[HN Gopher] Me an' Algernon - grappling with (temporary) cogniti...
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Me an' Algernon - grappling with (temporary) cognitive decline
Author : KentBeck
Score : 85 points
Date : 2025-06-10 15:00 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (tidyfirst.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tidyfirst.substack.com)
| cantor_S_drug wrote:
| > When I re-read Flowers for Algernon recently I was just sad.
| The second half of the story, where his mind is going away, is
| just brutal, especially when he can remember how smart he was but
| knows it's gone for good.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21544149
|
| "Von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old
| son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes
| wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest
| of us." - Edward Teller
|
| I watched a documentary from the 80ies a long time ago. A
| mathematician (can't remember his name) who worked with von
| Neumann in Los Alamanos was interviewed. He described von
| Neumann's last weeks in the hospital - the cancer had already
| metastasized into his brain. The mathematician said something
| along this lines (I am citing from memory): "von Neumann was
| constantly visited by colleagues, who wanted to discuss their
| latest work with him. He tried to keep up, struggling, like in
| old times. But he couldn't. Try to imagine having one of the
| greatest minds maybe in the history of mankind. And then try to
| imagine losing this gift. I was terrible. I have never seen a man
| experience greater suffering."
|
| Marina von Neumann (his daughter) later wrote this about his
| final weeks:
|
| "After only a few minutes, my father made what seemed to be a
| very peculiar and frightening request from a man who was widely
| regarded as one of the greatest - if not the greatest -
| mathematician of the 20th century. He wanted me to give him two
| numbers, like 7 and 6 or 10 and 3, and ask him to tell me their
| sum. For as long as I can remember, I had always known that my
| father's major source of self-regard, what he felt to be the very
| essence of his being, was his incredible mental capacity. In this
| late stage of his illness, he must have been aware that this
| capacity was deteriorating rapidly, and the panic that caused was
| worse than any physical pain. In demanding that I test him on
| these elementary sums, he was seeking reassurance that at least a
| small fragment of this intellectual powers remained."
| squigz wrote:
| Now keep in mind that that frustration - the absolute torture
| of losing who and what you are - applies to everyone going
| through something like this, not just the greatest minds of
| their time.
|
| Makes me glad that we're starting to look at assisted dying
| more seriously...
| tough wrote:
| why not try to cure alzheimer or other mental diseases that
| show up on the elderly instead?
| squigz wrote:
| Are these mutually exclusive ideas? Can we not pursue
| research in this area while not forcing families to watch
| their loved ones slowly lose their mind and wither away?
| tough wrote:
| I guess we can explore both, but I'd ask you to research
| how these laws are already affecting families too in new
| ways on places where eutanasia is already legal.
|
| It's easy on older -about to die-, people, but what about
| not such clear cut cases, some families are actually
| against their beloved ones taking their lifes, and the
| state allowing it, (Parents suing their offspring, to try
| and not have them do it, for example)
|
| and yes, a judge rules out on such cases, but to me,
| well, i dont see why the state should -sanction- taking
| your own life, when is something that shouldn't be
| natural, there's medical cases for sure, but laws sadly
| aren't perfect, i'd rather have no one wrongly off
| themselves
| squigz wrote:
| > I guess we can explore both, but I'd ask you to
| research how these laws are already affecting families
| too in new ways on places where eutanasia is already
| legal.
|
| Can you provide some reading? Because this doesn't really
| mean much by itself.
|
| > It's easy on older -about to die-, people, but what
| about not such clear cut cases, some families are
| actually against their beloved ones taking their lifes,
| and the state allowing it, (Parents suing their
| offspring, to try and not have them do it, for example)
|
| Then those families can talk about it and the person
| dying can make their choice. The families who don't like
| it can do what they want, just like those who do want it.
|
| > when is something that shouldn't be natural,
|
| Almost nothing about our modern life is "natural",
| including most of medicine. That said, how is death
| unnatural?
| tough wrote:
| > Almost nothing about our modern life is "natural",
| including most of medicine. That said, how is death
| unnatural?
|
| only meant having to bear the death of your child before
| you, usually a parent dies first, although i guess infant
| mortality rates where much higher until recent times...
|
| this recent case what i was thinking specifically https:/
| /www.elconfidencial.com/espana/2025-03-17/justicia-av...
