161–170 of 304 posts
I don't think it's the case that all depressed people are realists, but that realists in general may be more predisposed to depression or being depressed. It seems likely some people suffering from depression have real mental illness, and a much much smaller number of people are ultra realists and get depressed over real negative events and facts. I know there have been times in my life where I have suffered from dep…
For what it's worth, Terror Management Theory has pretty much failed to replicate: https://psyarxiv.com/dkg53/ ("Failed pre-registered replication of mortality salience effects in traditional and novel measures")
Just one study, whole theory doesn't depend on one replication attempt, etc. -- but the baseline rate for a set of social psych findings being legit should probably be <50% at the outset.
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This is a bad analogy that makes it sound like you're defending flat-earthers. It's like saying you use Hermeticism's Principle of Rhythm to build a pendulum-powered clock... And unlike both Flat-Earth theory and Hermetics, Newton was actually demonstrably right . Flat-earthers and Hermeticists spin their theories out of whole cloth.
The shape of the Earth is just a model [1] - an approximation. All models have margins of error. All models are wrong, some are useful [2]. The map is not the territory [3]. All scientific models are scale variant [4] e.g contextual. Scientific models are pragmatic at best. Useful for a particular purpose within some domain of applicability When last did you take the curvature of the Earth into account when arranging…
Illusion in the spirit is as nothing, behold a world that runs on illusions! Their war and peace are made upon illusion, their glory and their shame are from illusion. - Rumi [1] [1] https://bit.ly/31jwRUb
I'm not so depressed these days (thankfully) but this "realism" does tend to manifest is different ways. I'm very self-conscious about not dragging people down because some thoughts that I think daily that are normal for me, seem to be absolutely psychologically crippling for people who previously hadn't, or didn't want to think such things. Usually when I do express these thoughts they're in the form of semi-dark hu…
keeping my realist comments to myself took me more than two decades to become competent at. it'll take me another two decades to master. the trick is to understand that all people live in a marginal headspace where engagement with the nature of the world is heavily filtered and limited so that their psychology can continue to mostly function on a day to day basis. this is true whether you are a "realist" or "pessimis…
I don't think it's the case that all depressed people are realists, but that realists in general may be more predisposed to depression or being depressed. It seems likely some people suffering from depression have real mental illness, and a much much smaller number of people are ultra realists and get depressed over real negative events and facts. I know there have been times in my life where I have suffered from dep…
I'm not so depressed these days (thankfully) but this "realism" does tend to manifest is different ways. I'm very self-conscious about not dragging people down because some thoughts that I think daily that are normal for me, seem to be absolutely psychologically crippling for people who previously hadn't, or didn't want to think such things. Usually when I do express these thoughts they're in the form of semi-dark hu…
I feel like I relate. > So I try to keep this "depressive realism" to myself most of the time. Do you ever start to feel alone, isolated, and mis- or not understood too?
Reading literature helps. It largely deals with the big, sad themes & topics of life and existence. Yes, the "stuffy" "canon" stuff. At least you know all these famous (or famous among lit-reading folks, anyway) authors saw the same things you do, then, which is a kind of camaraderie. Hell, Gilgamesh is about this stuff, very directly. Egyptian didactic literature treats of it. The Bible. Homer and the Greek tragedians. It's been around as long as we've had written culture, basically. You Are Not Alone (aside from how you totally, completely are, naturally! hahaha).
Then find other people who read that stuff and talk with them about it and set up dinner & wine parties to talk about it and hey you guys wanna go see the latest Lars Von Trier film and congratulations, you've distracted yourself from the fundamental horror at the center of existence by way of engaging with it, mission accomplished.
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…
You can practice mindfulness and meditate daily and still be depressed about the state of the world you live in. You can recognize negative experiences, embrace them, and still feel empty afterwards. You can see yourself as a bristle on the brushstroke of the universe and still feel insignificant. You can see that life is just a game and not want to play. In a world with 7 billion people all playing their own game, t…
Why is feeling insignificant bringing you down? Understand that for yourself.
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I've found a lot of correlation between this sort of sense of humour and the type of place I enjoy working at. Me and straight laced folk just don't get on. It doesn't work. There's an impedance mismatch whereby there are all of these invisible lines that I cross without even realising. Like yeah, dude, your job is bullshit. So is mine. Life is, and then you die. If you're not fucking around and having (harmless) fun…
> Those sorts of people need to exist - society would fall apart if everyone were so freewheeling Is that really true, or are we just conditioned to think that? Basic sense and decency can still be made explicit.
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> When last did you take the curvature of the Earth into account when arranging your furniture? I don't do that, but neither do I assume that the entire earth is flat just because my living room is. Saying that all theories are born equal is nonsense, some things are more correct than others.
It doesn't matter what we SAY about the shape of the Earth though, does it? It only matters how we use/apply those theories in practice. Practical errors have consequences. Theoretical errors don't. It's just lip service without follow-through. I can SAY that the Earth is triangular and nothing will happen. Q.E.D If you insist that it is in (some way) wrong or incorrect for me to say that the Earth is triangular. Wel…
Did you use a GPS lately?
http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps....