In response to the Wizard Power post, Garrett and David were like “Y’know, there’s this thing where rationalists get depression, but it doesn’t present like normal depression because they have the mental habits to e.g. notice that their emotions are not reality. It sounds like you have that.”
… and in hindsight I think they were totally correct.
Here I’m going to spell out what it felt/feels like from inside my head, my model of where it comes from, and some speculation about how this relates to more typical presentations of depression.
Core thing that’s going on: on a gut level, I systematically didn’t anticipate that things would be fun, or that things I did would work, etc. When my instinct-level plan-evaluator looked at my own plans, it expected poor results.
Some things which this is importantly different from:
Always feeling sad
Things which used to make me happy not making me happy
Not having energy to do anything
… but importantly, the core thing is easy to confuse with all three of those. For instance, my intuitive plan-evaluator predicted that things which used to make me happy would not make me happy (like e.g. dancing), but if I actually did the things they still made me happy. (And of course I noticed that pattern and accounted for it, which is how “rationalist depression” ends up different from normal depression; the model here is that most people would not notice their own emotional-level predictor being systematically wrong.) Little felt promising or motivating, but I could still consciously evaluate that a plan was a good idea regardless of what it felt like, and then do it, overriding my broken intuitive-level plan-evaluator.
That immediately suggests a model of what causes this sort of problem.
The obvious way a brain would end up in such a state is if a bunch of very salient plans all fail around the same time, especially if one didn’t anticipate the failures and doesn’t understand why they happened. Then a natural update for the brain to make is “huh, looks like the things I do just systematically don’t work, don’t make me happy, etc; let’s update predictions on that going forward”. And indeed, around the time this depression kicked in, David and I had a couple of significant research projects which basically failed for reasons we still don’t understand, and I went through a breakup of a long relationship (and then dove into the dating market, which is itself an excellent source of things not working and not knowing why), and my multi-year investments in training new researchers failed to pay off for reasons I still don’t fully understand. All of these things were highly salient, and I didn’t have anything comparably-salient going on which went well.
So I guess some takeaways are:
If a bunch of salient plans fail around the same time for reasons you don’t understand, your instinctive plan-evaluator may end up with a global negative bias.
If you notice that, maybe try an antidepressant. Bupropion has been helpful for me so far, though it’s definitely not the right tool for everyone (especially bad if you’re a relatively anxious person; I am the opposite of anxious).
This seems basically right to me, yup. And, as you imply, I also think the rat-depression kicked in for me around the same time likely for similar reasons (though for me an at-least-equally large thing that roughly-coincided was the unexpected, disappointing and stressful experience of the funding landscape getting less friendly for reasons I don’t fully understand.) Also some part of me thinks that the model here is a little too narrow but not sure yet in what way(s).
This matches with the dual: mania. All plans, even terrible ones, seem like they’ll succeed and this has flow through effects to elevated mood, hyperactivity, etc.
Whether or not this happens in all minds, the fact that people can alternate fairly rapidly between depression and mania with minimal trigger suggests there can be some kind of fragile “chemical balance” or something that’s easily upset. It’s possible that’s just in mood disorders and more stable minds are just vulnerable to the “too many negative updates at once” thing without greater instability.
I imagine part of the problem is also then the feedback loop of Things Don’t Go Well > Why Even Bother > Things Don’t Go Well. Which if anything you’d expect that sort of proactive approach that simply does the thing anyway to break. I do wonder though if there may also be entirely internal feedback loops (like neuroreceptors or something) once the negativity is triggered by external events. I would assume so, or depression wouldn’t need to be treated pharmaceutically as much as it is.
EDIT: it’s also possible John felt fine emotionally and was fully aware of his emotional state and actually was so good at not latching on to emotions that it was highly nontrivial to spot, or some combination. Leaving this comment in case it’s useful for others. I don’t like the tone though, I might’ve been very disassociated as a rationalist (and many are) but it’s not obvious John is from this alone or not.
