5 ms·

Under the maladaptive neuroplasticity theory which motivates the BDNF connection, I think anxiety could be taken into account naturally: just as depression is a

by gwern 6y ago

Under the maladaptive neuroplasticity theory which motivates the BDNF connection, I think anxiety could be taken into account naturally: just as depression is a maladaptive persistent overlearned estimate of the world as threatening, unrewarding, and pointless, which persists despite regular experiences which should falsify those beliefs and lead to learning (but doesn't), anxiety is persistent overestimation of risks which persist despite regular experiences of dangerous risks not happening which should lead to learning (but doesn't). So if boosts to neuroplasticity can help a depressive learn that life doesn't suck, it makes sense if boosts could also help an anxious person learn that life isn't so dangerous.

kulig 6y ago
I dont believe that people have anxiety disorders for no reason at all... e.g. an autistic teenager who got beaten up for being socially clueless or abrasive. Anxiety might be the thing that saved them from being seriously harmed.
wincy 6y ago
I thought life sucked and was on anti anxiety medications for year then realized I was simply allergic to half the food I was eating. Your ancestors and my ancestors stuck around long enough to reproduce and raise their kids without offing themselves from depression, has something changed to make the environment less conducive to being a living human?
- __blockcipher__ 6y ago
  Obvious fallacy here: we are all descendants of those humans who survived - at least until having children. Those who offed themselves early are selected out of the genepool. Note the above is not to suggest that there’s not a number of factors of a modern environment that we’re not properly/perfectly adapted for. But the handwavy “people weren’t depressed and anxious in the old days” is an illusion.
- supersour 6y ago
  Hi, how did you find out you were allergic to half the food you were eating? I would like to know more about tests/elimination diets you have tried.
  - treeman79 6y ago
    Start an elimination diet. Chicken and green vegetables are a good starting point. I did chicken and sweet potatoes for a month. Had a ton of issues go away. Turned out practically everything bothers me. AIP diet has been a life changer.
  - adanto6840 6y ago
    Go to an allergist. You may end up getting referred to a GI. But it's a sure-fire way to know if you have actual allergies or not. Source: Wife's visit to allergist & subsequent referral to GI doc today (no allergies).
  - gwern 6y ago
    You'd be surprised what people can put up with cheerfully. A relative of mine turned out, around high school or so, to be allergic to wheat (which is in half the stuff you eat). It gave him regular diarrhea. He had grown up with it and simply assumed it was normal. How would he know otherwise? (A version of the 'typical mind fallacy' https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing-from-one-example https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi... one might say.) It's not as if people go around saying, 'good morning! I had my usual poop today, a good #3 on the Bristol stool scale, placing me within 1SD of the human norm! And yourself?' 'Likewise, likewise; good checking in with you and discussing our morning defecation, as is very normal for us human beings, ha ha.'
maybelsyrup 6y ago
> just as depression is a maladaptive persistent overlearned estimate of the world as threatening, unrewarding, and pointless That we can look at the lives of millions of people in America in 2021 and call their abject misery 'maladaptive' or 'overlearned' is ghastly. I know I'm supposed to offer more in an HN comment, and I'm not trying to call you names. But if I told that to someone in psychotherapy I'd deserve more than just losing my license. I don't doubt that looking inside people's biology for clues about what's going on when they suffer these kinds of anguish is interesting or potentially helpful, but I can say two things quite confidently on the matter: 1) After 60 years of dominance, the biological-psychiatric project's track record is dismal and has failed to move any population-level needle on the levels of suffering it tries to study and ameliorate 2) Focusing on biology at the expense of questions about "context" or "environment" or "maybe this depressive is reacting exactly appropriately to their horrible existence" is a staggering waste of brainpower and money and time, and it leaves me at a loss for words. Outside of the social strata represented on HN (and probably within it to some degree) the world is "threatening, unrewarding, and pointless" for vast numbers of human beings, and I'd challenge anyone to sit in front of such a person and tell them to their face that it isn't. If there exist "regular experiences which should falsify those beliefs and lead to learning (but doesn't)", I got news for you: those experiences aren't prompting "learning" because they're not enough. This is like telling hungry people to feel more full after feeding them a saltine cracker. You can't "cure" depression by pumping people full of prescribed psychotropics - the major mental health effort of the past half century - any more than you can do so by pumping them full of vodka. Address poverty, address violence, address a litany of social ills - and I mean really address them - and you'll see what happens to depression. Excuse me, but this touched a nerve.
- anaphor 6y ago
  There's a quotation from Abraham Maslow that I really like, which I think is similar to your point. > I am deliberately rejecting our present easy distinction between sickness and health, at least as far as surface symptoms are concerned. Does sickness mean having symptoms? I maintain now that sickness might consist of not having symptoms when you should. Does health mean being symptom-free? I deny it. Which of the Nazis at Auschwitz or Dachau were healthy? Those with a stricken conscience or those with a nice, clear, happy conscience? Was it possible for a profoundly human person not to feel conflict, suffering, depression, rage, etc.? In a word if you tell me you have a personality problem, I am not certain until I know you better whether to say "Good" or "I'm sorry". It depends on the reasons. And these, it seems, may be bad reasons, or they may be good reasons. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow
loceng 6y ago
Is it actually maladaptive or society wide is it normal and adaptive? If everyone was so easily influenced or moved into different states - perhaps then the traits differentiating those who are more conservative or more liberal in their behaviours wouldn't be possible. There are lessons to be learned from suffering, your own and others - and people becoming so imbalanced that they are stuck in suffering is easily arguable as a canary for society and signal for how we treat others.
fsckboy 6y ago
> just as depression is a maladaptive persistent overlearned estimate of the world as threatening, unrewarding, and pointless, which persists despite regular experiences which should falsify those beliefs and lead to learning (but doesn't), anxiety is persistent overestimation of risks which people with depression have been shown to have a more accurate perception of reality. it's the rose-colored glasses view which is adaptive.

