sudoman

Please, let's remember that the mentally ill aren't 'evil alien[s]', as the author describes her father. People considered mentally ill are those who generally have emotional and/or cognitive irregularities, be they subtle or strong. That still makes them human.

I recognize the need to expand involuntary commitment laws to include evidence of recent events beyond the past 15 minutes of an interview. I agree that something does need to be done about dangerous people in general, regardless of whether they are mentally ill or not. This is a problem that needs restrictive and supportive measures on many fronts.

However, most mentally ill people are not dangerous. The author's use of circumstantial stories, instead of statistical evidence strongly distorts the reader's understanding of a typically mentally ill person. In her story, almost every mentally ill person she mentions kills someone. But as the author says in the end, the mentally ill are statistically less likely to harm another than to be harmed by someone else.

I think that some of what the author hopes for is a good idea, but if people could be forcibly treated for mere delusions or minor symptoms, then that also includes the huge percentage of normal Americans who believe in or claim to have seen ghosts. Do unusual religious beliefs count as insanity? Are your political views ever considered 'irrational' by someone else? What happens to free thought and religion?

The problem with creating laws that chip away at civil liberties is that these laws can be abused or stretched to cover people who are in a 'grey area' and aren't a real danger. Those in power can take laws and apply them according to their personal preferences and values, at the expense of those who do little harm.

I think it's a good idea to have involuntary commitment laws only for the rare dangerous cases that exist. But in addition to that, human support is needed. Treating people well and showing gentle empathy will help win them over to the side of those who are trying to help. In the end, let's not harm the large majority who are closer to the middle of the grey area, and aren't dangerous.

This is one thing I love about free software: the ability to extend a set of code to other devices and purposes. Somebody has an itch to scratch, shares those changes, and other people benefit as well. :) I just wish that hardware manufacturers in general would release the specifications for their devices, so that hackers could write more free firmware blobs and drivers without having to split hairs. Ideally, the manufacturers would release the code themselves, so that there would be wider support for hardware, and you wouldn't see things like "sound isn't working yet" in the known issues list.

P.S. While this project describes themselves as "open source", it is also a free software project since they use a free license. Otherwise, what would be the point, if hackers couldn't share their contributions with each other and the world?

> He's only "required" [to do] so if he chooses to use iOS. And if he chooses to use iOS, it's because the platform attracted him, and one thing that attracts a lot of people to it it's the "it just works" and "you don't have to manage it".

That is entirely true, and yes that is part of the problem. The polished nature of a proprietary operating system is like a polished jail. It may be nice and roomy now, but what about in 5 or 10 years when everyone has an iPhone and Apple has one or no competitors? Can we stop them from shrinking our room if there is no free alternative?

> Except if you jailbreak

Actually, no. You can access the filesystem, but you can't install your own free (or proprietary) operating system on the iPhone because there isn't one.

Free software isn't all about nice looking features (though they tend to get developed in time), it's largely about creating a dynamic that ensures the freedom of the user, and that protects them from anti-features, both blatant and subtle. It may not sound like much on the surface, but it's an important issue, especially if someday someone in power says that they don't approve of what you do with your computing devices.

The user of a program is controlled by the program and the program is controlled by the programmer. Do you wish to be controlled by someone who won't show you what the program does, and doesn't allow others to make improvements? There _are_ alternatives, and they are not perfect. I don't expect everyone to be an early adopter of every free technology, but there are many, especially at HN, who would be able to use them and to help them grow to the point where most people would be able to use them quite easily. Developing free software is an act of generosity, because it is much needed in our world, where we are becoming so dependent upon computing technology.

Android is not a free operating system, but originally claimed to be one. http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/09/19/1756241/RMS-Is-Androi...

Yes, there is the inconvenience of people having different ideas of what makes an optimal program. However, in the case of Gnome3, the Gnome team has been developing fallback mode, which will be used in some GNU/Linux distros in their next releases. So there is still a good deal of original functionality still in place. (And yes there are still variants like XFCE, and other alternatives.)

However, the main point isn't whether we can get as much eye-candy as humanly possible. Free software operating systems may always be lacking some set of features that are present in proprietary systems. But the real issue is how many _anti-features_ there are. We know about Apple's decision on storage policies because it is blatant and they were up-front about it. But there is so much in a proprietary program that we can't easily monitor. It may sound paranoid, but there are likely backdoors, etc. in many of our cell phones, allowing paying governments to listen to converstaions, even when it's sitting in your pocket, or it looks like it's off but still has the battery in. http://www.neatorama.com/2011/05/29/gmail-hackers-used-us-go... Gmail and others are _known_ to have backdoors to user data for governments, for example. How comfortable are you with that?

And it's not limited to backdoors and spying. Apple once installed a hardware chip in one of their computers to remove certain features and sell it at a cheaper price. Removing the chip allowed users to use those features. While we usually don't have much control at the hardware level, I personally don't want to use an operating system that is defective by design http://www.defectivebydesign.org/ , with forced obsolescence just being one example of a dirty tactic that is often used. (Get the latest phone, the previous one isn't cool anymore and the new OS works like crap on your "old" hardware!)

