Hacker News Reader

Comment by nathanvanfleet | Hacker News Reader

Using the term "give-up-itis" discredits this article. It's like describing it as a "case of the mondays" when you die.

No it doesn't. They use the proper medical term in the very same sentence, and continue to use psychogenic death except in a direct quotation from a doctor.

You have to be pretty damn anal to think using a colloquial term suddenly discredits all the other information in that article.

>>You have to be pretty damn anal to think using a colloquial term suddenly discredits all the other information in that article.

There is some validity to his point though. Every time I read the word "give-up-itis" I reflexively feel negative feelings towards the article. It feels as if they are trying to be funny but not in a good way.

I actually think "give-up-itis" is a more specific term than "psychogenic death", and is a better descriptor for what they're talking about. First, "psychogenic death" just means a death caused by the mind, without any specifics about how the mind caused it—e.g. if you think about something really scary and make your heart rate jump up and manage to give yourself a heart attack, it seems like that might qualify as a "psychogenic death" (I imagine there'd have to be other things wrong with your heart for that to tip you over the edge, but I'm not an expert); whereas this is about a mechanism involving some kind of apathetic mindset. Second, "psychogenic death" can only apply after the person is dead; it doesn't describe someone suffering from the same mechanism that hasn't killed them yet. Maybe "psychogenic decay"? (But again, that doesn't specify the mindset involved; perhaps someone who spends all their time experiencing pain, or anger, or something else would decay in a different way.)

If they had to come up with a "medical" term for "give-up-itis", I might guess it'd be "apathetic psychogenic decay", or else some Latinized phrase. https://translate.google.com/#auto/la/disease%20of%20giving%... yields "De morbo dare sursum", who knows.

I also suspect this research is early enough that it doesn't make sense to choose an official term and commit to it yet. I am in favor of people not polluting the namespace of terms with things that, upon closer examination, should have been named something else.

Not to mention the fact that "-itis" refers to swelling so it's not even a medically correct use of the suffix! ;)

A small nitpick of your nitpick. Our obsession with 'proper sounding' language is likely counter productive. When you translate many of the formal phrases we use into their original language, it's not far up from give-up-itis. hypothermia = underheated, brontosaurus = thunder lizard, cardiac arrhythmia = heart lacking rhythm, hematoma = blood mass, etc.

Choosing to continue the tradition of naming things in a way such that only a relatively small chunk of society would immediately understand their meaning is something that I've never understood.

If you aren't functional with Greek and Latin prefixes, you're basically not an English speaker.

A lot of the words with these roots are international, or nearly so:

Polish: brontozaur; Spanish: brontosaurio, Slovak: brontosaurus; French: brontosaure; German: Brontosaurus.

These kinds of words actually make English easier to learn for people coming from numerous other languages.

Sure, let's be the laughing stock and replace that with "thunder lizard" and "underheating".

> Choosing to continue the tradition of naming things in a way such that only a relatively small chunk of society would immediately understand their meaning is something that I've never understood.

Jargon has its place. In regards to medical jargon, it serves as both a signal knowledge of medicine and pointing to a specific idea. Using plain language may or may not refer to the specific idea at hand and it definitely signals a lack of knowledge.

It's the same reason people who use computers say "cursor" instead of "pointy thing".

I don't think one signals knowledge by choice of vocabulary, but rather by what is said. If you've ever been pitched something in a field you're an expert in by an imposter, they're more than capable of talking the talk. It's the content of what is actually said where their fraud is exposed. It's not for a lack of knowledge of vernacular or even its misuse, but for lack of understanding the topic which they are discussing. By contrast if you translate e.g. Socrates to pidgin, I'm certain the wisdom would no doubt still resonate simply because of what is said and the logic behind it, regardless of how it is said.

The precision is certainly a reasonable argument, yet that may be begging the question. The reason these words are more precise than alternatives is because these words are the ones chosen to associate with whatever 'thing' we might be referencing. Blue berry is hardly precise in terms of the words used, yet you know exactly what I am referencing with those words. Had we adopted such a tradition there we might find ourselves calling them vaccinium cyanococcus in a parallel dimension, and certainly there they would likely find the notion of blueberry to be an insufficiently precise alternative.

The article insinuates that there exists such a term that is in use; if that is the case, I wouldn't malign it for conveying that situation.

Still I can't see how someone in the medical profession would stick the -itis suffix on something that isn't any sort of inflammation, even out of jest.

Even, say, "give-up-osis" would be an improvement; an "osis" is just a condition (neurosis, psychosis, ...).

"itis" is used in the vernacular for making up words for obsessive preoccupations or imaginary illnesses and such; that formation style is not fitting in a serious medical setting at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com