
Why Anti-Authoritarians Are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012) - kushti
http://www.madinamerica.com/2012/02/why-anti-authoritarians-are-diagnosed-as-mentally-ill/
======
fallingfrog
This comment below the article triggered something deep inside me: "So a 7
year old who refuses to read or practice reading is healthy anti-authority
individual?". Let me tell you that when I was a kid I loved to read, I read
voraciously everything I could find, and I did because _nobody made me do it._
I can assure you that if a teacher had sat me down and forced me to read
something boring at that young age, I would have hated the teacher, hated
reading, and hated school and I would hated anyone who tried to get me to do
it again, forever. Believe me, some kids just love freedom! Please, if there
are any teachers out here reading this, do not kill the fragile thing in your
kids that loves to learn by forcing them to read or do something boring with
no explanation except, do it because you said so!

~~~
Aeolos
I recall reading a study about how school destroys creativity. IIRC, they
found that 70% of children entering school exhibited some form of creativity.
By the time they finished 6 years of primary school, that number had fallen to
1%.

We train ourselves to become mindless drones, and then put anyone who doesn't
on medication.

~~~
avian
Whenever I hear about studies like that, I wonder what the control group was.
As in, how many children that did not enter school exhibited creativity 6
years later?

~~~
Aeolos
I'd have to dig up a reference to the study, but I won't be able to do that
for the next few days. Google scholar returns various results for "school and
creativity decline" if you have access to the relevant journals.

~~~
Aeolos
Self-replying because I cannot edit: see [1] for a link.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11360290](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11360290)

------
humbleMouse
This is very interesting to me. I went to a psychiatrist last week and she
told me I have "delusional thoughts about the government." She asked me what
gives me anxiety, and I told her that it freaks me out that the government
collects all of our data and wants to take away encryption. She told me I am
nuts and that the government doesn't do that. ce le vie!

~~~
williamcotton
She has a point. You might actually have delusional thoughts about the
government if you spend too much time on the Internet, especially on forums
like this. I mean, look at the support you're getting here! Pretty much every
commenter is on your side with this. HackerNews isn't really known for being
able to cater to outside opinions.

What do you mean by "the government collects all of our data". What do you
mean by "the government"? Do they come in to your house and go through your
private photographs? Do they break in to your house and read your journal
while you're at work?

Or do you mean that the NSA intercepts electrical signals that you publicly
broadcast from your house?

Did you talk about the details of how the government collects all of our data?
Perhaps you were both unable to disassociate your paranoid thoughts about a
totalizing outside power from the reality of the situation.

The reality is that the government is not collecting all of our data. It is
collecting most of the data that we publicly broadcast. The politics of this
are a totally separate concern from your feelings of anxiety.

Maybe the problem is you spend too much time publicly broadcasting electrical
signals and too little time dealing with your actual private thoughts and
effects.

Maybe write a poem that no one will ever hear outside of being recited in your
own living room! Maybe keep a physical journal that you keep safely stored
under your pillow! There are plenty of things you can be doing to convince
yourself that the government is not collecting all of our data.

Edit: _facepalm_...

~~~
EdSharkey
I think this comment is not very compassionate/overly harsh. But you have some
good nuggets in here ...

> The reality is that the government is not collecting all of our data. It is
> collecting most of the data that we publicly broadcast.

There are some recent troubling moves towards collecting "telemetry" about
offline user actions in operating environments like Windows 10, but this
observation largely rings true. Where I think you need some empathy is
understanding how some people wrestle with the knowledge that "stuff
I/family/friends broadcast is stored, indexed, and could be used against
me/family/friends."

The knowledge that to broadcast one's thoughts exposes one to possible tyranny
can only squelch discussion, and that drives people apart. We're social
creatures, so that's not healthy.

Techies are especially cognizant of what "broadcasting" means in today's
landscape. Celphones broadcast one's movements, audio, images, and store
personal information that could be secretly stolen. Yeah, I can see why some
people are anxious.

You're absolutely right that people need to write down private thoughts on
paper and keep journals that they don't share. That's good for mental health
in any case.

~~~
williamcotton
> I think this comment is not very compassionate/overly harsh. But you have
> some good nuggets in here ...

What parts? I'm not trying to be harsh but nor am I trying to be
compassionate.

I think what may be considered "not very compassionate/overly harsh" is
nothing more than a subjective reaction to the vast difference in political
opinion that I express compared to the rest of the HackerNews community.

> The knowledge that to broadcast one's thoughts exposes one to possible
> tyranny can only squelch discussion, and that drives people apart. We're
> social creatures, so that's not healthy.

Yes, we are indeed social creatures, which is why we should all spend more
time offline. There is a world outside of the Internet and I think a lot of
techies forget that. The government is not listening in on our conversations
down at the local pub. The government is not taking minutes on Kiwanis and
Rotary Club meetings.

This perceived totalizing nature of the "surveillance machine" is mainly
experienced by people who mainly interact with the outside world on the
Internet. It's like a Greek tragedy!

I posit that too much cellphone and Internet use can cause many kinds of
mental health issues.

Go outside more! You're totally free! The streets are yours for the taking! Go
hand out pamphlets in the town square! Grab a guitar and sing for an audience
in a public park! Go to the beach and make new friends! There are no
gatekeepers!

Choosing to have your entire life thinly channeled through a certain kind of
electrical signal that you constantly broadcast from your person and then
suffering under the consequences is quite maddening.

~~~
EdSharkey
> What parts?

Stuff like how you were calling into question the parent's perception of what
the NSA does with "electrical signals" coming from their house. I got the
impression that you were framing the parent as a crackpot. It's just ...
there's better ways of making your points than to call people out like that,
whether they really are a crackpot or (most likely) NOT.

You may not have tried to be harsh, but you were. And you have no empathy for
the parent, which is a bummer.

You made and are making good points in this retort, but they're mostly lost in
the negativity. I'll get off your lawn now.

~~~
williamcotton
First off, I'm not calling the guy a crackpot, and you're not even claiming
that I did either!

I was using a rhetorical device to show that OP's statements can very well be
perceived as crackpot ideas to almost everyone outside of forums like this.

I don't think you know what the word empathy means. It isn't related to some
sugar-coating process. It just refers to a capability to relate to another
individual.

I used to have all of these same paranoid delusions about the government/the
system/the man... and then you know what? I got older, I met a lot of people
who care a lot about civil order, and I realized the world is full of nice and
friendly people and there are plenty of ways for me to get involved to make
sure the world keeps getting better!

I feel like I can empathize very well with people like OP. And since I don't
think of myself as a crackpot when I shared these same thoughts, I don't think
of OP as a crackpot. I now know that many of my beliefs were juvenile and
undeveloped and I think OP's are as well. I'm sure OP is fine. He just needs
to grow up a bit and stop trying to blame "the man" for his problems.

This makes me guilty of being patronizing but not lacking in empathy. Is there
a better way to go about trying to help OP grow as an individual? Sure, but
it's not going to happen on some Internet forum, which is why I mainly avoid
this place! Layers upon layers of irony!

I just think you kids spend too much time on your phones and you don't really
know how things work out there.

You're fine to hang out on my lawn whenever you want, but I would appreciate
it if you didn't check your phone every 30 seconds while you're a guest on my
property, it's very rude.

And also, seriously, just go outside more. You're looking too pale these days.
You're like a ghost.

Ya'll need some outside perspective.

~~~
Malician
Everything you say here is extremely condescending and assumes that you are
more mature and experienced than the reader.

I'm not going to toot my own horn, but I will say this about the aged elders I
have met who were fantastic and respectable people, and from whom I learned
the most: their main feature was humility, and knowing that they did not in
fact know everything.

Not everyone likes paper books. Some people like trees, but also using a
laptop under one. Some people are growing up gay or trans in a hard-right
reactionary community and their only outlet is the Internet. Others simply
prefer the company of they know online to those they happen to meet on the
street.

I'm glad you have experienced personal growth in your own life. You think the
views you used to hold were underdeveloped - fine! But don't pattern match
other people you meet to those views and assume they just need to get past
them and think like you do now. That's rude and presumptuous.

~~~
williamcotton
> Everything you say here is extremely condescending and assumes that you are
> more mature and experienced than the reader.

That's just your interpretation. Other people are entitled to their own
interpretation of what I'm saying.

I don't feel like I'm being condescending, I feel like I am being patronizing.
Those are related concepts but they're not the same thing. Also, if you didn't
notice, and this could just be my fault, but I was trying to be comical! I was
playing the patronizing character who shouts "NOW GET OFF MY LAWN!"

> I'm not going to toot my own horn, but I will say this about the aged elders
> I have met who were fantastic and respectable people, and from whom I
> learned the most: their main feature was humility, and knowing that they did
> not in fact know everything.

You have no idea who I am nor what I'm like. How about you offer up some of
your personal opinions and you let me take a crack at judging you? I'm willing
to have a very open and honest talk about some very real instances of paranoid
delusions that seem to dominate the conversation in our forums. I think these
are destructive and unnecessary fixations.

This is what makes me patronizing. I'm telling you that if you think that "the
government is watching everything that we all do, all the time" and that if
this makes you unhappy, well, there's a reason for that. It's a matter of
perspective. I'm offering a paternal perspective. I've been there, I've done
that, and I'm here to tell you that you're being a bunch of doofuses.

NOW GET OFF MY LAWN!

> Not everyone likes paper books. Some people like trees, but also using a
> laptop under one.

Ok, but that doesn't change the political and legal realities of what it means
to have a paper book and what it means to use a laptop connected to the
Internet.

> Some people are growing up gay or trans in a hard-right reactionary
> community and their only outlet is the Internet.

They have many more outlets than the Internet! I would argue that there are
much more productive and healthy outlets than those found on Internet forums.
It is at least unhealthy to think of the Internet as being someone's only
outlet. Growing up and being a teenager is difficult anywhere and I definitely
found a lot of support on the Internet when I was a teenager in the mid 90s
but shying away from the real world was never a long term solution. If there
are hard-right reactionary communities that are oppressing teenagers then we
need to figure out how to fix the root cause of those issues, and not just
paper over them by avoiding the confrontation!

> Others simply prefer the company of they know online to those they happen to
> meet on the street.

And just like conversations on the street, you should expect people to be able
to hear your conversations when you're publicly broadcasting information from
your physical location!

NOW GET OFF MY LAWN!

