This is about as useful as saying "How about you just eat less?" to someone who is struggling with their weight — that is, not useful at all. There's a reason only 15% of overweight people manage to make any progress towards weight loss, never mind any meaningful progress [0]: changing habits is hard, and as a society we haven't found a good way to systematically address the problem. Condescending quips do little to help in that regard.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4539812/

Isn't "How about you just eat less?" just a particular case of exercising self control?

> changing habits is hard, and as a society we haven't found a good way to systematically address the problem

Don't think there is one. Just case by case solutions. But they all boil down to finding the motivation to control a harmful behaviour.

Come to think of it, the person in TFA managed to exercise enough self control to turn off their notifications :)

Not being able to understand why what you're saying is impractical (and just plain rude) is itself indicative of a mental fault.

Are you on the spectrum? If you are, why don't you just stop being on the spectrum? :)

What is it that you're struggling with? Then we can have someone that doesn't struggle with that issue tell you that you just have to do this or that. Afterwards your struggles will be a thing of the past!

You know how to beat Usain Bolt in a race? Just run faster!

> How about learning a little self control? You can train yourself you know...

Yes, but you only have so much time and effort for training. So if you can fix some things without expending will power, that's a win.

This is the nastiest comment I’ve read on HN in a while.

It might be helpful to compare your comment to the comment by pnut[1].

I think the two of you have similar experiences, but a very different reaction to this article.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28127075