Dabrowski’s theory and existential depression (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: Dabrowski’s theory and existential depression (2020)

#91

Post by acituan » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

zhdc1 wrote: post #60

acituan wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not going to comment on the quality of the article or whether 'giftedness' is a meaningful construct Just that it is made aware, instead of leveling a counter-argument, you are only appealing to authority. Everyone, all the way back to Freud or Jung, would be fair game to criticize for such a young field as psychology, because new paradigms and data do surface often. I don't care if they made this their life's…

> Just that it is made aware, instead of leveling a counter-argument, you are only appealing to authority. The original poster attacked the author's credibility. I pointed out that, when you help establish a concept, you're qualified to write about it to non-experts in a public venue.

I am the original poster. There is no attack to the credibility of the author, there is questioning the lack of a consideration on the confounds and a sufficient explication of the term gifted. Disappointingly a crowd of people emerged demanding reverence to their PhD, career and the verbosity of their essay without being able address my original critique. I am not saying I am necessarily correct, or they necessarily haven't thought it out etc, but it is a pretty damn valid question to ask.

It is almost as if people are personally offended because they are inclined to consider themselves gifted and explain away feeling depressed with that.

Re: Dabrowski’s theory and existential depression (2020)

#92

Post by bengarrr » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

pizza wrote: post #83

bengarrr wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entropy IS always increasing. Water is always gonna flow downhill. Its not possible to go from maximally ordered to even more ordered, except in some kind of highly localized phenomena. But it is possible that it can return to that maximally ordered state after it reaches a maximally unordered state. This is the idea Roger Penrose has for the big bang is that it is the state of the universe immediately succeeding the…

I'm not really talking about things that violate energy conservation or statistical mechanics. I'm talking about how the uniformity of the state during the big bang lead to something clumpier. Structure formation. And I still find it suspect to apply the concept of thermodynamical entropy, something defined for isolated systems at thermal equilibrium, primarily, to even make sense at universe-scale.

Structure is not entropy though unless I am missing what you are saying. The arrangement of macro level objects like a supercluster has less to do with entropy and more to do with dark matter/energy or what ever that stuff is. Also I dont follow the reasoning that this concept of entropy is incorrectly being applied to the universe... energy is energy I have never heard that the thermodynamics only applies to isolated systems in equilibrium.

Re: Dabrowski’s theory and existential depression (2020)

#93

Post by naasking » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

all2 wrote: post #86

hungrykoala wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "Universe/life has no meaning" sentence can mean two completely different things: 1. It could have a meaning, but there is none. For example food can have taste, but if it has none, we assume there is something wrong with it. 2. It is not possible for it to have a meaning, because it simply lacks that property. For example: what is the color of running? There is no color, and could never be. I think "Univ…

> There is no color, and could never be. This illustrates the scope of experience we apply to the world. I have never seen a color of running, but somoeone has. Synesthesia is very real and to those who possess it, there is a color of running. There are whole worlds of understanding that we cannot see because we lack the ability to see them. Some we can learn to see, some we deny because of reason or they have faded…

> This illustrates the scope of experience we apply to the world. I have never seen a color of running, but somoeone has. Synesthesia is very real and to those who possess it, there is a color of running.

Subjective properties are not objective properties. Synesthetes perceive subjective interpretations of objective properties. The perceptual distortions enabled by psychedelics are also not reflecting objective properties of the world, but subjective properties related to the information processing in your brain.

Re: Dabrowski’s theory and existential depression (2020)

#94

Post by all2 » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #93

all2 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no color, and could never be. This illustrates the scope of experience we apply to the world. I have never seen a color of running, but somoeone has. Synesthesia is very real and to those who possess it, there is a color of running. There are whole worlds of understanding that we cannot see because we lack the ability to see them. Some we can learn to see, some we deny because of reason or they have faded…

> This illustrates the scope of experience we apply to the world. I have never seen a color of running, but somoeone has. Synesthesia is very real and to those who possess it, there is a color of running. Subjective properties are not objective properties. Synesthetes perceive subjective interpretations of objective properties. The perceptual distortions enabled by psychedelics are also not reflecting objective prope…

You're sidestepping the metaphor.

The point is that you and I may not be mentally equipped to observe reality in a way that shows underlying purpose.

There's the assumption that the thing yields its purpose when inspected.

Consider a screw driver. If you and I see it but lack the knowledge of context into which it was created (driving screws) we would say it is obviouslymechanical, obviously designed and manufactured. A screw driver (or other mechanical apparati) don'thappen by accident. But no amount of inspection, theorizing, or philosophical discourse would yield its purpose or its use cases to us.

We assume, by looking at the universe, that it (the thing) will yield to us purpose or reason for being. We can't get that information about the universe from the universe. We need to step back and consider "where did the universe come from". The context of origin may yield the purpose of the thing.