~~~
EdSharkey
You're not so clever. You read like a book.

------
jensen123
I think it's interesting to look at how psychiatric disorders are invented.
For example, is homosexuality a mental disorder? It's basically just a bunch
of psychiatrists getting together, suggesting stuff and voting on it. It is
not science.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/the-
real-p...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/the-real-
problems-with-psychiatry/275371/)

~~~
threatofrain
A mental disorder means a stable cluster of symptoms in a population such that
it is (1) statistically abnormal, (2) distressful to a degree (clinical
significance), and (3) not ameliorated by a reasonable change in environment.

Statistical abnormality is one point that is debated among professionals today
because some might say that if obesity becomes pandemic, it's still a
disorder. Deafness is also an interesting discussion because there are deaf
communities now, so a reasonable change in environment is possible.

One does not use science to determine if a cluster of symptoms warrants
classification as a disorder. There is no inherency in the universe which
demands that. Science can set arbitrary statistical brightlines, study the
etiology of a stable cluster of symptoms, if it can be found, and then study a
range of possible interventions to the distress.

Perhaps in the future, mental decline at age 90 will be considered a disorder,
because everyone is mentally sharp even at age 100, the mental decline causes
a lot of financial and social distress, and it's not ameliorated by a
reasonable change in environment. In the past, it's comprehensible how
homosexuality was (1) statistically abnormal, (2) distressful to a degree, and
(3) not ameliorated by a reasonable change in environment.

People want a concept of mental disorder that is "objective". That's not
possible. Disorder is absolutely context-bound.

~~~
pessimizer
> A mental disorder means a stable cluster of symptoms in a population such
> that it is (1) statistically abnormal, (2) distressful to a degree (clinical
> significance), and (3) not ameliorated by a reasonable change in
> environment.

1) Every individual is statistically abnormal. That's how they're
identifiable. It's debated amongst professionals because there are absolutely
no consistent criteria for behavioural normality that wouldn't include wide
swaths of undistressed people.

2) is incoherent in practice. Mental disease is diagnosed in people because
they are not distressed by things that "should" distress people. Mental
disease is also diagnosed if people are distressed by the reaction of others
to their symptoms, not by the symptoms themselves.

3) " _reasonable_ change" is a hint that 3) is completely arbitrary.

The context that the concept of non-physical mental disorder is bound in is a
historical accident, non-physical mental disease doesn't translate between
cultures (entirely culturally-bound and fashion-following), and most of our
current concepts of mental disease have origins dependent on things like the
order in which we happened to discover certain neurotransmitters and
superstitions about epileptic seizures making people sane.

Mental illness is defined as when you don't get your work done, or you make it
difficult for other people to get their work done. All of the handwaving
around it, and the fabricated physical theories applied to a wide range of
"disorders" that largely amount to disobedience and differing opinions and
values, corrupt our society and undermine democracy. You take the drugs and
you do what you're told, or you will be medicated for your own protection.
It's also class/race-based - the range of behaviors a suburban white girl
would be medicated for are largely different than the ones an inner city black
boy would be medicated for, even though they would get the same diagnosis
(since diagnoses are based on "distress.")

This is not new. Every third rebellious kid I knew in high school 25 years ago
was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder or Bipolar Disorder, and had
month-long stints in mental hospitals that began when they stayed out all
night that one time, or flunked a semester, or got caught drinking or smoking
pot. ADD wasn't quite as trendy then, and the range of products being sold to
parents for it was narrower.

~~~
jmcmichael
Do you believe that mental disorders exist? If so, how would you go about
identifying and treating them? If not, what empirically verifiable means do
you know of to identify people who are a danger to themselves or society, and
treat them?

------
meric
The definition of "Authority":

 _the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience._

We're all free-willed individuals. Accepting orders, accepting other's
decisions, and obeying others are voluntary actions. As soon as we refuse to
follow an order, refuse to obey, the "authority", by definition, returns its
power back to ourselves. Authorities are only authorities because by our
grace, we allow them to be authorities.

The crazy ones are those who would voluntary give up their own initiative to
the stupid, to the power obsessed, to the egocentric, to the selfish.

