6 ms·

> Rather, it's a byproduct of a seriously messed up world/society/personal relations landscape, that depressed individuals are more sensitive to or have felt mo

> Rather, it's a byproduct of a seriously messed up world/society/personal relations landscape, that depressed individuals are more sensitive to or have felt more deeply. You can proclaim whatever you want, that don't make it true.

coldtea 12y ago
Sure. Doesn't make it false either. For starters, a lot of modern "science" is hastily written papers for research grants or keeping the researcher up there, the majority of which doesn't even hold in a second examination (this was shown in several meta-reviews, including in biology/medicine, e.g.: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0020124 http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj... ). I'm not for reductionism when it comes to complex emergent phenomena like our sense of self and feelings. Especially when things like "depression" (or ADD etc) are not atemporal facts of life, but change with the decades and with interpretation. Starting with a specific epistemology it's easy to interpret anything in a certain way. Those who've followed 19th and 20th century medicine have seen so many bullshit fads and theories that were debunked later. Even being gay was a medical issue, not many decades ago. No reason to believe "it's really different this time". Some people treat science like some neutral agent -- as if interests, stupidity, fads and ideology don't play any role in shaping it (they have the idea that the "scientific methodology" sorts everything out). They probably just want a substitute for religion, an authoritative source of knowledge.
- javert 12y ago
  > They probably just want a substitute for religion, an authoritative source of knowledge. Going on a complete tangent here. And I'm not disagreeing with anything you said. The substitute for religion is philosophy, not science.
  - garrettgrimsley 12y ago
    >The substitute for religion is philosophy, not science. Philosophy has not offered me the easy, yet wholly unsatisfying, answers that my baptist upbringing did. I wouldn't say that it is the best substitute for religion.
  - randallsquared 12y ago
    Philosophy and science aren't opposed. Philosophy is conjecture about fields in which we don't know enough to have a science, yet. This is not a dig at philosophy; it's important to keep searching for answers so that we do get enough evidence to build a science.
    - javert 12y ago
      I don't agree with that at all. Philosophy should and can be held to the same rigor as science, i.e., objectivity.
      - randallsquared 12y ago
        I think there are at least some philosophical topics which are non-objective by nature. Consider whether to be a solipsist. ;) More seriously, if you don't believe in an objective morality, then moral philosophy is a subject which qualifies.
        javert 12y ago
        Something that is non-objective by nature is a matter of faith, not philosophy. I do believe in objective morality. Morality is simply the study of what we should do. What should we do? That question is perfectly open to scientific enquiry. If Hume was right---that the question cannot be answered scientifically---then that's the end of moral philosophy and the beginning, perhpas, of morality based in faith. but I do not agree with Hume.
- SamReidHughes 12y ago
  Blathering about science and medicine still doesn't make your made-up proclamation about the cause of depression any less made-up.
  - gorklin 12y ago
    Way to back your claim with reason and evidence, SamReidHughes. You think coldtea is blathering? Prove it. There's a huge difference between "blathering", i.e. incoherence, and disagreement. If you truly find coldtea's comment incoherent, you may have an issue with reading comprehension.
- escape_goat 12y ago
