> One wonders how many obvious root causes to common illnesses are sitting right in front of us. Perhaps it's a silly comparison, but I was reminded when readi

> One wonders how many obvious root causes to common illnesses are sitting right in front of us. Perhaps it's a silly comparison, but I was reminded when reading this of the Facebook bug the other day[1] where progress was suddenly made when they started to think of system components as malicious actors communicating over covert channels. Here is someone arguing that we should be thinking about depression in essentially the same way: there are malicious actors (infectious agents) communicating over a covert channel (by some mechanism we don't yet understand). Perhaps the analogy is a bit of a stretch, but I think the idea of re-conceptualising a known problem in a new light is probably a good one. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8660994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8660994