gjm comments on Open thread, Mar. 2 - Mar. 8, 2015 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: MrMind 02 March 2015 08:19AM

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Comment author: kalium 08 March 2015 07:52:51AM -1 points [-]

It depends on the type of local optimum. I am reasonably sure that becoming too depressed to do enough work to stay in was the only was I could have gotten out of graduate school given my moral system at the time. (I hated being there but believed I had an obligation to try to contribute to human knowledge.)

Also flat affect isn't at all a universal effect of antidepressant usage, but it does happen for some people.

Comment author: gjm 08 March 2015 02:59:10PM 0 points [-]

Isn't flat affect also a rather common effect of depression?

Comment author: kalium 08 March 2015 11:30:59PM -1 points [-]

It happens but again it's not at all universal. Scott Alexander seems to think emotional blunting is a legitimate effect of SSRIs, not just a correlation–causation confusion. He also notes that

There is a subgroup of depressed patients whose depression takes the form of not being able to feel anything at all, and I worry this effect would exacerbate their problem, but I have never heard this from anyone and SSRIs do not seem less effective in that subgroup, so these might be two different things that only sound alike.

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