“Later” is a lie I tell myself. If I tell some I’ll do something later, there is a decent chance won’t think about it unless I do something about it. That can be putting it in my calendar, set a reminder, or actually getting up and doing the thing. 

It’s not judging myself. It’s reminding myself that the easy thought of “I can do that later” doesn’t work the way I want it to. There is a good chance I’ll not think or it, or only think of it when I am driving or something. It’s a reminder that maybe I need to step away from what I’m fixated on so I can do all of the other important things. 
 

“Later is a lie” has become a bit of a motto and mantra for me, along with “First: be kind.” Both of those came from things I’ve repeatedly told my son, as he’s been growing up. Now when I ask him to do the dishes, and he replies, “I’ll do them later” all I have to do it raise an eyebrow and he’ll either do them or set a timer. 

My cognition is pretty good for someone 47, I think. I’m a software engineer so I’m financially  dependent on my ability to perform mental labor. I have days where I can hold very complicated systems in my head, and I’m super productive. I also have days where I struggle to hold two things in my head at once, and I can’t really work. It’s worked out for me because, on average, I do pretty well. 

I don’t show any symptoms of Alzheimer’s, nor do my parents, in their 70s. Hopefully that continues.

I struggle with contextual memory—like remembering to make an appointment with my doctor when I can do so. I also struggle with working memory, like by the time someone tells me the third turn, I’ve forgotten the first. I struggle with remembering to do a second thing after the current task, like if I need to both throw out some trash and put away a book, I’ll be repeating in my head, “book, book, book…” until I’ve thrown out the trash, or I’ll just carry it around, or more likely, put it in a place I won’t remember. 

I used to see these as character flaws that I never seemed to be able to overcome, causing me a lot of shame and negative self-talk. 

Now I just see these as limitations that I can mitigate, where trying is good enough. It’s not fair to judge someone who can’t move their arms for not shaking my hand. It’s no more fair to judge myself for not living up neurotypical standards.

I use cognitive prosthetics, like reminders on my phone, my calendar with multiple alerts, and my journal. I compensate in other ways. When I tell myself I’ll do something later, I reply, “later is a lie,” which often enough gets me to stop when I’m doing. I have shower cleaners in my shower, my one plant above the sink (or now also in my shower in the window). If I need to remember to take something with me when I go home, I’ll put it with my shoes, if not immediately in the car: I put things I need to remember in places I’ll see.

All of that only works so well. 

I hope that if we get a super intelligence that they can know what it’s like to be us. I hope that leads to it having empathy. I hope that we get one of the nice ones of all the various individuals that could be possible. 

I don’t know how likely that is, but I hope so. I think most people are good people, so maybe we could get lucky and not get a jerk. 

Nope. You seem perfectly reasonable to me. Thank you for being vulnerable too, especially with English not being your first language. 

Care on here can be a little hit-or-miss. I try to raise the average. 

I’m glad you’re doing better right now. I haven’t myself had that kind of experience. I recently had a friend of a friend that was afflicted with paranoia. I thought that maybe it was schizophrenia, but after his death we learned it was likely liver failure due to heavy drinking. He’s thoroughly isolated himself. 

I’ve thought a lot about how to be as rational as possible when my brain isn’t working right. My aunt died of Alzheimer’s, so that runs in my family. I’ve been journaling every day for over a year now. It’s really about the only solution that I’ve come to for mitigating the effects of cognitive decline. 

It’s come in handy for the normal cognitive decline that come with age, and the memory problems I have with ADHD. Writing out my thoughts out also helps me to identify trends. It gives me a little distance from the thoughts and makes them easier to examine. 

Thanks for posting.


 

I’ve dealt with depression too. When I have a period of prolonged stress of more than a day or two, about two weeks later, I’ll start seeing the symptoms. For a long time I didn’t notice until I was coming out of that state, but over time I have gotten better at recognizing the symptoms. 

When I am in that state, I try to remember that my brain is not functioning properly. I remind myself that it’s temporary, and even if I can’t update my aliefs (how I feel), I can trust my past self enough to act as if things are no where near as bad as my brain is telling me. 

Sometimes it’s helpful to try to simulate what I would say when not depressed, but it’s also sometimes hard to know when I’m depressed. That part has gotten easier over time. 

When I’m depressed I find myself spontaneously saying, “What am I going to do?” I also get frustrated much easier. There are other, but those two are the easiest for me to recognize when my brain is depressed. 

Honestly, the best question to ask is, “who can I ask for help?” That help may be as simple as someone to sit with quietly, or can get a hug from. Often I have found that once I push through and reach out—even when my brain is yelling at me not to—it has an immediate positive effect. 

If you can, talk to a psychiatrist. They have the training to help you navigate through the depression. Also, I have way fewer depressive episodes than I used to because I was able to find medication support. It makes all of this is easier. 

What you are going through is awful, and even more complex than I have experienced. I really hope that you can find some relief. 

Awesome! Thanks! Would you welcome feedback on the symbols, along with suggestions? It's clear that you put thought and effort into this.

I like these, but I have to look up what most of them mean.  It would be helpful to show them named in this post. 

Recursion/induction is like a loop with an off-ramp. Like a letter Q. 

Maybe proof by contradiction is like an inverted house of cards. You make an assumption, and then look for ways to knock it down. 

proof by probability feels like a gauge, like a line with an arrow that indicates a threshold. 

Direct proof is a square. It just sits there on its own. 

I don’t know one directly for contraposition, but it involves negative space like the image of the faces and vases. 

Here’s an odd suggestion: make it in a Choose Your Own Adventure style. The joy of that format is that you can compare and contrast different possible worlds. You only need a handful of branching paths, especially when you already have two major ones. 

I wish mathematicians would take a page out of computer science/software engineering, where we’ve collectively decided that single-character variable names are bad practice. 

I do understand the value and beauty of a terse notation, especially when hand-writing it, but I can also appreciate similar beauty of well-structured and self-documenting code, especially within an code editor that uses a language server that can provide context for any symbol. White space hints at structure and comments clarify the more difficult to parse sections of code  

I’m constantly algebraicly manipulating symbols. We generally call it refactoring, but it’s the same thing up to an isomorphism. I aim to write my code in such a way to minimize the cognitive load on the reader. Using single-character symbols adds a whole layer of cognitive load where the reader needs to keep a mental map of what each symbol represents, especially when the convention chooses an arbitrary symbol, rather than at least using abbreviations. This feels especially onerous for students who are trying to learn the concepts behind the symbols, while trying to keep track of what each symbol represents  

This is really is just a general rant. You did a good job with your explanation. It balances technical nuance with approachability. That really is why I even had this thought to begin with.

Thanks for sharing!