As a meditator I pay a lot of attention to what emotion I’m feeling in high resolution and the causality between it and my thoughts and actions. I highly recommend this practice. What John describes in “plan predictor predicts failure” is something I notice several times a month & address. It’s 101 stuff when you’re orienting at it from the emotional angle, there’s also a variety of practices I can deploy (feeling emotions, jhanas, many hard to describe mental motions...) to get back to equilibrium and clear thinking & action. This has overall been a bigger update to my effectiveness than the sequences, plausibly my rationality too (I can finally be unbiased instead of trying to correct or pretend I’m not biased!)
Like, when I head you say “your instinctive plan-evaluator may end up with a global negative bias” I’m like, hm, why not just say “if you notice everything feels subtly heavier and like the world has metaphorically lost color” (how I notice it in myself. tbc fully nonverbally). Noticing through patterns of verbal thought also works, but it’s just less data to do metacognition over. You’re noticing correlations and inferring the territory (how you feel) instead of paying attention to how you feel directly (something which can be learned over time by directing attention towards noticing, not instantly)
I may write on this. Till then I highly recommend Joe Hudson’s work, it may require a small amount of woo tolerance, but only small. He coached Sam Altman & other top execs on emotional clarity & fluidity. Extremely good. Requires some practice & willingness to embrace emotional intensity (sometimes locally painful) though.
Like, when I head you say “your instinctive plan-evaluator may end up with a global negative bias” I’m like, hm, why not just say “if you notice everything feels subtly heavier and like the world has metaphorically lost color”
Because everything did not feel subtly heavier or like the world had metaphorically lost color. It was just, specifically, that most nontrivial things I considered doing felt like they’d suck somehow, or maybe that my attention was disproportionately drawn to the ways in which they might suck.
And to be clear, “plan predictor predicts failure” was not a pattern of verbal thought I noticed, it’s my verbal description of the things I felt on a non-verbal level. Like, there is a non-verbal part of my mind which spits out various feelings when I consider doing different things, and that part had a global negative bias in the feelings it spit out.
I use this sort of semitechnical language because it allows more accurate description of my underlying feelings and mental motions, not as a crutch in lieu of vague poetry.
In response to the Wizard Power post, Garrett and David were like “Y’know, there’s this thing where rationalists get depression, but it doesn’t present like normal depression because they have the mental habits to e.g. notice that their emotions are not reality. It sounds like you have that.”
… and in hindsight I think they were totally correct.
Here I’m going to spell out what it felt/feels like from inside my head, my model of where it comes from, and some speculation about how this relates to more typical presentations of depression.
Core thing that’s going on: on a gut level, I systematically didn’t anticipate that things would be fun, or that things I did would work, etc. When my instinct-level plan-evaluator looked at my own plans, it expected poor results.
Some things which this is importantly different from:
Always feeling sad
Things which used to make me happy not making me happy
Not having energy to do anything
… but importantly, the core thing is easy to confuse with all three of those. For instance, my intuitive plan-evaluator predicted that things which used to make me happy would not make me happy (like e.g. dancing), but if I actually did the things they still made me happy. (And of course I noticed that pattern and accounted for it, which is how “rationalist depression” ends up different from normal depression; the model here is that most people would not notice their own emotional-level predictor being systematically wrong.) Little felt promising or motivating, but I could still consciously evaluate that a plan was a good idea regardless of what it felt like, and then do it, overriding my broken intuitive-level plan-evaluator.
That immediately suggests a model of what causes this sort of problem.
The obvious way a brain would end up in such a state is if a bunch of very salient plans all fail around the same time, especially if one didn’t anticipate the failures and doesn’t understand why they happened. Then a natural update for the brain to make is “huh, looks like the things I do just systematically don’t work, don’t make me happy, etc; let’s update predictions on that going forward”. And indeed, around the time this depression kicked in, David and I had a couple of significant research projects which basically failed for reasons we still don’t understand, and I went through a breakup of a long relationship (and then dove into the dating market, which is itself an excellent source of things not working and not knowing why), and my multi-year investments in training new researchers failed to pay off for reasons I still don’t fully understand. All of these things were highly salient, and I didn’t have anything comparably-salient going on which went well.