| squigz wrote:
| > The young woman has been in a wheelchair for years
| after falling from the top of a building .
|
| > He added that his daughter suffers from mental problems
| with suicidal tendencies and constant changes of heart,
| and therefore needed psychological treatment, not
| assisted death.
|
| > "The patient's capacity to make decisions has also been
| verified," the ruling states, "by the attending physician
| and the psychologist at the Hospital Residencia . The
| plaintiff has not presented any evidence that could
| refute the conclusions of these reports. They show that
| Noelia retains her capacity to make all types of
| decisions, including, therefore, the decision to undergo
| euthanasia."
|
| This is a terribly sad situation all around, but I don't
| see this as evidence for why euthanasia laws are bad. The
| best I can see is that this highlights that we shouldn't
| push euthanasia as a solution to every lifelong
| disability, but that s a social/cultural issue, not a
| legal one - and one that we will certainly have to adapt
| to as assisted dying becomes more socially accepted.
| There will likely be more stories where, arguably, it
| goes too far, but I don't think there will be an epidemic
| of people offing themselves for relatively minor things.
|
| > only meant having to bear the death of your child
| before you
|
| Of course this is sad, but given the context of the
| conversation, the other choice being watching a child
| lose their mind or suffer in a world that is
| extraordinarily hostile to disabled people, I don't think
| saving the parents one type of pain (while subjecting
| them to another) is a really great idea either.
|
| Also, isn't it better to have a way for people to kill
| themselves "cleanly", rather than kill themselves at home
| (or worse, in public)? Presumably finding one's child
| like that would be far worse?
|
| (Of course, none of this is to say that we shouldn't
| e.g., make the world more accessible to disabled people,
| or help people learn to live with their disabilities, or
| try to cure Alzheimer's and the like - but as said, we
| can do all of these things at once. In the meantime,
| before we cure Alzheimer's and make everyone perfectly
| mentally healthy, we should also deal with the harsh
| realities that not having done those things entails.)
| tough wrote:
| I didnt link them but several similar cases around mental
| illness.
|
| IMHO a state shouldn't give individuals the right to off
| themselves.
|
| Nature and physics already do, providing laws and a
| framework around it perverses it to push that people that
| feels out of society to bad decisions some times
|
| Maybe its better to have them be able to do it -cleanly-
| and legally, but that also means more of them do?
|
| I don't see mental health, or disabilities, as granting
| ending your own life, my worry is this discourse around
| euthansia is actively against that view and detremines
| the experience of humans that are considered not optimal
| to society as they where a throw away toy
| squigz wrote:
| > IMHO a state shouldn't give individuals the right to
| off themselves.
|
| This is a really terrible way of putting it (another way
| of putting it might be "the right to end their
| suffering"), not to mention that a state needs a good
| reason to deny its citizens of rights, not the other way
| around. I don't see any good reason why we should deny
| people the right to end their suffering when they choose.
|
| > Maybe its better to have them be able to do it
| -cleanly- and legally, but that also means more of them
| do?
|
| I don't think assisted dying being accessible is going to
| cause more people to become suicidal, no.
|
| > I don't see mental health, or disabilities, as granting
| ending your own life
|
| The thing is, you don't get to decide that for me either,
| on a legal basis. You're welcome to feel this way
| yourself, of course, and encourage your friends and
| family not do so, but you don't have the right to decide
| that for others.
|
| > my worry is this discourse around euthansia is actively
| against that view and detremines the experience of humans
| that are considered not optimal to society as they where
| a throw away toy
|
| The thing is... we already do. Disabled, elderly,
| neurodivergent... There are large groups of people that
| society has been failing for a long time. Giving some of
| those groups (like the elderly) the option to not have to
| endure that seems to me a good thing.
| tough wrote:
| I agree with you overall but i feel the legislation isn't
| as nuanced and enables second order effects we can't
| preconcieve.
|
| But you're right it is not my right to decide for others
| either, and i abide to the laws and will respect others
| choosing to enact and follow this one, I just don't love
| the fact I guess
| 1123581321 wrote:
| It will be mutually exclusive along some class line if we
| try to pursue both. Additionally, without the desire to
| preserve life and value of the advantages of aged minds,
| we will not make as much progress on the disease.
