4 ms·

This story and the mention of MIT's "high suicide rate" remind me of something I've wondered about. Depression and suicide seem to be common among very smart p

by rkts 19y ago

This story and the mention of MIT's "high suicide rate" remind me of something I've wondered about. Depression and suicide seem to be common among very smart people. Does anyone know why?

palish 19y ago
Because when you're smart enough to realize you're not quite smart enough, it's crushingly depressing.
- mojuba 19y ago
  Why should that be depressing? It seems to me quite normal that I'm not smart enough for many hard problems - why should that drive me crazy?
  - kirubakaran 19y ago
    You were smart enough to realize that you need not be depressed when you are smart enough to realize that you are not quite smart enough.
randallsquared 19y ago
I don't know. However, here's some hypotheses, some combination of which may be most of the reason: Even if depression and suicide attempts aren't more common, very smart people may be enough more competent that they succeed more often. Most attempts at suicide don't actually result in death. It could be that the easy wins in building a smarter brain happen to lead to a genetic predisposition to depression. It could be that smarter people are more easily able to internalize that there's no ultimate point to life, and less able to just have faith.
- eru 19y ago
  So smarter people might just be better at suicide?
hello_moto 19y ago
You can see from their traits: 1) Super smart 2) Actively thinking every single day 3) Thinking how to solve hard problems 4) Too involved/focused with the area field they are in When people called that RMS is nuts, sometime I wonder, is he really that nuts? He's fighting for a better world of software. But at the same time, he doesn't fight over super-hard-algorithm. RMS is still in touch with humans albeit he's fighting/arguing with them CEOs/PRs. The rate of suicide is high among Grad/PhD students because they have to "think outside the box" every single day. They have to find a "breakthrough". Sometime, "thinking outside the box" means to break all the logics and common sense around you. When you start bending logics, there's a good chance the situation will change the way you perceive things. You began to accept your "new logic" (as in this case, human is just like a program, disease equals to bug).
- angryprofessor 19y ago
  >The rate of suicide is high among Grad/PhD students because they have to "think outside the box" every single day. They have to find a "breakthrough". That's really not true, though many grad students (especially in physics) think it is. You need to make a useful research contribution, but it can be evolutionary. My thesis problem is a very popular one: new Ph.D.'s are awarded monthly for incremental advances in this area. Only about 2 theses on the topic (in the past 10 years) have actually been breakthroughs. The rest are just marginal improvements, i.e. 1'st order -> 2'nd order -> 4'th order, spherical coordinates -> arbitrary spherical-like coordinates -> arbitrary coordinates, etc.
curi 19y ago
Maybe it's because smarter people tend to be less average. Less conventional. Less traditional. Deviating from tradition is the only way to get amazing new gains. But the majority of deviations are mistakes and make things go wrong. And when untraditional things go wrong, there is less support available to help deal with it.
corentin 19y ago
The more intelligent you are, the more alien you are to a society designed and run by average (if not dumb) people.
- comatose_kid 19y ago
  Society is designed? Interesting... I'd lean more towards emergent behavior.
  - mixmax 19y ago
    I agree - but emergence that will favor the Joe sixpack due to his abundance. In short: Lowest common denominator.
yters 19y ago
As the above comments show, smart people tend to take things more seriously. Not that that's a bad thing, but I think it explains the extremes in the views of smart people. Of course, I've just moved the question up a level here...
DanielBMarkham 19y ago
Who cares? It all seems so pointless
- yters 19y ago
  It's a problem if the situation is escalating...
  - marcus 19y ago
    I think you missed Daniel's irony
    - yters 19y ago
      Yes, yes I did.
yters 19y ago
Another question, has it always been this way? I remember reading somewhere that our levels of depression and suicide are a historical anomaly. What is different between now and then?
- Hexstream 19y ago
  Maybe previously, people were too occupied with subsistance to wonder if they should kill themselves.
  - yters 19y ago
    The majority of people today are mostly concerned with subsistence too.
    - Hexstream 19y ago
      And that's why most people still don't commit suicide? ;P
tokipin 19y ago
i place my bets on existential depression from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_giftedness#Depression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_giftedness#Depress... "A number of people have noted a higher incidence of existential depression [in the gifted], which is depression due to highly abstract concerns such as the finality of death, the ultimate unimportance of individual people, and the meaning (or lack thereof) of life." they recognize the irrelevance of everything. it's not uncommon for all types of people to have these sorts of thoughts, but the very abstractive abilities of the gifted mean these are more than just thoughts to them. these issues are as clear, concrete, and tangible as a brick wall is to mere normal humans compounding things is the fact that these gifted people hold nature in the highest regard, and see it as the only arbiter of truth. they can't escape the irrelevance of everything, because that's just how nature is it's a painful QED
- akkartik 19y ago
  Here's my shield against existential depression, arrived at after much pain (with major influences): Notice that you don't bother wondering what it all means when you're having fun. Meaning comes from having fun. (http://www.amazon.com/Just-Fun-Story-Accidental-Revolutionary/dp/0066620724 http://www.amazon.com/Just-Fun-Story-Accidental-Revolutionar...) Having fun usually involves work. (http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/24169645 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/24169645 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/21256293 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/21256293) How do you figure out what you love? Do something, see where it leads. Iterate between the doing and the loving as fast as you can. Sketch. (http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/24170012 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/24170012 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/24169153 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/24169153 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/1451852 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/1451852) What you love is a moving target, it changes with you. If you neglect it you will lose it.
  - michaelneale 19y ago
    I prefer the "dolphin" approach (from Hitchikers guide...). Where the dolphins think they are the most intelligent because all they do is muck about in the water having a good time.
mojuba 19y ago
We may be confusing cause and effect here. It's their insanity (actually inferiority complexes) that makes them take over infinitely hard problems when one gets all or nothing - more often the latter. This also reminds of Dangerous Knowledge (can't find it on Google Video anymore)
- pchivers 19y ago
  It seems that Dangerous Knowledge was taken down from Google Video. Here is a link to the BBC page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/dangerous-knowledge.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/dangerou... "In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Godel and Alan Turing - whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide."
  - mojuba 19y ago
    "which tragically drove them insane" - here's where the error lies. The film mentions that Cantor heard "voices" even before he got interested in mathematics, so it's not his genius that drove him insane, but rather the other way around. Cantor, Boltzman, Godel and Turing were among the few successful insane scientists.
as 19y ago
Material for anyone who wonders about this: Jonathan Haight's research on conservative and liberal values: http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/haidt http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/haidt Kazimierz Dabrowski's theory of over-excitability and positive disintegration. http://www.stephanietolan.com/dabrowskis.htm http://www.stephanietolan.com/dabrowskis.htm http://members.shaw.ca/positivedisintegration/ http://members.shaw.ca/positivedisintegration/ Durkhiem's ideas about anomie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie
nickb 19y ago
> Does anyone know why? Most of the gifted individuals suffer from existential depression. More here: http://web.archive.org/web/20061020235245/http://www.giftedbooks.com/aart_webb2.html http://web.archive.org/web/20061020235245/http://www.giftedb...
marcus 19y ago
Because ignorance is bliss.
yason 19y ago
Excess bias on the analytical, thinking, and "doing" sides of a human life purges out the practical, hands-on, "not-doing" side that's deeply rooted to nature and connects you to reality. You need to spend time in the nature doing nothing to realize where you come from and that you're not in hurry to anywhere and to balance, you also need to exercise your brain and thinking to break the limits of what you can, thus redefining yourself as you go by life.

