Well a large part of it was perfect timing. Those two posts have acted as mental condensation nuclei; they provided something for everything else to coalesce around. I am definitely not suggesting anyone else will have similar results. I’ll write in detail this week how they have been useful.
Patterns of “treatment → cure” are notorious for being able to trick a percentage of people into believing in treatments via confirmation bias and the fact that many problems seem to have background rates of natural remission.
I see from your longer “testimony” that you’ve been dealing with depression for a while and then more recently became romantically with someone. Depression is one of those things that frequently has “natural remissions” and improved social circumstances would be expected to go along with this based on some ev-psych theories of depression.
This is not to say that the theories didn’t really help, just to point out that there may be other explanations worth keeping in mind as well. Can you any way to test whether the theories from lesswrong truly were causal factors in the recovery from depression?
Yes and no. I still have to actively apply them, or some of the more general concepts, in order to keep the old feelings at bay. It literally feels as if there are two modes of thought available to me now and the old one caused my problems. However, I can’t think of a specific way to test them.
Also, I’m aware that my relationship has produced much of the change. Much of my depression was caused by low self-esteem and using grades as a metric of personal value. However, it had felt as if there has been a plateau. I was feeling a lot better, and more motivated to fight my feelings of depression but it wasn’t working.
The problem was that I was attacking the symptoms directly. If I had irrational thoughts, I would try to counter them directly, instead of the cause. That’s why I said that these articles acted as catalysts. They were not sufficient, but they were necessary.
You are ready to report significant life improvement only two days after this is posted?
Sorry, but there is just something infomercial about this. Ugh, infomercials!
Well a large part of it was perfect timing. Those two posts have acted as mental condensation nuclei; they provided something for everything else to coalesce around. I am definitely not suggesting anyone else will have similar results. I’ll write in detail this week how they have been useful.
Just to play devil’s advocate for a bit...
Patterns of “treatment → cure” are notorious for being able to trick a percentage of people into believing in treatments via confirmation bias and the fact that many problems seem to have background rates of natural remission.
I see from your longer “testimony” that you’ve been dealing with depression for a while and then more recently became romantically with someone. Depression is one of those things that frequently has “natural remissions” and improved social circumstances would be expected to go along with this based on some ev-psych theories of depression.
This is not to say that the theories didn’t really help, just to point out that there may be other explanations worth keeping in mind as well. Can you any way to test whether the theories from lesswrong truly were causal factors in the recovery from depression?
Yes and no. I still have to actively apply them, or some of the more general concepts, in order to keep the old feelings at bay. It literally feels as if there are two modes of thought available to me now and the old one caused my problems. However, I can’t think of a specific way to test them.
Also, I’m aware that my relationship has produced much of the change. Much of my depression was caused by low self-esteem and using grades as a metric of personal value. However, it had felt as if there has been a plateau. I was feeling a lot better, and more motivated to fight my feelings of depression but it wasn’t working.
The problem was that I was attacking the symptoms directly. If I had irrational thoughts, I would try to counter them directly, instead of the cause. That’s why I said that these articles acted as catalysts. They were not sufficient, but they were necessary.