Interview with the Creator of BitTorrent 500
brokencomputer writes "There is an interesting interview with Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent, on my site, WrongPlanet.net. Because there is already a plethora of information about BitTorrent, this interview takes a different approach and focuses entirely on Cohen's Asperger's Syndrome. In addition to being interesting to anyone interested in BitTorrent, Cohen's story is extremely inspirational to those of us who do have Asperger's, and will probably be so even to those without Asperger's Syndrome."
What about... (Score:5, Insightful)
School != Learning (Score:4, Insightful)
Learn? Who the hell wants to learn anymore? That's an old-fashioned way to look at it. Since your acceptance into college and, ultimately, your college degree amounts to your grade, why worry about what you learn? What? Doing your best? Being productive? I don't understand, what does that have to do with getting an A? That kind of thinking is last-century...who wants to be productive when you can just slide by your whole life? I mean, no matter what you make, the government's gonna pay you when you get old. What? The government fucked up Social Security?
Re:Not to rag on him... (Score:2, Insightful)
Cohen doesn't have Asperger's (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps, Mr Cohen should actually go out and get diagnosed by someone competent before misrepresenting a legitimate illness.
PS: What's with people's fascination of collecting disorders? "I'm a cutter! No! Bipolar! No, schizophrenic!"
For the people that actually have these fad-ish disorders, it isn't some cool gee-whizz thing, it's a nightmare.
Re:What about... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Am I the only one old enough on Slashdot... (Score:2, Insightful)
Aspergers Syndrome (Score:2, Insightful)
As a Fad
Since its introduction into the knowledge of the general public, Asperger's has become somewhat of a fad for those seeking to garner attention. In the fine tradition of disease whores everywhere, many young people who have ever felt the least bit shy or eccentric decide to self-diagnose themselves, forsaking the opinion of a qualified MD and therefore belittling genuine sufferers for just the sake of appearing special.
As Covering Up for Being a Total Fucktard
Some close-knit communities of people with distorted views of reality, such as furries, plushies and otherkin will frequently claim to have Asperger's or be Autistic en masse, often finding some way to tie its manifestations into the fact that they are social misfits, can't properly express affection, or to claim that it's an intrinsic part of being fucked up in the particular way that they are. In these instances, having "Asperger's" seems to be closely tied to posting disgusting and semi-nude pictures of yourself frequently to the internet, or writing extremely off-kilter fanfiction (see here (http://www.fanfiction.net/u/49104/) [fanfiction.net]). This disease (and the associated Autism) are frequent mix-ins for those who like to claim to have many diseases and disorders. They can usually pull it off in quite a long-term manner, much as children are often over-diagnosed with ADD/ADHD simply because if you distort reality enough, you can claim the particular social dysfunction or misbehavior is part of the syndrome in question.
Diagnosis
If you feel that you're shy, unusual, highly intelligent, able to sense the emotional states of others, good at judging body language and inordinantly pre-occupied with things that most people are not, congratulations! You are just like everybody else.
/satire
On Fake Diseases (Score:5, Insightful)
When children behave in ways that schools or parents dislike, this behaviour is often characterised as an illness. Depending on the nuances of the behaviour concerned, a child might be deemed to have Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD),
Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) or any one of a growing range of other illnesses.
However, there is something unusual about these diseases. First of all, they are defined entirely in terms of their symptoms, not in terms of some malfunction of the body. Why is this unusual? After all, before the underlying cause was known, diseases like AIDS and SARS, too, were recognised in terms of their symptoms. But that is different. It is perfectly meaningful to say: "that looks like SARS, but it might just be a bad cold, or the person might be deliberately exaggerating his symptoms". Hence also, with real diseases, it is possible to have an asymptomatic disease, like asymptomatic Hepatitis C. But it is not possible, even in principle, to have asymptomatic ADHD.
There is another unusual feature of diseases like ODD that should give us pause: they are typically treated without the patient's consent; and indeed the "treatments" are often physically identical to what would in a non-medical context be called punishments. This breach of human rights is casually justified as being "for their own good".
ADHD and its ilk really aren't diseases in the same sense as, say, Hepatitis C. They are metaphorical diseases, the names of which denote behaviours that are deemed to be morally unacceptable. In other words, the child has a certain opinion about what he ought to be doing and this opinion is different from his parents' opinion about what he ought to be doing.
Take ODD as an example, the diagnostic criteria are:
A pattern of negativistic, hostile, and defiant behavior lasting at least 6 months, during which four (or more) of the following are present:
1. often loses temper
2. often argues with adults
3. often actively defies or refuses to comply with adults' requests or rules
4. often deliberately annoys people
5. often blames others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior
6. is often touchy or easily annoyed by others
7. is often angry and resentful
8. is often spiteful or vindictive
Note the many moral judgements that are necessary to make any diagnosis according to this definition: "actively defies", "deliberately annoys" and so on. These are not deemed to be disease symptoms when a child does them to an intending kidnapper, or to the parents' political opponents at a demonstration, for example. These states of the child's brain become diseases only when a certain condition - disapproval - exists in the brain of another person - the parent or other authority. The treatment is also metaphorical and for ODD it consists of conversations and discipline. Again, this is very different from other diseases: bacteria are not great conversationalists, one cannot debate diabetes, but apparently ODD can be disposed of by talking to it.
The entire purpose of these diseases is, in fact, to give these vile "treatments" a gloss of medical and scientific respectability. Then no attention need be paid to whether the child is right to behave defiantly toward his parents in specific cases. No effort needs to be wasted on such fripperies as rational argument or considering that the child might have a point if they repeatedly refuse to obey their parents or say that they are bored in school. How very convenient for the force-users.
