_game_of_life

I have fallen into many pits of depression over almost 20 years now, even now I am struggling to get out of a deep one. Seems this is just a cycle in my life, unfortunately.

You can't logic yourself out of beliefs, I completely get that. Once you realize how depressed you are, you're usually also mired in terrible thoughts and negativity.

But in my experience, I HAVE to try to logic myself out of patterns of behaviors. I also need to fight those beliefs, as futile as it seems. Hear me out here:

I think one of the most toxic things was when I thought it was a chemical imbalance completely out of my control -- so there was nothing I could do but take pills and passively wait for my brain chemistry to correct itself.

I have recovered from like 4 or 5 episodes of major depression now, and the key for me every time has been a) realizing I'm depressed b) waiting for/creating a day when I have the energy to think and address this, and then c) reflecting on and fighting against thoughts and behaviours extending/reinforcing the depression.

Obviously this is a messy and inefficient process with a lot of slippage. And maybe it doesn't work for other people, or maybe I've got something else wrong with me than just major depression, and that's why it works.

Anyways, not trying to invalidate your experience, just sharing what I've found works for me.

Probably wise. Also relatable, I have tons of old notes of ideas at some point I thought were potentially profound, only to realize they were half-baked and/or already explored.

I'm still waiting on my "new kind of science." Wolfram makes all sorts of interesting claims, maybe he should focus more on interesting results.

How have I misrepresented it by saying it is as effective as a self-help book?

The thing about therapy, is that you usually want benefits to last for a duration that makes the effort put in worthwhile.

>Only four studies looked at longer-term outcomes after CBT.

>No clear evidence showed maintained improvement in symptoms of anxiety among children and young people.

If you take a look at the results further they conclude:

>The few controlled follow-up studies (n = 4) indicate that treatment gains in the remission of anxiety diagnosis are not statistically significant.

I'd like to remind you that "significant" in the context of a meta-analysis means "statistically significant." If something performs at the level of a self-help book, most lay people would agree that is not a very effective treatment, even if it has a statistically significant impact.

Speaking from experience, you analysis is spot on and this is a very common coping method in social work as well.

It is done because otherwise in the 9/10 cases where things do not improve, you feel you have failed. Much easier if the client fails you instead.

You can tell yourself, "well, maybe next time they'll get better -- after all, it takes many relapses before people kick a drug habit!"

This is a lot easier to swallow than "Oh god this stuff barely is working at all, I'm mostly just a gigantic resource suck and the money I'm paid would be much better spent getting this person stable housing and other support--but that's a lot less attractive to tax payers."

I got out of social work when I had that realization. Initially I coped by saying I was a "Good Person" in a helping profession, so I never looked too deeply into whether any of this horse shit actually was "evidence-based."

Every Psych 101 class should cover the current findings on efficacy of psychotherapies. But they never do, for obvious reasons.

Serious question -- How do you nominate someone for a Turing award?

So what would you suggest to replace it? Obviously there needs to be some federal law enforcement agency...

And as much as their past has portions that are super fucked up, wasn't that also a reflection of American society at the time?

I just think that for as much harm as the FBI historically caused, they've also busted enormous criminal rings and done a lot to reduce organized crime. I genuinely think Americans would be worse of without them, even with my bias as a leftist that typically loathes alphabet soup surviellance agencies.

Oh wow, summit.news! Those other headlines are stellar, be sure to give them a look. What's next for HN, Breitbart?

I love the topic too, a comedian whining about "cancel culture."

So great. Sparks joy. Definitely not a tired subject, more please!

Fork yeah, that's very exciting, thank you for the info.

I'm not a Rustacean but these memory related CVEs need to stop. Any small steps toward a memory safe(r) OS is good news to me!

I'm talking about both. When I was comparing them to competitors like Symbolab I was using the Alexa ranking for alpha.

I find it faster and more accurate to use a specific package in an interpreter than query Wolfram Alpha or use Mathematica. And for the simpler things a search engine will do!

Nobody should try anything new in the DE space because more mature things have been established with far more engineering hours?

That's odd to me. You don't think they'll look at the design and learn from the advances made during those centuries of hours? That's hardly throwing it all away.

Oh man, I just did a thesis on using a memory safe language like Rust for the kernel.

The consensus in research was that Rust is extremely promising for designing a next gen memory safe OS. Some data structures are troubling to implement (paging table, etc.) but the benefits are significant.

This is just a DE but if it's a sign of more things to come potentially over the next decade I am very excited.

Linux is always going to be fragmented, and other OS (ex. Android) are either already integrating some Rust or are strongly considering it (ex. Microsoft).

Thank you! I am trying to argue with myself more. Partly because I can be a bit of an opinionated know-it-all which is unpleasant and very foolish!

Also I think about how young we are as a species that uses the scientific method to question our reality.

Maybe all of my knowledge today will not stand the test of time, and will be considered just as silly as someone from the 1600s seems to me today? (ex. A natural philosopher that believes in abiogenesis)

But a mutual respect and bond can exist if we both strive to prove ourselves wrong, adapt, and grow.

It's still around but I imagine it is experiencing a bunch of competitors biting chunks out of it.

A lot more people can script now, so open source packages of computer algebra systems (Sage, numpy, scipy etc.) Probably take a small bite.

And then you have closed source ones to consider like Matlab.

The second largest chunk probably being bitten out of it is its web and app competitors (desmos, symbolab, etc.) Alexa rankings show that these see a lot more traffic and engagement (2 - 3 times).

Finally, a small portion of its functionality is now covered by search engines. I imagine they'll continue to gobble things up. There are also a few good Web tools, I used one for a linear algebra course I found a lot better than the freeware version of WolframAlpha that came with my Raspberry Pi.

I can't find any reports on its revenue or net income. I would be super curious who uses it. Maybe it's growing... who knows? I also remember it being recommended a lot in the early 2010s.