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Eugine_Nier comments on LW Women: LW Online - Less Wrong Discussion

29 [deleted] 15 February 2013 01:43AM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 19 February 2013 01:34:19AM 10 points [-]

As far as I can tell, horrific events can be used as jokes when they aren't vividly imagined, and whether something you haven't experienced is vividly imagined is strongly affected by whether the people around you encourage you to imagine it or not.

I'm not sure about that. It seems like in places and times where horrific events are much more common, people take an almost gallows humor attitude towards the whole thing (at least the violence part). Things like PTSD seem to happen when people in cultures where horrific events are rare temporarily get exposed to them.

Comment author: MugaSofer 20 February 2013 11:18:38AM -1 points [-]

This ... seems to fit the evidence, actually. Not sure why it was downvoted; is there some evidence nobody's told me about?

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 20 February 2013 04:19:06PM 0 points [-]

From what I've read, repeated trauma is a good way of predicting PTSD, so lack of familiarity with trauma wouldn't be a good explanation.

Comment author: MugaSofer 21 February 2013 04:55:22PM 1 point [-]

Oh, right. I interpreted it as saying that horrific events are only traumatic when you're from a culture where they're rare, not that repeated traumatic events somehow lower one's levels of PTSD. That would be nonsense, obviously.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 22 February 2013 01:53:35AM 7 points [-]

Right. One idea I had is that what causes PTSD is not so much the traumatic experience as being surrounded by people who can't relate to it.

A more Hansonian version is that exhibiting PTSD is a strategy to gain attention and sympathy and that this strategy won't work if everyone around has also suffered similar experiences.

Another possibility is that in cultures where traumatic events are common, people who can't deal with them without suffering PTSD are likely to get killed off by the next one.