by gwern 6y ago

kulig 6y ago

I dont believe that people have anxiety disorders for no reason at all... e.g. an autistic teenager who got beaten up for being socially clueless or abrasive. Anxiety might be the thing that saved them from being seriously harmed.

wincy 6y ago

I thought life sucked and was on anti anxiety medications for year then realized I was simply allergic to half the food I was eating. Your ancestors and my ancestors stuck around long enough to reproduce and raise their kids without offing themselves from depression, has something changed to make the environment less conducive to being a living human?

__blockcipher__ 6y ago
Obvious fallacy here: we are all descendants of those humans who survived - at least until having children. Those who offed themselves early are selected out of the genepool. Note the above is not to suggest that there’s not a number of factors of a modern environment that we’re not properly/perfectly adapted for. But the handwavy “people weren’t depressed and anxious in the old days” is an illusion.
supersour 6y ago
Hi, how did you find out you were allergic to half the food you were eating? I would like to know more about tests/elimination diets you have tried.
- treeman79 6y ago
  Start an elimination diet. Chicken and green vegetables are a good starting point. I did chicken and sweet potatoes for a month. Had a ton of issues go away. Turned out practically everything bothers me. AIP diet has been a life changer.
- adanto6840 6y ago
  Go to an allergist. You may end up getting referred to a GI. But it's a sure-fire way to know if you have actual allergies or not. Source: Wife's visit to allergist & subsequent referral to GI doc today (no allergies).
- gwern 6y ago
  You'd be surprised what people can put up with cheerfully. A relative of mine turned out, around high school or so, to be allergic to wheat (which is in half the stuff you eat). It gave him regular diarrhea. He had grown up with it and simply assumed it was normal. How would he know otherwise? (A version of the 'typical mind fallacy' https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing-from-one-example https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi... one might say.) It's not as if people go around saying, 'good morning! I had my usual poop today, a good #3 on the Bristol stool scale, placing me within 1SD of the human norm! And yourself?' 'Likewise, likewise; good checking in with you and discussing our morning defecation, as is very normal for us human beings, ha ha.'

maybelsyrup 6y ago

> just as depression is a maladaptive persistent overlearned estimate of the world as threatening, unrewarding, and pointless That we can look at the lives of millions of people in America in 2021 and call their abject misery 'maladaptive' or 'overlearned' is ghastly. I know I'm supposed to offer more in an HN comment, and I'm not trying to call you names. But if I told that to someone in psychotherapy I'd deserve more than just losing my license. I don't doubt that looking inside people's biology for clues about what's going on when they suffer these kinds of anguish is interesting or potentially helpful, but I can say two things quite confidently on the matter: 1) After 60 years of dominance, the biological-psychiatric project's track record is dismal and has failed to move any population-level needle on the levels of suffering it tries to study and ameliorate 2) Focusing on biology at the expense of questions about "context" or "environment" or "maybe this depressive is reacting exactly appropriately to their horrible existence" is a staggering waste of brainpower and money and time, and it leaves me at a loss for words. Outside of the social strata represented on HN (and probably within it to some degree) the world is "threatening, unrewarding, and pointless" for vast numbers of human beings, and I'd challenge anyone to sit in front of such a person and tell them to their face that it isn't. If there exist "regular experiences which should falsify those beliefs and lead to learning (but doesn't)", I got news for you: those experiences aren't prompting "learning" because they're not enough. This is like telling hungry people to feel more full after feeding them a saltine cracker. You can't "cure" depression by pumping people full of prescribed psychotropics - the major mental health effort of the past half century - any more than you can do so by pumping them full of vodka. Address poverty, address violence, address a litany of social ills - and I mean really address them - and you'll see what happens to depression. Excuse me, but this touched a nerve.

anaphor 6y ago
There's a quotation from Abraham Maslow that I really like, which I think is similar to your point. > I am deliberately rejecting our present easy distinction between sickness and health, at least as far as surface symptoms are concerned. Does sickness mean having symptoms? I maintain now that sickness might consist of not having symptoms when you should. Does health mean being symptom-free? I deny it. Which of the Nazis at Auschwitz or Dachau were healthy? Those with a stricken conscience or those with a nice, clear, happy conscience? Was it possible for a profoundly human person not to feel conflict, suffering, depression, rage, etc.? In a word if you tell me you have a personality problem, I am not certain until I know you better whether to say "Good" or "I'm sorry". It depends on the reasons. And these, it seems, may be bad reasons, or they may be good reasons. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow

loceng 6y ago

Is it actually maladaptive or society wide is it normal and adaptive? If everyone was so easily influenced or moved into different states - perhaps then the traits differentiating those who are more conservative or more liberal in their behaviours wouldn't be possible. There are lessons to be learned from suffering, your own and others - and people becoming so imbalanced that they are stuck in suffering is easily arguable as a canary for society and signal for how we treat others.

fsckboy 6y ago

> just as depression is a maladaptive persistent overlearned estimate of the world as threatening, unrewarding, and pointless, which persists despite regular experiences which should falsify those beliefs and lead to learning (but doesn't), anxiety is persistent overestimation of risks which people with depression have been shown to have a more accurate perception of reality. it's the rose-colored glasses view which is adaptive.