Archevore website is defunct, but I found an archived copy here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110315144025/http://www.paleonu.com/get-started
lululu
Karma: 302
I think the error here isn’t that you picked the wrong motivation, but that you assumed that there is any motivation at all.
A woman’s center of gravity is in the hips, walking is a pendulum-like motion which requires some amount of side-to-side motion as center of balance shifts. The more purposeful and energetic the gait, the more side-to-side motion is required to maintain speed/balance. For men, with a higher center of gravity, the side-to-side is in the shoulders. But a non-depressed man isn’t shimmying their shoulders because they unconsciously enjoy their own virility and sexiness.
It think you’re attributing emotional motivations to a mechanical necessity of how people walk. Now granted, hip swinging CAN be exaggerated for effect, but if you’re using it as an assay for depression, you’ll generally be looking at typical energetic hip swinging rather than atypical seductive hip swinging.
We could come up with a more robust heuristic. I agree that this might lead to too many false positives. I think this method would be more useful if you used it to make multiple measurements over time and if we added more of what we know of the symptoms of depression. The difference between depressed and sad (well, the obvious outward difference) is that sad goes away and depression lingers.
It seems like it would be useful to create a checklist or inventory of outward symptoms so that a friend observing could keep track of your mood. Emotional blunting is one of the symptoms of depression so it is totally plausible that a friend keeping track would notice before you. Someone experiencing depression isn’t motivated to keep track of their day-to-day mood fluxuations, so an outside observer can be very helpful in this respect. “Hey, I noticed that you’ve seemed down more often than not for the last couple weeks. Do you think you might have some mild depression starting up?”
Relatedly, there are now apps for phones which measure the speed at which bipolar people talk. Depressive and manic episodes can be picked up long before the symptoms become apparent to the bipolar person or the people around them. Depression causes people to act and talk slowly and lethargically, and to also be more reticent. This could be another possible and useful method to observe for depression. http://www.uofmhealth.org/news/archive/201405/listening-bipolar
Clinical guidelines for depression: Experiencing at least 5 of these symptoms and some of them almost every day for 2 weeks or longer
A depressed mood during most of the day, particularly in the morning
Fatigue or loss of energy almost every day
Feelings of worthlessness or guilt almost every day
Impaired concentration, indecisiveness
Insomnia (an inability to sleep) or hypersomnia (excessive sleeping) almost every day
Markedly diminished interest or pleasure in almost all activities nearly every day
Recurring thoughts of death or suicide (not just fearing death)
A sense of restlessness or being slowed down
Significant weight loss or weight gain
Observable traits a friend could spot (based on these clinical symptoms):
Slow, dragging gait
Unusually quiet/reticent
Slower speech
Apparent fatigue
In bed too much (generally covers both depressive insomnia and oversleeping)
Talking/thinking about sad things a lot
Tendency to self-blame or self-berate out of proportion to reality
Indecisiveness or apathy when making decisions
Dropping activities they usually enjoy doing
Avoiding contact with people more than usual, or avoiding contact with people they usually enjoy
Not being very engaged in conversation, not laughing, not showing interest in normally interesting things
And if these symptoms are happening regularly over two weeks, its probably a good idea to talk to them about their feelings and the possibility of getting professional help
I’m not saying its distasteful to find that gait attractive, it is a secondary sexual characteristic after all and thus indicates fertility/post-puberty. But yeah, the assumption of motivation/intention is a point of frustration when I run into it because I literally have no way to ambulate without men thinking there is some conscious or unconscious sexuality-based subtext. And it’s not by any means an uncommon assumption, maybe 75% of men over 25 make this assumption.
I have a pear shaped body, so my center of gravity is low even for a woman. As a matter of fat vs. muscle distribution, it is most like saying I grew breasts because I unconsciously feel feminine and sexual. Feelings just don’t have anything to do with fat distribution.
This one is pretty personal. After being surprise broken up with at the end of a very rewarding 5 year long relationship, I immediately looked up papers on how people recover from break-ups, what leads to best outcomes, how people can internalize lessons learned in relationships, etc.
