> It has been my experience that gifted and talented persons are more likely than those who are less gifted to experience spontaneous existential depression as an outgrowth of their mental and emotional abilities and interactions with others.
I read it a while ago. While my initial reaction was "relatable", later I started getting doubts.
Is it that talented people are more prone to depression (e.g. due to social isolation) or that their depression channels into existential/philosophical more often (this sounds even more plausible)? In both cases, I would love to see some numbers.
As a side note, "talented/gifted" is usually considered synonymous with high intelligence. Yet, I bet that it is as strongly correlated with dedication (going to the levels of passion or obsession) and sensitivity. It might happen that it is not IQ that matters in terms of gifted people being depressed.
I'm pretty sure you're unto something. When I think of the few really, really smart people that I happen to have encountered, they're all pretty laid back people. As in, it's like they've figured out the futility of it all long ago, settled on doing something they find interesting, and then sort of just flow through life.
So it seems more likely that pulling the short straw that makes you smart, but also having a personality type that compels you to do and fix things that would lead to people having issues with accepting that there is no inherent meaning to anything, it's all futile, and we're all gonna die sooner rather than later without having 'achieved' anything really.
> As a side note, "talented/gifted" is usually considered synonymous with high intelligence. Yet, I bet that it is as strongly correlated with dedication (going to the levels of passion or obsession) and sensitivity. It might happen that it is not IQ that matters in terms of gifted people being depressed.
I don't think this works. If you look at the strengths/weaknesses chart, there's no way that just passion or obsession matches the strengths or comes with the weaknesses.
I think the parent comment doesn't say that 'giftedness' is just passion, rather that out of the two axis that would make someone gifted (smart, dedicated), it's the second one that carries a higher risk in getting depressed.
> The fine line between genius and insanity on the interplay of autistic and psychotic tendencies among some mathematicians: Nash, Gödel, Newton and foremost: Alexander Grothendieck.
"Persons with heightened overexcitabilities in one or more of the five areas that Dabrowski listed—intellectual, emotional, imaginational, psychomotor, and sensual—perceive reality in a different, more intense, multifaceted manner."
It is plausible, but the casual arrogance in that idea is so thick deserves a second pass. It seems very unlikely that there is a 'gifted' class of people who have better access to depression than the rest of us.
It seems more plausible to me that existential dread strikes at random, and the gifted have a different set of coping strategies that leverage their giftedness. Most people just have to sort of take it because (1) existential dread doesn't imply any specific behaviours and (2) if a body wants to be able to feel existential dread tomorrow while living under a roof it has to keep earning a living.
Besides, life being meaningless doesn't imply anyone has to feel lonely or bad about it. We're all in the same boat and there isn't a reason to feel bad about the inevitable.
I read it a while ago. While my initial reaction was "relatable", later I started getting doubts. Is it that talented people are more prone to depression (e.g. due to social isolation) or that their depression channels into existential/philosophical more often (this sounds even more plausible)? In both cases, I would love to see some numbers.
The only thing I know that might support a link thinker-depressed is this one: "A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind" (https://science.sciencemag.org/content/330/6006/932, PDF http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/files/papers/others/everything/kil..., HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16797947)
As a side note, "talented/gifted" is usually considered synonymous with high intelligence. Yet, I bet that it is as strongly correlated with dedication (going to the levels of passion or obsession) and sensitivity. It might happen that it is not IQ that matters in terms of gifted people being depressed.