~~~
awinter-py
Following orders isn't totally voluntary. You don't have time in a stressful
instant to decide whether an order from your boss (colonel, coach) is correct.

People still argue about the milgram experiment and nuremberg trials but one
conclusion you can draw -- it's 'abnormal' to reject orders on moral grounds.

You're defining authority as power and that ends up being circular; the two
are synonyms. I think this issue is more complicated than you're making out.
The opposite of slavery is freedom, but the opposite of leadership is anarchy
and waste. I can't survive on my own so I work with groups of people.

~~~
meric
You have to believe either you or society is going to be better off if you
followed the order than you didn't, for you to follow it. A person who can
force that situation on you so you would follow their orders have authority. A
random person off the street can't order you around.

~~~
awinter-py
Depends on the situation; in the presence of danger, I trust the person with
the most information (and use various heuristics to assess who that is). The
analysis you're suggesting is right (am I better off following), but in
general that's just 'what is optimal to do' \-- and that takes time to know.

The implicit bargain in all power transactions is Sam Jackson's 'come with me
if you want to live'. (where 'live' can be 'get rich', 'not go to jail',
'eat'). And there's never enough information or time to make a smart decision.
Smart despots hoard information as much as guns, but even fair leaders have to
choose what to say because of limited attention and TMI risks.

------
Aqueous
"Anti-authoritarians question whether an authority is a legitimate one before
taking that authority seriously."

But there also some individuals who think _any_ authority is illegitimate. I
have friends and close relatives who I would characterize as having this
personality trait. I also observe that it has a negative impact on their
quality of life. They have trouble holding jobs, staying in school, keeping
friends, and building personal romantic relationships because they are so
resistant to being accountable to _any other person_ \- accountability which
translates in their mind to obedience to authority.

Authority isn't always illegitimate. That's why there is a such a thing as a
pathological degree of anti-authoritarian sentiment.

------
openasocket
OK, my father deals with people with ODD and Conduct disorder on a regular
basis, and I think this article is really miss-characterizing the condition.
You don't have ODD if you have a reason for defying authority, even a bad
reason. ODD is defined as having problems with planning and inhibition. I was
actually talking with my father just last night about ODD, and he described an
experiment to me. Imagine you have a patient play a card game in which they
have the chance to win money or lose money. Initially, the game is rigged in
the patient's favor, but as the game goes on it gets harder and harder for
them to win. Most people will figure out that the odds have changed and stop
playing, but people with ODD or Conduct disorder will continue playing far
longer than anyone else because they have poor planning skills. Describing
people with ODD as simply anti-authority is really missing the crux of the
condition.

EDIT: I shouldn't criticize the article, but rather the people who are doing
the over diagnosing. Just thought I'd give some context to the condition, so
people understand what ODD really is.

~~~
vanderZwan
You're inverting the entire premise of the article: he isn't really talking
about ADHD/ODD, he is talking about people who are anti-authoritarian and _are
misdiagnosed as ADHD /ODD as a result of it_.

When he talks about famous people who would have been diagnosed as having
these disorders in modern times, he's not saying that they have these
disorders, but that the diagnosis is bogus.

It's as he's saying "these people who have the common cold are misdiagnosed as
having the flu!" and you respond with "these common cold characteristics are
nothing like the flu." Well, yes, that's part of the issue at hand.

~~~
openasocket
You're absolutely right: I guess I just wanted to provide some context on what
ODD really is. I didn't want people to think that all ODD diagnoses are like
this, or that ODD is not a real disease. I'll edit my comment to reflect that

------
Joof
My (former) psychiatrist labeled me noncompliant for requesting modern studies
on SSRIs not done by the selling company before taking them. I guess I fall in
that category.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Medical professionals don't seem to like it much when patients do anything
that might call their expertise into question, it seems. :/

~~~
Gravityloss
If you advised a friend on cryptography/databases and they started pushing
back and repeating some questionable cliches? There's two sides to this. I've
heard it's quite frustrating to be a teacher or doctor nowadays...

~~~
machinelearning
There is a huge asymmetry in the consequences of not pushing back. While the
expert might be frequently frustrated by having to explain away the same
cliches, the patient/customer has a lot to lose by not pushing back.
Especially when the topic in question is a person's health.

