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Life & fun · January 11, 2026

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Engineering Schizophrenia: Trusting yourself through Byzantine faults

Hi HN! My name's Robert Escriva. I got my PhD from Cornell's Computer Science department back in 2017. And three years ago I had a psychotic episode that irreversibly shook up my world. Since then I've been applying a skill I learned in grad school---namely, debugging distributed and complex systems---to my own mind. What I've found I've put into a [book (pdf)](https://rescrv.net/engineering-schizophrenia.pdf) on engineering, my particular schizophrenic delusions, and how people who suffer as I once did can find a way through the fog to the other side. This is not a healing…

Engineering Schizophrenia: Trusting yourself through Byzantine faults launched on January 11, 2026 with 111 votes, #305 of 14,584 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches.

Alternativestop 2% of January 2026

In plain words

A book by Robert Escriva that applies distributed systems debugging techniques to understanding schizophrenia and psychotic episodes. Written for people experiencing mental health crises or questioning their cognitive reliability, it offers a process-based guide rather than a cure. The work combines the author's computer science background with personal experience managing delusions, intended to help others navigate similar mental health challenges through systematic thinking and self-examination.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

In the maker’s words, at launch

Hi HN! My name's Robert Escriva. I got my PhD from Cornell's Computer Science department back in 2017. And three years ago I had a psychotic episode that irreversibly shook up my world. Since then I've been applying a skill I learned in grad school---namely, debugging distributed and complex systems---to my own mind.…

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