All of Sable's Comments + Replies

I'm really happy to hear that this helped! Remember, all models are wrong, but some are useful. This model is useful for me; use it as long as it is useful to you.

This is awesome! I totally should have thought of it, thanks!

That's awesome that you're doing that research!

My biggest question is probably what the distribution looks like for people who get TMS for depression - how many of them are "cured" in the sense that they never need TMS again? How many need it again after a year? Two years? And so on.

I do think there's something to that idea - physical injury and pain is a very universal and visible experience, whereas mental illness is difficult to parse for those who've never experienced it. I also think there's some sense in which 'treatment' and 'cure' are treated differently for mental and physical illness.

A doctor wouldn't just prescribe painkillers for a broken arm and call it a day because your symptoms have been dealt with; they'd want to actually fix the problem. Depression, on the other hand, doctors seem perfectly fine with merely mitigating the symptoms. Perhaps because that's all they're confident they can do?

I didn't, but I'm not surprised your sister had that experience. It's a loud, repetitive noise going off next to your ear. My clinic offered me earplugs, which I didn't need, but perhaps your sister could have used?

That would be useful.

I suppose their calibration might be cause for concern. You're with yourself all the time, so you've been witness to your own highs and lows, but others might only see your highs (for example, if you only leave your house when you're above 50%, their scale would bottom out at 50%).

I would love to try psilocybin, but can't because of where I work. I have tried Ketamine and am now trying TMS, which are the two FDA-approved 'nuclear options', and have been seeing some success with them.

That's really interesting! I'm no expert in neurology, so thanks for the heads up!

True. I just happen to have the 'very hard to do anything' kind, so that's what I describe.

I haven't thought much about how treatment fits in here. I've certainly felt both dimensions mentioned get better/reduced through treatment (having to solve less puzzles, having to solve puzzles for coarser/less granular actions).

Ultimately, 'curing' depression would be the equivalent of removing the app from your brain.

Interesting. I'm glad that this resonates, and like the idea that what I described was a generic experience, which can be caused by various issues in the brain.

The comments below do capture some of my thoughts. I also feel depression as a lack of motivation and general malaise and inability to care about things or feel pleasure.

But these are 

1. difficult to explain to someone who's never felt, and
2. subjective feelings, which don't always translate well through language.

The metaphor is meant to invite someone to think about what their life would be like if, in order to do anything, they had to slog their way through tedious effort for little to no reward. I claim that the result looks, externally, very much like d... (read more)

I want to support this; the initial motivation behind Georgism is, in fact, the exact question of why poverty still exists when so much progress has been made - and the answer is that when private actors are allowed to monopolize natural resources (most importantly land), all the gains accruing from productivity increases and technology eventually go to them.

A UBI, as Eliezer suggests, is a band-aid to the problem, addressing the symptom but not the disease, and so long as land rents (economic rent) are monopolized, the disease continues unabated.

I don't k... (read more)

Yup. That's where I learned about it. I was looking for the link too and couldn't find it. Thanks!

I completely agree.

I have these moments every so often when I think to myself, "The entire MIT undergraduate curriculum is available for free online. ...why do we need college, exactly?"

And so on.

I have another post on my substack (I'll get around to posting it here at some point) about the kind of gains we should be making in educational technology, but haven't been.

Thanks! I don't know if I'm the person to write that book, but I do agree it'd be a good idea.

Thanks for the response!

I agree that the social services model is simultaneously good and bad. The issue stems from schools having to contend with two very different problems:

1. How do they deal with children from poor backgrounds who don't want to learn? How do they deal with idiots, special needs students, assholes, troublemakers, etc.?
2. How do schools deal with gifted children? How do they deal with students who are smarter or learn faster than their peers?

These kinds of students need very different kinds of environments to thrive.

Paul Graham is representati... (read more)

I switched up my medications and I'm feeling a lot better now, although it being summer really helps. Everything is better when the world outside is warm and sunny!

I've been looking into trying Spravato (Ketamine) as well, although the bureaucracy to actually get to trying it is no joke.

Thanks for asking!

