The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (an oldie but a goodie) | Hacker News Reader

The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (an oldie but a goodie)

lambdassociates.org

82 pointsacangiano22 comments

Wow. That's very close to home.

The author's other essays (http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/index.htm) are interesting, too. I particularly like "Why I am Not a Professor". After reading that one, I wonder if the BBM he rescued in "The Bipolar Lisp Programmer" is not himself?

He seems to argue the problem with BBMs is their success. Their success, that is, at working alone. So much so that they seldom want to work with others, for when you work alone you are not forced to yield to oft highly unpleasant real-life situations, which dilute the purity and elegance of your original solution.

And more or less refusal to exposure your system to real-life situations--PC hardware via Lisp machines, the wants of the masses, etc--means you don't get the critical mass of acceptance needed for mainstream success. Without this mainstream success you don't get the cash, industry support or new developers needed for growth.

Nice theory.

For those interested, I thought I'd provide an 'insider's view' of bipolar, since I have it. I go through manic phases followed by depressive phases. Sometimes mine are short (i.e. hours) but intense. Other times they last for months. I am obsessed with the problem of P vs NP, and thinking about it too much can lead me into manic phases, where I become convinced that I've solved the problem, and that others (i.e. teachers and friends) are out to steal my ideas. I become paranoid and write my name and the date on everything I write, in case someone claims my notes as their own. I become convinced that I am the reincarnation of Godel, Turing, John Nash, or other mathematicians. I converse with my "former selves" and tell them about my ideas. They respond with fascination and sometimes suggestions of their own. My mind spins and reels, and it feels sometimes like it becomes completely detached from my body.

It's true that while I'm manic, I can get abnormal amounts of work done. I also speak incredibly quickly, and develop a stutter because my mind moves too fast for my mouth to keep up. I call them 'cache misses' because my brain has to stop and go back to where it was just seconds ago, in order to 'fill in' the missing words. Because I think so quickly while manic, I become frustrated and irritated with anyone and anything that stops me from thinking as quickly as I'd like to. I have trouble sleeping at night, and when I do sleep, I dream of absurd mathematical problems that don't make any sense. Once I was skiing with some friends, and I had a dream wherein each ski route was assigned an integer value. It was up to me to make sure that the sum of the slopes traversed by my group was exactly zero. I had to keep convincing people to do different slopes in order to keep things balanced. When I have those dreams, I have a hard time waking up because I want to solve the problem so badly that I can't get out of bed. Additionally, when I'm manic, I drive more recklessly and take risks that I shouldn't. I'm much more likely to go home from a bar with a girl that I shouldn't. It seems like my sex appeal dramatically increases while I'm manic. This could be because I'm just thinking more highly of myself in general, but it could also be because i'm more aggressive, bold, and confident, all of which are appealing to girls.

The flip side of the mania is depression. When a manic phase ends, it usually leads to a depressive phase, when I realize i'm not a super genius capable of anything, and that my conversations with past mathematical figures are hallucinations. I think of myself as hopelessly stupid and doomed to live an unhappy life. It's not just being sad. It's a state of total hopelessness and despair. The only thing in the world that is remotely appealing is killing myself, which I dream of constantly. I've attempted suicide three times, each time getting closer to actually finishing the act. The last time I tried, I was standing on the 28th floor of a building in downtown Seattle, trying to work up the courage to jump off the ledge. If it weren't for some people who happened to come up the elevator as I was sitting on the ledge, I probably wouldn't be typing this today. I know that suicide is a terribly selfish thing to do, but until you've experienced the despair and hopelessness associated with bipolar depression, you can't begin to understand how much it makes sense. After my second attempt, I was taken against my will to a mental hospital, where I spent a few days. It was the worst experience of my life. All it impressed upon me was that, if I ever feel like suicide again, I shouldn't tell any medical professionals because they might take me back there. Even when I'm perfectly happy and level(i.e. no longer in a depressive or manic phase) I still occasionally think about killing myself. When I hear a story in the news about a plane crash or a celebrity dying, my first thouhgt is always to be envious of them. Just writing this post is making me want to kill myself.

