= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Decius comments on Three more ways identity can be a curse - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (104)
Are you a non-reductionist? Is 'melancholy' not also based on the chemical/physical (potatoe/potahto) configuration of your brain?
When it can be determined with reasonable accuracy whether someone was melancholic by performing an autopsy, you can call the two comparable.
Not that it really matters regarding the grandparent (autopsies aren't arbiters of what's based on a chemical state and what isn't, and what else but a chemical state would melancholy be based on? I would agree that the chemical changes associated with melancholy are certainly more subtle, but what does that matter?), but I'd like to know more:
Where did you get the impression that it can be determined with reasonable accuracy whether someone was depressed by performing an autopsy? Do you mean hypothetically, at some future point in time? I've never heard of such a thing being done. If you mean at some future point in time, then presumably the same holds true for melancholy.
Finding some abnormalities in some patients who have previously been diagnosed with depression and tagged for an autopsy upon death, yes, that's been done. But given a dead patient of unknown depression status, diagnose depression based on the brain, with reasonable accuracy? Tell me more.
I can't find the specific reference to a controlled "is this person depressed" study, so I may have false memories about that. It's trivial to find at least one reference to non-blind studies where a major difference was found between depressed individuals and those who died suddenly of natural causes.