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Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

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Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#71

Post by wolfgke »

kharak wrote: post #55
wolfgke wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could it be that people who see the world Realistically, get depressed? This fits my experience quite well. To give a software development analogy: The more you learn about deep, esoteric details of various parts of computers (i.e. you get to see computers more realistically than idealized), the more depressed you get about the current state of software development. And yes, late at night, I often work privately on…

Could you give an example? What's depressing about the current world of software?

> What's depressing about the current world of software?

For example the insanity that it is impossible to understand what actually happens below the surface. The ideal that I have in the back of my mind is that a highly gifted person who can afford to spend a few years of intensive study can really understand each individual line/byte of code that gets executed on the computer (i.e. all of the software that runs on it) completely.

---

An interesting lecture by Jonathan Blow:

Jonathan Blow - Preventing the Collapse of Civilization

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk

---

Also read some texts of Alan Kay's STEPS project:

For a well-readable overview, consider https://blog.regehr.org/archives/663

Some progress reports:

> http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2007008_steps.pdf

> http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf

Lots of additional papers about STEPS (and other topics): http://www.vpri.org/writings.php

(I want to make it clear that I consider what came out of the STEPS project to be very disappointing :-( ).

Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#72

Post by raxxorrax »

mehdix wrote: post #43

One can see the world more realistically without being depressed. Depression IMHO isn't necessarily a byproduct of a pessimistic worldview. If anything, nihilism (if we consider it a pessimistic worldview) had helped me to be more realistic. To accept that there is no intrinsic meaning in my life. If anything, it has brought me down to earth.

Not every form of depression is pathological. I think our current culture doesn't really provide many avenues to express sadness, so people probably don't tell the truth when they have doubt. And doubt is an uninvited guest for business.

Not directly applicable to the article though, that is probably a completely different effect.

Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#73

Post by LeonB »

kharak wrote: post #55
wolfgke wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could it be that people who see the world Realistically, get depressed? This fits my experience quite well. To give a software development analogy: The more you learn about deep, esoteric details of various parts of computers (i.e. you get to see computers more realistically than idealized), the more depressed you get about the current state of software development. And yes, late at night, I often work privately on…

Could you give an example? What's depressing about the current world of software?

I wouldn’t call it depressing but I think for example, when you look at even the most fundamental types, for example in c#, they have difficult problems.

Floating point numbers for example. Or date times. Egad! Or strings. There’s a Jon Skeet talk that covers this very well. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l3nPJ-yK-LU

Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#74

Post by [deleted] »

wavefunction wrote: post #69
psychoslave wrote: post #61

Let's be realistic: there are only humans with subjective narrow view of the world out there. And whoever will tell you that you are more/less realistic than some other category of people are judging you by their own narrow opinion of what is the ultimate-true-real-reality™. I hope this helped you to feel more depressed.

I am depressed by objective things like the die off of birds and bees and acidification of the oceans and temperature rises. I am depressed by the state of humans and their behaviors which are observable if harder to quantify. And as I've gotten older I realize I have a pretty solid grasp on things and the sort of woo-woo model of reality you propose "everything is relative" is eminently ignoreable.

[deleted]

Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#75

Post by 52-6F-62 »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #58
mirimir wrote: post #18

That seems reasonable to me. I've often found optimism in others to be foolish. And for bipolar me, extreme optimism is a sign of hypomania. But there's a lot more to depression than seeing the world realistically. There's a tendency to feel inadequate, hopeless and disempowered. And there's more to that than seeing oneself and ones capabilities realistically. One aspect is failing to break out huge problems into man…

I'm reminded of the 'ultimate perspective vortex' from the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a terrifying execution device that showed people exactly how significant they were in the grande scheme of things for an instant. Sounds a bit similar to what you're describing.

That’s exactly it and I imagine a big piece of what actually makes a depressed person more tuned to reality. I’m not sure which is the cause exactly, but I could imagine a person depressed spending more time ruminating about their place and deferring to the external for answers versus trusting one’s own feelings or perspectives by default.

Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#76

Post by supercanuck »

psychoslave wrote: post #61

Let's be realistic: there are only humans with subjective narrow view of the world out there. And whoever will tell you that you are more/less realistic than some other category of people are judging you by their own narrow opinion of what is the ultimate-true-real-reality™. I hope this helped you to feel more depressed.

Sounds like you might be depressed.

Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#77

Post by non-entity »

wolfgke wrote: post #32
buboard wrote: post #8

Could it be that people who see the world Realistically, get depressed?

> Could it be that people who see the world Realistically, get depressed? This fits my experience quite well. To give a software development analogy: The more you learn about deep, esoteric details of various parts of computers (i.e. you get to see computers more realistically than idealized), the more depressed you get about the current state of software development. And yes, late at night, I often work privately on…

> esoteric details of various parts of computers (i.e. you get to see computers more realistically than idealized), the more depressed you get about the current state of software development.

Honestly the most depressing part is hearing all these older guys talk about the really cool problems they worked on during the dawn of modern computing, knowing I'm just gonna be writing shitty business apps till I retire

Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#78

Post by hprotagonist »

see terry pratchett’s definition for “knurd”: https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Knurd

Consider the following scale:

Being drunk is to be intoxicated by alcohol to such an extent as to be unable to perceive the world clearly through the senses.

Being sober is to be able to perceive the world clearly through the senses, yet humans are quite capable of giving themselves illusions and little stories to make life more bearable.

Being knurd is to be (un)intoxicated with Klatchian Coffee to such an extent that all such comfort stories are stripped away from the mind.

This makes you see the world in a way 'nobody ever should', in all its harsh reality.

People generally find being knurd excruciating, as their comfortable illusions are stripped away and all of life's terrors are exposed.

Re: Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017)

#80

Post by riskneutral »

I used to feel this way, then I discovered meditation and now I am almost always in a positive state of mind. In my experience, it is depressed people who are not seeing realistically, and they are caught in cycles of mental delusion. Happiness achieved in this way is just about truly accepting the "depressing" realities and being okay with it all including your own depressing reactions to the realities, and then not identifying with these mental processes, not letting them define, own or move you as a conscious being. After some practice, a person can cope with life's unending, unexpected, negative surprises by processing the negative event in a single moment and then returning the mind to a calm and positive state. For some reason, in our society, we are not taught that it is possible (and in fact imperative) to observe, guide and ultimately control one own mind and thought stream. This has been practiced in other societies for thousands of years, and even in our own society mindfulness/meditation is steadily becoming a mainstream fixture.
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