NancyLebovitz comments on Incremental Progress and the Valley - Less Wrong

38 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 April 2009 04:42PM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 07 April 2010 11:57:37AM 1 point [-]

Julian Simon's Good Mood is a counterexample. He was seriously considering suicide once his children were grown-- he had no pleasure in life and a high background level of emotional pain.

Still, he was running his life quite well, and got over his depression when he finally had everything squared away enough that he could spend a little time thinking about it. He concluded that depression is caused by making negative comparisons about one's situation, and found a bunch of strategies (lower standards, improve situation, find something more important than making comparisons, etc.) for not making them.

The link is to the whole text of the book.