Sweet. Now that I’m public about being manic depressive, I get to write about fun analogies with various aspects of mathematics and computing. Today’s analogy: depression and mania are like least and greatest fixpoints in lattices. To the depressive mind, the world is as bad as it could possibly be given some of the available evidence. (I say “some” because a depressed person tends to ignore a good deal of positive evidence).

I believe life is more joyful and free when one is open and honest about as many things as possible. Therefore, I’ve decided to be open about having manic depressive illness, in the belief that being public about it will lift a bit of mental weight from my shoulders, and act as a personal vote in favor of openness and lack of stigma about mental illness. So far I’ve had two manic periods.