Edit: I assume you're talking about https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32161183, which was correctly downvoted for being a flamewar comment. Please don't post comments like that or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32161488 or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32161557 to HN.
It’s like an anti-vax YouTube video where any dissenting opinion is flagged until mods give up and remove it from the front page. It’s the same thing with abortion or anything else that isn’t a Rust article.
HN is an internet watercooler. People come here to have casual, curious conversations. That requires being allowed to be wrong, to think out loud, to shoot the shit, to exchange. Imposing some sort of correctness requirement, besides being impossible (how on earth would we enforce such a thing without a truth meter?), would kill conversation and therefore kill the forum.
You guys are overgeneralizing based on seeing comments you dislike. I understand (believe me I understand) how frustrating that is, but there are just as many people who agree with you, probably more. The fact that there's a range of views here is normal, inevitable, and fine.
HN has always operated on the principle that readers are smart enough to make up their own minds, i.e. to find their way through internet bullshit however they choose to do so. I don't see any reason to change that operating principle.
This is the one I was referring to. I’ll admit that the first one you linked was not productive, but I’m reasonably sure you’re taking a less charitable interpretation of this one in light of that. As far as what makes “everything” worse, the prevalence of attitudes like those I was challenging are the reason I almost died without treatment. But if they’re politely stated, no harm no foul?
That's not at all how we moderate HN. But IIRC (it's been a few hours since I've read the thread) your comments put an extreme personal skew on the comments you were taking offense at and then breaking the rules in reply to.
It's natural and understandable that this happens sometimes on topics where you feel strongly (I don't mean you personally, but any of us). However, natural and understandable does not equal ok. On the contrary: we all need to catch ourselves when we're getting carried away like that, and either edit our posts to be within the site guidelines, or just walk away. I find it helpful, in such cases, to remember that the internet is to a first approximation wrong about everything, and there's nothing that any of us can do about it.
I sincerely do not think it is an “extreme personal skew” to reject any perspective which would either casually or gladly leave me dead, nor that there’s any reasonable assessment which would arrive at that conclusion. ”I reject perspectives which render me dead” is a very middle of the road personal skew. It’s a personal skew which would be extreme in absence. It’s the kind of personal skew which alarms people that something is wrong.
If you think it’s “extreme”, because the kind of conversation you want to encourage here is “light”, then you ought to know that the kinds of “light” comments I routinely get here—about medication which means the difference between crippling anxiety that made life not worth living, and about a diagnosis which made changing that accessible to me—those comments don’t just vanish because they get moderated. They wouldn’t just vanish if I didn’t have “show dead” in my settings. I seldom see the moderation until after people have laughingly dismissed anything about my experience, they vanish after my reality has been not just questioned but lightheadedly treated as a butt of a joke.
It isn’t just about “the internet” being “wrong”. Discussions that happen anywhere can lead to people making irreversible decisions. “The internet” isn’t some abstract thing, it’s real human beings interacting as quickly as requests are processed.
My personal experience isn’t unusual. Other people will encounter comments like I’ve received and some of them will be discouraged. Some of the consequences of that will be dead humans who wanted to be alive. Pushing back against that isn’t just personal to me. It’s my way of hoping that other people who experience what I have stay alive.
If that’s “breaking the rules”, fucking ban me because I want no part of it.
It boils down to the same mechanism of action as electro-shock therapy. Presumably with a lot less destruction of neurons of course.
Now electro-shock is one of the most effective at treating depression, and I guess that might be why TMS might be effective too.
But I think the reason I ultimately wouldn’t do it is just that it feels like physically altering my brain and it’s a hard pill to swallow. Just like I would be hard pressed to accept a treatment like someone surgically excising a chunk of my brain matter even if a doctor told me it was 100% effective as a cure.
Perhaps this is irrational but I just can’t shake it.
And possibly justified.
A lot of us are armchair psychiatrist from reading articles. OP that you're replying to lives this type of medication and attributes being alive right now to it while a lot of us who have only read articles sit and debate.
A number of these comments can come across as "just eat healthier" to an overweight person or "don't be sad".
Just talk to you doctor might the worst popular advice on the Internet. My experience is the opposite: until you take matters in your own hands, experiment with various treatments and preferably find an open minded doctor who is willing to help you along the way (not only with advice but mainly with providing access to medication) it will not work. It might work if your problem is simple and typical but it won't otherwise.
The reason is obvious: you are likely as smart as your doctor. They might have more experience and general knowledge but they have an hour (if you're very lucky) for you and you have all the time in the world to catch up and figure it out.
Yeah, talk to doctors if you're the kind of person who drifts to homeopathy or other shamanism but please don't solely rely on them when it comes to your health of you have a bit of a brain.
It's that natural remedies such as psilocybin and LSD which have proven their worth for a very, very long time are still being blocked by you-know-which industry.
That said, in countries where pharmaceutical manufacturers are allowed to market prescription medicines, and one was recently convicted for pushing addictive substances on huge numbers of people, a certain amount of skepticism may be warranted.
("medicine X saved my life" and "a large number of people who don't get any real benefit for medicine X are being sold it" and "medicine X may have extremely bad side effects for some people" may co-exist, as well)
You have people arguing very strongly about things they know nothing about and sometimes if you actually know anything about it, it's painful to read just how bad some of the things people are saying, being a logical person, I try to point out what they are saying doesn't make sense, but it's wasted because that person just doubles down on whatever it is that they believe.
The most powerful lesson from noticing this effect and the hardest thing to do, is not actually taking that step back and just not getting involved, it's also in realising that i'm likely doing that too, so it's better to try and step back and approach such comments with a more curious and open mind, rather than one of thinking i'm an expert.