You Can Face Reality

Eliezer Yudkowsky

What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn’t make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn’t make it go away.
And because it’s true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn’t there to be lived.
People can stand what is true,
for they are already enduring it.

—Eugene Gendlin

What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn’t make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn’t make it go away.
And because it’s true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn’t there to be lived.
People can stand what is true,
for they are already enduring it.

—Eugene Gendlin

Wikipedia now has an article on depressive realism.

3pnrjulius14y

It looks like there's still some serious controversy on the issue. But suppose for a moment that it's true: Suppose that depressed people really do have more accurate beliefs, and that this really is related to their depression. What does this mean for rationality? Is it more rational to be delusional and happy or to be accurate and sad? Or can we show that even in light of this data there is a third option, to actually be accurate and happy?

It seems to me - and I'm a depressive - that even if depressed people really do have more accurate self-assessment, your third option is still the most likely.

One recurrent theme on this site is that humans are prone to indulge cognitive biases which _make them happy_. We try to avoid the immediate hedonic penalty of admitting errors, forseeing mistakes, and so on. We judge by the availability heuristic, not by probability, when we imagine a happy result like winning the lottery.

When I'm in a depressed state, I literally _can't_ imagine a ... (read more)

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