  Well, it's true that "hastily written papers for research grants" sets a pretty low bar when it comes to the determination of useful truths about anything. But it's also true that it's a bar that your opinion doesn't even come close to clearing. I'm glad that you're not "for" reductionism when it comes to complex emergent phenomena, but I'm not sure anyone is "for" reductionism. Some people are "for" useful abstraction. Epistemologies... my take on them is as follows. An epistemology restricts the ways in which something can be interpreted. Periodically, this has indeed been a problem. I am not sure that it is the problem you are describing; I think perhaps you mean to say that starting with an arbitrary epistemology, its easy to interpret anything to justify prior beliefs. As soon as you formalized your epistemology, though, it would start to lock you into its logic. What sounds right would take more and more work to justify if it was not, in fact, true. That's one of the benefits of having an epistemology. That's also one of the reasons there is a history of prior false belief for you to point at. All of the "fads" you mention are beliefs that can no longer be justified within the context of a scientific method. They are not arbitrary fads; they arose out of specific, historical misapprehensions, and it is not that they cannot be individually repeated; they categorically cannot be repeated. Within the context of a specific, logically coherent method, error runs out of space. Comparing the methods and knowledge of late 20th century medicine to those of early 19th century medicine --- should you chose to --- would refute the point you are trying to make. Meanwhile, you are responding to a person who has related his first-hand experiences and observations about a personally tragic case of clinical depression with a glib, slightly incoherent and profoundly reductionistic non-theory about the causes of his wife's illness. This is probably the product of a messed up personal relations landscape, but I will tell you that it is one to which I am extremely sensitive. Nothing is inherently false just because you pulled it out of your ass, but it is not a reliable method of producing anything you should share with anyone without making damn sure it is to the point and useful.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >But it's also true that it's a bar that your opinion doesn't even come close to clearing. Yeah, that's were traditionally people engage in discussion and evaluating each other's arguments (and even each other's opinions). Instead of expecting to settle things with some link to some research here or there, that they know even less about it that the ones that conducted it, and they have at best took a quick read of the final paper, without attempting to verify the results or anything. Really, scientific papers, as far as their consumers in popular science are concerned, are not more than the holy scriptures of yore. Something you believe because it comes from a source of Truth. Personally, if I'm allowed to say so, I don't believe in anything not mature enough to make it to a university syllabus. That would be 20 years and several papers by different authors at least to get to that. >As soon as you formalized your epistemology, though, it would start to lock you into its logic. What sounds right would take more and more work to justify if it was not, in fact, true. That's one of the benefits of having an epistemology. That's only true if epistemologies are not, like religion, flexible. But epistemologies are not some external entities, they are practiced and believed by fallible (like everyone) people. >Meanwhile, you are responding to a person who has related his first-hand experiences and observations about a personally tragic case of clinical depression with a glib, slightly incoherent and profoundly reductionistic non-theory about the causes of his wife's illness. Well, I'll have to disagree about the "slightly incoherent and profoundly reductionistic non-theory" part. Modern life is out of touch with the human animal and messed up, what's incoherent about it? It's an insight we celebrate in our most famous poets, writers, artists and philosophers. It's also something that can be gauged by the increase of depression incidents in particular countries and particular decades. And who told you I, and people close to me, haven't experience depression? It's not like that persons first hand experiences are the be all end all, and it's not like first hand experience mean that much in any case. There are all kinds of people with a wrong opinion (could be me, for example, as I'm saying this) that had "first had experiences" that got them to that opinion.

