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Eitan_Zohar comments on I need a protocol for dangerous or disconcerting ideas. - Less Wrong
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The fact that taking drugs for your mental issues doesn't nullify your concerns about existential problems in no way implies that your worries about those problems don't come as a result of mental health issues.
Sure, but I can say that I wouldn't be depressed at all if not for those existential problems. I mean, I would be depressed but in a general, background sort of way.
You can say that and of course it seems true to you. It's just like it feels true to the schizophrenic that the CIA is out to get him and his paranoia is due to the CIA trying to get him and not due to the fact that he's a schizophrenic.
Psychological research in general suggests that people are quite good at finding ways to rationalize their emotions. There a strong outside view, that suggests that rationalizations are usually not the root cause.
I've considered it at various points over the last seven years. I think I've justified it properly.
The nature of outside views is that they are going to be wrong eventually.
Of course you do, as the pressures for internal mental consistency are very strong.
This isn't an argument, it's Descartes' demon.
Understanding mental biases and how our brain plays tricks on it is a core part of LW. It hasn't much to do with logical argument but with modern psychological research.
It's no easy skill to notice when your emotions prevent you from clearly thinking about an issue.
Saying "The nature of outside views is that they are going to be wrong eventually." is also very particular. If I'm testing gravity by repeating scientific experiments whereby I drop balls, I'm engaging in the outside view. Science is all about the outside view instead of subjective experience.
When one is subject to a mental illnesses that generally is known to make on think irrationally about an issue, it's useful to not trust one's reasoning and instead seek help for the mental illness by trustworthy people. Bootstrapping trust isn't easy. There are valid reasons why you might not trust the average psychologists enough to trust his judgement over your own.
The general approach is too find trustworthy in person friends. For LW type ideas, you find them at LW meetups. You likely don't want to pull all your information from people from a LW meetup but if your LW friends say that you are irrational about an issue, your mainstream psychologists tells you, you are irrational about the issue and other social contacts also tell you that you are irrational, no matter how strongly it feels like you are right, you should assume that you aren't right.
Well, I definitely know that my depression is causally tied to my existential pessimism. I just don't if it's the only factor, or if fixing something else will stop it for good. But as I said, I don't necessarily want to default to ape mode.
Out of curiosity, how do you know that this is the direction of the causal link? The experiences you have mentioned in the thread seem to also be consistent with depression causing you to get hung up on existential pessimism.
I go through long periods of peace, only to find my world completely shaken as I experience some fearful epiphany. And I've experienced a complete cessation of that feeling when it is decisively refuted.