often, an understanding of the etiology isn't involved, but | also isn't needed, because it's the symptoms/syndrome that are | the problem, and the underlying pathology is otherwise benign. | There're very few psychological diseases that have an organic | origin, where treating the symptoms but _not_ the disease will | lead to the disease progressing and killing you. And those | diseases get treated carefully and separately, with workflows | that get you referred on any sign of such diseases to a | neurologist. | mioasndo wrote: | > Just because you can't identify what's going wrong to make | someone's car have unresponsive steering (the etiology), | doesn't mean you can't precisely identify the car as having | unresponsive steering (the symptoms.) | | Except in this case there is a (vague) diagnosis - something | is wrong with the car's computer (psychological issues). | | > Psychology is just fine at recognizing symptoms (and | complexes of symptoms that go together, a.k.a. "syndromes") | | You don't need psychology to recognise symptoms. Unless | you're saying psychology has it's own set of symptoms and | it's own terminology - which is just a truism. | | > and also very good at treating symptoms/syndromes, such | that they go away. | | Very debatable, and very provably false for most of | psychology's existence. | | > Often, an understanding of the etiology isn't involved, | | How often? | | > but also isn't needed, because it's the symptoms/syndrome | that are the problem, and the underlying pathology is | otherwise benign. | | So,the symptoms are a problem, but the causes of the symptoms | are not? How could you claim that the 'underlying pathology | is benign' without even knowing what it is? Imagine if this | level of rigour was applied to cancer - 'here take these | sedatives and painkillers to get rid of your symptoms... | don't worry the causes are totally benign'. It's absurd. | | > There're very few psychological diseases that have an | organic origin, where treating the symptoms but not the | disease will lead to the disease progressing and killing you. | | Except you really have no idea how many 'psychological | diseases' could be progressing and/or affecting you while you | mask the symptoms. How do you know such a disease isn't | present and progressing, if, as you said, you aren't even | able to identify the disease if it existed. | derefr wrote: | > You don't need psychology to recognise symptoms. Unless | you're saying psychology has it's own set of symptoms and | it's own terminology - which is just a truism. | | Psychology precisely defines syndromes (clusters of | symptoms), and then, in terms of syndromes, provides both: | | * tests qualifying patients into those syndromes (usually | in the form of various rating scales) | | * specific flowcharts for known-effective treatments for | patients qualified into a given syndrome | | It's not the rigor of physics, but rather the rigor of | engineering or civic planning: making rules for doctors to | follow that have been found in clinical practice to | optimize for population-wide outcomes. | | > How could you claim that the 'underlying pathology is | benign' without even knowing what it is? | | Because we _have_ figured out what the underlying pathology | is in many (not the majority, but many) cases, and almost | every underlying pathology we 've discovered _is_ something | benign: e.g. a genetic mutation that causes your synapses | to produce less of some messenger-chemical. Such mutations | have no long-term effect on your health, _other than_ | affecting your psychology. (And most of the cases we don't | understand present the same, are treated the same, and have | the same long-term health outcomes if treated or ignored, | and so are very likely to be _similar_ in etiology to known | diseases, despite not having yet been specifically | researched.) | | Also, as I said, psychiatrists pre-screen for non-benign | pathologies first, often _too_ widely. You can 't get | diagnosed with clinical depression (by a psychiatrist who's | doing their job) until you've been checked for vitamin | deficiencies, hypothyroidism, anemia, diabetes, etc. Even | in cases where you have 100% of the symptoms of clinical | depression, including ones that have no organic basis. | They'll still do the pre-screen, just to be sure you don't | have clinical depression _and_ one of those things. | | But _once you 're known to not have any of the known- | malignant pathologies_, then they can and will treat the | symptoms, because at that point the only problem they have | left to treat _is_ the symptoms. (What else would you | expect them to do? Drill a hole in your skull to biopsy | your brain tissue, to figure out what step in amine | metabolism is failing--just to end up with the _same | treatment_ they'd get to from looking at the symptoms?) | | > Except you really have no idea how many 'psychological | diseases' could be progressing and/or affecting you | | There is the simple observation that these syndromes aren't | _degenerative_. People can have e.g. untreated ADHD all | their lives, and they won 't live less long or end up in | the hospital more often than people without ADHD. That's | _despite_ ADHD being a syndrome with potentially dozens of | etiologies. Everything that causes that cluster of | symptoms, and _only_ that cluster of symptoms, is _equally_ | non-degenerative, because it's all _equally_ being | expressed solely as the same kind of non-long-term-harmful | down-line effect. | | A degenerative neurological disease makes itself pretty | obvious. Neurosyphilis is easy to recognize the symptoms | of, to the point that even doctors in the 1700s could make | the correlation that patients with that set of symptoms at | age 60, were the same people having a lot of casual sex at | age 20. | | > while you mask the symptoms | | When we treat a syndrome, what we're treating for usually | _is_ our best understanding of the etiology. Sometimes we | 're "sawing off one leg to make it even with the other" | (e.g. you have too few dopamine receptors, so instead of | telling your brain to make more -- which we don't know how | to do -- we tell your brain to make less dopamine), but the | treatment chosen is still putting the upstream system into | a new (and beneficial!) equilibrium state, rather than | "masking" down-line symptoms in the way that e.g. | painkillers do. | | (Though I would note that even painkillers are therapeutic | in some cases -- as often pain itself can have negative | short- or long-term consequences, e.g. acute inflammation | or acute increase in blood pressure in response to the | pain. A non-negligible part of the reason that people are | given opioids when they're in severe pain, is to decrease | the risk of them having a heart attack or going into | shock.) | mioasndo wrote: | > It's not the rigor of physics, but rather the rigor of | engineering or civic planning: | | I would say engineering has more rigour because almost | everything that really matters is based on rigorous | science. Engineering also includes a certain amount of | artistry, but that's generally within a rigorous | framework that allows this. But, yeah, as I said, | psychology is pseudo-science. | | > Because we've figured out what the underlying pathology | is many (not the majority, but many) cases | | Again, how many cases? If you've figured out the | underlying pathology for 1% of cases (which is still | many), how can you claim that underlying pathology is | 'almost always benign'? | | > and almost every underlying pathology we've discovered | is something benign: e.g. a genetic mutation that causes | your synapses to produce less of some messenger-chemical. | Such mutations have no long-term effect on your health, | other than affecting your psychology. | | First of all I would question the accuracy of these | diagnoses. Second, I would question the