Thanks, it's my first time linking to my own sequence. I fixed the link to the first post in it.

I like your approach! The only caveat I have is that the students taking these requirements could be anywhere from 9-17ish, so they won't necessarily be able to investigate the tools and concepts in depth the way they might in a college course.

Curious to hear your thoughts on my sequence. 

I'm going through a theoretical redesign of American public education, and I'd appreciate the feedback from a teacher's perspective.

I completely agree - often the hardest part of designing a system is what to do about willful defectors.

Hopefully some of this will become more clear as I keep posting, but the basic gist is that students have to be allowed to fail. We should make every effort to accommodate those who need help and rehabilitate those we can, but in the end if a student is determined to not learn/disrupt other students, they get failed and kicked out.

If there are actual crimes going on, I'd imagine the police should be called.

If a student is genuinely acting in bad faith - attending a class and ruining it for their peers - then they should be removed from the class and sent to a counselor/social worker.

Otherwise, "disruptive" is a difficult thing to pin down when there's no actual instruction to be interrupting.

They both tend to limit my (already limited) tolerance for it and make it much harder, although the depression makes it harder in general while the anxiety only makes it harder in higher-stakes situations, such as at work with a boss.

Your post is another interesting perspective I haven't delved into as much as I'd like. It reminds me of the parts work some of my friends are fond of - taking something negative in one's brain and asking, "but how is this useful? What is it doing for me? What is this piece of me trying to protect me from?" and then running with the result.

I'll have to give it more thought.

Fixed, thanks.

There's a joke in here about getting negatives wrong when depressed...

You're welcome! I'm glad it was helpful.

I also just looked up monotropism - I haven't run across the term before - and was like, yeah, that seems about right for me.

Interesting.

You're welcome!

Call it...unintentionally intentional? It makes sense to me that the mechanisms between them are related in some sort of Unified Field Theorem of the Mind sort of way.

I also have mental metaphors involving thermal mass and emotions...

Huh.

As a fellow procrastinator, I'm right there with you. I've found, for instance, that downers (alcohol, barbiturates, etc.) can allow me to be productive if anxiety is the cause of the procrastination, but if it's depression than the downers don't help at all.

Sure - I'm always interested in hearing other perspectives.

What's your secret?

Is it yoga?

(I bet it's yoga.)

Not being very sad all the time is good for you, 10/10 recommend. 

Words to live by, right there.

I think everyone has some experience with anxiety and depression; the alternative is literally ataraxia. The distinctions come with things like, "is it transitory or chronic?" and "is it ruining your life?" I'm glad you're not in that state anymore, though.

With regards to anxiety, I've had thoughts recently along the same track; maybe I'll write them up at some point. It's almost a case of "the dose makes the poison" - some amount of anxiety is natural and can motivate you, but too much and it prevents you from doing anything.

That's a fascinating description of your own state, and I hope you're working through it with your own resources.

For the post I was focusing more on a behaviorist approach to depression and anxiety, explaining what the resulting state/actions were by metaphor of how it felt internally, but I do also get the low mood and the feeling that everything is terrible.

I think I also get the 'lose the ability to perceive gradations of color' thing, which I think Scott's talked about before.

(I also had a nihilistic phase I grew out of. There's only so much 'depressed French people complaining' I can take!)

Thanks for sharing! I definitely like Scott's take on depression being a trapped prior.

When I'm depressed, sometimes a friend will make me go do stuff anyway and it usually makes me feel better, although I never expect it to make me feel better. Even when I know that it will.

Brains are weird.

Thanks Anders! That means a lot, I really appreciate it. 

Thankfully I've seen my psychiatrist and I've switched to the next medication, which is doing a better job. I'm also looking into getting Ketamine treatment; I'll probably make a post about how that goes.

You may!

Zoloft managed the depression but not the anxiety, and Lexapro the anxiety but not the depression.

For what it's worth, I have zero expectation that anyone else would share my exact response to the medications; both have helped plenty of people in the past.

I think this post highlights some of the difficulties in transmitting information between people - particularly the case of trying to transmit complex thoughts via short aphorisms.

