Slashdot Mirror
Depression May Provide Cognitive Advantages
Hugh Pickens writes "Paul W. Andrews and J. Anderson Thomson, Jr. argue in Scientific American that although depression is considered a mental disorder, depression may in fact be a mental adaptation which provides real benefits. This is not to say that depression is not a problem. Depressed people often have trouble performing everyday activities, they can't concentrate on their work, they tend to socially isolate themselves, they are lethargic, and they often lose the ability to take pleasure from such activities such as eating and sex. So what could be so useful about depression? 'Depressed people often think intensely about their problems,' write the authors. 'These thoughts are called ruminations; they are persistent and depressed people have difficulty thinking about anything else. Numerous studies have also shown that this thinking style is often highly analytical. They dwell on a complex problem, breaking it down into smaller components, which are considered one at a time.' Various studies have found that people in depressed mood states are better at solving social dilemmas and there is evidence that people who get more depressed while they are working on complex problems in an intelligence test tend to score higher on the test (PDF). 'When one considers all the evidence, depression seems less like a disorder where the brain is operating in a haphazard way, or malfunctioning. Instead, depression seems more like the vertebrate eye — an intricate, highly organized piece of machinery that performs a specific function.'"
You just have to think about marvin the paranoid android...
Break the sound barrier - bring the noise.
I'm going to have to think about this...
You have higher cognitive ability, you realize how the world runs, you get depressed. Not the other way 'round.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't."
I am lazy and I did a quick google and couldn't find a link...
However, I remember reading about a study in my college Psychology class that pointed to the fact that people depressed actually have a *clearer* view of reality when compared to the non-depressed. It's a rose colored glasses type of effect. When given questions about certain situations, clinically depressed persons tended to give more answers that matched up with the real-world reality of situations than the non-depressed.
In other words the world is shit I am justified in being depressed all the time.
My parents/teachers/doctors/government say I need the bennies.
... I'm all depressed and thought I would come to Slashdot and read some funny comments. That'll cheer me up, right? No one RTFA? Snarky posts for +5 Funny? All I found was an article reminding me how god damned depressed I am.
Wound up too tight. Depth first focus. Not a surprising finding IMHO.
Coffee helps to make sure that the depth of focus is not too deep where one hits the bottom (depression, with extremely single minded and obsessive thinking.) A little chaos is actually a good thing (tm).
if you are better at solving your problems when you are depressed, how come depressed people commit suicide when they are faced with problems?
I find it much more difficult to think logically about my own emotional problems when I am depressed. In that state, introspection is likely to lead to more depression. That's why it's referred to as a vicious cycle — depression is depressing! So it might be easier to figure out other people's problems but I'm skeptical that it actually leads to solutions to one's own social problems. Then again, perhaps that's just because I'm personally poorly socialized.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A trait that confers resistance to malaria when you get both or one of the dominate forms of hemoglobin from your parents, but you get screwed if you get both recessive genes. The odds get better for the majority of combinations, but one particular outcome is worse.
Maybe natural selection is selecting for more analitical thinking in most combinations of parental genes, but the group that gets all the recessives ends up with depression.
Depresses the hell out of me.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
So might depressants provide a similar boost? I've found that a beer or two helps me concentrate on problem sets. Maybe I'm not deluded...
If I were able to perform this intricate and highly adapted function and also handle the slightest daily stresses.
I've been struggling with a real tough problem, and getting more and more depressed.
Now I read this, and I have hope of solving it! woo hoo!
I can't tell you how happy I am!
wait....
Yup, the Mensa test was depressing. I passed, of course.
Most mental disorders are a result of an otherwise normal or useful mental process run-amok. Happiness and energy are good, but take them too far and you've got mania. Organization and hygine are good, but take them too far and you get OCD. Depression when half your family just died in a car wreck and your life is in turmoil is a normal part of coping, depression all the time when nothing is particularly wrong is a disease.
Give it a couple of years and it will be referred to as our "Outlook Orientation," and the government will commission a study to see if depressed people are being properly represented in grade school textbooks.
seems to me like any survival advantage offered by this would be completely wiped out by the fact that depressed people kill themselves hell of a lot more than non-depressed people.
I guess the fact that "Ignorance Is Bliss" is a saying, kind of implies that people always knew this.
Honestly, we all know that there are things like "taking things too seriously" and "taking things too lightly". Depression isn't there as a cruel joke to make miserable people more miserable, it's to make sure that in a grave situation you take a honest look at the situation and deal with it. It's a natural self-defense mechanism that for example you probably wouldn't want to have sex, get pregnant and have a child in a bad situation, being a leftover from before contraception. Of course some people get too much of it, just like others want to cuddle the cute grizzly bear and don't see a problem until they make a Darwin award of themselves. Very few aspects of typical human behavior is really that irrational, though it can be really out of place in the modern world.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I read this somewhere over a month ago.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
As opposed to the emotional effect of failing when you thought you'd blow right through it? :)
This article pretty much describes me to a T. I have been suffering from depression for a few years now and whenever I get down, I definitely have the thinking patterns that was described in this post. However, after going through depression, I have decided that it is much, much better to be ignorant and happy than depressed and realistic.