------
joeax
People that have an unrelenting, almost worship-like devotion to authority
scare the bejesus out of me. Imagine what a great society we would be if we
were all free thinkers.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
And nowhere is this more obvious than, Silicon Valley. Where the famous names
are worshipped. Repeated as talismans in posts and blogs. Dropped in
conversation at every turn. Studied and written about and hailed. Discussed in
hushed tones at lunch. Baffles me.

~~~
darkclarity
With a lack of religion, people naturally seek idols to look up to and create
a focus in their lives. That said, it can go too far and look like a cult. The
more I read about behaviour, history and psychology, the more I realise just
how specialised religions were at keeping civilisations sane.

------
Santosh83
Any deviant act or view is probably anti-authoritarian if by authoritarian you
also include the "authority" with which mainstream views and regulations are
imposed, sometimes by law, more often by majority pressure.

Yet everything mainstream isn't somehow bad. Humans survive only by
cooperating and banding together. It's just that we need to strike a golden
mean between listening to authority and being unique. It's a matter of
intelligence, applied on a case-by-case basis, and will work only if the most
people in a group practice it.

~~~
smokeyj
> Humans survive only by cooperating and banding together.

Or, more realistically - by enslavement, the threat of violence and killing
off everyone who challenges your authority. It seems history is tirelessly
cyclical.

------
tristor
Having experienced some of these things in my own life, I can honestly say
that I do believe that being an anti-authoritarian is often mistaken as a
mental problem.

I believe that authority is the wielding of power by an institution or
individual, and power is only useful if you voluntarily cede control (this
doesn't apply always, but does in 99% of cases). Refusal to cede control
returns that power back to you. People who /believe/ that they have power over
you, when proven that they don't, by your inability or denial of compliance
get irrationally angry and tend to think that it makes you a terrible person.
I consider this a selfish response, if perhaps a natural one.

To truly live in a free society we must be okay with having power over us when
the situation requires (such as at work), while also being okay with rejecting
power when our morals and ethics demand it of us. The issue seems to be that
some people have the ability to do the latter, and other do not, always
appealing to authority to base their arguments or guide their path. The fact
that many of these people who are obsessed with authority end up in mental
health professions is not really surprising, since the mental health
professions largely base the current accepted practices on cults of
personality rather than on scientific inquiry.

The fact that I chose a profession where it's basically impossible to BS to
anyone who knows anything because the rules of mathematics drive things far
more than how eloquently you speak is also not surprising. Anti-authoritarians
love facts, facts are a good basis for deciding when to cede power and when to
take it back and provide a guiding principle in your life that doesn't rely on
another person being an authority over you, even if they are outside your
control.

Anyway, that's kind of my reaction to reading the article. Definitely
interesting to reflect back on some of my life experiences given this context
and consider how things could have turned out differently, both for the worse
or for the better.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
In the Soviet Union, and I imagine the other Marxist–Leninist countries,
people were sometimes diagnosed as mentally ill for not believing in
socialism.

~~~
goodcanadian
I get your point, but I do somewhat wonder about the sanity of people in the
Soviet Union who would not, at least, pretend to believe in socialism.

~~~
stplsd
Dissidents and human right activists were sent for mental institution mostly
by diagnosing schizophrenia as a means to discredit them and as message to
others. We should applaud those brave souls and not doubt their sanity.

------
randcraw
'Anti-authority' is not a well defined label. Independent thought and
independent behavior are very different things. And unless your behavior is
disruptive or destructive, generally nobody cares what you think.

Iconoclasm is a more specific label: independence of thought, or belief, or
convention, without any mention of behavior. Presumably iconoclasts are what
Levine is describing as positive examples of anti-authority, AKA mentally
healthy folks who just think differently, but don't act on it, or who act on
it in constructive ways.

But anyone who acts disruptively or destructively also qualifies as anti-
authority. So I don't see where Levine draws the line between good and bad
forms of anti-authority. Inactive belief is good? Disruptive or violent is
bad? He doesn't say.

~~~
StanislavPetrov
Who decides what is "disruptive"? Is it "bad" to disrupt society if that
society is evil and corrupt? Was a German who sought to disrupt the Nazis in
Germany mentally ill, or was he rightfully disruptive and anti-authoritarian?

The point here is that authority and society have no intrinsic worth. The
issue is that those who reject authority and/or society are defined as
mentally ill according to the psuedo-science of psychiatry, whether or not
that authority and/or society is worthy of rejection.

~~~
randcraw
That sounds like a resounding endorsement for anarchy. :-)

Game theorists will certainly disagree with you that there's no value in group
cooperation. It's pretty obvious that any group that cooperates is more
powerful toward almost any goal than any individual or group that does not
cooperate.

But the question implied by Levine isn't whether cooperation is "worth" more
than uncooperation. He's asking whether authority is always good, and hence,
whether anti-authority is necessarily bad, or whether it's often a
constructive alternative to group-think and submission, given that everyone is
inevitably part of one or more groups and thus is obliged to choose a path:
conform, change the rules, or quit the group. Levine's implication is that
those who choose not to play by the rules, and disrupt the group
destructively, are not necessarily pathological.

But I think Levine didn't succeed in making that case. He claimed only that
some people are labeled as malefactors strictly because they refuse to conform
to norms or authority. He doesn't say what fraction of those cases did so
unhelpfully. In fact, I suspect all were disruptive to the group's normal
conduct, and most in a destructive way.

That's not exactly a strong case for singing out, "Viva la difference!"

------
alanwatts
Reminds me of a Dr. King quote:

>But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist,
as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of
satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your
enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray
for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an
extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness
like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian
gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther
an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John
Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of
my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave
and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self
evident, that all men are created equal . . ." So the question is not whether
we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be
extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of
injustice or for the extension of justice?

"Crazy", "Nutjob", "Mentally Ill", "Extremist", "Heretic" \- these are words
used to write off ideas which are too difficult for one to even consider
because they often threaten the most deeply held assumptions of a persons
life. Social constructions can be very fragile.

------
thetruthseeker1
I am an immigrant in America. I have had problems with my bosses(American)
when I challenged some of their decisions at work. When I challenged their
decision in every quantifiable metric, they could not defend it in any way and
relented, but then I heard from HR about not following orders in general.

I think in American culture there is lot of emphasis on command hierarchy( may
be military influenced?) and who wears the pants so to speak, compared to my
home country in the east, and I think that may have something to do with it.

But I can attest to the the repulsiveness I feel to subtle authoritarianism
where orders are sneaked in along with regular conversation.

~~~
bcheung
It depends a lot on where you work.

I have worked at places where I have delivered what I thought were superior
results compared to what they were asking but they were upset because it
wasn't exactly what they asked for.

Other places give a lot more authority and a wide latitude.

Startups tend to be a lot more flexible in this regard and it is why I prefer
working at startups vs enterprise companies.

------
bcheung
Anti-Authoritarian sounds a lot like critical thinking. That's a disease now?

"Anti-authoritarians question whether an authority is a legitimate one before
taking that authority seriously. Evaluating the legitimacy of authorities
includes assessing whether or not authorities actually know what they are
talking about, are honest, and care about those people who are respecting
their authority. And when anti-authoritarians assess an authority to be
illegitimate, they challenge and resist that authority—sometimes aggressively
and sometimes passive-aggressively, sometimes wisely and sometimes not."

~~~
alanwatts
Critical thinking is heresy to group think.

------
tsunamifury
I think once you realize the vast majority of authorities preach contribution
and submission while merely taking for themselves -- you begin to see everyone
around you who submits to them as a bit insane. This becomes really hard to
rectify until you can figure out an equilibrium of physical submission to a
unjust authority without psychological submission.

------
cat-dev-null
Police have been known to send people whom they have beaten up for mental
examination in order to discredit them. This happened in Los Altos to a guy
playing Ingress.

------
vanderZwan
Telling how the people in the comments who disagree with the article also tend
to appeal to authority (see the comments by Herb and Jaroon).

------
nickbauman
I have a friend whose 14-year-old daughter has been diagnosed with ODD. She
frequently cuts herself with anything she can get her hands on and when she
doesn't get her way she will literally spin around and around shouting and
growling angrily for a quarter to a half hour like she's possessed, sometimes
physically lashing out at her parents. It's terrifying to watch and is
definitely _not_ your garden variety skepticism of authority.

~~~
tajen
You seem to believe that she is ill, but the only reason you provide is that
she wants to take her life away. Proof.

Why did we invent that it's forbidden to take your life away? It's in all
insurance contracts, in bank agreements, in many ToS; If a kid takes their
life away then the parents are penaly responsible for not looking after; and
if an elderly person becomes sick, then she's forever prevented from accessing
the basic tools to end her life. For god's sake, and elderly person who lived
100 years, let her die when she thinks it's time to, even if it's messy.

As much as solitary confinement is a form of torture - as much as prison,
actually (once again, we'll keep you forcefully alive while in prison,
_because you must endure the torture we 've assigned to you_), keeping people
alive when they want to die is another form of torture.

So I'm very sorry but that 14-year-old girl might being tortured by the
requirement of staying alive.

~~~
Thriptic
I don't see any mention in the parent post about suicidal ideation. Self-harm
!= desire to kill yourself.

Also lumping together wanting to kill yourself because you are experiencing
severe physical pain (old people with terminal illness), psychological pain
through torture (certain prison confinements), and mental disorders is a gross
over simplification. This isn't a binary issue. We shouldn't say people are
never allowed to commit suicide or people are always allowed to commit suicide
without us trying to intervene to improve their quality of life.

------
Mikeb85
On one hand, devotion to authority is kind of what makes society possible. We
all work, are cogs in the machine, and as a reward we all get a more or less
decent existence.

Of course, the downside is that when society is ill, or when our leaders are
objectively wrong, we don't see it because we're used to just following
authority, and can't see beyond our couches and screens.

~~~
donatj
I have to believe we as creatures can work together willingly. Consensus and
order can be brought by understanding and communication without without force
of authority.

