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Comment by ookblah | Hacker News Reader

he must be having a legit mental breakdown. i do not understand any of these decisions done so haphazardly with no regard to users or their current situation, even if that was the direction they were moving. basically, telegraphing that he will personally go out and fuck up your day if you cross him. pettiness to the nth degree right here.

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At first we were saying it as a joke, but I am increasingly seriously wondering just how many famous people in the Valley are in various stages of stimulant psychosis, considering how widespread the joking-not-joking talk is about liberally using Adderall etc. to maximize "the grind".

Don’t casually suggest “mental breakdown” for people and situations you do not know or have first party insight to.

First, blaming things on “mental breakdowns” is incredibly lazy and shallow and belittles the struggle that people with mental illness have.

Did you ever stop to think that maybe this guy is just greedy, or an incompetent CEO?

Yes but I think it’s more likely he is having a mental breakdown.

Matt said in his keynote that he had a kidney stone a few weeks ago, which is evidently extremely painful. Perhaps that physical trauma triggered something.

I am not in the mood to do the proper base rate computations but I think it's considerably less likely that this would be indirectly due to a kidney stone rather than simply any of the well known psychiatric and neurologic condition you can have at the age of ~50.

he could be all of them? i'm basing this off the fact that he was able to run and build it up to what it is today, then suddenly going off the rails. more of me grasping at an explanation than a declaration of truth heh.

Well, an essential part of psychiatric diagnosis is often to notice the presence of a noticeable before/after change. Psychosis, mania, are valid hypothesis that would make a CEO take surprising decision.

I don't see how that belittles the struggle of patients. Having and company and being bipolar is far from life on easy mode.

Greed and incompetence are also valid hypothesis, although don't necessarily need an abrupt change in behavior.

So now you are diagnosing the guy as bipolar? Based on what?

I am not. I am saying this is a hypothesis to consider. This is not at all the same thing and I would agree with you that diagnosing bipolar on a few press articles makes no sense. The goldwater rule is a good rule imo.

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