While depressive people tend to consider a problem very intensely and break it into lots of sub-problems and try to analyze what could have happened if some options were different, all those - ruminations (as the summary states) - still lead to nothing because the all the shit has already hit the fan and there is nothing that can undone that. so the thoughts go round and round and round again.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
But chronic pain is not so wonderful.
Having an immune system is also beneficial to survival. Multiple sclerosis, not so great.
Having suffered from depression in the past, I can tell you that this finding brings no comfort to depressed people. I would rather be happy and terrible at solving problems than be depressed and great at it.
This story really made me feel deeply depressed. I guess I'll ruminate for a while now.
-----
Best sig ever: SEGFAULT
the psych profession still has very little idea of what is going on in the human mind but they still insist on "treating" people
Nobel prize, here I come.
if your conclusion to all these said problems is "everything is crap"?
This is basically where people who are prone to depression have markedly less influence by illusiory conditions. They view the world as it is, without the rose tinted spectacles of the non-depressed.
This gives a general predisposition towards problem solving and accurate assessment of situations, allowing the excision of the personal investment in problems, treating the problem as a more logical construct, which overall leads to better problem solving (which has been researched since the late 70s and 80s).
However, depression being what it is, it doesn't make life around a depressed person any easier, and isn't that great for the depressed person themselves (I speak as one that's prone to that state of mind and have to be a little careful from time to time; it does make things in my favourite field of IT Business Continuity seem somewhat easier than it does for most though, with me jokingly being accused of having enough paranoia for the whole hospital).
The trouble with "Depressive Realism" is that it's not entirely evident whether it's the realistic state of mind that brings about depression (having trouble with the normal chit chat that greases the social wheels, yet goes nowhere, is a real drag and will definitely get you down), or whether it's the depressive state of mind that leaves you more objective.
About a week or so before sitting for the IIT-JEE break up with your girlfriend and fall into despair and depression. Great way to boost your All India Rank and State Rank.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I never considered an occasional depression a disorder and this tends to prove it; depression would just be a state of mind to help you solve the problem that caused the state of mind in the first place. To me people that are always depresses or even always happy are probably the ones suffering from a disorder.
Already had this figured out.
Ruminant depression is a different order of magnitude from end-of-universe major depression. Which do they mean?
Sherwin Nuland on electroshock therapy
At the other end of the spectrum, it's just a mood disorder (and working title of Annie Hall).
Anhedonia
Years ago I read an article about stress and the immune system. The claim was that under stress, the immune cells leave the blood stream and enter into the skin cells. Hence the collapse of immune levels in the blood stream. Stress is often associated with physical confrontation. Perhaps under this circumstance the body is more concerning about fighting off infection from skin trauma than whether the last meal was a mite tainted, or some child has picked up a sneeze.
I haven't seen this followed up, but does it really make sense that body's response to stress is to shut down the immune system? Never to me, it didn't.
Another great one is the doctors instructing you that "whatever your itch system conveys, ignore it".
'Itchy' neurons tell mice when to scratch
So we have an entire nervous subsystem devoted to itch, and our only response is to not listen?
I read an article that the appendix is now believed to act as a pocket of gut bacteria to restart the gut after a core dump.
And then there was the whole thing about "junk DNA" where junk is apparently a scientific word meaning "you can't write a successful grant to study this". From another perspective, at the original sequencing cost of $1 per base pair, I can feel their pain.
I get mighty tired of the scientific meme "functionless until proved grantable". Were the scientists originally responsible for this, or the surgeons?
How many doctors does it take to change a light bulb? Three, but while they're at it, they'll change the socket too.
I must have been a f*cking genius back then.
I'm currently doing a very complicated documentation job about a system I've not worked on previously (its essentially been abandoned and I have to put together what they've done so it can be continued). I'm going to put on a few Radiohead tracks and see if it gets any easier.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Unfortunately there exists a condition of being depressed about ones function within the universe and purpose for being. What is the meaning of relationships? Is everything self gratification? Absurdism may be the only practical approach, but not everyone is depressed about petty worldy or personal things.
Because if I suffer from both obesity and clinical depression then my brain is an intelligent mess.
optamistic people are living on hope; depresso guy acknowledges that he will never everr get to bang all the hot chicks, he is right cos he's sober free from the drunkenness of optamism
http://www.anticharisma.com/
Add to my previous post masturbation and nocturnal emission: it turns out that a small amount of fresh sperm is more effective than a larger quantity of stale spumen.
And female orgasm: the cervix mashes down on a little pocket where semen pools.
And the bulbous bowhead of the male member: turns out to be good at removing stale/foreign semen from the vaginal tract.
I knew I had more material, but it was locked away in another file.
Mary Roach: 10 things you didn't know about orgasm
We are supposed to dwell,be sad, and sometimes feel depressed. A good diet and plenty of water/exercise will balance out the feelings and help you reflect. Meds and quick fixes are to be avoided.
