This loss hits close to home for many, as seen in the comments. Many of us struggle with different mental health issues. We truly need to re-evaluate how we address mental health and our commitment to provide better services for those in need as well as reducing the stigmatization around mental illness as a whole. With so much background noise about so many things framed with negative connotations and the exponential pace at which it is increasing I fear we will see more and more loss related to mental illness. In my opinion we need to focus on how to re-ground ourselves in many ways, a lot of this may be attributed in part to the loss, both perceived and/or real, of social norms and the increasing disruption and distortion of good factual source material and how we access this information. With all the touted benefits of AI/ML it feels geared to economic gains rather than positive use cases for assisting us in life rather than the repetitious narrative of "replacing" us. My thoughts go out to her family and friends, and all those effected by this news. It's also easy to lose sight of the fact that many of us who are not visible in the mainstream deal with this on a daily basis with very little support, even with access to to "quality" care there has been a percievable declination in that metric of quality. A high proportion of intelligent people are prone to mental illness, or rather what socially and medically frame and define mental illnes as. For those with little to no access, or for example forced onto "care platforms" due to lack of resources the effects can be much worse. Best wishes to you all, if you are struggling reach out in any way you can, you matter, we all do.
Thanks for the clarification, it was not my intent to spread rumors. Her openess about her mental illness was then another example of perseverance in the face of it, another example of what an amazing person she was.
Sad news. She gave me a gmail invite after I begged for one on slashdot, seems like an eon ago. We corresponded off and on but unfortunately I was never able to meet her in real life. Rest in peace.
With the rise of AI and geopolitical risks, the importance of security is increasing year by year. I think it is not only a great loss for the security community but also for society as a whole to lose such talent at a young age. RIP.
First Dan Kaminsky, then Peter Eckersly, and now Aloria.
This whole trend of people dying so young needs to stop. People need to take care of themselves, go to the doctor, make sure to find any issues you might have, and be responsible in addressing them.
The candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long.
Many not neuro typical people burn out in one way or another and "vannish". But without the non-neuro typical behaviour, you would not get the expertise.
If you can not recongize faces, you are less likely to socialize and more likely to escape into reading or coding, or any other creative non social endavour.
If you are bi polar, you are way more able to turn your life into a "story" of great highs and falls, which might even affect other lifes. In a way the madness maketh the genius. And then unravels it.
Turns out for the relations/familys though, that its not great to life in a play.
We need ways beyond medication to keep people around that spin themselves apart. Because they notice and love/hate what makes them themselves. If you are a bipolar actor and you have a choice between "acting" and crashing, or a zombie existence, then the "zombie" is not a problem solved beyond having 1up in the statistics.
Not all medications for bipolar are zombifying, though it took me 10 years to find something that worked well. On Lamotrigine I’ve been largely symptom free for nearly 7 years now, with few if any noticeable cognitive side effects. The problem with untreated bipolar is that it can be a progressive degenerative condition. It seems to have a physical component involving immune disregulation and neuroinflammation (mediated by life stress and exposure to pathogens) which medication can help. I’d strongly urge anyone in the early stages of illness who thinks they can manage on their own to seek help and try different medications until they find something that works for them.
There's definitely no silver bullet, but things have come a long way and there are a lot more options for treatment today than ever. It's very likely that some combination of treatments will be a significant net positive, even with side effects considered.
I appreciate this comment. Medication also does not support all modalities of being, either due to coverage of 'what is available to treat it' or the complexity/depth/developmental nature of what it is. In part, the world being adaptive helps, though it won't always compensate for the underlying thing.
For example, for me. I am autistic. How sensitive my autism is, I do not know. The air conditioner is running right now next to me and it is as overwhelming as I would assume a jet engine is for many people based on reactions and attention span. I used to numb out all of the environmental/information overwhelm, but after doing therapy and connecting with myself, I am doing much better emotionally but also am much more connected to all of the noise in the world. There are some dissociatives and such that can help people on the spectrum, but there's only so much you can do, and the NMDA receptor does not seem to do the best with long term inhibition (as a main target). Who knows, we may find something yet.
For me, many of the features of autism seem to be linked to that natural lack of information filtering in the brain where it does a quick 'yes/no' gut check before presenting the information to me. At least, some of the science shows that there are alterations in the scaffolding of the neurons that process that kind of information, this happens during very early development as far as I recall. I am sure there are multiple low level things happening as well, it is a spectrum of multiple potential causative and experiential elements after all, as best as I can tell.
One thing that I do to cope with the information overwhelm and balance it out is have a thing that I know very well as my 'safe' activity. However, there still should be something new so that it does not get boring. My sensitivity to 'new' is different than many people's sensitivities. I think that's why special interests can develop, I see them as a form of (what I feel is often generally) healthy adaptive self-regulation.
For me, my self-regulation includes neural network research. I can get lost away from all of the overwhelm and the visceral feelings of processing the day's sensory overspill by diving deep into research. I still have to process the feelings -- my best understanding is that that sensory overload can turn into PTSD within a short period of time if not dealt with, and I'd rather not add more to the pile. But my pile grows quickly, so safe places, safe environments, and routines that I know can take down the stress a bit for me in knowing that all of a sudden I won't have an unpredictable situation dump a kind of traumatic experience on me that I may not have the hours to emotionally process. Hopefully this helps you see a bit into the minds of people with autism and why the regularity is so important. I believe it's a response to the fact that the threat level is quite legitimate for deviations from that standard. Because the information coming in is 3, 4, 8 or even 10+ times more impactful. So very seemingly boring and/or repetitive/restrained things to other people can be appropriately stimulating for autistic people.
