Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

The thing that strikes me here is how much we repeat the mistake of Norma (taking the mythical average body and assuming that differences mean problems) today in talking about people's minds.

I started using computers before it was fashionable, before my fellow nerds started being worth billions and ending up on magazine covers. It's hard to describe now how much our difference was seen as wrong, as the sign of a problem.

I have to wonder how much other natural differences gets medicalized. I know I have friends who take drugs for "insomnia" even though the only problem they experience is that they don't always get the "average" night of eight hours uninterrupted sleep. (Which anyhow is a modern invention. [1]) When I was in mourning after my mom died, a few buttinskys suggested I talk to my doctor about antidepressants, even though actual experts thought I was doing fine. And I worry about the number of schoolkids who have their differences medicalized because, in effect, they are inconvenient for overburdened teachers using industrial-age models of education.

I have no solution here, but I definitely find it troubling.

[1] For more, see this podcast, especially the "Til Morning is Nigh" segment: http://backstoryradio.org/shows/on-the-clock-4/

Modern psychology does not care about average it cares about capable of functioning in society. If you can't avoid say screaming in public that's a problem not just a non issue. Arguably the tolerances might be low, but it's hard to argue with the basic premise.

Granted doctors assume if your talking to them you have a problem. But that's arguably a reasonable prior.

PS: The extremes of behavior get very far out there, notmenjoying talking to people is fine, not being able to so communicate is an issue.

>If you can't avoid say screaming in public that's a problem not just a non issue. Arguably the tolerances might be low, but it's hard to argue with the basic premise.

People are prescribed stuff for much much less than "screaming in public", including feeling stressed in BS high stress jobs, being "hyper-active" at school, etc -- with "modern psychology" more often than not siding with the normality of abnormal and abusive societal norms (as it always did. Science is conservative. Not so long ago you got medical treatment for being gay, for example).

>Granted doctors assume if your talking to them you have a problem. But that's arguably a reasonable prior.

Doctors also prescribe and over-prescribe all kinds of BS to people who don't need it, and get all kinds of pharma percs for doing so.

Heck, they'll go even to doing un-needed operations, compared to that, prescribing BS is nothing:

https://www.google.gr/search?q=uneeded+operations+scandal

I don't know that I agree with your characterization of modern psychology, and I am anyway talking more about psychiatry and its chemical interventions.

But even if I granted your point, you're still demonstrating one aspect of the problem I'm talking about. You suggest that any time there's a mismatch between a person and the society they find themselves in, there's a problem with the person. Rather than with society, or with their expectations or what "functioning" means, or with some other aspect of the situation.

The same thing happened with the pilots. The assumption was that the planes were fine, so any issue must be with the pilots. But the planes were constructed around a mythical "normal" person, and I am suggesting we construct society and our expectations of its participants around a "normal" person.

>How much we repeat the mistake of Norma (taking the mythical average body and assuming that differences mean problems) today in talking about people's minds.

Makes me wonder which is the perfect text editor that everyone should use, is it emacs or vim?

Every post on HN is, at most, six degrees of separation from a emacs vs. vim debate. In this case, it was a mere two.

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