... Paul Thomas Anderson the first time they saw the summary?
I was like "you'd know all about depression, you wrote Magnolia."
I like the idea that depressed people can have deeper thoughts than everyone else just by calling them some fancy name. I bet that helps them feel better about how shitty their lives are. It's no wonder that Thesaurus and Therapy both start with TH. THPBBBPPP!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
If my PHB is trying to make me miserable, it's just so I'll have higher mental faculties. Of course, if I fail to show a sunny and cheery disposition despite my misery, I'll be marked down as having a bad attitude.
Of course, all this can be solved by being one of the 10% of Americans who are on happy pills.
I am officially gone from
The old adage still rings true - Ignorance is bliss
also, this article is the first ive heard depression described correctly in comparison to my views and in contrast to the absolute bulshit misinformation pharma-company propaganda that currently permiates the zeitgeist of western society. "ask your doctor if XYZ is right for you" depression is the mind telling us theres a problem and putting us in a mode that is motivated to solve in a meaningful way the prob at hand. Antidepressants are WRONG cos they shut off this vital bodily mental function and cause things like the colambine naughtiness... Read my article on this issue here http://www.anticharisma.com/zeitgeistyettobecomezeitgeist.html [anticharisma.com] cos I really reckon I know what im talkin about here, and I came to my analytical conclusions about depression during a mental rumination process conducted while I was in the grips of depression...
http://www.anticharisma.com/
time to go off my meds...
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
....like the ability to listen to Emo music without wanting to jam pencils into your ears?
My old sig was REALLY stoopid.
Is that what we now call how people feel when stuck with using Microsoft mail programs?
It's human to say that something serves a purpose. The body is just a continuing mess of chemical reactions, none with a specific design. People have made similar claims of benefit about autism and schizophrenia, too. They confer logic and creativity. It doesn't change the fact that they're also significant handicaps.
I also have to question just how depressed the study participants were. Having been clinically depressed twice, my experience was one of blank, dreary shutdown. True, I didn't have an overly optimistic external viewpoint, but I also had an overly negative self-narrative. I was irrational. Fortunately, I couldn't summon the energy or focus to think about much of anything anyway.
"Alpha children wear grey They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfuly glad I'm a Beta "
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
...so what if you're depressed and you smoke a lot of pot? Does that balance you at NORML?
And to think wanting to put a bullet in my brain is actually a sign of efficient programming.
I'm working on a project that follows the hand off of 150 million dollars worth of application source code. As I was reviewing the software I found several remarks. Two were:
' I don't know why I have to include this in the program
' but it's the only way it will work
' For some reason I have to put this in here to keep
' from getting an exception error
The last one is a keeper because we still got the exception error until it was fixed.
Jimmy Hendrix was obviously not a programmer.
OK, I solved the problem of overpopulation. But nobody cares and somebody will steal my solution anyway, so now I'm going to kill myself.
I'm so depressed.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
When people are depressed there can be considered two types -- 1) survivors and 2) dead
The dead are people who are actually dead or pretty much on their way to that end. Those remaining are survivors. To become a survivor, one has to adjust and adapt. Closing down the emotional parts of the personality is just such a coping method that works for many who would otherwise be ruled by their less stable emotional components. The observations made are essentially looking at "what's left over" when the emotional part of a personality is suppressed.
As another commenter pointed out, depressed artists use their more intense and unstable emotional core to enhance their works. So the result of depression is not always becoming more analytical and good at problem solving, but rather, it is a common result found when all other aspects of a personality are controlled, limited or suppressed.
And those that do not manage to control, limit or suppress their emotional components end up in jail, mental institutions or dead and generally progress beyond simple depression (meaning they no longer fit into the category of "the depressed") into much more dramatic categories.
I don't want an eye with vertebrae. I'll stick with the beam.
"The little critters of nature... they don't know they're ugly!"
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
In light of this article, a lot of you guys are trying to make depression seem like an eye opening experience. When I'm depressed, it's true that I tend to get lost in deep thought more often, and the rose tinted goggles are definitely gone, but it's more like they're replaced with shit tinted specs. I tend to think I'm worthless and can't do anything, that no one wants me around, and that everything is being designed for my failure. The end result is that I'm demotivated and I don't want to do anything. That's what depression is, not a fun day at camp fucking intellectual as everyone seems to want to believe it is.
From a long experience with various SSRIs, an nSRI, an anti-psychotic and a beta blocker (and now an anti-convulsant with alleged action against anxiety, but it's too soon to draw conclusions on that one yet) I can tell you that the coin can also land on its edge, i.e. the medication does sweet fuck all other than a few side effects at the start and possible withdrawal symptoms if you come off it too quickly (thanks Venlafaxine for that lovely 'rollercoaster' effect).
As emotion in the extreme (love, hate, happiness, sadness) can be all consuming to ones thoughts, it kinda makes sense it's possible depression (lacking interest and ability to be stimulated) where one is void of emotions may in enable thoughts to be freed and consciously focused more accurately.
