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Comment by ludston | Hacker News Reader

My good sir. I presume that you don't mean to be offensive, and I am not the kind of person that is offended by unintentional gaffs, but let me clarify for you why your line of speaking, is, in fact offensive.

First, reread everything that you wrote, and substitute "depressed person" for some racial minority. Most of what you have said is still valid and there is a possibility that it is even true. However, you must see that this would be so offensive that your post would be flagged.

Instead of fostering predjudice against people of a racial minority, you are (probably unintentionally) fostering predjudice against people with mental health problems. Do you not see why this is offensive?

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Mental health problems, as said, is not a race. And not everything is prejudice. Racism is supposed to be prejudice because "You can't say there's causal relationship between the race and another specific trait". It is prejudice because it is deemed IRRATIONAL i.e. logical conclusions involving race fail at their very foundational base, race, and are thus logically incorrect. Mental instability though? It is the trait itself. It IS a valid base for logical conclusions regarding the human affected by one. You can claim one does not know enough of a mental illness to make conclusions for one's behavior. But one who does know, can then judge (not pre-judge) accordingly, and logic and truth are by definition not offensive.

Erm no. Not everything is racism.

Lack of caring for elemental things, including life, is a common trait of depression, not race.

But I did not say, depressed people should not have any clearance. I say, mentally not stable persons can simply not be trusted with every tasks. No generalisation. It depends on the task. So I doubt, you would offer the guarding of the red button for example, a suicidal person. And deep depression, is mostly combined with suicidal thoughts. There was a pilot some years ago, piloting a full plane to join him along his suicide. So much for extreme examples.

And as for the secret new release of the hot new game console x? I don't care about their security. But I see, that companies would want stable persons there, too.

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