So I guess some takeaways are:
If a bunch of salient plans fail around the same time for reasons you don’t understand, your instinctive plan-evaluator may end up with a global negative bias.
If you notice that, maybe try an antidepressant. Bupropion has been helpful for me so far, though it’s definitely not the right tool for everyone (especially bad if you’re a relatively anxious person; I am the opposite of anxious).
This seems basically right to me, yup. And, as you imply, I also think the rat-depression kicked in for me around the same time likely for similar reasons (though for me an at-least-equally large thing that roughly-coincided was the unexpected, disappointing and stressful experience of the funding landscape getting less friendly for reasons I don’t fully understand.) Also some part of me thinks that the model here is a little too narrow but not sure yet in what way(s).
This matches with the dual: mania. All plans, even terrible ones, seem like they’ll succeed and this has flow through effects to elevated mood, hyperactivity, etc.
Whether or not this happens in all minds, the fact that people can alternate fairly rapidly between depression and mania with minimal trigger suggests there can be some kind of fragile “chemical balance” or something that’s easily upset. It’s possible that’s just in mood disorders and more stable minds are just vulnerable to the “too many negative updates at once” thing without greater instability.
Wow…..
I think I might have this. Will test immediately.
This needs to be a top level post.
I imagine part of the problem is also then the feedback loop of Things Don’t Go Well > Why Even Bother > Things Don’t Go Well. Which if anything you’d expect that sort of proactive approach that simply does the thing anyway to break. I do wonder though if there may also be entirely internal feedback loops (like neuroreceptors or something) once the negativity is triggered by external events. I would assume so, or depression wouldn’t need to be treated pharmaceutically as much as it is.
EDIT: it’s also possible John felt fine emotionally and was fully aware of his emotional state and actually was so good at not latching on to emotions that it was highly nontrivial to spot, or some combination. Leaving this comment in case it’s useful for others. I don’t like the tone though, I might’ve been very disassociated as a rationalist (and many are) but it’s not obvious John is from this alone or not.
As a meditator I pay a lot of attention to what emotion I’m feeling in high resolution and the causality between it and my thoughts and actions. I highly recommend this practice. What John describes in “plan predictor predicts failure” is something I notice several times a month & address. It’s 101 stuff when you’re orienting at it from the emotional angle, there’s also a variety of practices I can deploy (feeling emotions, jhanas, many hard to describe mental motions...) to get back to equilibrium and clear thinking & action. This has overall been a bigger update to my effectiveness than the sequences, plausibly my rationality too (I can finally be unbiased instead of trying to correct or pretend I’m not biased!)
Like, when I head you say “your instinctive plan-evaluator may end up with a global negative bias” I’m like, hm, why not just say “if you notice everything feels subtly heavier and like the world has metaphorically lost color” (how I notice it in myself. tbc fully nonverbally). Noticing through patterns of verbal thought also works, but it’s just less data to do metacognition over. You’re noticing correlations and inferring the territory (how you feel) instead of paying attention to how you feel directly (something which can be learned over time by directing attention towards noticing, not instantly)
I may write on this. Till then I highly recommend Joe Hudson’s work, it may require a small amount of woo tolerance, but only small. He coached Sam Altman & other top execs on emotional clarity & fluidity. Extremely good. Requires some practice & willingness to embrace emotional intensity (sometimes locally painful) though.
Because everything did not feel subtly heavier or like the world had metaphorically lost color. It was just, specifically, that most nontrivial things I considered doing felt like they’d suck somehow, or maybe that my attention was disproportionately drawn to the ways in which they might suck.
And to be clear, “plan predictor predicts failure” was not a pattern of verbal thought I noticed, it’s my verbal description of the things I felt on a non-verbal level. Like, there is a non-verbal part of my mind which spits out various feelings when I consider doing different things, and that part had a global negative bias in the feelings it spit out.
I use this sort of semitechnical language because it allows more accurate description of my underlying feelings and mental motions, not as a crutch in lieu of vague poetry.