| squigz wrote:
| Well, we are not "trying to" pursue both - we actively
| are. Anyway, there certainly is much discussion to be had
| about class discrimination in medical care, but that
| seems out of scope for this thread - not least because of
| very simple things like some country's healthcare systems
| being radically different than others.
|
| > Additionally, without the desire to preserve life and
| value of the advantages of aged minds, we will not make
| as much progress on the disease.
|
| I'm not sure why you think that easing end-of-life
| suffering would lead us to stop preserving life?
|
| We're also not talking about "aged minds," we're talking
| about damaged minds - and even if we were, we're not
| talking about de-aging or anything like that.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I appreciate the response. I said "trying" because
| neither the disease research or the policy change has
| broadly succeeded yet, and I don't think either are
| certain.
| yapyap wrote:
| because assisted suicide is a bit more damn easy than
| "curing alzheimer"
|
| why not cure cancer while you're at it
| tough wrote:
| well I didn't ask which one was easier but more worthy to
| pursue
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I doubt you can cure these diseases, you can perhaps
| prevent them, but to cure would mean removing their
| effects, and if you could remove their effects and say,
| bring a seriously deteriorated Von Neumann back to his
| previous mental heights it seems like you should be able to
| make anyone the equal of Von Neumann - which I agree would
| be a great thing to be able to do but seems to be a much
| further along than the words cure or prevent would
| indicate.
| squigz wrote:
| > I agree would be a great thing to be able to do but
| seems to be a much further along than the words cure or
| prevent would indicate.
|
| If the words "cure" or "prevent" don't indicate that, why
| did you bring it up? :)
|
| I think this is being needlessly pedantic. Keeping in
| mind that one of HN's guidelines is to respond to the
| strongest plausible interpretation of a comment, I think
| we can assume that GP meant, essentially, "learn enough
| about these diseases so as to detect and prevent them
| from causing irreparable damage"
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| The "disease" we're talking about here is death. Von
| Neumann was losing his mental capacity because he was
| dying. I know some in the silicon valley set think that
| "curing" death is both feasible and desirable but I
| disagree on both points.
| sinenomine wrote:
| A voice from outside SV (mine): We can extend life and
| prevent disease in animals and should do the same in
| human beings. As much as the West has exclusive access to
| biomedical R&D, it's an ethical imperative for the West
| to pursue this goal on behalf of humanity as a whole.
|
| You invented _noblesse oblige_ and should measure up to
| it.
| tough wrote:
| no death is just part of life, there's no life without
| death.
|
| the disease would be alzheimer, and curing it would mean
| probably preventing it / being able to edit the genome to
| nullify whatever gen is making it come up in the first
| place (if its genetic)
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| sorry but the strongest plausible interpretation of the
| word cure is obviously not "prevent", it is to undo the
| damage.
|
| >If the words "cure" or "prevent" don't indicate that,
| why did you bring it up? :)
|
| the strongest plausible interpretation of my comment
| would be I brought it up for the reason I said - that if
| you could cure the disease you would have to be able to
| give anyone the capabilities the disease destroyed
| (because these diseases seem to destroy parts of the
| brain so even if you "brought back" the brain it would be
| a different brain with different data in it)- and that,
| although I did not state it, I felt that the original
| poster had not considered this when they expressed a wish
| to cure.
|
| on edit: obviously if you have experienced minor damage
| you can get back to what you were before because the
| brain has a lot of redundancies and it can recover if
| decline is halted, but if you have experienced major
| damage you're probably not getting back and asking for a
| cure there seems unlikely to work.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| There is a world of difference between removing an
| inhibitor and adding an enhancement.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| since these diseases destroy parts of the brain not just
| inhibit the functioning of the brain you would need to
| add an enhancement and not remove an inhibitor to bring
| back lost functionality.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Depends very much on the disease, for my specific type of
| brain fog from dysautonomia (via ME/CFS and hEDS) it may
| feel like a gradual and permanent degradation but it is
| largely completely reversible and when you know what
| you're doing it's actually pretty easy to do so. This is
| only known by a very small minority of doctors so the
| chance a specific patient meets such a doctor is
| incredibly low which is why most people still think it's
| some great big mystery. I was able to remove the
| inhibitor and bounce back better than ever. I think the
| brain fog in my case was caused by excess IL-1B pro-
| inflammatory cytokines and directly targeting that with
| medication did result in the brain fog near permanently
| lifting.
|
| It's also likely that even if the degradation is
| permanent it is also likely multifaceted and one of those
| facets is likely to be treatable such that the impact of
| the degradation could be greatly reduced. I think it's
| incumbent on us to try as much as possible even in the
| seemingly lost causes because learnings from such
| attempts could yield insights for those who are not lost
| causes.
|
| It's a ridiculous conflation to suggest that the
| inability to take a regular person and give them Von
| Neumann intelligence means that we can't help Von Neumann
| stuffing an ailment even if a component of that ailment
| is clearly permanent.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Depends very much on the disease, for my specific type
| of brain fog from dysautonomia (via ME/CFS and hEDS)
|
| sorry, I thought we were talking about Alzheimer's
| because Alzheimer's was what was mentioned in the post I
| responded to but now I see it is in fact every ailment
| that affects the brain, and not just Alzheimer's.
|
| >It's also likely that even if the degradation is
| permanent it is also likely multifaceted and one of those
| facets is likely to be treatable such that the impact of
| the degradation could be greatly reduced.
|
| this might be what was meant here,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44277444 - when I
| said that the brain has a lot of redundancies and of
| course caught and stopped early enough then it wouldn't
| be such a big problem
|
| but hey, what do I know, I didn't even know what we were
| talking about evidently, thanks for correcting me.
|
| >It's a ridiculous conflation to suggest that the
| inability to take a regular person and give them Von
| Neumann intelligence means that we can't help Von Neumann
| stuffing an ailment even if a component of that ailment
| is clearly permanent.
|
| OK well I guess I am taking a more stringent meaning of
| cure than you are, you are taking the relieve meaning,
| which is of course to help, but I am taking the revert
| meaning. I believe mine is a pretty common meaning, at
| least in the vernacular. I mean when they say we cure
| cancer they don't mean it will make the pain less intense
| and maybe you can live twice as long as otherwise.
|
| Certainly I believe the pains and problems of a disease
| can be relieved, but in the case of Alzheimer's (sorry
| for going back to the disease I was discussing since you
| have informed me I was not discussing that but since I
| was, actually, discussing that I am just going to have to
| stick with it) it can not necessarily be reverted - it
| can potentially be reverted as I indicated earlier if not
| too much damage is done (because of redundancies), but if
| for example you have late stage Alzheimer's I don't
| believe you are going to get to cure (revert) all
| damages.
|
| In such cases you can manage to stop it and rehabilitate
| the patient to a less damaged earlier state perhaps, but
| otherwise I would think there was too much damage to
| revert it, because if brain tissue is too damaged I
| suppose (perhaps again due to a naive model of how I
| suppose memories and knowledge are maintained in the
| brain) that the data that was held by these damaged
| sections is now unrecoverable.
|
| on edit: removed some verbiage.
| sinenomine wrote:
| 1. As other commenters point, many cases have intact
| memory and circuits for what would be considered "lost",
| which activate from time to time. So it's likely a
| question of SNR and tissue vitality (e.g. basic capillary
| function) for these cases.
|
| 2. You wouldn't believe what feats of neuroplasticity lie
| behind a few receptors properly pushed by molecular keys.
| We just don't have experience to describe it. Adult
| neuroplasticity and (disproven btw) neurogenesis is a
| rigid sad joke compared to what's possible.
| sinenomine wrote:
| With all due respect, _you didn 't even try at anything
| resembling full effort_. There are 2, maybe 3 societies
| in the world, which have (or had) the capacity to try
| implementing a serious R&D effort to prevent the diseases
| of aging. The effort has been meager so far, and
| ultimately, compared to other major R&D directions (no,
| I'm not talking about AI, AI is fine), it's a testament
| to how much we value ourselves and our loved ones.
|
| As an adult who already lost a few of my relatives, and
| will probably lose a few more: if we truly loved them,
| we'd have put at least 10% of GDP into eventually curing
| all degenerative diseases, while implementing a simple
| scalable cryopreservation infrastructure for those who
| won't be there in time.
|
| It could be done, The West and Asia could achieve this.
| But didn't, due to all too well known web of aversion &
| coping mechanisms.