How is this related to technology... ahh dont bother replying, I just dont care anymore.
Many historians regard Abraham Lincoln as one of the best presidents the United States has had.
Turns out he had many characteristics of a depressed individual, which perhaps would have given him clearer insight into the issues of his day.
...but it's not new.
Human yet knows that for ages, i.e in TaoÃsm that's what is called "contemplation" (the same word very takes sense at least in french)
It's a constructive and no-productive (hehe) part of life that aims in understanding how the world rolls. Do you remember opium smokers ?
I think science mainly usefull to formerly validate what we unconsciously already know.. great..
it's joyful, but it's really not new for me.
I also happen to have a 148 IQ
Yeh, me 2, I are 940 IQ end I haz been diagnosed clinicly dead
From the description of the study, it sounds like this effect could be due to stress rather than depression and the two just happen to be correlated. When you encounter a complex problem, how would you describe your emotional state? depressed or stressed?
The study notes that stressful life events have been shown to induce depression, but their analysis does not seem to control for stress as a potential factor.
Fight or flight its all the same
Live to die another day
--Ryan
whoa, that's depressing...
I read "everyday activities such as eating and sex" and thought "one of those is not every day on Slashdot". On consideration, it's not every day just about anywhere.
So we have a Scientific American article telling us that Obsessive Compulsive people (a trait shared among those clinically depressed) are obsessive and compulsive? Holy crap! I knew that the grant stimulus was handing out money like a paedophile hands out candy, but I had no idea ... I need to get me some of that!
(Yes yes, I'm trivializing the findings and I'm sure/hope there is much more to it than that, but that's the kind of comment you get from a guy who only read the summary)
So you just took the Mensa test? Only an hour and you're done right? You should have taken the WAIS. 4 hours of ever harder questions of many different types. At the end, I got TOTALLY depressed, so I scored 138 and was able to become a member of Intertel. 99th centile instead of 98th for Mensa :-)
virtually every major problem ive run into in life is solved by letting go and walking away from it for a time and focus on other things. then when i return to the problem later i usually have the answer worked out or i can make a fresh approach toward the solution.
if i took the depressive approach described in this article i suspect i would have problems solving even the most basic of problems. it sounds like depression is a refusal to allow the rest of your brain to do its job. ?
This is well known and documented already. Knowing about reality can be a real downer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism.
I have a history of dealing with depression that goes back many years. It comes and goes. But lately, I have succumbed to levels of anxiety that are wholly unfamiliar to me. It seems that the only way to reverse the anxiety (besides Xanax) is to revert to a more depressed state. The depression actually feels comfortable by comparison. I suppose that's because I'm used to it.
Yea it might, but whats the point of it all?
http://freelinuxguides.wikidot.com
... I never told you so.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Giving sympathy to depressed people doesn't lift them out of their depression. It just reinforces the secondary gain, subtly conditioning their unconscious mind to depress them whenever they feel like they would like a little sympathy.
Depressed people don't do this on purpose, of course. Nobody gets addicted to a secondary gain on purpose. Nobody even knows they are doing it. That is why it is "unconscious." They don't sit there and think "I should make myself feel sad and miserable, even though I hate feeling sad and miserable, because when I authentically feel sad and miserable (and am not faking it), only then do other people show me some affection and make me feel good." Though some of us would like to pass judgment on them; telling ourselves stories about how they are doing this on purpose; the fact is they usually have no idea this is going on.
I understand that being depressed sucks. I was depressed for a solid two years after a bad break-up. It was the worst two years of my life. Receiving sympathy from my friends didn't help. It seemed to them like the depression-originated things I did and said were fishing for sympathy, so they kindly complied. But I was depressed again the very next day. They had tried to treat the symptom, but that did nothing for curing the disease, and it just made me feel even worse for my inability to stay happy.
If you are depressed due to a chemical imbalance, then take your meds. That will do much more good for you than using blogs to show the world how depressed you are. No amount of sympathy will lift you from your state...it will just more deeply entrench you in the long run.
If you are depressed, like I was, over a specific event, then skip the meds and find a way to move beyond. THAT hole is one you dug yourself (not by causing the event, but by remaining emotionally addicted to it), and only you can climb out of it.
But either way, don't be a pity-suck. It makes the depression worse and it makes you pathetic. And don't cater to those who beg for pity...because they also beg for pain...and all you actually accomplish is a worsening of their problems.
Sorry to trigger an episode - please don't hurt yourself. Depression has many forms, but the most common is caused by extreme egoism. You're not as smart as you believe.
I guess.
OMG!!
Not only is depression (in others) useful, it gives billions of airheaded Trillians something to do while they're torking off their daily boyfriends.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Many posters seem to be attempting to justify their "depression" as being somehow reflective of a more accurate world view. Firstly, I think most folks are actually expressing cynicism, and not depression. While external events may trigger depression, the source is internal -- lack of self-confidence, desire, hope for one's own future, etc. Cynicism, OTOH, is a pessimistic world view such that one can justify actions being meaningless in a world where everything is going to go wrong anyway.