I think the comments provided a wealth of feedback as to the various edge cases that can occur in such a transmission, but the broad strokes of the post remain accurate: understanding compressed wisdom can't really be done without the life experience that the wisdom tried to compress to begin with.

If I was to rewrite the post, I'l likely emphasize the takeaway that, when giving a... (read more)

I don't see this as a conscious choice people make to not solve the problems the institution they're a part of is supposed to address. I agree that many of the individuals within the institution are working in good faith and genuinely care.

The issue is that the incentives of the people are not the same as the incentives of the institution itself, which are to grow and attract more status and money, which happens when the problem is seen as harder and more important.

Yes, Climate Change is obviously not solvable by a few activists, but there's a finite amoun... (read more)

I use homelessness as an example, but I believe the logic generalizes. You're right that in many cases, the incentives facing an institution aren't powerful enough to matter, or the people involved could/would just go do other things.

But there are also a lot of cases (see: almost all nonprofits) where people's jobs depend on the existence and salience of the problem, in which case I think the incentives do start to matter.

While I haven't looked at the data lately, there are a lot of institutions in the US, as I use the term. Surely of the many social ills they address there are some that solvable/solved?

While I used ending homelessness as an example, the salience of an issue matters too. Climate change organizations receive lots of funding because their cause is seen as an important priority. If that changes, their funding dries up. So they have an incentive on the margin to overemphasize the importance of their associated problem - they benefit from the problem, while generally not solving it. Hence, commensalism.

Thanks! I've been pointed to them by others as well; it's a good example of an institution surviving the death of their problem.

I do think that the case underlines how important problems are for institutions, in a sort-of "exception that proves the rule" kind of way.

They would need another problem to pivot to.

Also, I suspect that such a pivot on an institutional scale is difficult to pull off. People often prioritize altruistic work because they're passionate about a specific cause - maybe they were homeless in the past, or they were a cancer survivor, etc. That wouldn't necessarily translate.

This was well thought-out, thank you.

You're right about redefining the word/problem. I've been referring to this as "The Pivot" in my head.

It would still be better if we found a way to form institutions such that, once they had solved a problem, their resources were efficiently allocated to the solution of the next-most-pressing problem.

Wait until you discover the world of Worm fanfiction (*cue evil laughter*).

Very possible.

I do suspect, though, that your friends at least have an internal process of analysis going even if they're not working. (I could of course be wrong.)

Well said.

Quite true, and I considered being more specific about the kinds of relationships I was talking about.

For the sake of brevity I omitted such relationships.

What I did try to emphasize was that a relationship doesn't have to be equal to be reciprocal. So long as each party is getting what they need out of it, it usually counts. In a parent/child relationship, for instance, the parent is/should be getting something valuable out of the relationship, even though that something isn't reciprocity or emotional support.

As you say, the reward might be seeing your junior/student/child grow up and succeed.

I understand what you're saying. I wasn't familiar with the exact definitions of the political theory you cite.

I do think that it's reasonable to be bound by laws made before one was born, but only to a certain extent. Society changes over time, and over a long enough period of time I would argue - philosophically - that the society that passed the law is no longer the society I was born into. (And yet the law is still binding, because the law doesn't have an expiration date.)

That being said, thanks for the reply, and I appreciate the feedback!

Fair, and I forgot about the term stuck prior (I think I've heard "trapped prior" before). Thanks!

Great question.

You've got the basics - eat right, workout, sleep, etc., but just saying that isn't much help.

I've gotten a great deal out of habit chaining/trigger-action planning when used consistently; basically you create chains of actions that feed into one another so once you've started the chain, it takes no extra willpower to just keep following it to its conclusion.

For instance:

Wake up -> make breakfast -> get pills -> turn on sunlamp -> eat

is one, that makes sure I take my medication, eat breakfast, and get some light everyday (the lat... (read more)

A good point, and I agree. Part of my thinking on this topic, and the desire to write on it, was sparked by Scott and others' debate on what mental illness and sanity really are (how much of it is social, how much biological, etc.).