|
| In your small-mindedness you failed humanity.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >With all due respect, you didn't even try at anything
| resembling full effort. There are 2, maybe 3 societies in
| the world, which have (or had) the capacity to try
| implementing a serious R&D effort to prevent the diseases
| of aging.
|
| exactly who do you think I am? It sounds like you think I
| am some sort of avatar of one of these societies, and for
| some reason I am here posting on HN.
|
| >while implementing a simple scalable cryopreservation
| infrastructure for those who won't be there in time.
|
| ok, well as long as its simple.
|
| >In your small-mindedness you failed humanity.
|
| okey-dokey, well I can definitely see you are going
| through something right now, hope you get better.
| tough wrote:
| Yeah tbh english isn't my first language, and I meant
| more into -finding the causes- and eradicating alzheimer,
| aka preventing it, much like we have done with polio, or
| whatever.
|
| Not really curing people already in advanced state of the
| maladie...
|
| anyways, they're not mutually exclusive, but enhanching
| life should preceed ending it in the order of priorities
| imho
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Ok sorry about the mistake, I just made the observation
| as a small aside, thinking perhaps you did mean cure as
| in totally revert damage.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| We haven't yet and likely won't for a lot of people who, to
| be blunt about it, would quite literally rather die than
| lose their mental faculties. Ultimately it's their choice.
| Honestly it doesn't strike me as all too different than a
| DNR.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| Do you genuinely believe that this is a binary decision, or
| is this just anti-euthanasia rhetoric disguised as concern
| trolling?
|
| Offering humane end-of-life options to people suffering
| today does not prohibit ongoing disease research towards
| potentially helping people in the future.
| sinenomine wrote:
| It's not entirely binary, but there is an obvious
| unpleasant tendency in e.g. Canada, to soft-push MAID
| onto potentially treatable patients who don't even seek
| medically assisted death.
|
| I wouldn't want my government to have an option of
| dealing with the problem this way, and if I needed MAID,
| I'd just self-administer.
| tough wrote:
| Yes, it's a slippery slope once a state providing
| assistant to suicide is law imho.
|
| It just doesnt seem something a state should be charged
| with.
| kcplate wrote:
| > In this late stage of his illness, he must have been aware
| that this capacity was deteriorating rapidly, and the panic
| that caused was worse than any physical pain.
|
| I watched my father go through this (due to Alzheimer's) before
| he passed away. He would say "I don't understand why I just
| can't _think_ like I used to". It was heartbreaking. He was a
| brilliant mathematician before the disease put him in a mental
| prison. It was pure torture for him.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Watching my grandmother slide helplessly into the dark mental
| abyss of dementia and then be lost inside it for years made me
| realize that it is downright inhumane to not offer end of life
| assistance to people.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I have conflicting feelings on it
|
| On one hand, I had a similar experience with my grandfather.
| He eventually couldn't even remember to speak English, he
| reverted to his childhood language. When we translated, he
| thought I was a childhood friend of his, not his grandson. It
| was awful
|
| But sometimes he would be so lucid and remember everything.
| It was so awful thinking that "he is still in there" the idea
| of him choosing to end it and not have those last few times
| to talk.. I dunno
|
| During one of those lucid times was the most deep and
| important conversation I ever had with him. He understood
| what was happening and it gave him the freedom (courage?) to
| talk about things he'd never talked to me about before. It
| was so important to me as a young man, I cannot imagine if he
| had signed an end of life form and I never got to see that
| side of him before he passed
|
| Selfish of me I know. But still. Maybe this really just
| highlights how important it is for people to really talk to
| one another when they are alive
| squigz wrote:
| > I have conflicting feelings on it
|
| As ardent a supporter of assisted death as I am, I really
| don't think there's any other way to feel about it. You
| illustrate exactly why these types of choices will never be
| easy.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Yeah, to clarify I do support it. I think reducing
| suffering is a noble goal and allowing people to choose
| not to suffer needlessly is overall a good thing
|
| But it definitely is not cut and dry and I can see why
| some people are extremely resistant to the idea
| tanewishly wrote:
| Where I currently live, terminally ill nearing their end
| often fall in a pattern of eating and drinking less and
| less, to the point of having nothing (not even water).