Secondly, it is problematic to correlate ignorance with happiness, without a pretty shallow view of happiness. The concept of happiness itself is a pervasive problem, because it is presented as some obtainable ideal, when it is nothing of the sort. Happiness and sadness are a natural part of the ebb and flow of life, you can't miraculously obtain one without the capacity for the other being ever-present. It is far more useful to consider things from the point of view of contentment, or put another way, acceptance. Cynicism or optimism, for example, are rejections of the view that there is balance in the world, and instead posit some sort of universal constant towards one direction or the other. The problem, of course, is that their premise will at times not come to fruition, and significant distortions are necessary to continue to justify the world view.
In summary, depression and cynicism are not necessary states for intelligent people. They are certainly ever present phases, but think of this as an excuse for philosophical exploration. In other words, we get to these places because whatever constructs we had for a world view didn't quite work out. Time for reassessment, and another attempt.
Disclaimer: I'm a Daoist. ;p
Seriously, it's the most broken-down, circular, pointless plodding thought process I've ever encountered. I've known plenty of people with a range of minor-to-more-signifiicant mental health problems and ruminatory thoughts, and all their ruminations have never got them anywhere. Not one of them, not once, ever got to the root of those endless problems they chased their own tails round in circles in for ages and ages, and TBH most of the content of their ruminations and apparent insights was just vacuous, trite or meaningless. Time spent ruminating is time completely and utterly wasted, you get far better results by giving up the hopeless illusion of control and accepting you're just never going to have all the answers to everything in life. It may perhaps aid your performance at some low-level sensory-cognitive tasks, but that doesn't scale up to any greater ability to deal with real-world scale and life-choice problems.
I tend to think that most people live lives that really suck. (I am not being funny, face it; 9 of 10 people would rather be doing something other then what they are doing at any given time. See: WOW and 2nd Life) There should be no surprise that when you have a group that biologically/chemically can not rationalize they boring/bad/unhappy life they may be a bit smarter then the rest of us cow to the slaughter. It is well known that many brilliant people do not sleep as much (Leonardo da Vinci reportedly sleep only about 2 hours a night). Clinical depression is often tied to serotonin uptake issues, the very same stuff that helps us sleep makes us happy when we are in out little cubical waiting for 5 PM. Being our collective and profound, underwhelming knowledge of how the entirety of the human brain works it's not surprising that there is a link there. I can't wait to hear more.
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
'Depressed people often think intensely about their problems,'
Me too! But instead of the dull outlook on things I look for the good things.
I don't recall where I heard it but I like to try and live by the following model.
--If something is bothering you, instead of worrying about it do something about it. If you can't do anything about it and it is out of your control, don't worry about it, it's not going to make it better.--
If you can follow that you should be one happy person.
Don't let your managers find out about this.
I, for one, welcome our depressed mentat overlords! No, seriously, depression decreases the amount of brain tissue of a patient in a measurable way. This whole thing smells like scientology, really.
Some have commented that you think deeply, you know how things really work, and you get depressed.
But, that sort of depression is temporary, as your brain is able to release Oxytocin and correct itself. Those that do not release enough Oxytocin feel more pain and are more sensitive to things, so get depressed, and stay depressed for longer. While those that produce the chemical for the brain to rebound and cope faster.
If you as a child grew up in a bad situation, like abuse and so forth, may become depressed. Depression is inner rage, while others extroverted will rag out on the world and on others, instead on themselves.
On the other hand, like another commenter has states, there is no real proof of which came first. It's a chicken and an egg problem.
I actually *am* suffering from depression for quite a few years now, and the only problem im constantly trying to solve is how to kill myself in an humane as possible fashion. Which I would hardly consider any kind of 'cognitive advantage'.
The world doesn't go for us the way we'd like it to go so boom.....depression. We lose someone important in our lives to death (parent/spouse/child) [the world isn't going the way we'd like it to go] and boom.....depression. Depression is a creation of our mind. That same mind has an incredibly complex and powerful way to deal with good emotions. The overwhelming majority of these types of difficulties (and I'm not speaking of those with an observable deficiency in seratonin or some type of psychosis) comes from things not being how we thought they would be. How many of you thought you'd be someplace in your life at a certain age, only to get there and feel sad because you never made it as big as you'd hoped? Not to grandstand but Buddha spelled out how to deal with all this reality smeality (my word) about 2400 years ago and that's to understand that there's nothing that's "real." Form is emptiness and emptiness is form. Learn to control the mind and you life will follow. Others have mentioned how they'd trade what they had to be dumb and happy.. Christianity too also says in their bible (and I'm probably paraphrasing)...Lest you become as little children, thou shall not enter into the Kingdom of God. (~2000 years ago) I've not seen too many depressed little children. I have a 7 mo son who's always happy just to be held in mine or my wife's arms. It's all about training the mind and maybe, just maybe, watching a little less tv that tells you you're not ok and that you have to buy this or something is wrong/missing with you!
