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Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

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Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#101

Post by asldfkweiorz »

sjg007 wrote: post #80
doctorcroc wrote: post #8

Tangential, but this psychologist argues that depression evolved as a behavioral shutdown mechanism to prevent humans from over-investing in tactics or behaviors that did not yield any benefit (from a dopaminergic standpoint) -- https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/theory-knowledge/201604... . The reasoning is that we conserve energy by not pursuing "dead-ends". Naturally, this evolutionary mechanism is thrown for a…

I would've called that procrastination.

There is a massive difference between procrastination and depression. To be flippant, the difference between having changed clothes by 4pm or being still in your pyjama, trying to get out of bed and having breakfast.

Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#102

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

trgv wrote: post #57
ZenoArrow wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "If obtaining X (career, significant relationship, etc.) does cure your "depression" then you didn't have clinical depression to begin with." Depends. There's a decent amount of evidence that exercise can help reduce episodes of depression, even clinical depression. If obtaining X is obtaining a healthier body, then there's a decent chance you can help to lift yourself out of a funk by getting it. However, there's…

I imagine there are "people diagnosed with clinically depression" who could cure their depression by exercising and/or changing their life in some way. However, I know a couple people who do not fall into that bucket. Both of these people suffer bouts of totally debilitating depression. They are both respected within their communities, smart, successful, and have full lives. Both of them get a lot of exercise, both a…

> In my opinion, the way to look at this kind of depression is as a chemical imbalance.

Having lived my entire life dealing with depression, I believe you are wrong. Any "chemical imbalance" is a symptom, the physical expression of a mind suffering.

Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#103

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #39
meesterdude wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are two general sources of depression: environmental and biochemical. This is not at all what the field of psychology has identified as the "general sources"

So enlighten me. What does psychology have to say about it?

In my personal experience, psychology is to depression what nutrition science is to obesity. They act like they know what they're doing, but really don't.

Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#104

Post by emiliobumachar »

pron wrote: post #94
Bjartr wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Populations trend towards the reduced expression of phenotypes which are maladaptive. I don't think it is then unreasonable to presuppose (as a starting point for further investigation) that commonly expressed phenotypes might represent beneficial adaptation, especially when to our intuition the opposite would be true.

Saying that something is not maladaptive and saying its adaptive are two very different things.

I failed to see the difference. Would you please explain? Sounds to me like "not short" vs "tall". Subjective, and people may map different sections of a spectrum into each expression, but again, they may not.

Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#105

Post by splintercell »

rubicon33 wrote: post #38
nexus2045 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain what you mean, particularly the last part? So you're saying having that independent high paying job, in your experience, really helped things? For me, that's almost my only "hope" of a better future - I'm involuntarily living with my parents due to renting in my city not making financial sense, and I think that causes me a bit of depression because I feel totally out of control of my situation (I fe…

Here's what people who don't have depression, constantly think about depression: I just need X and then I won't be depressed! That's a NORMAL psychological process (not having something important, feeling negative about it). If obtaining X (career, significant relationship, etc.) does cure your "depression" then you didn't have clinical depression to begin with. You're a human being who was unhappy that their situati…

I firmly believe that there are different kinds of depression. The kind of depression Christina Ricci has in 'Prozac Nation', or the author of 'Noonday Demon' has, is not the same thing, which a lot of people face on episodic level.

The kind of depression you're talking about (which you incorrectly term as 'clinical depression') is exactly how you describe it. There is no cause X, in the world which would fix it.

However, a lot of people feel depressed and their cause is different, than the cause for the first kind of depression.

The article GP linked, is talking about a theory that it's caused by body shutting down to prevent you from overinvesting in failed strategy is quite true for people feeling second kind of depression, and this may be the evolutionary reason for depression.

For the first kind of depression, I believe it's a disease caused by the depression (which has evolutionary reasons) working erratically.

Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#106

Post by pron »

emiliobumachar wrote: post #104
pron wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that something is not maladaptive and saying its adaptive are two very different things.

I failed to see the difference. Would you please explain? Sounds to me like "not short" vs "tall". Subjective, and people may map different sections of a spectrum into each expression, but again, they may not.

Those are not the only two options. Maladaptive traits decrease the frequency of the carrying allele over time (as they hurt chances of survival+procreation), and even assuming that we're not catching a maladaptive trait in the process of being weeded out, its mere existence does not mean it's actually adpative, i.e., helping survival and procreation rates and increasing in frequency. Even assuming that the trait is mostly genetic, it can be neutral, it can be a common maladaptive mutation, and it can be a "net-positive" maladaptive side effect of an adaptive trait -- this is especially likely in a complex organ as the brain, which we know very little about. Assuming that a particular high-function brain behavior is adaptive just because it's there is therefore a stretch, even if it's reasonable to assume it's not severely maladaptive.

Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#107

Post by Bjartr »

pron wrote: post #94
Bjartr wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Populations trend towards the reduced expression of phenotypes which are maladaptive. I don't think it is then unreasonable to presuppose (as a starting point for further investigation) that commonly expressed phenotypes might represent beneficial adaptation, especially when to our intuition the opposite would be true.

Saying that something is not maladaptive and saying its adaptive are two very different things.

Correct of course. I sent a long time deciding if I should extend my part or not to cover that distinction, but I'd felt I'd said enough.

Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#109

Post by anon1253 »

lisper wrote: post #51
danharaj wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you're saying having that independent high paying job, in your experience, really helped things? The job didn't cure my depression but the money let me do the things I need to do to be happy. I stayed with my parents for a bit when I got my first programming job. Moving out was one major positive thing for me. Money doesn't make you happy, but you only really have power over your life when you have money. That's…

I can vouch for this. Money is not sufficient, and it might not be strictly necessary, but it's a huge lever.

"I'd rather cry in a Ferrari"

Re: Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? (2017)

#110

Post by colechristensen »

tw1010 wrote: post #2

Does anything have an evolutionary "purpose"? I mean really. Why, really, is the human tailbone less "purposeful" than our hair?

The easiest way to talk about evolution is talking about purpose and desires as if it were a conscious being.

Of course this is not true but there just aren't words in English for the subtle and specific concepts involved. Correctly communicating the concepts with our clumsy language requires stumbling around and turning concise ideas into difficult to understand monsters.

When you are talking about evolutionary purpose, you're actually talking about the set of cause and effect pressures that lead to the effect.

The human tailbone is less purposeful than the hair because we can reason fairly easily that the loss of hair would decrease fitness in some very believable situations. The loss of a tailbone we can't seem to think of any fitness changes.

We have both hair and a tailbone. There _is_ evolutionary pressure to keep hair, although not extreme pressure as there's quite a bit of variability. There is not much evolutionary pressure to have or get rid of a tailbone. In order for there to be a change there has to be a path of mutations that survives and grows in a population. There probably A) isn't an easy path of mutations to get rid of the tailbone and B) isn't a meaningful cost to grow and maintain one. Those two things put together make lack of purpose. It's there, but doesn't really make a difference and isn't easily changed.

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