Ask HN: What's the most exiciting thing happening in your niche?

Sure, here’s an article related to a study on how the brain stores traumatic memory differently from just last month!

https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/neural-patterns-diffe...

Also this study related to the neuroscience of dissociation of memory, showing in EEG an increase in the interconnectivity in the brain before and after treatment.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.8895...

Functionally, we’re learning how to measure the effectiveness of treatments and therapies on the brain, and also learning how the brain handles difficult situations.

This isn’t without controversy, as there was a very large conflict in the field of psychology called the “memory wars”, related to some people having recovered memories via free association and suggestive therapy practices (all very discredited now), and those memories were provably false. There was a very large movement that was spearheaded by a very… suspect organization by the name of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation that posited that ANY recovered memory is almost inherently false. This didn’t really jive with people who had recovered memories of abuse who actually did find real evidence and admissions by the perpetrators. To this day there are many in the field that believe that dissociated memory is impossible. This went on for decades and made studies on dissociation and memory an extremely politically difficult thing. Remember the satanic panic in the 90s? This was that.

So now we’re moving on, finally, from that debacle, and finally being able to bring the subject in a new age, while also having learned a lot about what things not to do. It’s estimated that fully 1-3% of the /human population/ has the more severe version of a dissociative disorder, more people than have red hair. And yet, the ability to study dissociation and also the cultural understanding of it is just opening up. To me, it has the potential for huge societal implications as way that we treat dissociated memories and parts of individuals in trauma therapy is the same process by which we can heal interpersonal wounds. It’s the magic that a great diplomat has in talking with and truly hearing people and building consensus and trust and community. All this last part is mostly conjecture and a set of possibilities for broader applications on my part, but I wanted to share some of what makes me so enthused about it.

I had to take a long break from my thriving career after I found myself diagnosed with a dissociative disorder, and had to learn a LOT about how this all works in order to repair things within myself that I didn’t appreciate were broken (that’s the very short version). I’m absolutely thriving in ways that I have never imagined possible as a result of some of this work.

Yeah, I'm going back to school for a different field (environmental engineering, of the crystals and concrete sort). But if I'm being honest with myself, my main preparation isn't educational but attitudinal/emotional: accepting that I will probably be much poorer in the second half of my life than the first. If retirement seemed a distant prospect before, it will certainly be an impossibility now.

I've done web dev long enough (nearly 30 years) to see it grow from some niche field for nerdy teenagers and certain businesses, to exploratory and revolutionary in the Gmail days, to now taken over by global capital and hypercommercialized.

I thought my labor was fairly compensated at $20 to $40 an hour, working for small businesses and being part of their communities not much different than a graphic designer or brochure maker.

When web dev work skyrocketed to $150-$200+ an hour, as it did during the pandemic years, it just looked like another insane dot com bubble to me. I'm glad that burst and I hope it stays that way -- IMO nothing tech gives us is worth the enshittification it causes our societies and cities, in terms of rampant homelessness and lack of housing, etc.

While challenging on a personal level, I think this was a necessary market adjustment. I know from direct experience my work isn't very difficult, both compared to other parts of the web stack and compared to the many technical fields that require years of study and PhDs and such. The wage explosion we enjoyed was just caused by speculatory investment, a form of gambling all its own, not because our skill or social value suddenly skyrocketed.

In a different world without predatory capitalism, I would've enjoyed being able to do this work the same way potters make mugs, as a personal craft and a pursuit of art. But these days more and more it seems that part of it is getting pushed out by the kind of development that only cares about profit and engagement. It's not what I want out of my career or my life, no matter how much it pays.

No :)