In my research, it's been a number of years and I've spend more hours than I want to on it. I currently hold the training time speed record on CIFAR10 now, and I have other projects that I work on A. because I enjoy them and B. because they are that calming thing for me, among various other pertinent reasons. Being able to just work on it and make something new in an environment and problem space that I very intuitively understand after building a deep relationship with it over several years is very freeing and can feel safe. I can also go too far and burn myself out very quickly, and that's not so good for a few reasons (at least one or two of them you can probably guess).
What's not so good is that whatever coping mechanism I have is a ball and a chain. Sure, I'm able to make incredible research, but I'd rather my brain let me just be out with friends. I'd rather my brain didn't have the social blindness and that I could just intuitively go through a flow of conversation instead of doing some higher-education equivalent study of social patterns over 20-30+ years or so. I think this is similar to your (this is for the Original Poster here) original points about how the non-neurotypical behavior can result in things that are true brilliance, but also with a deep cost associated with them, and that yes indeed, there should be other ways for people to be able to be in the flow of society. I think it's a very hard problem, and I'm also very glad that people are becoming aware of it. I can't say I should expect people to go incredibly far beyond their comfort zones, but I think as a society we can take baby steps to be aware of and accommodating of different disabilities.
Before I learned I had autism, I really struggled with disability-related things. I still do! Not quite as badly. But I did have a strong aversion to people who weren't neurotypical as I felt really uncomfortable with their differences. A lot of my trauma growing up came about having to wear a neurotypical mask as perfectly as possible, all the time, with pretty strong negative incentives if I didn't. I just did not have the capability, and I'm still slowly working through the huge backlog of years of undoing the damage and healing there. Part of that includes accepting and better integrating with people with all different kinds of disabilities, not just the ones that I now know. Another part of it is a bit of motivation to try to help guide people who had a perspective like mine when I was a lot more judgemental (even though I knew I didn't want to be) just a little bit closer to being accepting and accommodating towards those with disabilities. It's all a journey, I think.
I wish there was a quick and effective solution, and accepting that there's very likely not is certainly a hard proposition. If you're wanting to help, then maybe just take a bit of a step in yourself to learn a little more about a disability that you encounter like you hopefully may have today/tonight/whenever, and also whenever the opportunity comes up with someone else, whatever that small comment is that's a good little push towards the right direction in conversation. I think this issue is helped by a wave of little, tiny actions, and less some giant, drastic action. I think there are some great safe spaces and people out there where I can be my more unbridled, unfiltered self. Though it is rarer than I'd hope for (heck, I still struggle seeing some of the ways I naturally react and handle things when unmasked. It's not bad, but definitely not neurotypical at all and very much classically 'autistic'.). I enjoy the times when I can be more authentically myself. And in the other times, I just try to enjoy the experience itself of being with others and being able to experience the world.
We might see an epidemic of young deaths as some younger people give in to despair. If you can and think of it, I'd challenge you to just reach out to at least one youngster you know in that younger age range. I'm in the Zillenial bracket and one thing I see is that the intentionality of relationship building is not always there, though not for lack of want. I think I've seen people feel trapped in not being able to meet and be with people at times (personal bias as this includes myself), and I've seen reaching out over that barrier really do so much. It has for me in the past when I've really hit some tough times and hard rocks. So maybe think of someone you know and do that. It could go a long way, even if they're not on the edge of some kind of cliff.
Much love and thanks for reading if you made it this far. <3 :)
> How about we don't blame the people, especially with the state of certain countries' healthcare systems.
There was no blame put on them, it is very sad to see young people pass away. But since you bought the discussion in that direction:
As far as I know two of those people are from the country with the best healthcare system in the world and with enough money to afford it, they were not living on food stamps.
Even the perfect healthcare system won't fix your health issues if you don't take the necesary steps to find them in time, maybe even prevent them.
Take the advice given and don't make everything about politics.
> As far as I know two of those people are from the country with the best healthcare system in the world
I guess the implication here is that they were living in the United States. A quick search for "best health care system in the world" (DDG) shows the US not even in the top 10 in any of the first 4-5 hits.
The US definitely doesn't have the best health care system in the world overall, but if you can afford it, you can get some of the best health care in the world.
> The US has state-of-the-art healthcare... if you're rich.
> but we're not talking about people like restaurant servers
Indeed, we're talking about people who are neither restaurant servers nor multi-millionaires.
The question is, where exactly is the point where a US citizen can e.g. stop worrying about the possibility of medical bankruptcy. I think that it's substantially higher than "restaurant servers".
Forget bankruptcy. How about we just get to the point US citizens don't have to worry about calling an ambulance? When I was a kid (I'm late 40s now) it was $200-500. Now it's low to mid 5 figures. And if you don't call your insurance and get approval within the window they refuse to pay it. Guess what? When I am in need of an ambulance I'm probably indisposed to calling my insurance company (if I have one) and navigating their approval system for the hour it takes.
Here in Japan, ambulance rides are free. It's a difficult concept for American expats because they need it drummed into their heads that you just call for an ambulance if you have a problem that's serious enough for a hospital visit.
The medical community is pretty clueless with some things--as they puff their chest and act authoritative. Mental healthcare reminds me of 1500s dentistry right now. There are some successes here and there but mostly dangerous and a waste of money.
Try getting a bi-polar teenager to cooperate with treatment. Bonus points if you have a barely competent healthcare professional.
Came to say similar. Current mental health medicine is about on par with middle ages' level approaches to heart problems. Add to this society's failure to seriously address mental health problems, and their continued stigmatization. Plus, the attack from media, both social and other, we're not altogether in a great place. We could be doing better.
Often it's really not possible to muster the personal responsibility you seem to be demanding here. The village needs to get better at helping these people for whom it's really hard to help themselves, instead.
