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540 points drankl | 2 comments | | HN request time: 1.307s | source
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parpfish ◴[] No.44485690[source]
Decades ago in my first abnormal psych course, the prof warned us that there was an almost iron-clad law that students will immediately start self diagnosing themselves with “weak” versions of every disorder we learn about. In my years since then, it has absolutely held true and now is supercharged by a whole industry of TikTok self-diagnoses.

But there are a few things we can learn from this:

- if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves that makes them feel unique, they’ll take it.

- if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves to give a name/form to a problem, they’ll take it.

- most mental disorders are an issue of degree and not something qualitatively different from a typical experience. People should use this to gain greater empathy for those who struggle.

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Aurornis ◴[] No.44485973[source]
> - if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves to give a name/form to a problem, they’ll take it.

This one is widespread among the young people I’ve worked with recently. It’s remarkable how I can identify the current TikTok self diagnosis trends without ever watching TikTok.

There’s a widespread belief that once you put a label on a problem, other people are not allowed to criticize you for it. Many young people lean into this and label everything as a defensive tactic.

A while ago, one of the trends was “time blindness”. People who were chronically late, missed meetings, or failed to manage their time would see TikToks about “time blindness” as if it was a medical condition, and self-diagnose as having that.

It was bizarre to suddenly have people missing scheduled events and then casually informing me that they had time blindness, as if that made it okay. Once they had a label for a condition, they felt like they had a license to escape accountability.

The most frustrating part was that the people who self-diagnosed as having “time blindness” universally got worse at being on time. Once they had transformed the personal problem into a labeled condition, they didn’t feel as obligated to do anything about it.

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dsubburam ◴[] No.44486436[source]
This parallels the debate about free will and determinism. If you were in the determinist camp, believing that all that one does was predetermined by prior environmental causes, could you still hold people responsible for their actions?

Hobart makes a convincing argument that you can: "Fatalism says that my morrow is determined no matter how I struggle. This is of course a superstition. Determinism says that my morrow is determined through my struggle. There is this significance in my mental effort, that it is deciding the event." [1]

i.e., he is a "compatibilist", thinking that you can believe in free will and determinism too.

If you find Hobart persuasive, time-blindness or no, it does make sense to reproach someone for being habitually unpunctual.

[1] https://philarchive.org/archive/HOBFWA

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1. Aurornis ◴[] No.44486608[source]
> If you were in the determinist camp, believing that all that one does was predetermined by prior environmental causes, could you still hold people responsible for their actions?

This is a good example of where over-thinking a topic in abstract terms causes some people to lose sight of the big picture.

Take a step back and think about what you’re saying: If nobody could be held accountable for their own actions, does the concept of accountability disappear? It’s a farcical claim.

But you’re right, this is essentially what is being argued: By invoking therapy speak and formal sounding labels, the person wants you to kindly box up any accountability or consequences under the label and direct them at the abstract notion of the labeled condition, instead of the person responsible.

This is why I experienced so many people getting worse at punctuality after learned the phrase “time blindness”: They used the therapy speak to transform themselves into the victim, at which point the pressure to improve their situation diminished because they believe victims couldn’t be blamed. The temptation becomes strong to label everything negative this way as it’s a nice escape hatch to externalize accountability.

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2. gsf_emergency_2 ◴[] No.44486969[source]
>escape hatch to externalize accountability.

It's harder to escape from "has bad taste" than from "irresponsible" :)

>Bad taste leads to crime

Useful reminder (originally Stendhal's, that Lead poisoning is always indirect)?

OT warnings

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_acetate#Sweetener

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3027955/