coldtea 12y ago

Sure. Doesn't make it false either. For starters, a lot of modern "science" is hastily written papers for research grants or keeping the researcher up there, the majority of which doesn't even hold in a second examination (this was shown in several meta-reviews, including in biology/medicine, e.g.: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0020124 http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj... ). I'm not for reductionism when it comes to complex emergent phenomena like our sense of self and feelings. Especially when things like "depression" (or ADD etc) are not atemporal facts of life, but change with the decades and with interpretation. Starting with a specific epistemology it's easy to interpret anything in a certain way. Those who've followed 19th and 20th century medicine have seen so many bullshit fads and theories that were debunked later. Even being gay was a medical issue, not many decades ago. No reason to believe "it's really different this time". Some people treat science like some neutral agent -- as if interests, stupidity, fads and ideology don't play any role in shaping it (they have the idea that the "scientific methodology" sorts everything out). They probably just want a substitute for religion, an authoritative source of knowledge.

javert 12y ago
> They probably just want a substitute for religion, an authoritative source of knowledge. Going on a complete tangent here. And I'm not disagreeing with anything you said. The substitute for religion is philosophy, not science.
- garrettgrimsley 12y ago
  >The substitute for religion is philosophy, not science. Philosophy has not offered me the easy, yet wholly unsatisfying, answers that my baptist upbringing did. I wouldn't say that it is the best substitute for religion.
- randallsquared 12y ago
  Philosophy and science aren't opposed. Philosophy is conjecture about fields in which we don't know enough to have a science, yet. This is not a dig at philosophy; it's important to keep searching for answers so that we do get enough evidence to build a science.
  - javert 12y ago
    I don't agree with that at all. Philosophy should and can be held to the same rigor as science, i.e., objectivity.
    - randallsquared 12y ago
      I think there are at least some philosophical topics which are non-objective by nature. Consider whether to be a solipsist. ;) More seriously, if you don't believe in an objective morality, then moral philosophy is a subject which qualifies.
      - javert 12y ago
        Something that is non-objective by nature is a matter of faith, not philosophy. I do believe in objective morality. Morality is simply the study of what we should do. What should we do? That question is perfectly open to scientific enquiry. If Hume was right---that the question cannot be answered scientifically---then that's the end of moral philosophy and the beginning, perhpas, of morality based in faith. but I do not agree with Hume.
SamReidHughes 12y ago
Blathering about science and medicine still doesn't make your made-up proclamation about the cause of depression any less made-up.
- gorklin 12y ago
  Way to back your claim with reason and evidence, SamReidHughes. You think coldtea is blathering? Prove it. There's a huge difference between "blathering", i.e. incoherence, and disagreement. If you truly find coldtea's comment incoherent, you may have an issue with reading comprehension.
escape_goat 12y ago
Well, it's true that "hastily written papers for research grants" sets a pretty low bar when it comes to the determination of useful truths about anything. But it's also true that it's a bar that your opinion doesn't even come close to clearing. I'm glad that you're not "for" reductionism when it comes to complex emergent phenomena, but I'm not sure anyone is "for" reductionism. Some people are "for" useful abstraction. Epistemologies... my take on them is as follows. An epistemology restricts the ways in which something can be interpreted. Periodically, this has indeed been a problem. I am not sure that it is the problem you are describing; I think perhaps you mean to say that starting with an arbitrary epistemology, its easy to interpret anything to justify prior beliefs. As soon as you formalized your epistemology, though, it would start to lock you into its logic. What sounds right would take more and more work to justify if it was not, in fact, true. That's one of the benefits of having an epistemology. That's also one of the reasons there is a history of prior false belief for you to point at. All of the "fads" you mention are beliefs that can no longer be justified within the context of a scientific method. They are not arbitrary fads; they arose out of specific, historical misapprehensions, and it is not that they cannot be individually repeated; they categorically cannot be repeated. Within the context of a specific, logically coherent method, error runs out of space. Comparing the methods and knowledge of late 20th century medicine to those of early 19th century medicine --- should you chose to --- would refute the point you are trying to make. Meanwhile, you are responding to a person who has related his first-hand experiences and observations about a personally tragic case of clinical depression with a glib, slightly incoherent and profoundly reductionistic non-theory about the causes of his wife's illness. This is probably the product of a messed up personal relations landscape, but I will tell you that it is one to which I am extremely sensitive. Nothing is inherently false just because you pulled it out of your ass, but it is not a reliable method of producing anything you should share with anyone without making damn sure it is to the point and useful.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >But it's also true that it's a bar that your opinion doesn't even come close to clearing. Yeah, that's were traditionally people engage in discussion and evaluating each other's arguments (and even each other's opinions). Instead of expecting to settle things with some link to some research here or there, that they know even less about it that the ones that conducted it, and they have at best took a quick read of the final paper, without attempting to verify the results or anything. Really, scientific papers, as far as their consumers in popular science are concerned, are not more than the holy scriptures of yore. Something you believe because it comes from a source of Truth. Personally, if I'm allowed to say so, I don't believe in anything not mature enough to make it to a university syllabus. That would be 20 years and several papers by different authors at least to get to that. >As soon as you formalized your epistemology, though, it would start to lock you into its logic. What sounds right would take more and more work to justify if it was not, in fact, true. That's one of the benefits of having an epistemology. That's only true if epistemologies are not, like religion, flexible. But epistemologies are not some external entities, they are practiced and believed by fallible (like everyone) people. >Meanwhile, you are responding to a person who has related his first-hand experiences and observations about a personally tragic case of clinical depression with a glib, slightly incoherent and profoundly reductionistic non-theory about the causes of his wife's illness. Well, I'll have to disagree about the "slightly incoherent and profoundly reductionistic non-theory" part. Modern life is out of touch with the human animal and messed up, what's incoherent about it? It's an insight we celebrate in our most famous poets, writers, artists and philosophers. It's also something that can be gauged by the increase of depression incidents in particular countries and particular decades. And who told you I, and people close to me, haven't experience depression? It's not like that persons first hand experiences are the be all end all, and it's not like first hand experience mean that much in any case. There are all kinds of people with a wrong opinion (could be me, for example, as I'm saying this) that had "first had experiences" that got them to that opinion.