The generalizations in TFA are misleading. People with clinical depression do not process much of anything, and dwell mostly on the negative aspects of their emotional and behavioral states. People with genetically mediated depression (ie. those for whom drug therapy is appropriate) may adapt to it, and learn to process things in a manner that fits the emotional state, that state being strong enough to overpower cognitions without such emotional baggage. But these are adaptations to adverse states, not adoption of cognitive styles that while processing promote consistent behavioral and possibly emotional states. Thus, it would be more appropriate to say there are people who, when approaching a problem that requires prolonged hierarchical analysis, fall into a cognitive state with attendant emotional and behavioral states that appear as though they are depression. People prone to depression may also be prone to adopting this processing style, but it's probably over-reaching to say that depression causes it (or depressed people think this way).
Although there are people for whom a particular state is problematic, it is not the state that is the problem but rather the person's inability to control it and/or their life, particularly those things that the state makes difficult to contend with in real life. For some, a particular cognitive state may produce in them a set of behaviors that produce problems, or that others consider to be problems, while serving the purpose of processing information in a certain way. There are some people who, when trying to solve a complex problem, will take in all they can about it, then go on with life and not think about that problem. Later, a solution will emerge seemingly of its own accord. This intuitive problem solving approach allows these people to solve problems more efficiently than they could have otherwise, and may not have been able to at all. This style of partitioned attention has positive effects in solving some problems. However, the effort of keeping one problem solving process operating in 'silent mode', and of maintaining the separation from other processes, puts a strain on the attentional system. This is sometimes called the attention bottleneck. When this happens, the person's behavior appears to indicate that they are unable to maintain their focus on things.
In order to solve a problem the person chooses to be a little scattered for a while. They exhibit a temporary deficiency in their attentional system but can override it easily when necessary. There are also persons who tend to process things in this way due to their psychological and/or physiological make up. They are less able to override the state, and exhibit the 'scattered' state more often and more obviously. Rather than a 'temporary deficiency in their attentional system' it is more accurate to say that they have an attentional deficit.
And there you have a parallel example to TFA where a cognitive style and a problematic behavior range coincide, but differentiating the cases of cause/effect (frequently with less control) and common correlation (more frequently with better control). This should help illustrate that it is more accurate to consider certain states, and not an entire person, to be disordered, as well as the fact that adoption of things that change one in a significant manner should be considered re-ordering rather than dis-ordering. Furthermore, it should be the person themselves who makes the determination as to whether the state produces in them a disorder due to it causing problems in living, rather than other people or even themselves coming to that conclusion because the resulting behaviors happen to fit a pattern seen in people who also exhibit those behaviors and have significant life problems caused by them.
So, people who use a cognitive process that runs in the background and produces a result seemingly automatically sometimes exhibit deficits in control of their attention. But people who exhibit deficits in control over their attention may may or may not be us
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Are you sure that you don't mean serotonin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin#Antidepressants, which is one of the main factors involved in depression ?
I'm diagnosed with major depressive disorder. See a therapist regularly, go to group therapy, and have been on all sorts of meds forever (although I decided to try getting off them yesterday, in consultation with my psychiatrist).
And yep, that up there is pretty good description of the way I think.
Depression still sucks, though. :(
FTA: Research in the US and other countries estimates that between 30 to 50 percent of people have met current psychiatric diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder sometime in their lives. But the brain plays crucial roles in promoting survival and reproduction, so the pressures of evolution should have left our brains resistant to such high rates of malfunction. Mental disorders should generally be rare -- why isn't depression?
Because depression is not, fundamentally, a mental disorder. It is wired into every human brain .. anyone subject to repeated setbacks, social neglect or ostracism, or trapped in an unpleasant situation with no solution will likely begin to suffer depression. The brain 'shuts down' (http://psychweb.cisat.jmu.edu/ToKSystem/My%20ToK%20Papers/BSM%20Final.pdf) so as to minimize emotional risk as well as consumption of resources. If we were pack animals, the animal would remove itself from the pack and thus the safety in numbers, to either starve or be taken by a predator. That way the pack doesn't waste time supporting a 'useless' (at best) or 'parasitic' (at worst) member of the pack.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
I get soooo depressed whenever I attempt to solve the problem of how to get Noureen DeWulf, Jessica Alba and Rose McGowen into bed (either individually or all at the same time).
Any help out there appreciated.....
This sounds to me like they're saying depressed people must be so super smart that they'll be able to think their way out of all their problems and stop being depressed. They are clearly not depressed, since they're so fucking stupid to actually think that.
The new cost-saving treatment for depression will be telling people to go solve all their problems and stop being depressed. Well, at least that's better than the current system, where you will do/take all kinds of crap, until you're so fed up with that that you'll be telling everyone you're relaxed and happy, because you can't be bothered to talk anymore to some clueless moron who's advice will be "think positive".
Catatonic depression basically shuts me down to the point where I'm not capable of doing anything, which is good because it's at these times that I realize that life is worthless, shitty, and without redeeming value. If I had any inertia I'd kill myself. This is the worst of the sin wave.
