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Comment by steven2012 | Hacker News Reader

steven2012

Unfortunately I think this person seems mentally ill. I have a friend who in his 30s became a paranoid schizophrenic and although he was very articulate, he had major flaws in his logic and behaved erratically. He also filed many lawsuits and was litigious as well.

It sounds like this person was dismissed from his job (he mentioned it in one of his videos), and he hasn't been able to find employment because of his mental illness.

It's sad that we don't do enough to help those with mental illness. It would go a long way to making their lives better and the rest of our lives safer.

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Don't you think there is a good chance his mental illness is actually a result of being consumed by such an awkward situation?

The details he provides about proof of employment and wrong-doing by Chrysler when asked to confirm it are very clear. If those are real, we can't tell - this looks like something a good journalist would be able to uncover, and maybe help achieving some kind of closure.

No I don't think so. It sounds like he was fired for at the very least strange behavior, and all of his potential employers picked up on it. If he were technically good, it wouldn't matter what Chrysler said. But it seems like he's not technically good.

Maybe an awesome engineer in tech can get hired even if his past employers deny employing him. But what about a perfectly average engineer in something more traditional like automobiles? It's my understanding tech is pretty unique in being "less" sensitive about pedigree.

It doesn't matter if his case is real or not. What matters is, for 17 years, a mechanical engineer basically just lived like a bum rather than trying to get any kind of real job, even something as simple as a fry cook, waiter, janitor, anything. He had already been a janitor and maintenance mechanic once, so that should have been easy to get again.

What _is_ clear is he can barely write, he records videos of himself outdoors that are barely audible, and even if he won this strange case, he's clearly not employable now. More than likely his mental illness started after he became an engineer and quickly progressed.

Keeping in mind that we're speculating on a case without any direct access to the subject, it's actually really unlikely that we're looking at a single episode caused by one situation (his employment with Chrysler) that's lasted for thirty years. But it's entirely possible that the situation could have made existing problems significantly worse.

There are certainly aspects of his writing that might be suggestive (the graphorrhea and rambling over minor details, irrational paranoia, etc.) of certain mental illnesses. Since paranoid schizophrenia was mentioned by the parent comment, take that for example: it's not something that comes about because of a single situation later on in life. There are clear, measurable physical symptoms in that instance such as a significant and measurable difference in grey matter. That doesn't happen because of any episode you've experienced.

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