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I sincerely hope that nobody assumes that because this is on the top of HN that this isn't batshit crazy garbage. HN is an echo chamber that can turn a logical

I sincerely hope that nobody assumes that because this is on the top of HN that this isn't batshit crazy garbage. HN is an echo chamber that can turn a logical mind into one that starts assuming every premise upvoted on here is acceptable. Don't fall into that trap.

ysavir 3y ago
Can you elaborate on what you think is "batshit crazy garbage"? I'm not challenging the notion, I just think your post would have much more value if, instead of dragging HN's populace through the mud, you concentrated on specific points in the article that you think are prime examples of its impracticalities.
- jrflowers 3y ago
  I can’t speak for GP but I laughed out loud when I read about how the author of this article knows how to “cure depression”. Aside from the ignorance of brain chemistry, situational factors that can contribute to depression, and the glaringly obvious fact of the subjectivity of how depression is experienced, the hubris to assert that this blogger ~knows the cure ~ inspires very little confidence in their credibility. For example, if you read me the first few sentences of this article and then said “This was written by someone that doesn’t provide any reason to trust their reasoning” I would not be surprised. In fact if you told me that the person that brags about their cure for depression in their blog was not very bright, I wouldn’t see cause to argue with you.
  - scaramanga 3y ago
    He didn't say he knows _the_ cure he says he cured himself. It's like someone loses weight and sticks to it, they don't know _the_ cure for obesity, but they managed to go from being obese to not being obese and staying there for some time and then wrote a blog wherre they say "wow, i found i was over eating due to eating shitty lunches at my desk and not doing exercise so then i switched to salads and cycling to the office, turns out i cured obesity in myself" It's completely different from putting forward an intervention and then claiming, against all scientific evidence, that this is a reliable and repeatable cure. A good trick for reading comprehension is to read the last paragraph first: "I don’t expect this to work for everyone or even most people who are inexplicably unhappy. But I believe that most people can gain some insight by reflecting over how their lives correspond to evolutionary history. " blah blah blah.. This is an incredibly weak claim, it's basically saying "[most] people can gain insight into their emotional state by reflecting on their basic needs and for some people (not all, or even most), that might make them not be unhappy, my evidence is a sample size of yours truly, plus maybe a few people i've talked to who agree". Wow. One can often get a different impression of articles by reading only the headline or the first para, which tend to be loaded with attention-getters or rhetorical tricks that are designed to be provocative and hook a reader in. It's easy to make knee-jerk emotional reactions. Article seems to me, just to be full of rather banal truisms masquerading as science. But so is just about everything else written on the topic.
    - jrflowers 3y ago
      > A good trick for reading comprehension is to read the last paragraph first: I appreciate your concern for my reading ability! As you’ve pointed out: >It's easy to make knee-jerk emotional reactions. Sometimes the urge to insert meaning into a text can be so strong that one can be compelled to ignore the entire premise of a blog post. Heck, a person might even resort to cheap condescension to defend what some might reasonably call empty self-congratulatory drivel!
- civilitty 3y ago
  She's essentially arguing that long-term happiness is an evolved signal that someone is on the right evolutionary path. It's the emotional self-help equivalent of a prosperity gospel. Her argument can best be illustrated by a paragraph from another article titled How I cured myself with evolutionary psychology [1] > In order to cure my depression, I did the evolutionary psychology thing hard-core: I got married and had children. I dropped out of university. I moved to the countryside. I started to renovate and build houses and to grow food for my family. As far as I can tell, she has no training as an evolutionary psychologist. It's self help woo woo wrapped up in barely coherent scientific jargon - that demographic loves evolutionary psychology because it can be used to spin any story you wish about why humans are the way they are. [1] https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/how-i-cured-myself-with-evolutionary https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/how-i-cured-myself-with-...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
culanuchachamim 3y ago
Can you expand on why you think this is a batshit crazy garbage?
- Camouflager 3y ago
  The statement is misusing words, in that rewards make you happy by definition. This is a typical postmodern statement, trying to reorganize deep rooted cognitive structures, with words, which is completely backwards.
- ddevault 3y ago
  Evolutionary psychology is psuedoscience.
  - kelipso 3y ago
    It makes a lot more sense than the usual psychology frameworks, so I would rather approach it from an evolutionary psychology point of view than not lol.
deleted 3y ago
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ysavir 3y ago