Re: Dabrowski’s theory and existential depression (2020)

#95

Post by rendall » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

bengarrr wrote: post #85

rendall wrote: post #35

For me and a friend, we'd joke about our existential despair. "What's wrong?" "The Void" Any philosophy that just asserted that the Universe has meaning was a non-starter, for me. There is nothing that I can see that unambiguously tells me that the Universe ultimately has absolute purpose or meaning. It could, but anyone who tells you they know the fundamental question of why we are here is delusional or a liar. The…

I was thinking about this the other day actually and I believe consciousness serves a higher purpose. If you think about it without any consciousness in the universe, nothing would ever be observed. Without consciousness the universe would just be an empty library, full of history and knowledge but with nobody there to read the books (assuming we are the only conscious life form in the universe). And that's fine I gu…

Perhaps. Personally, I don't find these notions comforting. It could be that our consciousness serves a higher purpose of some sort, or it could be it is but sweet delicious nectar for hungry entities, and we are but fodder.

My philosophy must allow for either and neither.

Re: Dabrowski’s theory and existential depression (2020)

#96

Post by acituan » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

rendall wrote: post #35

For me and a friend, we'd joke about our existential despair. "What's wrong?" "The Void" Any philosophy that just asserted that the Universe has meaning was a non-starter, for me. There is nothing that I can see that unambiguously tells me that the Universe ultimately has absolute purpose or meaning. It could, but anyone who tells you they know the fundamental question of why we are here is delusional or a liar. The…

> Any philosophy that just asserted that the Universe has meaning was a non-starter, for me.

> Humans create meaning in the face of an uncaring, indifferent Void.

I hope you realize that your assertion, which asserts a complete lack of meaning, is just as strong as the philosophies that assert meaning. To me, both are non-starters.

To make progress one has to question the framing of the problem, which is actually what most of the continental philosophy enlightenment onwards was about.

Maybe meaning already requires consciousness that looks out at the world, so it would be a contradiction to claim the things in themselves has meaning. (subjective)

Or maybe there is meaning in things themselves, but there is an intelligibility problem and we can't have a sufficiently comprehensive representation of it internally. (objective). Think it as the model file not fitting a single machine.

Or maybe meaning is a process that requires both the conscious looker and a meaning in things themselves, and is dynamically loaded. (neither subjective nor objective). It can still be constrained by cognitive capacity or intelligibility, but maybe we're doing a pretty good job at it nonetheless because we are able to conform to reality in an adaptive manner, and survive better than any other species with our modeling. Also we have been coming up with technologies to beef us up on the intelligibility and capacity fronts; like invention of literacy!

So maybe existential depression is a mere stuckness in a local minima of this meaning making process between the conscious looker and objective reality, in no small part thanks to our current philosophical and other institutions really sucking at training us on the dynamic loading process. Nor we have the supporting education to leverage the collective intelligence of the best of the humanity (remember, we've invented literacy, but what is the use if we don't read the most important stuff on this matter?). Without these constraints addressed, "there is definitely no meaning" sounds to me like giving up on looking for one's keys because they are tired and don't feel like they have made any progress. I am not saying there are definitely keys either, but it is a worthy endeavor to try getting better at looking for it at least.

Re: Dabrowski’s theory and existential depression (2020)

#97

Post by rendall » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

SkyMarshal wrote: post #74

rendall wrote: post #35

For me and a friend, we'd joke about our existential despair. "What's wrong?" "The Void" Any philosophy that just asserted that the Universe has meaning was a non-starter, for me. There is nothing that I can see that unambiguously tells me that the Universe ultimately has absolute purpose or meaning. It could, but anyone who tells you they know the fundamental question of why we are here is delusional or a liar. The…

What you’ve described is pretty close to Optimistic Nihilism, eg “The universe has no intrinsic meaning, so I’ll make my own.” https://duckduckgo.com/?q=optimistic%20nihilism

Thanks. I'd love to know more about it

Re: Dabrowski’s theory and existential depression (2020)

#98

Post by naasking » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

omegaBroom wrote: post #16

As someone who was (in my opinion wrongly) labeled gifted as a kid, I think this is because it comes with very high expectations and forces you to think about yourself and your actions all the time. Depression is basically self obsession. Life is only good when you forget about yourself. This is the same reason why social media drives depression as well.

> Depression is basically self obsession.

While there's something to this claim for common and mild forms of "depression", it's far too trivial a soundbite to truly capture what's going on with depression. If it were true, then volunteering at a soup kitchen or something equally selfless would quickly cure depression, no matter how treatment-resistant. It's simply not the case.

Re: Dabrowski’s theory and existential depression (2020)

#99

Post by texaslonghorn2 » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

_y5hn wrote: post #6

nathias wrote: post #2

This type of depressive nihilism is just a reaction to the destruction of values, after that you can progress towards an optimistic nihilism, building your values on truth instead of lies.

Makes me ponder what corporate values are.

perhaps the corporate religion worships and values wealth. similar to the Ferengi in Star Trek.

Re: Dabrowski’s theory and existential depression (2020)

#100

Post by acituan » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

DangitBobby wrote: post #89

acituan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a counter-argument to the content other than pretending to know my knowledge, experience, intentions on the matter, and ascribing an inflated self-importance to discredit me as a whole (also known as ad-hominem)? Have you checked other comments in this thread? Do you find my criticism truly unique? Isn't almost every quarter in HN we discuss the replication crisis in psychology? Do you nonetheless ask for…

Calling out reasoning as fallacious is not as powerful as you think it is.

To me rationality is a pretty important normativity, not that I am after it for power.

But since you seem to precisely know what I think, exactly how powerful should I feel about it?