There is one last oddity to note. Professor Michael Fitzgerald of Dublin University has recently said that geniuses such as Socrates, Charles Darwin, and Andy Warhol may have had a mental disease called Asperger's syndrome characterised by not wanting to talk to people and having "restricted" interests with "abnormal" intensity. Now, suppose that having Asperger's syndrome for a while wo
Cohen might. Who are you to say? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the diagnosis helped me make sense of my life, if it gave me tools with which I could build a better life, then yes, I was autistic.
If the diagnosis turned into an excuse for self-destructive behavior, turned into a rationale for why I should be excused from the rules of civility, if it became a license for uncivil behavior, then no, I wasn't autistic.
In the end, she told me, it wasn't up to her to decide whether I was autistic. It was up to me.
It was the best psychiatric advice I've ever received. And, y'know what? I'm not going to tell you if I'm autistic or not. I don't care if you know. I don't wear a sign and advertise myself to the world one way or another.
I know if I'm autistic or not. That's enough.
So please show some courtesy to Bram Cohen. It's very possible he's received the exact same (excellent) psychiatric advice I've received.
Re:A great book (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cohen might. Who are you to say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What must suck... (Score:1, Insightful)
You can be born with a talent; you cannot be born with achievement.
Re:Clarification on Aspergers (Score:5, Insightful)
Take any 6 symptoms, say you need 3 to have the disease, and a certain percentage of the populace will have it. Throw in a few famous dead people who "could have had the disease" (except no one even got to examine them, just idle speculation based on other often dead people's recollections) and you've got a nice, fuzzy, ill-defined disease. What I'm getting at is that this disease definition sounds so ellusive (widely varying symptoms, many of which are relatively common), that it doesn't seem to be anything more than a series of symptoms. Heart disease there's blockage. Hepatitis there's an actual virus. Hell, even depression you can measure lowered neuro-transmitters, treat it sucessfully with drugs, etc. But what use is this "diagnosis" of Aspergers Syndrome other than making people feel better because you've assigned it a name?
There's so many of these elusive "syndromes and disorders" these days that it calls into question much of medical science. Gulf War Syndrome, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, which of these are actually real? Does every behaviour that's a bit out of the ordinary have to have a syndrome or disorder associated with it. Maybe I have Argumentative Skeptic Disorder.
Symptoms include
1. inability to accept well cherished beliefs as fact.
2. arguing against unproven beliefs whenever they're brought up as fact.
3. Use of sarcasm.
4. Not accepting the opinions of learned experts.
I'm really trying not to be a dick, but how is this diagnosis more than just a bunch of vague symptoms?
Re:Clarification on Aspergers (Score:3, Insightful)
Could be Diet (Score:2, Insightful)
(not just artificial foods, lots of natural stuff is bad for some people too, eg milk)
Re:Cohen might. Who are you to say? (Score:3, Insightful)
If the diagnosis turned into an excuse for self-destructive behavior, turned into a rationale for why I should be excused from the rules of civility, if it became a license for uncivil behavior, then no, I wasn't autistic.
I think that this is quite possibly the greatest thing I've ever read on Slashdot.
I've often looked at the (sometimes deliberately?) vague descriptions of various popular mental disorders, including autism, and noted how many of those traits might apply to me. But with almost every one, I could see it being the latter case, not the former.
That's great advice and spoken (written?) well.
I'll share with you another piece of advice I was once given by my child psychiatrist* when I was having difficulty coping with grad school:
Drugs are for temporarily helping you regain your sanity until you can control your life just fine on your own. They're a boost to regain self-reliance, not a permanent crutch.
*Not because my parents suspected I was nuts, but because I'd had febrile convulsions and they wanted to make sure nothing broke.
In defense of Aspergers (Score:3, Insightful)
Men with Aspergers often end up in jobs where they make the nuts and bolts of society run, because they can focus on them. And, in fact (sorry about the myth destruction) many of them do get laid. And seem to have mostly normal kids... Men with alpha male social disorder frequently end up killing people, destroying social structures and generally making people's lives a misery. It's a matter of perception.
I have a feeling that in earlier societies where there were no chattering classes, the intelligent people with Aspergers ended up as priests or shamans and acted as a check or balance on the alphas. Prophets like Nathan and Jeremiah with their tendency to flame people in public and obsessions with strange things would seem to have exhibited at least some of the symptoms of Aspergers.
I am not denying that Aspergers makes normal social relations difficult. I probably have a mild version of it but never needed to get formally diagnosed: I know of people who have it more seriously and it can be a real handicap. But it is not usually as severe a handicap as being stupid, being brought up by useless parents, or growing up in a criminal society like the Jamaican or LA gang culture.
Re:Hooray, a religious nutcase! (Score:3, Insightful)
Recommendation (Score:3, Insightful)
ODD and Soviet-style "social psychiatry" (Score:3, Insightful)
The definition of ODD above, a "mental disorder" characterised by opposition and defiance, sounds uncomfortably like something out of Soviet social psychiatry.
Re:Clarification on Aspergers (Score:3, Insightful)
Same thing with the numerous syndromes. We know that a missing protein or a damaged gene can cause behavioural changes. When these changes are negative, we name it a syndrome that goes beyond mere personality issue. It is indeed a medical condition, but this fact may be hard to accept for someone in his 30-40s (or older), who got his biology in school when we didn't understand much about the brain.
Re:Clarification on Aspergers (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Clarification on Aspergers (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, you can start a philosophical discussion of what is pathology and what is the norm. Yes, it's not totally cut and dry, but in cases like autism we are mostly justified in calling it a pathology.