Can you elaborate on what you think is "batshit crazy garbage"? I'm not challenging the notion, I just think your post would have much more value if, instead of dragging HN's populace through the mud, you concentrated on specific points in the article that you think are prime examples of its impracticalities.

jrflowers 3y ago
I can’t speak for GP but I laughed out loud when I read about how the author of this article knows how to “cure depression”. Aside from the ignorance of brain chemistry, situational factors that can contribute to depression, and the glaringly obvious fact of the subjectivity of how depression is experienced, the hubris to assert that this blogger ~knows the cure ~ inspires very little confidence in their credibility. For example, if you read me the first few sentences of this article and then said “This was written by someone that doesn’t provide any reason to trust their reasoning” I would not be surprised. In fact if you told me that the person that brags about their cure for depression in their blog was not very bright, I wouldn’t see cause to argue with you.
- scaramanga 3y ago
  He didn't say he knows _the_ cure he says he cured himself. It's like someone loses weight and sticks to it, they don't know _the_ cure for obesity, but they managed to go from being obese to not being obese and staying there for some time and then wrote a blog wherre they say "wow, i found i was over eating due to eating shitty lunches at my desk and not doing exercise so then i switched to salads and cycling to the office, turns out i cured obesity in myself" It's completely different from putting forward an intervention and then claiming, against all scientific evidence, that this is a reliable and repeatable cure. A good trick for reading comprehension is to read the last paragraph first: "I don’t expect this to work for everyone or even most people who are inexplicably unhappy. But I believe that most people can gain some insight by reflecting over how their lives correspond to evolutionary history. " blah blah blah.. This is an incredibly weak claim, it's basically saying "[most] people can gain insight into their emotional state by reflecting on their basic needs and for some people (not all, or even most), that might make them not be unhappy, my evidence is a sample size of yours truly, plus maybe a few people i've talked to who agree". Wow. One can often get a different impression of articles by reading only the headline or the first para, which tend to be loaded with attention-getters or rhetorical tricks that are designed to be provocative and hook a reader in. It's easy to make knee-jerk emotional reactions. Article seems to me, just to be full of rather banal truisms masquerading as science. But so is just about everything else written on the topic.
  - jrflowers 3y ago
    > A good trick for reading comprehension is to read the last paragraph first: I appreciate your concern for my reading ability! As you’ve pointed out: >It's easy to make knee-jerk emotional reactions. Sometimes the urge to insert meaning into a text can be so strong that one can be compelled to ignore the entire premise of a blog post. Heck, a person might even resort to cheap condescension to defend what some might reasonably call empty self-congratulatory drivel!
civilitty 3y ago
She's essentially arguing that long-term happiness is an evolved signal that someone is on the right evolutionary path. It's the emotional self-help equivalent of a prosperity gospel. Her argument can best be illustrated by a paragraph from another article titled How I cured myself with evolutionary psychology [1] > In order to cure my depression, I did the evolutionary psychology thing hard-core: I got married and had children. I dropped out of university. I moved to the countryside. I started to renovate and build houses and to grow food for my family. As far as I can tell, she has no training as an evolutionary psychologist. It's self help woo woo wrapped up in barely coherent scientific jargon - that demographic loves evolutionary psychology because it can be used to spin any story you wish about why humans are the way they are. [1] https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/how-i-cured-myself-with-evolutionary https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/how-i-cured-myself-with-...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

culanuchachamim 3y ago

Can you expand on why you think this is a batshit crazy garbage?

Camouflager 3y ago
The statement is misusing words, in that rewards make you happy by definition. This is a typical postmodern statement, trying to reorganize deep rooted cognitive structures, with words, which is completely backwards.
ddevault 3y ago
Evolutionary psychology is psuedoscience.
- kelipso 3y ago
  It makes a lot more sense than the usual psychology frameworks, so I would rather approach it from an evolutionary psychology point of view than not lol.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]