Perhaps some of us just don't fit into the carrot/stick/hierarchy system that seems to be preferred by most people. Discipline may just increase the alienation.

Rehabilitation centers in fact have discipline. It is likely how and why they kicked him out. They do have clear rules and enforcement. I think that your assumption that no one thought of discipline or attempted strict is out of nowhere.

But suggestion with psychiatric care is likely right.

Discipline comes from the parents too, not just Rehab centers. From the article:

> They told each other he needed space, that surely there were some things that gave him pleasure, and that he had a knack for computers. But on days he never left his screen, it was hard not to despair. More than once they wondered: “Should we pull the plug?”

There was a lack of rules and enforcement in his home life. If you read the rest of the piece carefully, you'll see other moments where the parents failed to set boundaries before he was sent to Rehab.

Your comment was about assumed lack of discipline everywhere.

Also, this is parents wondering about where the correct lines are. That does not proves general lack of discipline everywhere. Them wondering back then about what they should do is not proof of no one tried discipline either. They did seen gaming addiction as sign as him being interested in at least something. Plus, even in this discussion you have HN members horrified over parental suggestion that computer in his room might have been mistake. It is not some kind of obscure unusual line of thought.

It took 22 years to send him to Rehab. The article is clear that his parents were afraid to discipline him during that time. The rest is just splitting hairs

It's easy to say that the path they didn't take would have lead to success, and if they had taken that path, then it still would be easy to say that the path they hadn't taken would have lead to success.

It's hard to question your own identity. If this article had described a social media addiction, a gaming addiction, or any kind of digital addiction that did not involve the word "hacking", I think we would be a lot less ambivalent and much more certain about the roads not taken.

Compare the discussions on the first two topics…

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1634536577&dateRange=custom&...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1634536625&dateRange=custom&...

… to the topics on "hacking addiction" or "hackers addiction" or "hackers addict":

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1634536625&dateRange=custom&...

As it turns out, only one article on HN is about hacking addiction and its description predicts the behavior of the young man described in the article: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Sv8IHkBtBEXjSW7WktEY...

The claims of the ex-hacker corresponds well with this article too: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37752800

I would be equally skeptical of any claim about gaming or social media addiction that proposed a course of action that we'd have no way of knowing worked.

Yeah, it's hard to know anything that contradicts your identity, which Paul Graham (the founder of HN) alluded to in his piece:

http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

When people call us out on it, our first instinct is denial, to profess ignorance of outcomes and to assert our largely imaginary objectivity and skepticism.

Do you know what would have saved this kid? If not, you're as skeptical as I am.

I wish I could give this more up-votes; it really hits the nail on the head with respect to this thread.

I think you've got the wrong hammer-related analogy. "Strict disipline" in the form of cutting off the kid's access to computers sounds like a "when all you have is a hammer..." kind of solution. It's an overly simplistic way of attacking a symptom without attempting to address or even identify the underlying problems, and it comes with a self-satisfied justification for the potential harms of that approach because at least you're doing something (even if there's no reason to believe it would have accomplished anything other than change how the underlying problems manifest).

GP said:

> Perhaps the easiest, earliest intervention for that digital addiction was to cut him off the "drug" and maybe put him through psychiatric care.

And that's absolutely backwards. Definitely get him psychiatric care, and maybe cut him off from computers entirely, if professionals concur that it seems likely to help more than hurt.

People have this idea that addictive substances and habits are the sole reason for an addiction, and that the problem will be fixed if you take away the obvious symptom, but there are usually other factors involved. Taking away the centre of someone's life is really bad because it leaves them in exactly the same state they were in when they developed the addiction, minus the (harmful) coping mechanism.