During the "normal depression" I just want to be alone and I find no joy in life. However anything that is escapist is appealing. I write stories, poetry, paint, and otherwise find outlets for creativity. It's all stuff you'd get really depressed if you saw, but there it is... the world deconstructed.
Then there are the times I'm feeling well. This is freedom like most people will never know. Remember that scene in Fight Club where he tells the guy that if he doesn't follow his dream he'll come back and kill him and then says something like "tomorrow his breakfast will taste better than anything you or I have ever eaten"? Well that's what it's like. The high of the sin wave. I can't even remember what depression is like... or even that I have it. All things feel good and life is wonderful. All my relationships have started in these phases. Hypo-manic, in a way.
I score in the top 99% for analytical thinking (for my age).
In the third grade I scored 152 on an IQ test.
I can solve most problems without actually thinking about the steps required. I just "know".
And yet, today I wanted to step in front of the subway train.
up to U.S. $7 million if I solve all of the Millenium problems.
Yours In Valium,
Kilgore Trout
TFA is nonsense. Full of generalizations, suppositions and voodoo. They make no distinction whatever between different types of depression. They don't mention physiological symptoms or account for the role of anti-depressants, ECT or other treatments in relieving symptoms. They don't deal with the obvious problem that depression can lead to suicide. The notion that encouraging rumination should have a measurable impact on the progress of the episode is laughable. Should blowing your nose more often have an impact on how quickly you recover from a cold?
In very rough terms, there are two types of depression: transitory and chronic. Transitory depression is a reaction some people have to trauma, psychic or physical. When someone says 30% of adults suffer from depression sometime in their life, this is what they are talking about. If your marriage breaks down, you get depressed for a time. You might even benefit from focusing on your problems, but to say the depression is an evolutionary adaptation that leads to the analysis leads to benefits is voodoo. Its the same thing as saying Sickle Cell Anemia confers a resistance to Malaria.
The notion that every human characteristic must have an evolutionary benefit is plain stupid. Its this kind of thinking that has turned Evolutionary Psychology into a joke. This article is a prime example.
I don't worry now, because one day I was fixing the Dali Lama's computer when it broke. I said "Man are you going to pay me now or what?". He said I don't have any money and if I did I wouldn't give it to you, but I can give you something else instead. I thought to myself, self I gotta get something outa this deal and a little something is better than nothing. So I said OK. He said the he would put me on the fast track to the afterlife. So, I don't worry since I now have that going for me:)(: Now contemplate that with a Shenyang.
140 on one might be 160 on the other.
Percentage is more useful, course you should also include the margin for error in the test as well.
Deleted
Regular depression is debilitating in almost every way.
Mild depression is unpleasant but has the benefit of helping some cognitive abilities.
What I really hate about depression* is that it makes me quite unpredictable. This makes it harder for others to socialize with me, and for me when making quick decisions.
Once I realize that I'm actually depressed, it's a minor relief, because now I know how I'll be reacting for the next few days, until the depression goes off, but that is such a relief that I instantly realize it and adjust accordingly.
The hard part is asking yourself whether you're just sad for some reason, or depressed for no reason, and the inaction that results from your hesitation to make any decision, from fear of being depressed or manic and doing something you'll regret.
*Besides the obvious feelings of emptiness, animosity and laziness.
Depression is like an alarm system, Frequently it tells us there is something in our life which needs to be addressed. Occasionally, it starts raising an alarm without any reason or not shut off, and itself becomes the problem. It is highly useful, but not really welcome.
Does depression provide cognitive advantages, or does having a cognitive advantage make you more likely to be depressed?
Our society wants to call everything a disease, probably because nobody wants to take responsibility for their own problems. But, sometimes, depression is simply a natural reaction to what's happening around you.
Personally, I consider anyone who doesn't think the world is in big trouble to be mentally defective. I think there are two reasonable reactions for those of us who do realize we're in trouble. One, be depressed. Two, stop feeling crappy and do something about our problems. However, the vast majority of our society is either depressed for completely selfish reasons (e.g. my wife is humping the UPS guy), or happy for completely selfish reasons (e.g. I have a big house).
But for the crowd that likes to pretend we're not making our planet less inhabitable, that we're making progress towards world peace, and that we're not slaves to the world's bankers, Depression is a great way to marginalize the response of those who're actually bright enough to realize what's happening.
Though this is secondary to your main point (which I will not presently challenge), your selection of Nietzsche as an example is a poor one.
Nietzsche questioned the absolute nature of truth, and repeatedly returned to a resultant affirmation of life. He found value not in abstract notions of virtue which he felt were erroneously held to be universal absolutes, nor in unsubstantial promises about an afterlife (about which he ranted often). He saw these attitudes (most popular among the religious, but also among idealists in general) to be rejections of life and, in his own words, the true nihilism.
To put it simply, why do you value something abstract? Because you hate the real. Why do you look forward to a better afterlife? Because you hate this life.