classification of | these pathologies as benign - a more accurate statement | is probably 'we don't know'. Third, you say 'other than | affecting your psychology' - so they often do actually | have long term effects on the person? | | > Like I said, psychiatrists pre-screen for non-benign | pathologies first, often too widely. You can't get | diagnosed with clinical depression (by a psychiatrist | who's doing their job) until you've been checked for | vitamin deficiencies, hypothyroidism, anemia, diabetes, | etc. Even in cases where you have 100% of the symptoms of | clinical depression, including ones that have no organic | basis. They'll still do the pre-screen, just to be sure. | | This is the only reason why psychology is even able to | exist - because all of the heavy lifting is done in the | realm of real science, and once real, understood | pathologies are excluded the psychologists/psychiatrists | can do their thing. That is, until yet another real | pathology is discovered and the guidelines have to be | updated such that psychologists don't end up mistreating | people with the condition as they were up until then. | | > But once you're known to not have any of the known- | malignant pathologies, then they can and will treat the | symptoms, because at that point the only problem they | have left to treat is the symptoms. | | So, basically, once the real medicine and science find | they cannot solve the problem, the patient is left with | the psychologist, who drugs the patient to mask the | symptoms? | | > (What else would you expect them to do? Biopsy your | brain?) | | Well, I don't expect a psychologist to have enough | expertise for a biopsy, but could I expect to at least | have a couple holes drilled in my skull, or maybe some | electroshock therapy? | | > There's also just by the simple observation that these | syndromes aren't degenerative. People can have e.g. | untreated ADHD all their lives, and they won't live less | long or end up in the hospital more often than people | without ADHD. | | ADHD isn't a pathology, and 'live less long & end up in | the hospital more' are not the only criteria I would | consider required to label a disease as benign - they | must have ongoing issues affecting their qualify of life | in order to be diagnosed with ADHD in the first place. | That being said, your statement is a pretty good argument | for why psychology is irrelevant. | | > When we treat a syndrome, what we're treating for | usually is our best understanding of the etiology. | | When you say 'our best understanding' you mean a | psychologists best understanding? The question is how | good is this 'best understanding' really? | | There are many different fields involved in modern | medicine - biology, chemistry, neuroscience, physics, | statistics, etc. What does psychology add? From where I'm | sitting it adds absolutely nothing, and is far less | rigorous. | derefr wrote: | > But, yeah, as I said, psychology is pseudo-science. | | _Science_ is about doing experiments to get data that | allow you to create+refine models of reality that make | predictions on what further data will look like. | | Psychology is a science. People may argue whether it is a | _hard_ science, but it's doing all the _science_ things. | | What is the difference between an RCT on how a drug | affects cancer (given some formal rating scale for | cancer), vs. an RCT on how a drug affects ability to | concentrate (given some formal rating scale for ability- | to-concentrate)? The former is considered medical | research. The latter is considered psychological | research. | | > Well, I don't expect a psychologist to have enough | expertise for a biopsy, but could I expect to at least | have a couple holes drilled in my skull, or maybe some | electroshock therapy? | | Uhhh... _why_? Both of those treatments are almost-always | worse /higher-risk than just putting up with whatever was | wrong with you before. | | Also, I don't _want_ people to drill holes in my skull. | Most people don't. It is, in fact, considered unethical | by most medical boards to drill holes in a patient's | skull, if what you're treating for would not be worse | than a hole in the skull. (And a hole in the skull is | _very_ risky, in terms of liability to infection, stroke, | etc.) | | This is my point: psychiatrists are people who, like IT | help desk techs, try to diagnose a thing by hearing it | described over the phone, with no ability to touch or | interact with it. Psychology is the model, the best set | of predictions we're been able to attain, for how the | mind works, given that we can only interact with it this | way. | | Psychologists try _very hard_ , using a _lot_ of rigor | and _very powerful_ statistical methods, in an attempt to | extract signal from the super-noisy clinical input of the | practice of clinical psychiatry and of human psychiatric | research. (Plus animal psychological studies, where we | have the alternate problem of trying to model a mind we | _can_ probe directly but _can't_ communicate with.) | | "Unethical psychology" would be a hard science indeed. | | > When you say 'our best understanding' you mean a | psychologists best understanding? | | I mean humanity's best understanding. The academic- | scientific 'us' -- everyone working together to advance | the frontier of knowledge. | | ---------- | | Addressing your comments as a whole, you seem to have | conflated the practice of clinical psychiatry, with the | medical science of psychology. | | "Psychology" is just what neuroscientists call their | neurological behaviour studies, when the study doesn't | involve or rely on a white-box model for what's | happening, only a black-box behavioural model. | | In modern practice, there are no psychologists who aren't | neurologists; no psychology paper is being written by | someone who isn't a neuroscientist. "Psychology" is to | "neuroscience" as "ML" is to "Computer Science" -- i.e. a | specific sub-discipline that some researchers might focus | on, but not because they lack the skills outside of that | discipline; rather only because they enjoy the process of | doing that particular type of research more. | | _Psychiatry_ is the practice of using psychological | findings in a clinical, medical context. Psychiatrists | _are doctors_ , who have then further _specialized_ by | learning deeply+broadly about the various models-of- | understanding that psychologists have developed. They | know as much about _medicine_ as any other doctor; they | just have the additional understanding that e.g. | "depressed people aren't just sad." (Which is, y'know, | something we had to _prove_ , and all the papers that do | that are _psychology_ papers.) | | As such, psychiatrists are probably the doctors it'd be | most beneficial to talk to, if you have a problem that is | potentially psychologically rooted. A regular GP, who | never touched any of that specialty while getting their | degree, _will_ be able to recognize organic diseases, but | _won't_ necessarily recognize psychiatric syndromes, and | so will be very likely to _mis-_ diagnose a purely- | psychiatric syndrome _as_ an organic disease. | s5300 wrote: | >And those diseases get treated carefully and separately, | with workflows that get you referred on any sign of such | diseases to a neurologist. | | No they don't. Are they _supposed to?