| This process of dying takes 1-2 weeks(!). Longer if some
| liquid is still imbibed.
|
| This is a common ending of a terminally ill process and
| apparently seen as humane. Though I think if anyone
| treated their dog like that, we'd report them for animal
| abuse.
|
| I don't have good answers to most questions surrounding
| this topic. But I'd like to get to a point where people
| are treated as humanely as their pets in their final
| period. And I can't even tell you the current practice
| isn't, just that it does not at all feel that way to me.
| squigz wrote:
| > Where I currently live, terminally ill nearing their
| end often fall in a pattern of eating and drinking less
| and less, to the point of having nothing (not even
| water). This process of dying takes 1-2 weeks(!). Longer
| if some liquid is still imbibed.
|
| Even just getting to this point is usually a brutal
| period of pain. Then you have to die like that? It's
| frankly barbaric.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| bit ironic, all this effort to extend life but it turns out
| that living that long isn't always so great so we start
| euthanizing folks.
|
| I'm not saying it's wrong or right (I don't have a full
| opinion on the matter yet) but it seems very indicative of
| human endeavors more generally. Like a big a cosmic joke.
| 0_gravitas wrote:
| There's a really big gap between 'living so long' and
| 'living with a lovecraftian deteriorating and debilitating
| disease'
| kevingadd wrote:
| If you experience temporary cognitive decline like this
| definitely pay attention to it, it can indicate serious stressors
| in your life that need to be dealt with immediately. It can get
| worse steadily if you ignore it!
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I am actually just starting to go on medical leave from work
| due to this
|
| My performance has been going down, my anxiety and stress are
| through the roof. Honestly you wouldn't know it from talking to
| me, other than the fact my memory is shot
|
| I'm completely forgetting stuff minutes after it happens
|
| I'm very unhappy with the feeling, and I hate going on leave
| for this, but I have to. I'm not even 40 and this is the second
| time in my life I've burned out hard like this
| beng-nl wrote:
| Good luck friend
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Thank you, very kind of you
|
| I mostly wanted to share my current state so if other
| people reading also recognize themselves in it, hopefully
| they realize it isn't normal and they also go seek help
|
| As for me I will be okay. I've been through this before on
| my own and managed. This time I have a partner to help me
| through too
| zellyn wrote:
| This happened to me during the pandemic. High (insupportable)
| stress, plus a year or two of significantly too little sleep,
| plus social isolation.
|
| It was terrifying. I had just seen my mom taken by
| Alzheimer's (or something similar) way too young, and thought
| my life was over.
|
| All the tests coming back negative, making a point of hanging
| out with friends, returning to the office, and getting enough
| sleep seemed to help, and it slowly started getting better.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I am somewhat the opposite. The pandemic was great for me.
| Being able to work remotely is wonderful. Much less
| stressful than commuting daily, more free time, less
| scrutiny during work hours and I don't live alone so
| staying home isn't isolating
|
| I definitely do need to spend more time out of the house
| with friends and such though
|
| Most of my current stress is due to AI fears, layoffs
| looming, uncertain about the future job market for my
| skills, and such. Definitely too little sleep
|
| I think I'm too young for Alzheimer's to be a serious
| concern but it does run in the family so it might be worth
| asking my doctor about it. I hadn't thought of that
|
| I really do think that it's mostly a combination of my
| company having like 6 rounds of layoffs in the last couple
| of years, plus them turning up the pressure to use AI as a
| daily driver now.
|
| I've been trying but I just cannot get the productivity out
| of it that other people are claiming. Makes me feel
| obsolete
|
| Edit: I also can't really wrap my head around my coworkers
| who are gleefully embracing AI tools after watching the
| company cut literally half of our development team over the
| past couple of years.
|
| It makes me feel like I'm watching chickens sharpen the
| farmer's axe
| zellyn wrote:
| I think sleep is possibly the most important part. I also
| did a sleep study and started using a CPAP machine: might
| want to look into that if it's a possibility...
