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Comment by tygorius | Hacker News Reader

Been there, done that, got the meds. It taught me the valuable distinction between normal mood swings and out-of-whack brain chemistry.

Seriously, if you have a strong bout of suicidal thoughts in reaction to flippant remarks such at Torvalds's then you need to bring this up to a mental health professional because your current coping mechanism isn't working.

If you're merely tut-tutting with disapproval however I simply disagree. Wanting a world where people never get their feelings hurt is a fruitless quest.

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Your speculation on and advice about my mental health is rude and insulting.

I'm not merely "tut-tutting". I don't think telling people to commit suicide because of a legitimate technical disagrement or hurdle is acceptable. If you disagree, put up a reasoned argument or shut up.

I think the problem is that you honestly believe that he was genuinely telling people that they should die. It's an expression, and not terribly uncommon, either.

Honestly, I've never heard that kind of thing (as in "kill yourself" not "you're a moron" - that one is par for the course among kernel hackers) said outside of Linus Torvalds, Ulrich Drepper maybe, and comedians and the like that are in an explicitly comedic situation. I realize he doesn't mean it literally. Anyway, this is just to clarify, not to argue further.

In case you are wondering: if somebody tells you to "go fuck yourself" he doesn't literally want you to do that.

Not that it would be bad, if you did, though.

If someone tells me in person to "go fuck yourself," fine, that's a normal turn of phrase in my neck of the woods. "Please kill yourself now" is going to lead to an immediate knuckle sandwich, though, unless I don't have the balls to do it. I will try to make an exception to this if it happens when I'm travelling in Europe.

Sorry. No aspersions on your mental health were intended. I was using "you" in the general, hypothetical sense. You and I are not the only ones reading this thread.

One of the things I learned from depression was that one (not "you") could intellectually realize that a stimulus was trivial and yet still have a near-overpowering emotional response. People in such a situation would be well advised to deal with the underlying electochemical issues instead of thinking their depression is merely the result of circumstances and something they can just conquer with more will power.

I came back to apologize for telling you to "shut up." I don't think it was worded too too rudely and necessarily requires an apology, but that's not my style, either. I just lost a ton of karma on this (not that that matters, but it stings a bit!) and felt like a lot of people were attacking me on disingenuous grounds. Anyway, I do appreciate the apology, so thank you!

Your point about depression is actually quite interesting. My personal belief is that your emotions reflect the mental content of your mind. So if something is making you depressed, you need to think about what's wrong with the ideas you hold that's causing you to be depressed, and change your ideas. It seems to me that if you just treat it with medicine, the underlying wrong ideas will potentially linger. (OTOH, I've heard it said that taking the medicine gives you strength to confront the things that are bothering you when you lack it.)

FWIW, I haven't been able to confirm or deny my belief, but I suspect it's basically correct, but that not all people can address the intellectual disconnects they have in all situations without some form of outside help.

I used to have the same view of where emotions come from. But after getting brain snapshots and diagnoses from medical doctors and a psychologist, I had to confront my personal history and conclude that habits of thought were only part of the solution. Hence the research findings that talk therapies and meds are more effective than either alone. (Not to mention that an effective therapy is one that produces a 30% solid success rate balanced with a %30 negligable response. Not something you want to hear if you're looking for magic pills to make your problems disappear.)

Anyway, as famed neuroscientist Ted Nelson once put it, "Everything is intertwingled." Just a couple of months ago I read an item about a rodent memory experiment in Helsinki that supported the theory that the reason antianxiety drugs work is that they stimulate neuroplasticity. The results would seem to explain why those drugs could show up in our bloodstreams within hours and yet take weeks for real results to show up -- and it also supports two-pronged approaches to improvement.

This is truly fascinating. In case it's useful for anyone besides me: I searched for the article and came up with [1]. Haven't read it yet, though.

Thanks so much for being so tremendously forthcoming about what you've been through. As I'm sure can be inferred from my first response to you, yes, I'm going through a similar place, and I really appreciate your willingness to share your experiences and empathize.

[1] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6063/1731

Your speculation on and advice about my mental health is rude and insulting.

For me, this is crossing the line from "Linus has an interesting and entertaining character" to "this person seems to be mentally disturbed."

That's a nice trick you have there, where you're allowed to be rude and insulting about a person's mental state while taking offense at anyone doing the same to you.

You strike me as the kind of person who chooses to take offense at things.

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