~~~
Aeolos
There are people who derive pleasure from destroying things. On the internet
you may call them trolls (from the harmless garden variety, to the people
swatting, making death/rape threats) - depending on the variant, you may eject
them from the community, shadowban them, call the police, etc. All of which
are applications of force and authority.

How do you deal with those people, when you go outside the safe confines of
the internet, without using force or authority?

------
mbrutsch
When you have a "diagnosis" from a "scientific discipline" that cannot be
rigorously tested or diagnosed, it seems obvious it would be open to abuse in
this manner.

If there were a blood test for crazy, it would be a little more difficult.
Sadly, diagnosing illnesses of the mind is just educated guesswork, and will
likely never rise to the level of science that most people assume.

~~~
thaw13579
There is evidence that MRI can be used to detect biological differences and
that there is some genetic component as well. The two major challenges though
are that these diseases are not "binary" but multivariate and that it's very
difficult to collect enough data to explore that space. So it's certainly
hard, but not impossible!

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0920996401...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0920996401001633)

[http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v43/n10/full/ng.940.html](http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v43/n10/full/ng.940.html)

------
xlm1717
I thought it was particularly interesting when the author talked about
differing reactions people had when taking psychiatric medication. It then
seems that the effect of psychiatric medication has more to do with the
person's frame of mind than any actual effect of the medication.

According to the author, if the patient rejects the doctor's authority, the
patient can react even more violently when put on psychiatric medication. Even
more interestingly, the author goes on to suggest that patients who do take
the medication take it to placate authority, rather than for perceived effect.
The author uses the example of someone in a highly stressful job taking Xanax
instead of marijuana because while they might believe marijuana helps more,
they don't take it due to employer drug tests.

It leads me to this question: when doctors think a medication is working, do
they think so because of actual beneficial effects seen in the patient, or
simply because the patient is complying with the treatment?

------
eevilspock
Prior discussions of this piece:

206 comments, 3 years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5674438](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5674438)

138 comments, 4 years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3642570](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3642570)

------
stegosaurus
This is the primary issue I have with our treatment of mental health.

Physical disabilities and illnesses come about due to clear actions, and are
generally recognizable as universally bad.

These sorts of things either happen near-arbitrarily (birth abnormaility,
blood clot) or via an accident (falling down the stairs). After the fact,
you're less able, in general.

By contrast, many mental illnesses are triggered by society, and some make no
sense without a societal structure.

People go to work, become stressed at the lack of reward or meaning in their
employment and get depressed. Now they have an 'illness', because they no
longer want to turn up for work. Cyclical reasoning.

There are certainly many mental illnesses that aren't covered by this, but I
think that when comments are made about 'declining mental health in society'
\- it's really just throwing diagnoses at the fact that we're becoming more
cut-throat....

~~~
300baud
Definitely. If people talked about physical illness the same way we did about
mental illness, we'd diagnose anybody below than the 30th percentile in height
with High Shelf Access Disorder and try giving them growth hormones. Mismatch
to an artificial environment is not necessarily a disease.

This Philosophy Bites episode on "Categorizing Mental Disorders" has some good
material on the topic: [http://philosophybites.com/2016/01/steven-hyman-on-
categoris...](http://philosophybites.com/2016/01/steven-hyman-on-categorising-
mental-disorders.html)

And there's a lot of good work under the label "medicalization of deviance".

------
Yaa101
19th century schooling (which is still our current schooling system) is about
preparing for conscription.

------
jkot
I read a bit on authors pages. I think he paints "anti-authoritarian" as young
hippie who is against everything just because. That explains no mentions of
psychiatry in soviet union, early 20th century and so on.

------
dschiptsov
Authority of a math textbook or a biology textbook is not the same as
authority of religious dogmatism, tradition or a state ideology.

Rejecting the former is an illness, rejecting the later is a right.

------
dreamlayers
Sanity is defined relative to society and social norms. For example,
homosexuality stopped being labelled as a disorder when society's attitudes
started changing.

------
jokoon
I don't think authority is the problem, what bothers me more, is how passive
consensus somehow reinforces some ideas more than others, and that can make
them difficult to challenge them.

So in a sense, I think that there is a transparent "consented" authority,
which is harder to challenge. Of course most people are happier in such a
society. That's true, you can't really tell if the person is insane or just
having an opinion about something.

------
Sideloader
I have a friend who I've known since first grade. He would never just "obey
orders"...he would always try to find out why he was being asked to do
something and if the request seemed illegitimate he would refuse, sometimes in
creative ways, to honor it. He was diagnosed with ADHD and labeled a "problem
child".

