ChristianKl comments on Three more ways identity can be a curse - Less Wrong

40 Post author: gothgirl420666 28 April 2013 02:53AM

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Comment author: Decius 28 April 2013 04:19:37AM 3 points [-]

Why shouldn't Alice self-modify into someone who has a stronger passion for homelessness, for 4 mu?

You can't make decisions based on what your future self would value, any more than you can make decisions based on what your past self valued. Even with TDT.

"Be yourself" means "do not suppress your identity". It involves avoiding the trap of thinking e.g. that because your knowledge of Asian adult film stars is low-status, you should conceal it even at the cost of added stress. If you are playing status games, you don't want to be yourself- you want to be high status. If you are not playing status games, your status is irrelevant and you should act accordingly.
Depression (a chemical state of the brain) is not laziness, nor lack of motivation, nor akrasia, nor lack of motivation. If you are referring to something other than a chemical state, try using 'melancholy'.

Personally, I have found that tying performance to ability to self-image is helpful at improving both, provided I also make careful use of cognitive dissonance: I deny that poor performance is the result of poor ability, breaking the negative feedback, while associating good performance with high ability and good identity. It's often uncomfortable identifying how my forced perception of high ability is compatible with focusing effort on improving my ability to meet standards, but I prefer it to the possibility of having high ability and high performance but low self-image (imposter state).

Basically, I explicitly prefer high self-image to low self-image regardless of ability or performance, and doublethink well enough that the mutual boosts dominate the exchange.

Comment author: ChristianKl 30 April 2013 06:07:08PM * 3 points [-]

Depression (a chemical state of the brain) is not laziness, nor lack of motivation, nor akrasia, nor lack of motivation. If you are referring to something other than a chemical state, try using 'melancholy'.

The official definition of depression in the US is in the DSM-V and doesn't say anything about the chemical basis. If a bunch of psychological symtoms are present the person is per definition depressed.

Different people who are depressed are probably depressed for different reasons on the chemical level.

Comment author: Decius 30 April 2013 06:51:32PM 0 points [-]

Using the official definition requires that we accept that the symptoms cause the depression. That conclusion is absurd, therefore the premise is absurd.

Of course, I've just realized that means that I've been using a nonstandard definition, but I think the OP was too.

Comment author: ChristianKl 30 April 2013 09:01:38PM 2 points [-]

Using the official definition requires that we accept that the symptoms cause the depression. That conclusion is absurd, therefore the premise is absurd.

No, depression is a term that describes symptoms. There are probably various distinct causes that can produce those symptoms.

You can cause a depression by hitting someone strongly on the head. Sometimes depression is produced by the way an individual deal with an emotional trauma.

Comment author: Decius comment score below threshold [+] (4 children)

Comment author: DSherron 02 May 2013 04:02:36PM 3 points [-]

Your error is related to the Mind Projection Fallacy. You are confusing the causes of us calling something depression with the actual causes of that depression. We identify depression based on the symptoms; if you have them then we say you're depressed, if you don't then we say that you are not. In neither case are we assuming that causality flows from our observations to our conclusions. The DSM definition just defines what we're talking about with the word "depression" - what set of symptoms we want to refer to. But the symptoms are caused by something, physically, and therefore the depression is equally caused by that same thing physically. The symptoms cause us to call it depression, but they (tautologically under Aristotelian reasoning) cannot be the cause of the depression, since they are the depression.

Comment author: Decius 03 May 2013 04:30:09AM 0 points [-]

Are you saying that the symptoms are identical with the depression, even though each individual symptom can exist without depression being present?

If not, then which precedes the other? if the depression causes the symptoms, it must precede them; but by the DSM definition, depression does not exist unless the symptoms are present.

Comment author: DSherron 03 May 2013 05:29:37AM * 3 points [-]

You're confused about words; I recommend you read A Human's Guide to Words, summarized by 37 Ways Words Can Be Wrong. I'll try and give a quick explanation that will hopefully be helpful. Depression is not a low-level part of reality; it's just a convenient label on our maps. The entire meaning - literally all of it, by the DSM definition - is that the person possess a certain number of symptoms from a list. If you know they express those symptoms they are depressed; if you know they are depressed you know they express those symptoms. That is, literally and entirely and without exception, everything that is true about the word depression as defined by DSM. There is no further question, no further information. There is no precedence, no ordering to the events between being DSM-depressed and having the symptoms. DSM-depression is in the map, not the territory, so there is no causality involved.

Actually, I'd like to put this metaphor in terms of 2 sets of maps. The first map just says "DSM-depressed" on a person. That map is compact; it enables compressed storage of lots of information, although it certainly is not lossless. When you pull that map out, and read it, and you know what DSM-depression means, you can then draw a second map. This map is a little bit more precise; it has a list of symptoms, and says they express some number of them. But you can't then combine the maps, and write a single map which both contains the list of symptoms and the DSM-depressed tag. It would be redundant; there would be repeated information. The 2 maps are describing different levels of organization. It would be like looking at an airplane and saying "do the wings, engine, etc. cause this to be an airplane, or does the fact that it is an airplane cause the wings, engine, etc." It is nonsense to ask the question; in the territory there is no "airplane" label, and for that matter no "wings" or "engine" labels either. Don't confuse your map with a more detailed map, nor with the territory itself.

One other note is that you're acting like the word "depression" has a meaning, no matter what a given definition defines it to mean. If I defined "depression" to mean "water", and used it consistently, and made it clear to you what I meant, I would be committing an error with words; but that error would not be that "depression" doesn't really mean "water".

EDIT: Forgot to say this, but I'm tapping out. I'd recommend not clogging up the comment thread any more than we already have. If you still have questions feel free to PM me, and I will respond in more depth, but unless you've read the linked sequence and understood at least most of it (or put a genuine effort into trying) I'll probably just point you back to it.

Comment author: Decius 03 May 2013 03:33:10PM 2 points [-]

That is, literally and entirely and without exception, everything that is true about the word depression as defined by DSM.

My point was that that definition does not adequately describe the territory; like 'Having a taxable income less than an arbitrary value' does not adequately define poverty. I was trying to use the map to talk about the territory, not use the map to talk about the map.

ChristianKl comments on Three more ways identity can be a curse - Less Wrong

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