

Most People Are Depressed For a Very Good Reason - hhm
http://www.violentacres.com/archives/169/most-people-are-depressed-for-a-very-good-reason

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daniel-cussen
My hypothesis: Happiness is a response your body gives you when you do
something right. Because it's somewhat outdated, it rewards hunting, eating
and mating than studying or doing a desk job. It's basically a way your genes
judge how well you're doing their bidding, and it is often way off. I see it
as a byproduct of achieving other, more worthwhile goals, and not something
worth pursuing for its own sake. Your nucleus accumbens is an outdated,
selfish judge of success that has too much control over your brain. It's a bad
judge.

I ignore it as much as I can. Obviously, I run the risk of being unhappy. It's
probably a bad decision, and I might have to give in eventually. I'll see how
it goes.

~~~
trekker7
Interesting. But how do you define "worthwhile", when deciding what to pursue
besides happiness?

~~~
daniel-cussen
If your brain and your genes are similar in that they both see continuing to
exist as their ultimate goal (because if they didn't they'd stop existing and
be replaced by things that are driven to keep existing), you could prioritize
immortalizing your mind, if that's what you think "you" "are." That might mean
trying to live as long as possible, uploading your mind to a computer,
spreading memes as a way of spreading your mind piecemeal, or writing and art
as a way to leave a footprint.

Of course, it would be good to get your cake and eat it too; it might someday
be possible to calibrate your brain's reward system so it rewards whey protein
instead of trans fats, say. It might be possible to stop the negative feedback
mechanism that regulates dopamine levels. If you could permanently increase
dopamine levels, you could be happy ever after.

------
whacked_new
Haha, VA on news.yc...

Most people who make generalizations about most people make mostly bad
generalizations. {yes, the irony}. I agree that widespread depression is a
social problem, but those anecdotes about "reason" amount to little. Mental
disorders are overdiagnosed in USA, but "their lives suck"? Not that I dispute
this entirely, but it's still quite a preposterous assumption.

If one can readily identify a reason for depression then they already fall
into a different group of people than those who get depressed for no apparent
reason. And this is the depression that _induces_ one to think one's life
sucks ,when it seemed fine the day, or hour, ago.

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gregwebs
There is evidence that suggests otherwise. Specifically, people's happiness
levels don't change much over their lives. After a major life event (death of
someone close, marriage) happiness levels return back to normal after a year.

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kmt
I'm skiing at SnowBird at the moment and let me tell you: this is one of the
true antidepressants. I sense even reading the RTFA could potentially be
depressing. :-)

Take care of yourselves boys and girls.

------
watmough
Modded up for truthiness.

Funnily enough, I was reading my school report card the other day, and it was
full of "inattentive", "lacks zest", "work patchy", and I thought, "Wow, I
must have been really depressed."

And then I realized, I was 16 at the time, with bad acne, crappy grades, and a
severe popularity problem.

No shit sherlock, my life really did suck. ;-)

~~~
yters
Yeah, my outlook improved once I had more control over my life and didn't have
to live in the socially backward world of public school. Once my social worth
became dependent on the actual productive things I did than on my ability to
fit in, I had higher self esteem.

That's why I think the US is pretty cool. Just think, in many countries people
have to live in public school society for the whole of their lives.

------
dpapathanasiou
Another way of looking at it: _"If a little is not enough for you, nothing
is."_

[http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/12/hedonist-philosopher-
epicur...](http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/12/hedonist-philosopher-epicurus-was-
right.php)

------
tarkin2
I agree with the article.

Yet I wish he'd put more emphasis on how drugs can break you out of a loop of
depression (what? i'm a computer scientist. can't I make awful cs puns?), and
are very useful as long as the users doesn't become dependent on the drugs for
that help.

There's a good article about psychedelic drugs (although I realise the author
was speaking about legal drugs) and psychotherapy here:
[http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=psychedelic-
healing&...](http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=psychedelic-healing&page=1)
which I previously couldn't decide whether to submit or not.

------
kajecounterhack
function DepressionDefined('name') {

//Lets make some equations!

//First lets define depression

var Depression = sad state of mind;

var Super = 10000000000000;

Super + Depression = "super sad state of mind";

//Now geek, special classification

var Geek = obsessive state of mind;

//Add them up...

var Suicide;

Depression + Geek = Super + Depression = Suicide;

//Call advanced functions

Suicide = Permanent solution to temporary problem('name');

//And that returns

Return Suicide; }

Lets see the output

"NAME has committed suicide. SUICIDE is FAIL."

~~~
icky
Parse error.

