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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

I went to the library at my Uni a while back looking for books on paranoia, a phenomenon associated with schizophrenia, and was disgusted that the majority of books were like this article, confusing vague ideas about culture with important concepts from mental health. It’s shameful because there is enough ignorance and confusion in this area and we don’t need people who should know better (as this author expresses) to create more.

I’d also reject the idea that the proliferation of stories really overloads people because stories follow their own physics (that I’d quarter-jokingly call pataphysics) and so constrained they recycle a limited repertoire of patterns. principles and archetypes and even if the details of the stories become a blur, one internalizes the structure.

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Perhaps you're wrong in expecting the term "paranoia" to be exclusive to some clinical definition that you happened to be seeking at that time.

I don't see how stories sharing some common structure (what does that even mean? rise-and-fall combinations?) makes it impossible to become overloaded by them.

It is very disappointing that I was prepared to write off a pretty interesting article because of their decision to do this.

I do agree with your second point though, especially when this is proven by the prevalence of the holy "algorithm".

"Leading masses of conversations to become little more than titbits of information and data flung in solely as signifiers of knowledge and meaning, yet never actually adhereing to any form of practice or purpose," seems pretty accurate to me.

I am curious as to what purpose you went to your uni library for. Medical research? Curiosity? What writings did you find? Why is it a problem that people use schizophrenia in conversation and writing? Not all discussion is medical research, and is certainly not held to those standards.

I’ll agree with this. Study language and lingual theory. Much of language is metaphor we apply to different lens. Language is mainly a process of trial and error. We continue saying something, refining that saying through different word usage until we come up with a term that fits our lens correctly. Words don’t have rules. Humanity makes those rules and then applies them.

The commenter below, mentioning “truth-seeking” would need to define what they mean by truth. Is this capital T truth that applies to everyone or lowercase truth that applies to the specific and differing lenses we use?

It's concerning because conversation has become just about talking and the pleasure of having a chat, rather than truth-seeking. Not that conversation should or must be about truth-seeking, but seeing conversations being idle chatter everywhere, with medical terms like "schizophrenia" being thrown about willy nilly is unsettling. One does not have to speak in the parlance of a medical researcher in order to find meaning and truth in a discussion around mental illness, and yet despite this, most information in this space is just noise.

Most information in most spaces is noise. Finding the signal in the noise is difficult in every area, and restricting colloquial (or philosophical) discussion because of overlap with a medical field seems rather harsh to me. We need to learn to understand things deeply, not just look at the surface of the issue: instead of "regular literature is mixed in with scientific literature, so this article is bad," maybe we could look at the what the article provides, and use it to draw new conclusions or support our understanding in addition ways. I see many problems in our society, our culture, that I would describe as schizophrenic, as a reflection of human predilections, and this article provides another lens for understanding.

Nowadays we encode micro-stories in memes. We address a particular situation with the most relevant meme. We don't comprehend any overarching stories or belief systems apart from capitalism, free-market economics and technological progress. Instead of addressing structural societal problems, we treat mental health and classify new kinds of mental disorders.

That's cause of time frames involved.

Think kahnemans system 1/system 2 or the difference in reaction time of the (electrical)nervous system and the (chemical)endocrine system.

Culture generation happens along both time frames.

Engament metric driven social media and news media are all system 1. Reaction times ate fast. There is no system 2. It's still evolving.

So current Culture generation doesn't exhibit system 2 fall back when required.

Good point. What would you suggest? I wouldn’t know. Lowering taxes on beer in pubs? Raising taxes on social media accounts?

money isn't the most important driver in decisions. Making something previously free paid is a much bigger drive than tripling the price. Why? it's the fact that you actively have to decide to do something and execute on it. If you made it so that in order to keep a social media account you had to submit a form each week to the local social media office, hardly anyone would have one. Even (especially) if you could submit a reimbursement form to have any costs associated with filling and posting the form returned.

> Lowering taxes on beer in pubs? Raising taxes on social media accounts?

Reforming the whole media system to not incentivise engagement. Let Facebook become a place where one shares family pictures with close relatives. Reward the YouTuber who produces infrequent 2-hour long videos that talk about philosophical ideas.

You can just directly pay the YouTubers that you like, and unfollow Facebook accounts that you don't want to see. But if you're suggesting some sort of government restrictions or subsidies, screw that.

Restricting spying and indefinite data retention, and making companies responsible for content they don’t just host but promote, would likely kill engagement-first social media and “the feed”. And are things we should do anyway.

> Reward the YouTuber who produces infrequent 2-hour long videos that talk about philosophical ideas.

YouTube Longs.

You seem a big deal (karma wise) so I don't want to get banned by saying my usual "understanding of schizophrenia is all wrong because the voices in our heads are really disembodied others." Read my last comments and tell me if I'm out of line. I was press ganged into Americas thought control hooligan army fifteen years ago and I've been fighting thought control ever since. I am a first hand source.

This is a growing problem because it's real and modern understanding is backwards.

Greer is good.

Greer IS good! F...ing dimwits!

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