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Comment by frereubu | Hacker News Reader

One thing that I learned during my psychology degrees that always stuck with me was that mildly depressed people are measurably better at judging probabilities of things happening. (Unfortunately I can't remember off the top of my head the structure of the study, or how much better they were). I wonder if that might fit into this, in that if you're mildly depressed presumably bad things are happening to you, so perhaps it's adaptive to be more realistic about your situation. Pretty hand-wavy stuff, but interesting to think about.

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I don't know who conducted the original study, but I remember that Martin Seligman opened his book Learned Optimism with a discussion of an experiment exactly along these lines.

Two groups of people -- a group of clinically depressed people, and a control group -- were asked to operate some apparatus that was programmed to fail a certain percent of the time. They were then asked to estimate how much actual control they had over the apparatus.

The control group consistently overestimated, while the depressed people were spot on.

A try it yourself experiment: simply start giving accurate time estimates to project managers, and see how long it takes them to call you a pessimist :)

Those who are successful in life have walked a path of failure, yet they keep getting up and trying again, learning from their mistakes and growing. This at its heart is a healthy kind of optimism.

Those who call themselves a realist, who believe it will fail, shoot themselves in the foot, because they do not get to learn the valuable lesson that comes from that failure. Without trying and failing growth is stunted. Trying is a win-win. You either get what you aimed for, or you learn and grow.

One scenario is if one grows up in a dangerous situation, you're shut down from risk taking, because taking a risk in a situation like that could seriously harm you. Meanwhile those who grew up in a safe environment could safely explore and open themselves up to positive hypotheticals worth attempting.

Another scenario is that when one fails instead of learning how to do better next time they create an assumption that any remotely close scenario in the future will end in failure. When one believes a negative dangerous outcome will happen, and they're thrown into that situation, it creates anxiety. This is why anxiety and depression often go hand in hand.

I remember reading an article like that. Also, it's a bit of a meme that if depression was 100% harmful then it would already be eliminated by evolution. I mean why shouldn't people prone to depression die off?

Don't make a mistake, I'm still working on improving my life and uncovering the root causes. It is a silent thief of life.

Evolution does not and cannot give a shit about you is why really. Elimination by evolution requires it to be both utterly nonviable and not tied to anything else. Look at sickle cell anemia - one copy protects against malaria via mild blood cell deformation. Two makes them concave.

There are plenty of non-optimal things kept around because there isn't sufficient pressure to ensure it dies out.

Or sinuses!

An Annoying Quirk Of Our Evolution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSSmJLb468k

But what I meant is that according to the theory of evolution, individuals with disadvantageous traits reproduce less often. If they reproduce less often, they pass their genes less often. I think they say the trait is regressive.

> Elimination by evolution requires it to be both utterly nonviable and not tied to anything else.

Neither of those things are required. Any disadvantage to reproduction frequency of an allele can lead to its extinction. Even a 'good' allele can lose to a 'better' one.

(The scare quotes are to acknowledge that these terms are just frequency re-stated)

> I mean why shouldn't people prone to depression die off?

"Having a child will make me happy". And hell, maybe it will - it's the perfect ruse by our genes - keep us depressed until we reproduce.

Or maybe we leading a path in life with no meaning causes us to be depressed and seek a solution. Having a child puts one in the present moment and does give some meaning back though is not a cure for depression. I highly doubt the genetics make us depressed to have children.

The appendix is 100% harmful but not eliminated. As is nearsightedness.

Evolution is only affected by genotypes that prevent reproduction.

Uhm, no.

https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/35/12/2957/5112969

"the strongest signals of recent human adaptation in Europe did not coincide with the Neolithic transition but with more recent changes in environment, diet, or efficiency of selection due to increases in effective population size."

> The appendix is 100% harmful

It is not.

Much better examples would be cancer and auto-immune diseases. Evolution is not magical, it can't produce 100% fault-free organisms. Or maybe it will, given a few more billion years. But in a limited time span, there is no reason to expect it to correct any potential flaw in an organism (and experience obviously shows that it hasn't).

That's a rather antiquated view. Nowadays, the appendix is considered an active organ again, essentially a spawning zone for the gut flora. I recall reading that people that still have their appendix have a more diverse gut microbiome, and more importantly, their gut flora recover more quickly after antibiotic treatments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism

I struggle with mild depression, especially in the long winter months in the Northeast U.S. Anecdata, I know, but I'm much better at estimating times (arrival times, how long it will take to pack for a trip, when we will actually leave to get to an appointment) than my wife who is eternally optimistic.

This comes in handy on estimating project times as well though only for me internally as most people don't want to hear realistic project times.

I think there is also data that intelligent people are more susceptible to depression, so that might influence that result. Cannot find the source of it though.

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