To someone who thinks the meaning of life lies somewhere in an abstract concept or afterlife, Nietzsche will seem gloomy. This is not because he sees no value to life, but because he sees value precisely where others do not: in existence itself. In many of his works, he celebrates this quite jubilantly.
Nietzsche is hard to read, no doubt. His writing style is anything but simple, and his target audience is not the common man. Further, there are issues with his editor having been a racist (and having poisoned some of his writings with racism), and also with translators that didn't really understand him. If you want to understand Nietzsche, read Walter Kaufmann's essays and translations.
Lastly, and as an aside, Nietzsche could not have raised a family...his health problems were quite extreme and made him unattractive. He in fact proposed to more than a few women and was always rejected. This did not prevent him from affirming the value of life itself, and finding encouragement in his place in the evolutionary process (seeing man as a bridge to an even greater man).
What I found interesting was that I am reading Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness In the Sky", only partway through.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky
The zipheads aka the Focussed. Biochemical (originally diseased induced in the Emergents) manipulation of the brian to create deep undisturbed thought on an issue.
Originally published 1999
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
This is it. It's not going to get any better.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I'd love to read this story, if you can figure out or remember the name of it. Maybe it's just the telling of this tale from Annie Hall that another poster mentioned? But it'd be great if it's actually a story, definitely worth a read. Searching Google for "woody allen happiest couple story" brings up only your Slashdot post as the first hit!
This would be the same Woody who said, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying."
You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton house.
I was always under the impression that thought and depression worked opposite that; they've got cause-effect wrong.
Seems to me folks start off not thinking and many maintain that throughout life.
Some however, do begin thinking about the world and people and the way things are right now and the way things could or 'should' be and then they get depressed.
Depression doesn't cause clear thought; clear thought causes depression.
I'm posting as Anonymous Coward so you won't think I'm lying about my 185 IQ. As Anonymous Coward I have no (obvious) incentive to lie about it. I tested this years ago in kidnergarten, also, they gave me another brand of IQ test a few weeks later and it came out to 165ish.
Anyways, I too have been diagnosed with depression. I think they diagnose everyone with that if they can't come up with something better. Anyways, I don't know if IQ has anything to do with it in my case, because I took some IQ tests online more recently ( as an adult ) and have scored all over the board - 104, 155, 123, 133 ( I made those numbers up, but they are similar to the actual scores which I don't remember - I made up the 185 and 165 too because I don't remember the exact scores but they were thereabouts ).
Point being, IQ scores seem to be fairly unreliable at least in my case, and if they are effected by depression, then depression seems to have in my case driven them lower. If it works the other way with depressiveness being a cause of high IQ, then I must have been really depressed as a kidnerdgartener ( which I totally wasn't ). Maybe it's the world that makes you dumb. Or maybe it's just me that's gotten dumber. Or maybe IQ tests are dumb.
...
It's hard to make a point because there are different kinds of depressions and everybody sees depression from a different perspective.
For example, when I read in the article about ruminations, analytical thinking, being isolated to focus on a single problem, etc,. I identified with all of this. Also, I never thought I have clinical depression (Iirc, the depression that comes without any apparent reason at all, not being sad because you were dumped by your girlfriend or something) but there is some other kind of depression which in my opinion comes because of another chronic mental disease that makes your life horrible. In my case it's obsessive compulsive disorder but not the mainstream one (I don't do rituals) but the unseen one, Pure-O form of it that makes you worry and be ashamed about horrible thoughts that happened to pass through your mind.
The keyword 'ruminations' in the article is also a primary characteristic of OCD (both the ritualistic one and Pure-O) where you are bothered with endless thoughts that go into cycles and you can't let it go. While I had the cycling worries illogical thoughts ("If I trip on the cracks a good person will die" or being bothered by sexual/violent thoughts on people or situations you wouldn't like to have them) the same ruminations went for more "logical" worries (Did I just said something that has harmed someone? What if I forgot to lock the door and be robbed?). Generally, I was overthinking and overanalyzing and worrying about things too much and even if I wanted to tell my brain to shut up it wasn't possible. Add to all these, how they also affected my social life, how I was sensitive and school and being bullied all the time, how things didn't went nice in family too and you have an accumulation of sad experiences, negative thoughts, bad memories, a complex for other people's successful life, an isolation from people, awful feelings about myself and the ruminations continue on all these parts (What am I? Why am I not normal? Why is abnormal bad? Also revolving around "I need to have a life" to "Fuck real life! It's a lie.." and never finding a point of serenity).
They all add up and it becomes more complex, also my personality is based on these thoughts and if I could turn back and become just like the rest I would be more depressed because I wouldn't be me but what people dictated me to be (I had a lot of hate for criticism like "You should get a life! You should be just like the rest.."). It's all a complex pattern. (This kind of) depression is not weltschmerz but a result of a mental disorder that lead (or had very similar characteristics) to overthinking, deeply analyzing, worrying while the rest were just having fun in their ignorance and also a result from the social trauma for thinking and acting different than the rest.
The "H-Word" has died for me.