If it weren't for Firefox, there would hardly be any web standards to speak of, and the internet would basically cater to Microsoft Windows' Internet Explorer. Microsoft resisted the development of the internet in its current form because it allows users of virtually any operating system to use the web to its fullest potential. I don't think Apple is very much above that kind of thinking. When there weren't many apps for the iPhone, Apple touted the idea of web-based apps, because it was an easy entry point, and there weren't many binary alternatives in the "ecosystem". Once there were lots of programs in Apple's (censored) store, they began discouraging the use of web-based applications and encouraged everyone to make programs compiled for the iPhone, largely because a user of any device can use a web-based app, but you have to buy an iPhone to use the any of the programs that have been written by programmers for that device. (No cross-compiling allowed by Apple, btw.)

So whether or not we like where development is heading with a given free software project, there is a sanity to the development process in that there are no anti-features that I can really think of. If any get made, then all it takes is _one_ programmer to say, "I don't like that idea, I'll just delete that code and share the change with others, because it suits me, and because I can."

edit: spelling

This general problem is a symptom of a major issue regarding the use of software that does not respect the freedom of its users. Every non-apple developer and user is required to bend to the will of the programmers who develop the proprietary iOS. Any negative choices or limitations imposed by Apple Inc. are virtually uncircumventable.

On the other hand, if users and developers in a community are free to view, modify and share the source code of the operating system and programs they are using, then that creates a dynamic where software cannot remain defective by design, something which cannot be said about Apple's hardware or software.

If we were talking about free (as in speech) software, users would have control of their data, and their choice of how to manage it; not some distant programmers working for a corporation's bottom line.

Ok, but Sony is still trying to block class action lawsuits. There are now millions of PSN users who are signing away their right to participate in and benefit from such an action if Sony is abusive or careless again.

I wouldn't necessarily say that it's human nature, but Western culture. Yes, there are those who most value surpassing others at any cost, but that is their personal culture, and not the singularity of human nature. I think that people choose which roles of their multi-faceted human nature to act upon and which ones to avoid.

It's possible that an education that teaches the values mentioned in the article would give similar advantages as those in the past. The difficulty is that a large source of people's education is the surrounding culture itself, so people pick up values that they see others pursuing. So if young people see the example of adults endlessly accumulating wealth and spending frivolously, then those observing think, "hm, maybe this is a good idea," and so they emulate, and the problem continues. And for those who have been doing and valuing the same the same thing as their neighbours for so long, just assume that it's "human nature," and not some human choice with many advantages and disadvantages.

If the brain only had a couple of neurons, then it might make sense to pump up the transmitters between them to get a more intense response because you don't need very refined control. However there are 100 billion neurons in the brain, and are connected in very complicated ways.

Since there's evidence that cranking up the seratonin for _every_ neuron or suppressing the dopamine for _every_ neuron isn't healthy, it stands to reason that treating "mental illness" is more complicated than turning a water faucet on or off. Who knows exactly what causes it? It could be related to patterns of connection, i.e. neuron A is better off connected to neuron B at site C, but is connected strongly to neuron D at site E. And then comes the question of whether the neuron is sending weird patterns of action potentials. Or it could be the timing, speed or synchronization compared to other neurons is off. Or it could be poor overall health of each individual neuron. Or subtle brain damage. And the problem might be localized to just some neurons in one part of the brain, and not another, making treatment of the whole brain with drugs a messy approach. You see, there are no obvious answers right now, but there are plenty of alternate explanations besides global chemical imbalance. :)

EDIT: Also, you could think of mental illness as being psychological, and something that the brain can heal on its own, given the right environment.

The way I understand meditation is that it is a way of stepping out of "worlds of becoming" that the mind is constantly entering and wandering around in. (Until things go bad, and then it jumps to another world.) The way I try to deal with this is through the ongoing practice of calming the mind and giving it good mental food. A good source of this food is the blameless pleasure that comes from the ability to settle on a single range of awareness such as the body or the breath, and then to stay there for long periods of time, which is actually more satisfying than it sounds at first. It's inevitable that the mind will keep pulling itself away to harmful yet tempting subjects, so learning how to return peacefully, yet firmly and repeatedly is a skill that I've been trying to develop.

It becomes somewhat obvious as one begins to meditate that this wandering, and the repetition of unskillful mental qualities, is connected with what stress and suffering there is in life. The accompanying insight into these thought worlds and how they keep originating and pulling stress and suffering with them can supposedly allow one to grow dispassionate for those addictions and give them up to at least a greater or lesser extent. It's interesting to see what repeated mental habits the mind thinks are good ideas, simply because it hasn't taken a good look at them since before the age of two. Giving those habits up, even if only temporarily, can be a great relief for the mind.

The tough part about all this is putting in the effort on a regular/continual basis when the initial results can come and go without your really seeing why. Looking at my own practice, I can say it's worth the effort so far, despite the difficulties. When I'm in a tough spot, remembering the moments that I have been at greater ease in the meditation give me reason to keep working in that direction.

If you're interested, here are some talks by my favorite meditation teacher: http://dhammatalks.org/Archive/BasicsCollection/BasicsCollec...

I hope this helps your practice. ;-)