When I discovered that getting over the relationship itself is different from no longer liking the person on the other side of the relationship, I was able to do the work to get over the relationship itself in about 4 to 5 days. (actually, it was exponential, most of the results were in the first day, with a long tail of results over the past two weeks). I’m defining being over a relationship as no longer identifying with it, no longer feeling like half of something bigger, no longer missing the feelings of that relationship, feeling that it really was for the best, and being genuinely happy with the current state of affairs.
While I realize I might never “get over” having affection+lust this person, who I still consider my best friend, I am now no more likely to want to take action on those feelings than on my feelings for the many friends I’ve had crushes on over the years, and in fact probably a lot LESS likely since science says it would be a bad idea. So a lingering crush is really no big deal. I can comfortably hug or have real talks with this person without feeling the pangs of missing out on more, and can happily reflect on good memories without any tinge of sadness.
I am now dating someone else, and not in a rebound way. I considered waiting longer than two weeks, but after looking at the literature, I decided not to because of the measurable happiness gains of being in a relationship, plus my general tendency not to ruminate/dwell, plus my genuine not-wanting to get back together (plus, obviously my feelings for this new person).
Yeah, I’ve been downvoted to a negative number in Quora with a nice, detailed, science based article about why someone’s “recently recovered early-childhood memory” were probably not reliable enough for her to publicly accuse someone of molesting children and without first talking to a counselor and preferably a councilor who understood memory. It was all very reasonable and with ample evidence to support every statement.
I got down-voted to negative by a guy who said she should try a past-life regression and literally used the phrase “sort of a quantum parallel worlds reincarnation metaphysics with possibility of memory across various worlds and/or lives”. (Actually, if you guys could upvote me on that, I’m genuinely worried that other people with similar recovered images will find his advice and be unable to see my comment and that lives and relationships will be destroyed, the thread is https://www.quora.com/I-think-I-have-been-abused-sexually-as-a-child-I-just-have-some-faint-memory-picture-which-came-up-very-recently-in-my-mind-How-can-I-be-sure-I-am-a-20-year-old-female)
Looks like almost twice as much goes to lawn maintenance as to the entire industrial and commercial sectors, and by contrast, lawns have absolutely no productivity or economic benefits.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-doing/
You’re correct that modern farming techniques are fairly efficient, but within the confines of any specific crop being grown. Efficiently watered corn, for instance, still takes less water input than efficiently watered rice, millet takes less water still. Techniques are good but crop selection is questionable. Beef/alfalfa is the thing on the top of my mind when I say this.
Yeah! I think its a great idea, I was considering doing this anyway. Expect a post in the next couple days! I finally have enough karma to write one now (long time lurker, this is a new account)
I can think of two, but I also think the number of people who don’t use long-term thinking and should far outweighs the number of people who do and shouldn’t, so I still think that teaching that skill is a great idea.
If someone doesn’t know the amount of time or effort to complete a goal, they could end up very unhappily pouring effort into a sunk-cost situation because they are imagining a long-term (but not guaranteed) future where that goal is achieved. In this situation, present-oriented thinking would be more useful.
Future (or past) oriented thinking can be a form of rumination, often seen in depression. In this situation, someone imagines every possible future, over and over, and extremely pessimistically, which leads to a sense of powerlessness. Present oriented thinking is EXTREMELY useful to combat rumination, which is why mindfulness based depression interventions have the same success rate as actual drugs.
Nevertheless, this is promoting a more goal-oriented long-term thinking exercise that doesn’t really run on the same circuits as rumination. Case 1 could still be a pitfall, but promoting long-term thinking will probably help far more people than it hurts.
When should a draft be posted in discussion and when should it be posted in LessWrong?
I just wrote a 3000+ word post on science-supported/rational strategies to get over a break-up, I’m not sure where to put it!