by rkts 19y ago

This story and the mention of MIT's "high suicide rate" remind me of something I've wondered about. Depression and suicide seem to be common among very smart people. Does anyone know why?

palish 19y ago

Because when you're smart enough to realize you're not quite smart enough, it's crushingly depressing.

mojuba 19y ago
Why should that be depressing? It seems to me quite normal that I'm not smart enough for many hard problems - why should that drive me crazy?
- kirubakaran 19y ago
  You were smart enough to realize that you need not be depressed when you are smart enough to realize that you are not quite smart enough.

randallsquared 19y ago

I don't know. However, here's some hypotheses, some combination of which may be most of the reason: Even if depression and suicide attempts aren't more common, very smart people may be enough more competent that they succeed more often. Most attempts at suicide don't actually result in death. It could be that the easy wins in building a smarter brain happen to lead to a genetic predisposition to depression. It could be that smarter people are more easily able to internalize that there's no ultimate point to life, and less able to just have faith.

eru 19y ago
So smarter people might just be better at suicide?

hello_moto 19y ago

You can see from their traits: 1) Super smart 2) Actively thinking every single day 3) Thinking how to solve hard problems 4) Too involved/focused with the area field they are in When people called that RMS is nuts, sometime I wonder, is he really that nuts? He's fighting for a better world of software. But at the same time, he doesn't fight over super-hard-algorithm. RMS is still in touch with humans albeit he's fighting/arguing with them CEOs/PRs. The rate of suicide is high among Grad/PhD students because they have to "think outside the box" every single day. They have to find a "breakthrough". Sometime, "thinking outside the box" means to break all the logics and common sense around you. When you start bending logics, there's a good chance the situation will change the way you perceive things. You began to accept your "new logic" (as in this case, human is just like a program, disease equals to bug).

angryprofessor 19y ago
>The rate of suicide is high among Grad/PhD students because they have to "think outside the box" every single day. They have to find a "breakthrough". That's really not true, though many grad students (especially in physics) think it is. You need to make a useful research contribution, but it can be evolutionary. My thesis problem is a very popular one: new Ph.D.'s are awarded monthly for incremental advances in this area. Only about 2 theses on the topic (in the past 10 years) have actually been breakthroughs. The rest are just marginal improvements, i.e. 1'st order -> 2'nd order -> 4'th order, spherical coordinates -> arbitrary spherical-like coordinates -> arbitrary coordinates, etc.

