thelettere

Agreed save for the last line - the character limit means nothing complex can ever be successfully discussed there. Which excludes basically every important subject, leaving quick news and jokes as the only viable uses of the platform for anyone of sense.

Both of which I enjoy, but that's hardly cause for lavish praise.

So I should save my outrage for juveniles acting like juveniles on a juvenile platform rather than a grown man playing psychologist and successfully clickbaiting a moderated adult platform?

One could argue I shouldn't be outraged at either, particularly given HN's track record of dealing with anything complex involving human beings rather than technology. But I haven't entirely given up on adults capable of engaging in extended discourse, for better or worse.

It should go without saying that a rumor is not a case report. Name one physician who published a report based on extensive first person experience with a vampire (and not, say, Renfield's syndrome).

Plus the case reports are only supplemental to the larger and more empirical lines of evidence for it.

Just because it's more often contested doesn't exempt the author from the responsibility to grapple with (or at the very least make himself aware of) the reasons why it's included in the DSM and the ISD and why it's been acknowledged (if grudgingly) since the very beginnings of the discipline and before - including a long section in James "Principles of Psychology" - if he's going to make such a claim. He seems patently unaware of the long list of psychological principles that no one contests that align with the diagnosis - from the existence of discrete states in sleep and infancy, to brain microstates, to state-dependent learning, to extreme state switching in bipolar, periodic catonia and the other disassociative disorders, to the commonality of hypocrisy of which the individuals themselves are blithely unaware, and the trickiness of personality science.

And that's not even addressing the highly detailed and often highly public case studies of DID across time and cultures, the research showing dramatically different brain readings across the spectrum based on the current identity of the DID patient, ect, ect.

But he doesn't even attempt to address any of that because he has no idea what the hell he's taking about. It's a deflationary article with the populist message that psychologists and Tiktokers are the dumb. So I get why it's popular, but it adds all of nothing to the conversation. He's just another panderer milking the public for attention and money.

And as for the label, again one can acknowledge the existence of a biopsychosocial cluster without coming down on either side of the question of whether or not they are symptoms of an underlying disease. There's a long history of scholars doing this, particularly in the sociology of mental health. Additionally the author does not appear to be making any such argument here against the psychiatric nosology as a whole - just this one diagnosis.

Edit: grammar.

"I have ADHD so I'm an expert on autism."

Dude has exactly zero expertise in the field or experience with this population, and yet he makes these kinds of claims. And all based on an article or two he found.

Pathetic. Almost every psychiatric diagnosis is problematic, and articles questioning any's validity can be dug up. Doesn't mean the emotional/cognitive/behavioral cluster does not exist.

The link between trauma and disassociation is incontrovertible, and DID is merely an extreme version of this. Case reports of it across Western, Middle Eastern and Asian societies across the last 2 centuries show a remarkable degree of consistency in their reports of this, so the idea that this is some kind of passing fake fad is absurd.

The only thing the article adds is a critique of a Tik-tok sub-culture. Color me shocked that this is not a particularly enlightened group - but I guess this is the kind of hard-hitting "journalism" popular Substacks were made for.

Stikk is a company that specializes in this, and they say their numbers indicate it works.

Appreciate the FYI. Of course it's on the comment where I lay out my clearest argument - but so it goes.

You're the one talking like a young person (and I'm firmly in middle age, thank you very much).

You do know what the world looked like when we relied entirely on anecdotes for knowledge? If that's the world you want to live in, then all power to you.

My point was that we don't have to pretend that we're the first sentient beings to have a conversation on these issues, or ignore/dismiss that on many of them there has been progress made. That while there remain many fascinating open questions about them, the shape of others is relatively known.

There is a Sisyphean quality to the never-ending recurrent pop-up of conversations on topics like depression and loneliness. Every few months if not sooner another round of active conversations pops up with hardly any recognition that this has been discussed - here or elsewhere - before, or that it's been examined with greater rigor than personal experience can provide.

So no, I'm not saying that discussion should be held "to the rigor of scientific publication". I'm saying that a century or more of systemic investigation deserves some space - however small - in the conversation. Or better still should serve as the backdrop, so that what we're discussing isn't forever retreading to no avail the same often wrong-headed paths.

If on a post on nuclear energy someone brought up the idea of rubbing sticks together as a viable alternative national energy source he'd be downvoted and laughed out of the room.

But the equivalent - or worse (i.e. not just ludicrous but counter-factual) in conversations on topics having to do with human beings doesn't just get entertained but is often celebrated as the fount of wisdom.

And here's the thing: when we say someone is educated, what do we mean? In the fullest sense, what does it mean to be an educated person? It means to know something of human beings, which is ultimately the most consequential subject.

And so for the conversations on this most consequential subject to be such an un-self-aware dark ages shit-show in a group that largely holds up - at least in word - science and technology, progress and the future, learning and rationality is ludicrous. And that it continues forevermore still more so.

So I am pointing out what I would hope to be a sobering contradiction. And that if the group is so fascinated by these subjects - they seem at times to be the more active discussions on the site - maybe some of that energy could be used to actually learn something about the subject.

So that future discussions could - at least once in a while - touch on the wonders of nuclear energy instead of being forever damned to never-ending masturbatory chats about sticks.

There are no studies on the empiricism of HN comments, in which case anecdotes and personal observations are all we have.

And I'm not making some obtuse argument, but a common sense one which is readily recognizable by anyone who frequents HN. Are you contesting it?

Have value how? How is it not in fact the very opposite of valuable (in cases where there is some empirical knowledge)?

I enjoy anecdotes occasionally as well, but here's a thought: if all you have is personal experience (i.e. you have no familiarity with the accumulated knowledge on the subject) - maybe you should listen rather than speak. Speaking then is akin to spitting in the face of the countless individuals who spend their lives investigating these questions, acting as if they and their work basically does not exist. It muddies the waters - particularly in light of our cognitive biases - and often misinforms where it should enlighten.

How is that moving the conversation forward? If this were a literal watercooler, than that's one thing - but this is forever archived material. The written word has always historically had a higher bar than spoken word (a tradition that the internet has undermined, and to our detriment) - and for a reason.

If we're all just here to entertain each other before we pass into oblivion, then that makes some sense. But the dominant narrative here is not of that kind, but of a belief in progress and the future.

If that is in fact an genuine wide-spread belief here, then these kind of threads are in service to the exact opposite of such beliefs. I'm not saying that anecdotes have no place, but only in the context of some conversance with the knowledge base - or in cases where the question has not been tested or is untestable.

Unless of course we want to just drop the pretenses, embrace our irrationality and start regular threads on medicinal leeches, communications with the dead, and phrenology. But somehow I don't see that happening anytime soon.