_ Yes. But, at least in | the US, things just don 't go as smoothly as they should with | regards to this because our healthcare system is | incomprehensibly worthless. | sli wrote: | Your complaint seems to be with the US healthcare system | and not psychology. | brudgers wrote: | An even larger number proportion is people being assholes because | they can...just like offline bad behavior. | | Mental illness reduces culpability. | | Attributing _most_ bad behavior to mental illness excuses it. It | treats Twitter trolls as if they have no agenda. | | But Twitter is what we celebrated in the Arab Spring. An | effective propaganda platform. That's how trolls use it...to | promote ideologies. That's why the article leads with LGBT | hotness; to define the victim perpetrator roles. | callesgg wrote: | Anyone that says anything that is meant to hurt people has | psychological problems. | | But reading intent is impossible. | [deleted] | bingidingi wrote: | >About 70% of DID patients are also diagnosed with BPD, and the | two conditions are often considered part of the same spectrum. | | >I'm certainly not saying that all trans people have personality | disorders or that being trans is a mental illness. | | A little bit of whiplash on this one. Despite the sentence or two | claiming what the author is purportedly not doing, the rest of | the article seems to indicate otherwise. If you don't want an | article that makes you look like you're conflating trans people | and mental illness... don't use a trans person as a springboard | to talk about mental illness. | zozbot234 wrote: | > A little bit of whiplash on this one. Despite the sentence or | two claiming what the author is purportedly not doing, the rest | of the article seems to indicate otherwise. | | Trans people _who actively post online about their trans | status_ are a narrowly selected subset of trans people as a | whole, and those _who act obnoxious enough to be a foremost | example of OP 's point_ even more peculiarly so. One should | never try to derive generalized descriptive statements from | such narrow anecdata. | falldmg wrote: | To say there is no issues with irrational behavior in the LGBT | community online would be criminal dishonesty. This is not a | personal indictment against trans people or LGBT people as a | whole, who have existed before Twitter, before Tumblr, and | before Live Journal. The author, IMO, should not have to jump | through Olympic hoops in order to distance themselves from the | transphobic conclusion being pushed on them. They said that | wasn't their intent, and the article doesn't appear to draw | that conclusion. That really ought to be the end of it. | | This is exactly one of the problems with modern internet | discourse. And I know someone is reading this comment wondering | if I'm "one of the good ones". This mindset is, in itself, | toxic and irrational. While bad intent matters, the absense of | evidence of bad intent should be good enough ground to stand | on. | slver wrote: | So we can't discuss trans people as a category and their | correlations? | | There's a line between avoiding harmful stereotypes that lead | to unfair discrimination and willful ignorance or | misrepresentation of facts in service of political correctness. | | It's extremely hard to say where this line is. | | But we still have to be aware of its existence. | bingidingi wrote: | I'm not saying it can't or shouldn't be discussed, but the | author was so conscious of the correlations made in the | article that they felt the need to literally write that | they're _not_ trying to make those correlations. | | There's no shortage of people linking transgendered people | and mental illness, just as there's no shortage of people | linking homosexuality to mental illness. If you're not trying | to strengthen those assumptions, then use different | examples... it seems lazy to just try to hand-wave it away in | a sentence rather than using a different example. | rbanffy wrote: | Considering the amount of discrimination, harassment, and | hostility these people endure every single day, I would be | surprised if they remained perfectly sane. | zepto wrote: | Lots of trans people in fact _are_ mentally ill. | | Given the additional stresses and oppresive social experiences | trans people face _and are outspoken about_ , this is entirely | unsurprising. | bingidingi wrote: | Sure, but this isn't an article about the mental health | issues faced by trans people, it's an article about mental | illness' role on the internet that uses DID, BPD, and trans | people as the primary example of mental illness. | jandrese wrote: | Mental health in relation to sexual identity is a massive | minefield in online discussion. As soon as you go down that | path you are in the realm of "curing" trans people of their | mental illnesses, aka literally Hitler. It doesn't matter | what you're actually saying, the only thing very online | people are going to read is how you want to eliminate deviant | sexual identity with medicine. | unethical_ban wrote: | amznthrwaway: If you read this, know you are shadowbanned - | only certain people can see your content. I can only guess | it has something to do with being a bigot and not just | wishing for people to die, but directly wishing for the | parents of fellow posters here to die. | | You claim to have been shadow-banned before (I know I was, | many years ago) but somehow, you don't know you've been | banned for the past two months. And somehow you don't | realize how unacceptable it is to criticize and insult | racial groups and all members within it simply because of | their skin color, no matter the color. | dang wrote: | You've broken the site guidelines, which say: " _Don 't | feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead._" | a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls. Obviously that | should go double, at least, when the user is already | banned and the comment is killed. Turning a dead comment | by a banned user into an off-topic distraction and even | starting a flamewar about it as you've basically done | here, is an abuse in its own right. Please don't do | anything like that on HN again. | | It's also a bad bet to assume that a trollish account | isn't aware that they're banned here; the majority are | perfectly well aware, and most have created many accounts | and been banned many times. They continue to post with | banned accounts as a way of continuing to spew into the | forum and troll the minority of users who have 'showdead' | turned on. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | unethical_ban wrote: | I suppose I'll follow the rules, but I think | shadowbanning is really tacky to do except in the case of | actual spam. | | Note my name. I was shadow-banned for one sarcastic | comment eight years ago, despite being an otherwise good- | faith, decent contributor. Maybe things are different | now, but I've never gotten over the feeling of wasting my | time putting thoughts together and responding to a | conversation and finding out I muted. | | Hell, I'm a mod of a city subreddit, and one of the other | mods has shadowbanned a complete asshat of a person. I | don't have ban powers, otherwise I would ban them | outright. It makes me uncomfortable to be a party to | disrespect like that. | dang wrote: | We don't shadowban established accounts--we tell people | we're banning them and why: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateR | ange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... That's been the case | for many years. I wrote about this the other day: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27573675. | | The exceptions are spammers and serial trolls. Those we | continue to shadowban, for different reasons. In the case | of spammers, telling them they're banned would just | invite more spam, and in the case of serial trolls, would | invite more trolling--besides which, serial trolls know | perfectly well that they're banned. That's what "serial | troll" means. The account you thought you were helping by | telling them they were banned is one of the latter, and | if you saw the shockingly abusive things they'd posted in | the past I'm pretty sure you would think twice before | casting them as an innocent victim. | | Don't you think it would be fair to update your views | after 8 years? HN moderation has changed massively since | then. When pg was the sole moderator of HN, it was | completely impossible for him to put the kind of | attention into moderation that we've been doing since we | took over in 2014. That's the primary difference. | | If you look through my comment history you'll see that | I've posted tens of thousands of comments and spent | thousands of hours exhorting users to follow HN's rules, | cajoling them and coaxing them and warning and scolding | and coaching and helping and teaching. We cut people an | incredible amount of slack before banning them. It's | repetitive work and frequently meets with aggressive | attacks and the most incredible sorts of imaginary | accusation. I think it's reasonable to expect a decade- | long user like yourself to cut us a little slack as well. | If you think that we're beheading people without | consideration, or treating them in any way | disrespectfully, let alone unethically, I would invite | you to observe more closely. I slip up sometimes and am | happy to make corrections when people point that out, but | I don't think charges of systemic malpractice are | justified. | amznthrwaway wrote: | And very online people like you whine and cry about how | you're the real victims if anybody critiques any aspects of | your ideas, or probes your motives. | | Because very online white male people are so ensconced in | privilege that they not only demand to be able to say any | thought that comes into their head; you are such entitled | little princesses that you must be able to say it without | anybody ever being even slightly mean to you in reply. | | And then, comically, whiny, thin-skinned little losers like | yourself call other people snowflakes and characterize them | poorly, without ever realizing what an absolute hypocrite | you are. | chrismeller wrote: | This is one of the main reasons I feel like the current culture | of never disagreeing with anyone so you can never possibly offend | anyone is ultimately toxic. | | As a person with (currently treated and doing fine) psychological | issues I don't expect any single comment to get through to you, | but if there are never any negative indicators that you are the | problem, rather than everyone else... there is a mathematically | insignificant chance you will ever realize something might be | wrong. | | Particularly so in the case of the unfortunate stereotype of | lonely loser who lives in his mother's basement and spends all | his time on the computer. | news_to_me wrote: | I totally agree. In my friendships, I highly value people that | will tell me when they disagree, and I try to avoid people who | are hard to disagree with. Some of my favorite people are | stereotypical "New York" types. | 3grdlurker wrote: | > the current culture of never disagreeing with anyone so you | can never possibly offend anyone | | I'm not sure what you're talking about--I wonder if this is | just your extremely subjective experience of the internet? | Because I thought that the internet lately has been nothing but | disagreement. | sreque wrote: | I think people disagree with each other all the time right | now, but rarely ever actually listen. You can't update your | view of the world based on feedback if you refuse to take the | feedback seriously in the first place or think critically | about opposing points of view. | [deleted] | cmckn wrote: | Agreed, I think this sentiment is along the lines of | "political correctness run amok" which is a completely | subjective interpretation of changing social norms. Whereas I | think the article is discussing how some use the impersonal | void of social media as an outlet for their anxiety, etc. | | Personally, I try to limit the amount of time I spend on such | websites, and HN is really the only place I read the comments | (in moderation). Consuming everyone else's anxiety is | unproductive, because it skews how I view the world (and the | people in it), and raises my blood pressure. :) | navbaker wrote: | I actively avoid Twitter, but still get force fed Twitter | opinions via most news websites. I wish they would stop | producing headlines about the latest "backlash" or | "outrage" on there. | dwaltrip wrote: | I recommend not spending much time on those types of news | sites :) | bellyfullofbac wrote: | But, how would they make money otherwise?! /s | | I think fucking social butterfly Arianna Huffington [1]'s | website Huffington Post is the one that started the trend | of headlines like "X {destroys,obliterates} Y" to report | on 140 Twitter outbursts. Thanks, lady, for your | contribution in destroying the media landscape. | | https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/1994/11/ariannas- | virt... | nitrogen wrote: | _I thought that the internet lately has been nothing but | disagreement._ | | Perhaps it's disagreement across tribes, but mandatory | agreement within each tribe? | wpietri wrote: | I like your point, but I think you take it too far here: | | > if there are never any negative indicators that you are the | problem, rather than everyone else... there is a mathematically | insignificant chance you will ever realize something might be | wrong | | A lot of my self-improvement has come not because of explicit | negative feedback, but through paying attention to people and | reflecting on who I want to be in the world. That's not to say | that any approach is generally superior. People have all sorts | of ways of dealing with the world. | darkerside wrote: | What you may not realize is, some people literally don't know | how to do that, or that it's even something anyone would ever | do. If you dropped into an alien culture, you'd need to learn | a new raft of different signals all over again. | rmellow wrote: | Hi, immigrant here. I'm literally an "alien" from/in this | planet. | | Canadians are very nice, but their famous agreeableness | (and passive-agressiveness) often prevents me from | realizing when I've committed a transgression, and makes it | so much harder to integrate into the culture. | | Negative feedback is very useful and I would be grateful to | get it instead of receiving a veiled response. | derefr wrote: | A lot of the bad in the world comes from leaving people | unequipped of certain basic "soft skills". It's not the | same thing as mental illness, but it has similar effects. | | And, for some reason, people become seemingly completely | unwilling to learn-by-example any new-to-them soft skills, | once they reach adulthood. | | Or perhaps "lifelong learning of soft skills" _is itself_ a | soft skill that people aren 't being taught. | | ----- | | Anecdote: I was diagnosed/treated for ADHD as an adult, | whereupon the "social soft skills" part of my brain | suddenly started working like it never did through my | childhood. | | I went from thinking I was on the autistic spectrum, to | noticing all sorts of new patterns while observing social | interactions. I quickly realized that my _capacity_ for | social-skill learning had never been missing; but rather, | the learning itself had just sort of been "paused", for | lack of "voltage" in the right brain areas. | | I did / am still doing a lot of delayed soft-skill learning | as an adult. And it's really starkly obvious how much other | people with me in the same situations, _aren 't_ deriving | the same learning I do from those situations -- even when | those people are sorely lacking in the relevant social | skill, but aren't _otherwise_ socially unskilled. It seems | like they just aren 't _bothering_ to look at the situation | under the right "lens" to see the pattern, even though | it's a "lens" they clearly possess. | wpietri wrote: | Sure! Everybody's born not knowing how to do that. Or | understanding most social signals. Some of us learn. As I | said, people have all sorts of ways of dealing with the | world. | amznthrwaway wrote: | > This is one of the main reasons I feel like the current | culture of never disagreeing with anyone so you can never | possibly offend anyone is ultimately toxic. | | This culture doesn't exist in the real world. | | A bigger problem is people like who who soak themselves in | hyper-partisan media and ideas, lose the ability to engage in | critical thought and analysis, and whose brains turn to mush. | | So let me be clear: you're a moronic idiot who is completely | and totally fucking wrong both on the facts and your (dull- | headed) interpretation of your invented reality. | darkerside wrote: | I continue to believe that downvotes would make Twitter and | Facebook a healthier and happier place. | bluefirebrand wrote: | > if there are never any negative indicators that you are the | problem, rather than everyone else... there is a mathematically | insignificant chance you will ever realize something might be | wrong. | | Then again, depending on the psychological issues it doesn't | matter how many negative indicators there are that you are the | problem. Some people just seem unable to accept they have | issues, or unable to correctly process that people's reaction | to them is in fact negative. | | There's just such a wide range of things here. | emerged wrote: | Narcissists consider both positive and negative interactions | to be positive, and narcissism has been on the rise for years | owed primarily to social media. | nickysielicki wrote: | This sort of wishy washy argument (seemingly accepted by | generally educated/reasonable people on HN) is the reason that | society is so scientifically illiterate. It has nice sounding | arguments that embed themselves into your thought patterns but | zero real substance. Articles like this are how you get hordes of | people to believe something without cause. The next time you see | someone act "bad" online, you'll be able to excuse yourself for | thinking, "that person has 'psychological issues'" instead of | thinking any deeper. You saw an article about that, after all. | | The plural of anecdote is not evidence. | falldmg wrote: | Unfortunately, your critique has even less substantiation than | the article, and therefore it would be even sillier to draw | conclusions from it... | nickysielicki wrote: | That's only really a fair criticism if I had written an | entire article about why this article is bad. Of course a | comment about an article will have less substance than an | article, that doesn't excuse this article from failing to | meet the higher bar that ought to exist for an article. | falldmg wrote: | No, I disagree. Your critique is shallow even for it's | relative prominence. The article literally opens with a | counterpoint that you _shouldn 't_ generally use this as an | excuse. What you said in your comment acts almost as | perfect critique for itself: it sounds right, but it has | zero substance. Why should anyone value a critique that | says almost zero actual things about the article and | instead draws a general conclusion that sounds like it came | from purely reading the headline? | slingnow wrote: | Having the article state that you "shouldn't use it as an | excuse" is probably about as effective as the surgeon | generals warning on the side of a pack of cigarettes. | | What makes you believe that quick disclaimer would | discredit the claim the OP is making? | okareaman wrote: | You don't say what is wishy washy or give any supporting | evidence to your assertion that HN users seemingly fall for | such arguments or how "nice sounding" arguments embed | themselves into our thought patterns to control us or how these | wishy washy nice sounding arguments lead us to dismiss people. | You sound like you may have psychological issues and I say this | as a non-neurotypical (bipolar) | nickthemagicman wrote: | That's a little ad hominem to diagnose them from one | paragraph. | | There's actually a well known term for what they're | describing. | | It's called pop science and is a very real thing. | nickysielicki wrote: | I'm _pretty_ sure they 're joking. | okareaman wrote: | Yes, I made myself laugh. As a bipolar, I often find | things funny that other people don't. | droopyEyelids wrote: | The article's actual title is "Are Twitter trolls mentally ill?" | | It makes me want to talk about how the concept of the troll has | evolved from something specific to something very general. I | glanced through the article and none of the behaviors it listed | are what I'd consider troll behaviors. They're just the patterns | of mild mental illness. | | Trolls, in my old-man's definition, are almost a type of hunter, | looking to bait and confuse their victims. | | Trolls wouldn't be the hoards suffering from "sanctimony, | emotional aridity and ideological orthodoxy", and exhibiting | BPD/DID behaviors. Trolls would be the people trying to provoke | the above. | jandrese wrote: | I've seen news articles about "internet trolls" who followed a | neighbor around and sat outside of her window but also looked | at her Facebook page. The term has already lost its meaning. | hogFeast wrote: | Would you call Sacha Baron Cohen a troll? | loudtieblahblah wrote: | Absolutely | ben_w wrote: | Speaking for myself and not @droopyEyelids, absolutely. | kingsuper20 wrote: | A troll is it doing it for fun and as an art form, I'd say that | the horrid people on twitter are another thing. | | As mentioned in an earlier thread, I see a close relationship | between the Twitter People and That Guy who goes to all the | city council meetings to yell. They don't make up a majority of | the population, but they sure can burn up some bandwidth. | frumper wrote: | I'd agree with that. I view a troll as having no ideals they | cling to. They have a goal to provoke and incite with the least | amount of effort and that usually involves taking a | controversial stance for that given audience. It's what makes | arguing with trolls, or feeding trolls, so pointless. | bjornsing wrote: | Interesting discussion, but on second thought I'm not sure what | to make of it. Personality is a continuum and personality | disorders are not clearly defined illnesses, like the flu or | Parkinson's. They are just areas of the continuum that are deemed | troublesome for the person or their surroundings. One of the | diagnostic criteria for BPD is "Inappropriate, intense anger or | difficulty controlling anger". So saying that people with BPD are | overrepresented among people who display anger online is a bit | like saying red cars are overrepresented among red objects. Yes | they are, by definition. | slackfan wrote: | I for one, will be looking forward to the mandatory psychoactive | chemicals in the water due to these studies. | taneq wrote: | 2) Bad behaviour stems from psychological issues. | | 1) Psychological issues are things that cause bad behaviour. | ylee wrote: | Nothing has changed since Jerry Pournelle wrote 35 years ago when | discussing online forums: | | >I noticed something: most of the irritation came from a handful | of people, sometimes only one or two. If I could only ignore | them, the computer conferences were still valuable. Alas, it's | not always easy to do. | | This is what killed Usenet,[1] which 40 years ago offered much of | the virtues of Reddit in decentralized form. The network's design | has several flaws, most importantly no way for any central | authority to completely delete posts (admins in moderated groups | can only approve posts), since back in the late 1970s Usenet's | designers expected that everyone with the werewithal to | participate online would meet a minimum standard of behavior. | Usenet has always had a spam problem, but as usage of the network | declined as the rest of the Internet grew, spam's relative | proportion of the overall traffic grew. | | That said, there are server- and client-side anti-spam tools of | varying effectiveness. A related but bigger problem for Usenet is | people of the type this post discusses, those with actual mental | illness; think "50 year olds with undiagnosed autism". Usenet is | such a niche network nowadays that there has to be meaningful | motivation to participate, and if the motivation is not a sincere | interest in the subject it's, in my experience, going to be | people with very troubled personal lives which their online | behavior reflects. Again, as overall traffic declined, their | relative contribution and visibility grew. This, not spam, is | what has mostly killed Usenet. | | [1] I am talking about traditional non-binary Usenet here | sillysaurusx wrote: | > The network's design has several flaws, most importantly no | way for any central authority to completely delete posts | | Notice that HN mods can completely delete posts, but never do | so (or at least, not without the target's permission). Flag, | yes, delete, no. | | I think it's a cool distinction, and hopefully future social | networks will take a cue from it. Being able to see what's | going on (showdead) felt like an important diff from Reddit, | and avoided much of the "un-edit Reddit" wars. (There are sites | dedicated to tracking deletions by moderators.) | TMWNN wrote: | >I think it's a cool distinction, and hopefully future social | networks will take a cue from it. Being able to see what's | going on (showdead) felt like an important diff from Reddit, | and avoided much of the "un-edit Reddit" wars. | | I did not know this and am glad to hear it. Yes, I've wished | for a long time that Reddit would make all mod actions | visible in diff form. Not being able to tell without opening | a post/comment while logged out whether it has been hidden by | a mod without any notification is maddening. | sillysaurusx wrote: | Yeah, if you go to your profile and turn on "showdead", | you'll see a lot more stuff. There are some mod actions | that aren't explicitly visible -- they can boot comments to | the bottom, for example, despite upvote count. But it's a | good compromise. | | And I don't think it would be a good idea for _every_ | action to be public. Maybe. It's one of those things that | requires some thought. There are a surprising number of | "behind the scenes" actions, and all of them being public | would just ignite a lot of "why would you do such a thing" | type debate, which is both a distraction and usually | mistaken. | | Sometimes it's not mistaken, though, so your idea isn't | without merit. | zozbot234 wrote: | > completely delete posts | | This could be done by sending special "cancel" messages; it was | then up to individual Usenet servers to figure out whether to | honor these cancel requests, through unspecified criteria. The | feature was somewhat hidden away in some Usenet clients to | discourage pointless abuse, but it was there. | | > A related but bigger problem for Usenet is people of the type | this post discusses, those with actual mental illness; think | "50 year olds with undiagnosed autism". | | IME, these people were mostly entertaining as opposed to | genuinely problematic. With killfiles being in common use and | 'plonking' being discussed routinely as the standard way of | dealing with annoyances, users were meaningfully incented to | always be on their best behavior as judged by other forum | denizens. | ylee wrote: | >This could be done by sending special "cancel" messages; it | was then up to individual Usenet servers to figure out | whether to honor these cancel requests, through unspecified | criteria. The feature was somewhat hidden away in some Usenet | clients to discourage pointless abuse, but it was there. | | In practice the cancel/supersede messages were and are never | universally honored. | armchairhacker wrote: | Personally, the main reason I dislike Twitter / Reddit / | sometimes even HN, isn't the trolling or toxic posts. It's just | that most of the posts are - not interesting. Like dumb memes, | popular "unpopular" opinions, or "hot takes" that are the same | stuff over and over. | | Even on HN, post after post is: crypto sucks, advertisements | suck, cancel culture sucks, Amazon making $300 billion sucks, | "bring back the old internet!" And I agree with all of that (heck | sometimes I repeat it myself), but I don't need to hear it over | and over. | theknocker wrote: | Cool now we can all talk about how anything we personally find | abrasive must be a mental illness. | sva_ wrote: | I'm just glad that there finally seems to be a backlash against | all this nonsensical internet-hate-mob stuff. Like a big wave in | the ocean that finally recedes. Hopefully. | [deleted] | paperwasp42 wrote: | Having worked in the publishing industry, my experiences support | the conclusions of this article. | | About ~40% of authors I worked with had diagnosed mental health | issues, and were quite open about their struggles. Most were a | delight to work with--I strongly admire people who can be open | and honest about their struggles. | | But about ~15% were... not so delightful. Working with them was | hell, because they'd flip-flop constantly between treating me as | sworn enemy or best friend. | | Their twitter feeds reflected this attitude. They were quick to | pick fights with bewildered victims, to scream to the skies how | evil X person was, how they were the victim of X's behavior. | | Having worked with them, I knew they were unstable and to ignore | their online shrieking. But to an outsider.... | | All outsiders see is an award-winning author, touted as a genius, | with that little blue check mark declaring that they're a | respected member of their field. So of course they're going to | listen when that author screams that they've been victimized. | | Of course, pointing out that this person is mentally ill isn't an | option--for one, it's confidential information. For two, you'll | be fired for being "disability-phobic". | | So there's no choice but to sit back and watch the unstable troll | rip apart other people. | | It's horrible. And it's one of the reasons I left the publishing | industry. It's slowly and steadily being overrun by mentally | unstable trolls, and it's starting to have a serious impact on | which books get published and which don't. (Hint: anything that | might possibly trigger the trolls will NOT get a publishing | contract.) | lmilcin wrote: | I don't buy it. | | I think there is simple statistical/neurological explanation. | | Part 1: | | We are exposed to much more information and interaction that we | have evolved for. Our brains have very biased/impractical | approach to understanding the world: if you hear about something | happening many times in large number then it automatically gives | large weight to it and treats it as normal/prevalent/dangerous | etc. | | This is also what somebody might mean when they say "a lie | repeated frequently enough becomes truth". That's how our brains | are built. | | Part 2: | | We tend to notice things that are out of ordinary more than | normal. Nobody spends time revisiting "normal" comments, but | people will notice and spend their focus disproportionately more | on mean behavior. | | Part 3: | | Internet amplifies things, but mostly things we focus on. This | means an extremely mean comment will tend to be amplified more | and get more visibility than a perfectly normal comment. | | Part 4: | | Even if 1 percent of 1 percent of people write an extremely mean | comment _just once_ that is still deluge of meanness that your | biased brain will understand as "mean" being frequent behavior | on the internet, something that is done by many people and | probably frequently. | marcus_holmes wrote: | > Part 3: | | >Internet amplifies things, but mostly things we focus on. This | means an extremely mean comment will tend to be amplified more | and get more visibility than a perfectly normal comment. | | It's not "the internet". It's social media and news. Which is | funded by advertising, so optimises for "engagement" (emotional | content). A mean comment