curi 19y ago

Maybe it's because smarter people tend to be less average. Less conventional. Less traditional. Deviating from tradition is the only way to get amazing new gains. But the majority of deviations are mistakes and make things go wrong. And when untraditional things go wrong, there is less support available to help deal with it.

corentin 19y ago

The more intelligent you are, the more alien you are to a society designed and run by average (if not dumb) people.

comatose_kid 19y ago
Society is designed? Interesting... I'd lean more towards emergent behavior.
- mixmax 19y ago
  I agree - but emergence that will favor the Joe sixpack due to his abundance. In short: Lowest common denominator.

yters 19y ago

As the above comments show, smart people tend to take things more seriously. Not that that's a bad thing, but I think it explains the extremes in the views of smart people. Of course, I've just moved the question up a level here...

DanielBMarkham 19y ago

Who cares? It all seems so pointless

yters 19y ago
It's a problem if the situation is escalating...
- marcus 19y ago
  I think you missed Daniel's irony
  - yters 19y ago
    Yes, yes I did.

yters 19y ago

Another question, has it always been this way? I remember reading somewhere that our levels of depression and suicide are a historical anomaly. What is different between now and then?

Hexstream 19y ago
Maybe previously, people were too occupied with subsistance to wonder if they should kill themselves.
- yters 19y ago
  The majority of people today are mostly concerned with subsistence too.
  - Hexstream 19y ago
    And that's why most people still don't commit suicide? ;P

tokipin 19y ago

i place my bets on existential depression from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_giftedness#Depression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_giftedness#Depress... "A number of people have noted a higher incidence of existential depression [in the gifted], which is depression due to highly abstract concerns such as the finality of death, the ultimate unimportance of individual people, and the meaning (or lack thereof) of life." they recognize the irrelevance of everything. it's not uncommon for all types of people to have these sorts of thoughts, but the very abstractive abilities of the gifted mean these are more than just thoughts to them. these issues are as clear, concrete, and tangible as a brick wall is to mere normal humans compounding things is the fact that these gifted people hold nature in the highest regard, and see it as the only arbiter of truth. they can't escape the irrelevance of everything, because that's just how nature is it's a painful QED

akkartik 19y ago
Here's my shield against existential depression, arrived at after much pain (with major influences): Notice that you don't bother wondering what it all means when you're having fun. Meaning comes from having fun. (http://www.amazon.com/Just-Fun-Story-Accidental-Revolutionary/dp/0066620724 http://www.amazon.com/Just-Fun-Story-Accidental-Revolutionar...) Having fun usually involves work. (http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/24169645 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/24169645 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/21256293 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/21256293) How do you figure out what you love? Do something, see where it leads. Iterate between the doing and the loving as fast as you can. Sketch. (http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/24170012 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/24170012 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/24169153 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/24169153 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/1451852 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/1451852) What you love is a moving target, it changes with you. If you neglect it you will lose it.
- michaelneale 19y ago
  I prefer the "dolphin" approach (from Hitchikers guide...). Where the dolphins think they are the most intelligent because all they do is muck about in the water having a good time.

mojuba 19y ago

We may be confusing cause and effect here. It's their insanity (actually inferiority complexes) that makes them take over infinitely hard problems when one gets all or nothing - more often the latter. This also reminds of Dangerous Knowledge (can't find it on Google Video anymore)

pchivers 19y ago
It seems that Dangerous Knowledge was taken down from Google Video. Here is a link to the BBC page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/dangerous-knowledge.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/dangerou... "In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Godel and Alan Turing - whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide."
- mojuba 19y ago
  "which tragically drove them insane" - here's where the error lies. The film mentions that Cantor heard "voices" even before he got interested in mathematics, so it's not his genius that drove him insane, but rather the other way around. Cantor, Boltzman, Godel and Turing were among the few successful insane scientists.

as 19y ago

Material for anyone who wonders about this: Jonathan Haight's research on conservative and liberal values: http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/haidt http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/haidt Kazimierz Dabrowski's theory of over-excitability and positive disintegration. http://www.stephanietolan.com/dabrowskis.htm http://www.stephanietolan.com/dabrowskis.htm http://members.shaw.ca/positivedisintegration/ http://members.shaw.ca/positivedisintegration/ Durkhiem's ideas about anomie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie

nickb 19y ago

> Does anyone know why? Most of the gifted individuals suffer from existential depression. More here: http://web.archive.org/web/20061020235245/http://www.giftedbooks.com/aart_webb2.html http://web.archive.org/web/20061020235245/http://www.giftedb...

marcus 19y ago

Because ignorance is bliss.

yason 19y ago

Excess bias on the analytical, thinking, and "doing" sides of a human life purges out the practical, hands-on, "not-doing" side that's deeply rooted to nature and connects you to reality. You need to spend time in the nature doing nothing to realize where you come from and that you're not in hurry to anywhere and to balance, you also need to exercise your brain and thinking to break the limits of what you can, thus redefining yourself as you go by life.