As if the hopelessness, despair, and suicidal idealization weren't bad enough, I lose my attention span, ability to focus, and ability to enjoy things. Activities that I once used to enjoy become boring. I don't enjoy hanging out with my friends as much, and I don't want to do anything but sleep. I try to read a book but I don't enjoy it. I try to watch some TV but it's boring. I try to play a video game, but it doesn't hold any appeal to me. I go to a park to take a walk in nature, but it's all boring and uninteresting.

Lately the past few months, I've been mostly good. I still live in fear of entering another depressive episode. I regularly visit a psychiatrist and therapist, and I take mood-stabilizing medication on a daily basis. If I go off of my medication, (I once went to visit my parents for two weeks, and left it at home) I become incredibly depressed. Alcohol, even in small amounts, can make me suicidal.

Am I hopeful about the future? It all depends upon when you ask me. Some days I feel like I've got the worst of it behind me, and as long as I follow my medications, avoid alcohol, stick to routines, and don't make drastic changes in my life, I'll be OK. Other days I realize that empirically, something like 20% of people with bipolar die of suicide, and your odds of dying of suicide increase dramatically if you've already attempted it. I really have no clue as to whether i'll die by natural means.

I experience something similar, but not to the same extent. Nevertheless, hopefully this will be helpful.

I have a desire to succeed, to invent, to solve highly difficult problems, much like you, and it becomes an obsession. And, too, this coincide with an over-estimation of my ability to perform such. I believe this is so I will continue to try to solve such lofty problems.

But eventually the steam which powered that over-estimation runs out. And then I hate, because of my lack of success, myself to the same extent as I over-estimated myself. And this is no way to live. And this whole process comes down to one thing: my initial desire to succeed, to solve such difficult problems.

The more I look at my thoughts, where they came from, I realise this desire to succeed comes from my belief others will only value me if I succeed in such a way. When I imagine solving such problems, I always imagine other people, telling other people I've done this, and gaining their approval.

I have only a vague idea when I started to believe that I would only be a valued human being if I solve these problems that no-one else has. But this is where my bipolar cycle started. And it will only end when I remove this pernicious idea from my mind, which will require a lot of introspection.

Mine are actually more dramatic and I consider it a partial form of duality. This is because I can sense what I am doing but it seems almost a third person view. When I am working feverishly on a math problem (which are not very advanced compaired to what people on HN work on but I keep evolving) it is common for my mother to find papers all over my room and books thrown out of the window just out of spite. But all this seems to be done by some other person almost a friend of mine who I can talk to. There were times when I requested myself to come out of those phases so I can go into parties and enjoy (I consider myself different for that).Its super natural to me thats why I am spiritual but not religious. I find spirituality in maths and (my recent discovery) electronics in ways even I dont understand sometimes. But what I am proud of is that I have been able to keep it as a alternate identity. Quite separate from my public self. Only people very close to me (or those whom I have ranted to) know I am capable of doing such stuff. To others I am just the sweet boy next door, average in studies, looks, but everyone knows just out of spite that I can make it big. But sometimes I get confused as to which is my secret identity and which is the super hero/villain one.The boy next door who pleases everyone or the mad scientist with skeletons in the closet

Wow I understand almost everything you describe (except attempted suicide, I think I'd feel too selfish doing that and then feel bad for feeling that way. Instead I tend to go destructive on my life severing all avenues of success or potential pleausre), but I would never refer to myself as bipolar.

Also I appreciate your skiing example. I'm forever seeing how real life translates into some abstract problem or representation and feeling kinda weird about that. Or dreaming all night in code, symbols or (recently due to related work) music to try and solve a problem and waking up exhausted but with an answer.

Wow I feel like this is describing me verbatim, and then feel self-centred as though I don't deserve this description.

One of the most touching things I've read in while..

The author evokes life's tragedies in simple but nuanced manner.

Touching, indeed.

I see this pattern all around me and a lot of it in myself - and, mind you, I only use Lisp to teach Emacs new tricks. The fact worse is better in this industry is a tragedy so huge we have not yet come to appreciate its magnitude.