in Usenet will die unread. A mean | comment on Facebook/Twitter will get algorithmically amplified | because it causes others to interact with it. | rossdavidh wrote: | I think your four points are all absolutely true. However, I | cannot plausibly think of a reason why we _wouldn't_ have a | disproportionate amount of online bad behavior from the | mentally ill. There's really almost nothing in the online | environment to prevent it, and quite a lot of mental conditions | result in manic phases of some sort that would cause them to | spew a lot of it online. | distributedsean wrote: | This is an interesting idea, feel free to ignore this comment | :) | jollybean wrote: | This is interesting, but it's missing the parts around the | amplification and institutionalization processes. | | Imagine if all of the world's troubling content were in the | 'comments section'. Would anyone care? No. The 'comments | section' doesn't get widely distributed, it's not backed by | institutions or influential individuals etc.. | | In order for these kerfluffles to have impact they need to be | picked up on by supposedly credible institutions, with a wide | reach. | | If the 'Cancel This Person' Tweet were to stay entirely on | Twitter among regular people - nobody would care that much. | | But when the media gets hold, backs it, propagates it, | institutions start to adjust possibly by making statements, | withholding funding etc. - that's what causes major concern and | material influence. | | More powerful systems and forces use statements made by | individuals (often decontextualized) as fodder in their wars | over attention, money and ideology. | mysterydip wrote: | I never made the connection to part 2 in the abstract before, | that makes total sense. If you're walking down the street and | see someone with two noses, you're going to notice, not the 20 | other "normal" people you passed at the same time. Why wouldn't | the same carry over to reading text or watching videos? | joe_the_user wrote: | Article: "diagnosing people from afar is a bad idea" ( _diagnoses | people from afar_ ) | | Reason that diagnosis from afar is illegitimate isn't just that | you don't have enough information (but there's that). Just as | important is that "real", official, mental health diagnoses | generally don't make sense without the context that a given | person isn't functioning in society, has violated some | institutional norm, etc. | | The role of mental health basically is to look at someone who's | considered non-functional and classify _how_ they 're non- | functional. If someone, mental health professional or otherwise, | looks at someone in society and doesn't like how they're | functioning but society is OK with this, that person can say | society or some part of it is insane but collective insanity is a | manifestly different phenomena than an individual diagnosis. | | Edit: Behavior some consider bad, that some people get away with | and that is actually prized by some other section of society | (whether it be hitting on women or taking ultra-moralist stances | or trolling generally or whatever) can't be official, | institutionally defined insanity, even I don't might informally | various actions "crazy" (which indeed occasionally offends people | in the present context). | | Edit2: Another I'd put is that the specific tools of the mental | health professional aren't tools for understanding people in | general and aren't tools for understanding bad behavior outside a | context where it's debilitating bad behavior. In those contexts, | sociologists, maybe, something specific to say but to a large | extent, specialized knowledge by itself may given an advantage | and someone tossing around psychiatric terms in this is kind of | engaging in pseudo-science. | stevenicr wrote: | How fast can an algorithm be put together to find evidence of | mental health issues via social media posts and then trigger a | waterfall of rights removals? | | It could be easy to argue that society may be better off without | those folks having rights. | | Flagged as mental - - loose free speech - blocked from posting on | networks, email capabilities removed via isps, library and cell | phone companies. - Flagged so can not purchase firearms - | soldiers may now be sent to watch over you in your place or | residence/work - things you have said in the past and things you | know can be studied - search history, alexa/assistant stuff - you | can not hide what you know. - You could wait for a jury trial but | never be able to see your accuser, it's a bot written by a very | good professor/doctor - a jury of your 'peers' would be people | who have never been red-flagged as problematic social media | posters. - civil trials would be auto-lost because the bot would | know you are bad. - would it be cruel punishment to be cut off | from all things digital? no dating, friends, family, food orders, | rides.. | | It seems you can slay the bill of rights pretty quickly simply | using a digital footprint. | | I read a submarine article today pushing for the expansion of | background checks for rights that did not include a bunch of | 'other side info' that should be discussed.. it can be easy for | something to be right and be used for the wrong reasons or in the | wrong way. | | I've also seen news where 'they' are asking social media | companies to hand over info to try to prevent offline violence as | one solution to things - | | at what scale does this become weaponized mass destruction? a | thousand people? ten thousand? | | Of course people will lose their right to vote, maybe parenting | rights and all sorts of others. | | All from a twitter rant. | | This is actually where we are right now I guess. | | The goldwater rule mentioned in the article may need to be | codified into national law to prevent these kinds of things from | running amok. | korethr wrote: | Just reading that, my skin crawls and I can feel the nucleation | of an icy fear in the back of my mind. Not just no, but Hell | Fucking No. | | I argue that those genuinely arguing for such a system fail to | realize just how quickly it can and will be weaponized against | themselves. | slibhb wrote: | To me, the interesting question here is whether symptoms of BPD | (or mental illness more generally) might confer an advantage when | it comes to building a following on social media. For example, | catastrophizing seems to be a staple on the many popular social | media accounts. | kayodelycaon wrote: | I don't think BPD would be an advantage due to instability. | There is nothing quite like a neurotypical person being | dramatic. They can keep it up and keep going. It's a stable | "crazy" that doesn't have other problems getting in the way of | being dramatic. | paulpauper wrote: | No it does not. The most successful people on social media, i | have found to be pretty cool and collected. The mental illness | symptoms i think are more likely to come from having no | following and feeling ignored. That will drive some ppl mad. | Daishiman wrote: | Having dated people with BPD, it certainly created an emotional | roller coaster that makes the highs really high; normal | relations can even seem boringly stable after that. | tus89 wrote: | Did you know the background of unherd? If you did you might not | have regard for this. | dbrueck wrote: | I don't know the background - tell me more. | | Also, your comment comes across as an ad hominem attack, not | sure if I'm just misreading it though. | tus89 wrote: | It was created to promulgate extremist Christian-right | propaganda - the kind that is "un-heard" in the mainstream | media in the UK apparently. | | There are a lot of such organizations that don't openly | declare their ideological background, and funding sources. | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | Can you cite that UnHerd was founded by and funded by | "extremist Christian-right