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I do have one already and it helps a great deal for
| getting good sleep when I can
|
| But it does not help me get to sleep in the first place
| unfortunately. Too much anxiety
|
| I appreciate the suggestion though and if anyone else
| struggles to sleep, wakes up randomly out of breath, I do
| strongly recommend a cpap. It is great for me when I
| actually can sleep
| DougN7 wrote:
| What is "the genie" that is referred to a few times? An AI coding
| copilot?
| zellyn wrote:
| Yes. LLMs
| GarnetFloride wrote:
| I was in a car crash and spent a month in the hospital where they
| gave me heavy-duty pain killers. I could tell I was having
| cognitive issues because I couldn't remember words that I knew I
| used before, but I wasn't curious about it.
|
| After a while they halved the prescription and after a few hours
| I could feel my words returning. It was terrifying to feel my IQ
| rise substantially. Before I left eh hospital they gave me
| various cognitive and mental tests and it was reassuring to be
| told that I was in the 96 percentile of my peer group (college
| educated, engineers)
|
| We deal with a parent with dementia and another with a stroke.
| The difficult part with all of these are not really seeing the
| decline from the inside, sometimes there are the acknowledgment
| of hints of decline but mostly you don't want to think about it
| and compensate as best as you can.
| nottorp wrote:
| Heavy duty pain killers tend to do that but it's temporary.
|
| I remember having a particularly nasty dentist visit after
| which I kept myself stuffed with a painkiller i hadn't head of,
| on her instructions. Then going to the corner store and
| forgetting why I went there.
|
| Permanent cognitive decline is another, much sadder, topic.
| squeegee_scream wrote:
| I've had cognitive decline over the past 6 years. I turn 41 this
| year. It's strongly (maybe solely) due to stress, anxiety,
| depression, migraines, and insomnia. This entire clusterfuck
| started 6 years ago because, while I had the skills to excel in
| school and career, I was sorely lacking in the skills to be a
| father, husband, and homeowner. When I got married and we began
| having children, my decline began. But it was slow enough and
| normal enough at first (new parents often don't get enough sleep,
| they often have extra stress and anxiety, etc) that I did nothing
| to combat it. It wasn't until 2021 with all the added awfulness
| of 18 months of a global pandemic that it become obvious things
| were unsustainable. I was barely able to function at work, I was
| being put on a PIP, and I was almost completely absent from my
| family. When I was with my family I was irritable, angry,
| constantly complaining.
|
| I got on antidepressants and that helped, though it came with
| it's own set of problems. I started seeing counselors, reading
| self-help books, I went through 6 months of cognitive behavioral
| therapy for insomnia (CBTi), working with a neurologist to get
| migraines under control, seeking help wherever I could. It has
| been a slow process but I'm doing a lot better. I'm still nowhere
| near where I was cognitively. In fact I don't know that has
| improved much at all. And it's only been in the past year that
| I've began to understand my decline as a result of jumping into
| marriage, fatherhood, and home ownership without the necessary
| skills to handle them. I'm hopeful things will continue to
| improve, I've learned an enormous amount about life, fatherhood,
| marriage, love, forgiveness, hope, and priorities.
|
| If you are a young parent, or considering being a parent soon,
| work on yourself. Ensure you have the skills you need or your
| life (and the lives of those near to you) will become a bag of
| utter despair filled with shit.
| 12_throw_away wrote:
| Hey I think you might be me, this is basically me in most
| respects. I have nothing helpful to say except to say yeah,
| this is a real thing that I think many people are silently
| suffering through right now, 5-ish years post-pandemic.
| mickelsen wrote:
| Hey. I also fell through the cracks during the pandemic, laid
| off at the height of the hiring market, but unable and
| unwilling to go back, developed tinnitus (gone, phew!), had
| cognitive issues too that really took a lot of time to improve,
| and I'm only in my 30s.
|
| But it got better, and I'm in a better place now. It felt like
| I'd never get there; always tiny improvements but not quite
| there. Last year I finally felt the burnout gone. I stopped
| being so cynical. My life was better already, but still my mind
| was not quite there yet.