Very good article.

But learning from the past, I am already afraid of seeing lots of articles on the HN front page devoted to discussing the BBM...

Umm...analyzing self...Beep...Beep...Beep...Panic...Panic...Panic...... I have all the characteristics for a BBM, from top to bottom. Whats worse?I dont even ,know lisp!!!!!What do I do what do I do????!!!!!!!!1

Join the club ;-)

Start today: http://arclanguage.org/

If he wants to learn such an obscure (popularity-wise) language, he's probably better off using a popular (relatively), well-documented, well-supported (libraries) and stable dialect such as Common Lisp or Scheme.

I've just started learning Lisp and I find Arc fun. Hence, the suggestion. There are some nice people like coconutrandom, CatDancer, palsecam, zck and conanite who are active and helpful on the forum e.g. http://arclanguage.org/item?id=10554. The unofficial code repository Anarki is pretty good too.

People are doing some cool stuff - http://arcfn.com/labels/arduino.html

What's not to like?

Start here: http://clojure.org

I dont know but your advice does not appeal to me, I mean clojure just doesnt cut it. And i dont wanna go into the hassel of anything java (it ate up my master high school end project, I rewrote it in ruby then). What about haskell I know its not totall Lisp but seems better than clojure

They are fundamentally different languages. Clojure is dynamically typed, Haskell is statically typed (despite its great type inference). Clojure is relatively small and simple to learn, Haskell is larger and far more complex (it introduces many new concepts). Clojure is based on the JVM, Haskell is not, but it's backed up by many researchers who publish libraries on Hackage. Different strokes, really.

If I got down voted so many times just for this comment clojure sure must be a fine language.But I am still not going to learn it just because it targets the JVM. But maybe some day I will forget the 3 sleep less nights I spent rewriting the project in ruby or the A- I got where I had expected an A++, and try to look into clojure.

I think the fact it adresses the JVM is a nice thing that allows you to get away with writing Lisp code when your corporate overlords demand you to write Java code. ;-)

Now, more seriously, it seems a rather useful Lisp that somewhat deals with the problem of partial/buggy/worksforme library implementations by using the huge Java class library.

I dont understand why people are taking that post of mine against clojure so seriously, and if they are why they are misinterpreting it. I never said anything against the language or even the JVM in they-are-very-bad sense.Its just a psychological block that was created when my project crashed In front of my teacher, and I simply blame it on JVM. I know that its wrong, because I never debugged it. I just rewrote the whole thing in Ruby without any investigation. Maybe I was wrong,maybe my code was buggy or my project just didnt deserve and A+ (my teacher never gave me any reason for the minus in my grade). I just needed something to blame my crashed project on. Call it escapism and you are right actually. But still when you put something in your mind, a sheer hate for a thing when you are just 13 or 14 you tend to hate it forever. May be thats the case with me. May be it isnt and I am just too stubborn. Maybe I will just learn clojure after my term paper is submitted and then will write a post. Now what I wanna see is what I write in that post

First, it's not a bad idea to find a project you can work on with another person or two - a lot of the BBM character weaknesses are consequences of being independent even when it's a net loss. In some sense, this is an echoed in some Lisp systems that try to be Lisp "all the way down", rather than inter-operating with existing systems. Rewriting an entire software stack can be pretty quixotic, and at the very least distracts from whatever you set out to do initially.

If you want to learn Lisp (and I'm not sure - I may hear a hint of sarcasm), the book _The Little Schemer_ (http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/BTLS/) is a good starting point. It's a quick read, and will walk you through several of the big ideas in a (somewhat minimalistic) dialect of Lisp called Scheme. Whether you'd be happier using Scheme, Common Lisp, or some other Lisp dialect in the long run is hard to say, but you can get through that book in a weekend, and the main ideas it covers will apply to all Lisps. (You might find the style excessively cute, but it's short.)

_SICP_ (http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/) is absolutely worth reading as well, but really working through it will take much longer. It too uses Scheme, but covers several big ideas in programming that transcend specific languages. (I recommend _The Art of Prolog_ for the same reason.)

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