propaganda" forces? Considering | that its executive editor has frequently featured | commentators who are downright anti-religion (e.g. Richard | Dawkins), and various commentators who subscribe to old- | school 20th-century leftism including its antipathy to | religion, that is a claim hard to believe. | tus89 wrote: | So I search google for "undherd Richard Dawkins", first | link: | | https://unherd.com/2021/04/why-the-atheists-turned-on- | richar... | | "Why the atheists turned on Dawkins - They care more | about social justice than whether or not God exists" | | Written by: Ben Sixsmith is an English writer living in | Poland. He has written for Quillette, Areo, The Catholic | Herald.... | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | Yet at the same time, there is this [0] posted by a | higher-ranking staff member. That you have found an | article written by a contributor who has also written for | a Catholic publication does not served as proof of your | claim in the GP that UnHerd was founded to push | "extremist Christian propaganda" - the whole point of | UnHerd is that it draws on writers from a range of | ideological outlooks. | | And FWIW, the idea mentioned in these links that early- | millennium New Atheism eventually evolved into the | current wave of social-justice activism, is something | that has been often set forth by people here on HN and is | not exclusive to any particular religious or anti- | religious viewpoint. | | [0] https://unherd.com/thepost/richard-dawkins-scientism- | is-a-di... | tus89 wrote: | > the whole point of UnHerd is that it is includes people | from a range of ideological outlooks. | | You keep saying that. Let's like at some random headlines | from their "contributors" page: | | > Ideology should not trump children's health (anti- | trans) | | > France's mega-mosque problem | | > The emptiness of 'British values' | | > The death of American patriotism | | > The problem with male feminists | | > Universities have destroyed feminism | | > Can Labour be saved from the hard Left? | | > Labour isn't working | | > Why liberals are scared of football | | > Is Labour dead? | | > America attracts the wrong immigrants | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | Again, the whole point of UnHerd is that it includes | people from a range of ideological outlooks, who | ordinarily would be opposed to one another, because they | share some concerns and can forge a common cause in | publishing. | | None of the headlines that you cite are specific to | "extremist Christian-right propaganda", indeed these are | themes are commonly discussed by those who identify as | leftist and unreligious, but feel that certain things | that are presently insisted on in leftism as de rigeur, | are not part of the leftist tradition they recognize from | a few decades back. For example, with regard to being | "anti-trans", there are a _lot_ of soixante-huitards who | find the current focus on trans activism on the left | excessive and even problematic, because it was utterly | foreign to their struggle against rightist forces. | | You have still not brought forth any proof of your claim | above that UnHerd was founded and funded expressly for | "extremist Christian-right propaganda" purposes. The | gentlemanly thing to do would be to back up that claim, | or retract it. | tus89 wrote: | > includes people from a range of ideological outlooks, | who ordinarily would be opposed to one another, because | they share some concerns and can forge a common cause in | publishing | | LOL normally when people say "includes people from a | range of ideological outlooks", they _usually_ mean so | they present a range of ideological viewpoints. What you | actually mean is so they can present a single ideological | viewpoint, how counter-intuitive. | | > None of the headlines that you cite are specific to | "extremist Christian-right propaganda" | | Anti-islmam, anti-feminist, anti-left, anti-immigrant, | anti-trans...gosh what was I thinking! It's true the | headlines are not overtly religious...but I never that | was the case. Propaganda is often subtle so it can hide | it's true nature and purpose and origin. | | > You have still not brought forth any proof of your | claim above that UnHerd was founded and funded expressly | for "extremist Christian-right propaganda" purposes | | Websites that take up the anti-trans cause are either | secular radical feminist or Christian-right. Let's look | up the founder of unherd shall we? (you probably guessed | I already knew this). | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Montgomerie | | > Montgomerie was born into an army family in Barnstaple | in 1970.[7][8] He said in a Guardian interview[9] that | "his teenage Thatcherism was tempered by discovering | evangelical Christianity at sixteen". | | I guess it's not the radical feminist kind. | dragonwriter wrote: | Ben Sixsmith is neither a leader or founder of UnHerd, so | even if he's a Christian Right voice whose writing | they've carried, that hardly cobtradicts the claim that | they are diverse and that they don't focus on Christian | Right content, carrying much from sides opposing thst | viewpoint. | | Also, as Christian but pro-secular-politics left-leaning | person, I think the statement you quote as an example of | far right Christian propaganda is...just literal factual | truth; the negative reactions to Dawkins in some parts of | the atheist community is about social justice trumping | shared identity around belief in the nonexistence of God. | tus89 wrote: | A current tactic of the Christian-right is to enter into | alliances with people they would otherwise despise | (radical feminists, "scienceologists" like Dawkins) on | certain shared causes which are even more important to | them - the bonding cause currently is opposing | transgenderism. Dawkins happens to be transphobic - he | even lost awards over it. | version_five wrote: | The article isn't a study or something that needs institutional | credibility, it's just an opinion piece. Anyone interested can | just read it and decide what they think of it. | exolymph wrote: | People are capable on judging an argument on its own merits. | After all, if you don't think HN readers possess that | capability, why bother associating with the commentariat on | this website? | defaultname wrote: | A sizable number are never going to read the article or judge | its merits. Instead they'll click an arrow based on whether | the title matches their biases. "Yup, people I don't like | have psychological issues..." | | For the few that might it is generally worth knowing whether | it's actually worth the time. If the writer is someone | considered and knowledgeable, on a credible venue, for | instance. I know nothing about this site/writer so I'm not | commenting on that, but generally that is an input before one | spends the time on an essay. | anotherman554 wrote: | I guess it'd argue you can't judge an argument on its own | merits unless it's a philosophical argument. | | For example the best published scientific studies can't be | judged on their own merits because you have to trust that the | scientists actually conducted the studies and didn't fake the | data. So you basically have to fall back to some assumption | over whether the scientist is honest, not on the merits of | what they wrote in the study. | jchw wrote: | I Googled it and wasn't able to find anything terribly | interesting. From a brief look at the Wikipedia page I can't | find anything unusual, other than the most recent vandalism: | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/102963491... | | ... which isn't exactly terribly substantiated on its own. | | Furthermore, unless this opinion piece is demonstrably in bad | faith I dunno why that would detract from viewing it in a fair | light. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-25 23:00 UTC)