Shadow of a Doubt | Hacker News Reader

Shadow of a Doubt

harpers.org

18 pointssamclemens8 comments

I read the entire thing. I like the author's prose, and learned a little about their theatrical exposure therapy. Can't say I left with much else, but it was an enjoyable read

The exposure therapy part was definitely the most interesting part for me: licking dumpsters, hugging crazy homeless people (who then run away shrieking at invisible people), (very slightly) vandalizing cars, running a gauntlet of people holding knives... Not sure how much I got out of the previous sections, but the part starting here was fun:

> Onstage facing them stood Grayson, the mastermind of the night. This Grayson was a heady cocktail of signifiers garnished by an Indiana Jones–type hat he’d worn, I gathered, to all twenty-one Road to Recovery Tours to date.

This is a bait article. Avoid.

I'm not an expert on the topic of OCD, what makes this 'bait'?

It's a bit long-winded and flowery for my taste, but otherwise OK?

I guess what I took away from it is that the underlying low-level biological causes of high-level behavioral problems is a very, very hard (ie: impossible) problem to solve with current technology. Like trying to debug a massive simulator that was written by randomly flipping bits until things worked, and has no manual, using only a hex editor.

That and despite current instances of it manifesting about modern things (phones, germs, whatever) OCD has likely existed for a very long time and just happens to 'cling' to something specific in a given person.

It’s an article whose discussion points are engineered. It’s not in good faith, and it’s a more frequent problem with articles in general.

You still haven't really explained anything. What discussion points are engineered, and in what way are they engineered? What specifically do you have a problem with? If you don't explain your reasoning, why comment at all?

Maybe it's a joke about having a paranoid OCD feeling towards the article?

FWIW one of my rules is to instantly close any article that starts with an anecdote/story like that. It's hard to explain, but it's an easy way to know that they're more interested in manipulating/influencing you into believing their point rather than proving their point with facts/logic/argument. They'd rather tell fanciful stories instead.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com