Strategies and tools for getting through a break up
Here are a couple of the papers I saw that described this similarity:
http://jn.physiology.org/content/104/1/51.short (small sample size, I know)
http://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/jaap.2011.39.4.737
Not quite the same but similar: http://www.forensis.org/PDF/published_29.pdf
Addiction isn’t the only thing that happens in that part of the brain, and that isn’t the only part of the brain that is active. But the addiction/craving similarity is the most useful metaphor for someone going through a break up because it emphasizes that wanting something very strongly is not the same thing as it being good for you, and getting what you want does not make the wanting go away.
You are right, though, that paragraph is pretty neurobabbley. I have a tendency to use a lot of unnecessary jargon so I try to reduce it as much as possible. And also, this is my first post on LessWrong. Should I edit above?
OK, thank you. This is my first LessWrong post. I posted to discussion, hopefully it will find its place.
Yeah, I read during my initial research and I really appreciated the last section, New Directions, as directly relevant to my situation
For the purposes of this post, it isn’t meaningful what state my relationship was in when it ended. Many or most people reading this will have much less peaceful break ups than I (although maybe less surprising)
I do think you’re making a lot of assumptions with this. I never said he didn’t reciprocate. I don’t require emotional support because I am very calm, as I said, with a very low neuroticism. On the other hand, I’m in the 5 percentile for conscientiousness (barely conscientious at all!), so he kept me from losing things, kept me on time, kept me on task, made sure I completed projects I cared about, did extra chores, and cleaned up after me without complaint. A healthy relationship is difficult when both partners need exactly the same amount of support in the same areas.
I actually wanted to have an open relationship several months before he requested it, but I wrote it off as an impossibility until he independently raised the possibility. I was excited about the new options, but I also became the founder of a start-up in this same time window, which is astoundingly time consuming, and this on top of a day job. Not dating wasn’t really a product of my lack of excitement about the possibilities of dating.
All that said, obviously he wasn’t happy in the relationship and it did come as a surprise at the time, so I clearly wasn’t noticing something, or noticing something and not acknowledging it. I do think our continuing friendship is something of a good sign for the overall state of the prior relationship at the time it ended though.
I’m not totally sure about how to classify a rebound relationship, a cursory Google search shows that most of the sources on this are Cosmo and Yahoo Answers. I define it to myself as a relationship which is started because of the end of a prior relationship. It is either to stop from being lonely or to move on from the ex. The new relationship is compared and/or contrasted with the old one. The new one doesn’t have room to become it’s own thing. Usually they seem to move faster and burn out sooner than normal relationships. But that is just my definition, anyone else have any thoughts on how to answer this question?
And thank you!
I should say that research shows people had better outcomes recovering from break ups when they started dating someone. I’m not sure if this is because it makes you feel wanted, because of selection bias (more people who dated were ready to date), or because the new relationship itself. On the other hand, overwhelming colloquial knowledge has it that rebound relationships are not a good idea, but I couldn’t find actual any evidence to that effect. I’m not totally sure which to believe; the science is strong evidence from a small sample size, colloquial evidence is weak evidence from a huge sample size.
It was very helpful for me to read your wiki about your break up, some very good advice there! I think it is also very helpful to see people who have gone through difficult break ups and returned to their normal level of happiness. Impact bias makes it hard to remember that very few things have lasting negative effects on happiness.
While it is true that gut feelings+euphoria ≠ addiction, that doesn’t preclude addiction from using the same brain circuitry. In fact some social psychologists, esp Helen Fisher, speculate that addiction neuron circuits were developed first to support the first stages of romantic love and then co-opted by addictive substances and behaviors.
This framework has been useful in my recent break up because it is intuitively true that addictive cravings are not necessarily a good impulse to follow and satisfying the cravings does not necessarily reduce them in the long term. When I’m ruminating it is handy to be able to mark it as “ignore: meaningless craving.”
http://jn.physiology.org/content/104/1/51.short
http://jn.physiology.org/content/94/1/327.short
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=bUSRsXs2kGEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA87&dq=Helen+Fisher+addiction+love&ots=2HRkw3aRuM&sig=3Fvz0NYzaaxtk0l6meaz7jyN934#v=onepage&q=addiction&f=false