As we grew older and his ethics and moral compass developed he would supply
arguments to back up his actions - he would not rebel for rebellion's sake but
because he truly believed his actions were reasonable and justified. In high
school these took the form of successfully defying the school's no-hats-
allowed policy and under the auspices of a Frank Zappa loving art teacher
forming The Anarchist's Club (the tongue-in-cheek logo was a medieval spiked
club weapon emblazoned with a circle-A symbol).

The Anarchist's Club biggest action was a boycott of a mandatory pep rally for
the school's basketball team (we offered to study in the library instead)
which earned its 13 or so members a suspension with readmission after a
written apology and meeting with our parents. After three days only me, my
friend and one other student remained defiant. (Our parents were supportive of
our "cause".) We were readmitted after my friend and I went to the town's
newspaper and told them our story and a subsequent meeting with the school
board which, to our surprise, agreed the offer to study in lieu of attending
the rally was reasonable and overruled the principal's authority.

After high school we both moved to the west coast to attend college and
drifted apart. In the "real world", despite much rhetorical talk of freedom
and liberty from all corners, obedience and conformity to an often rigid
status quo are expected if one wants to be accepted by, and benefit from,
mainstream society. There are exceptions, like entrepreneurship to some
extent, and limited room to negotiate but generally defying the authority of
supervisors, managers, professors, the law of the land and any number of
"superior" people and institutions is met with the crack of a whip rather than
an offer of dialog and compromise.

Most of us suppress our anti-authoritarian instincts and fall in line with the
established order. The more we have to lose, the more we opt for security and
predictability over principles and conscience. My friend says he cannot do
this. Talking a decade after high school he says he was born without the
"conformity gene" and that he can't will himself to do something he feels is
unjust or infringes unreasonably on his liberty. He can't, for example, obey a
micro-managing boss if his method of working is more productive than the
bosses way. If the boss is truly concerned about productivity and the
company's bottom line he or she will not force employees to do things one way
and one way only. Every person has methods that work for them, but may not
work for others, and a boss who does not respect this is, according to my
friend, an ego-tripping asshole or a mindless drone in thrall to "management
theory".

My friend argues that his anti-authoritarian nature has cost him many jobs and
opportunities and has made climbing the middle-class career ladder all but
impossible. He makes money by buying and selling things on Craigslist and
E-bay, freelance graphic design jobs and the marijuana reselling industry. He
claims to have no interest in a stable career, home ownership and a family.
More than that, he says his disposition makes it impossible for him to submit
to arbitrary authority and to shelve his reservations for the sake of a
career. If I had just met him I might be tempted to call bullshit and think
he's rationalizing his failure after the fact but I've known this guy almost
my entire life and his behavior has been consistent since first grade.

He has been diagnosed with adult ADHD, an anxiety disorder, depression and
other mood disorders. (The DSM even provides a handy "unspecified disorder"
category.) One anecdotal tale proves nothing and there is a possible
chicken/egg problem here but based on my friend's and, to a lesser extent, my
own and other people's experiences I am convinced there are good reasons for
the APA or similar group to do an in-depth, independent study investigating
the links between mental illness diagnoses and anti-authoritarian personality
traits. Given what is at stake, I doubt that will happen any time soon.

------
Zigurd
This overlooks an opportunity: We need a new disorder. Call it Control-seeking
Disorder, or CSD. Cop gets in your face? Diagnose him with CSD and require
treatment that lowers aggression. TSA bumming you out? Make sure they screen
out CSD sufferers. Get them in treatment.

------
pmarreck
Site repeatedly crashes on mobile, thanks to Javascript ads.

And this is why I was made to disable my ad blocker by many sites. Thanks, f
__*ing ad industry. The least you could do is not crash my shit if I allow you
in.

------
useYourIllusion
I find it quite alarming that the DSM has been wielded as a tool for
hospitalizations and forced medication despite providing sparse forensic
evidence of the diseases it attempts to diagnose.

------
hyperpallium
The majority is always sane, Louis.

------
pigpaws
really? I thought they were called "Libertarians".

------
TheLogothete
Many people are so desperate to convince themselves that they are very special
snowflakes that they will use every opportunity to renounce the status quo. It
doesn't matter if the status quo is very sensible and sound. They need,
_crave_ to be unique. So every crazy, poorly concocted conspiracy theory gets
thousands, millions of devout followers. Convinced beyond belief in the most
absurd of things. The funniest thing is that they all think everybody else is
delusional and they got to the very special, elevated place, reserved only for
the very enlightened.

It is very annoying, tbh.

~~~
vixen99
No evidence - merely a rant.

~~~
TheLogothete
You are absolutely right.

This is my opinion, not a rebuttal. I don't need to collect formal evidence to
leave my comment. This is the Internet, not an academic panel.

~~~
roflc0ptic
This is not an academic panel, this is hacker news! I think on average the
culture here tries to avoid wholly opinion based discussion. You don't _need_
to collect formal evidence to leave your comment, but substantiated claims
sure will be more popular than unsubstantiated ones.