|
| Now just this year I've rekindled my curiosity, using my free
| time again for little projects, not leaving piles of unfinished
| stuff around the house, it's something that's even noticeable
| from the outside - the little things. So now, moving forward, I
| take it easy, forgive myself, try again and don't subject
| myself to unattainable benchmarks.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I used to get this pretty regularly, I thought I just keep
| burning out. I have an unusually high IQ and noticed that my
| symptoms were very similar to the string of condensed matter
| physicists that committed suicide. Their descriptions of their
| health issues before they killed themselves mirrored my own and I
| too used the Flowers from Algernon to describe my difficulties to
| others. I shared other weird stuff like extreme sleep difficulty
| and extreme noise intolerance. I found out only relatively
| recently it was due to ME/CFS which was from undiagnosed hEDS, a
| condition nowhere near as rare as it's thought to be. I had been
| to see a huge amount of doctors and none of them diagnosed me
| with this despite being a walking bag of symptoms and having
| extreme hyper-mobility. Anyway, I think tech, like physics, has a
| fairly strong IQ selection criteria bias so I've noticed a
| concentration of the same health issues here on HN.
|
| The characteristic brain fog seems to be tied to dysautonomia and
| excess IL-1B pro-inflammatory cytokines. I treat the latter with
| a strict no sugar diet, and high doses of D3, TUDCA, and DIM. I
| treat the dysautonomia with LDN, modafinil, amitryptiline, and a
| low dose of semaglutide (ozempic).
| antisthenes wrote:
| > The characteristic brain fog seems to be tied to dysautonomia
| and excess IL-1B pro-inflammatory cytokines. I treat the latter
| with a strict no sugar diet, and high doses of D3, TUDCA, and
| DIM. I treat the dysautonomia with LDN, modafinil,
| amitryptiline, and a low dose of semaglutide (ozempic).
|
| Does it work?
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Very much so, night and day. I've been pretty much issue free
| for 2 years, except for PEM which means I have to avoid
| cardio. I don't know how to fix that. Instead of cardio I eat
| healthy and lift weights. I was one of those gifted kids
| which was a hell of an advantage but things slipped away from
| me as I got older, now I'm back and as good as ever.
| marliechiller wrote:
| Interesting - your story of ME/CFS mirrors mine. Mine was
| triggered by a really mild cold a couple of years back, likely
| COVID. Thankfully a lot more research is going on into this,
| and im mostly back to full health now but the brain fog made me
| doubt myself at work a lot more than usual.
| anthk wrote:
| Beware with Ozempic, it can cause eye issues.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I have a fairly unusual genetic disorder, and quite rare to boot
| in this particular variant. The gold standard cocktail contains a
| medication which, while effective in dealing with one facet of
| the pain, absolutely turns down the dimmer switch on my mind in
| fairly particular ways. Gait is affected the next day, along with
| a mild aphasia. During the peak, however, I am dumb as a box of
| rocks. Math and spatial business seem fine. I can still program,
| however. Just do not talk to me, as communication is ...
| troublesome.
|
| I usually skip this portion of the cocktail unless things are
| particularly bad. The disorder is progressive, so when it comes
| for my brain, well, that's when things are over. I do not have
| much going on for me in terms of personal value except for, well,
| solving problems.
|
| A very close friend of mine has had _two_ hospitalizations for
| gangrene, and the second one absolutely devastated his cognitive
| abilities. He has leveled off at about eighty-five percent of
| where he was before. If he is tired or feeling unwell, verbal
| perseveration begins.
|
| My mother is fairly well-on in her years. She used to have a
| tremendous vocabulary, despite her very limited education. Now,
| she has begun to lose words and I end up "translating" for her
| because I know what she is getting at. She _could_ do crosswords
| but refuses to, even the Monday selections, which are typically
| the easiest. Very recently, she has begun misplacing things. I
| had my suspicions, and during a routine head, neck, and brain
| imaging for something else, I checked out the results and, sure
| enough, some loss of volume in the right hippocampus.
| eszed wrote:
| > I've always identified with my thinking--I have value because
| I'm smart. Turns out, as with all attachment, this is a mistake.
|
| I experienced a period of severe cognitive deficit while
| recovering from a medical episode. We didn't know whether it
| would be permanent or not. I also discovered - as a fellow my-IQ-
| is-my-identity person - that it didn't matter anywhere near as
| much as I'd have expected it would. I was still able to
| experience love, and joy, and humour. Some things sucked, and
| were frustrating, like not being able to retain enough
| information to read a moderately-complex piece of prose, but the
| point is that I still _felt like myself_ , even at a very low
| cognitive level. I'm immensely comforted. I expect I'll
| experience that again, as I (hopefully!) age, but it holds no
| particular terror anymore.
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