I keep finding examples of decision making that can be explained by shard theory. In particular, here’s an example I read in ACX today about how depressed people make decisions that keep them depressed, which sounds an awful lot like “shards guiding behavior in ways that tend to lead to their own future self-reinforcement”:
Millgram et al (2015) find that depressed people prefer to listen to sad rather than happy music. This matches personal experience; when I’m feeling down, I also prefer sad music. But why? Try setting aside all your internal human knowledge: wouldn’t it make more sense for sad people to listen to happy music, to cheer themselves up?
A later study asks depressed people why they do this. They say that sad music makes them feel better, because it’s more “relaxing” than happy music. They’re wrong. Other studies have shown that listening to sad music makes depressed people feel worse, just like you’d expect. And listening to happy music makes them feel better; they just won’t do it.
Scott’s preferred explanation is one of a kind of “mood setpoint” which the depressed individual’s actions are trying to reach:
Depression is often precipitated by some psychosocial event (like loss of a job, or the death of a loved one). It’s natural to feel sad for a little while after this. But instead of correctly activating regulatory processes to get mood back to normal, the body accepts the new level as its new set point, and tries to defend it.
By “defend it”, I mean that healthy people have a variety of mechanisms to stop being sad and get their mood back to a normal level. In depression, the patient appears to fight very hard to prevent mood getting back to a normal level. They stay in a dark room and avoid their friends. They even deliberately listen to sad music!
Self-reinforcing “depression shards” are obviously a mechanism through which depressive states can be maintained. But then the question becomes why are some people more vulnerable to this kind of depression homeostasis than others?
There’s certainly a genetic component, but given how polygenic depression risk is (>30k variants involved) the mechanisms are likely multi-causal.
I keep finding examples of decision making that can be explained by shard theory. In particular, here’s an example I read in ACX today about how depressed people make decisions that keep them depressed, which sounds an awful lot like “shards guiding behavior in ways that tend to lead to their own future self-reinforcement”:
Scott’s preferred explanation is one of a kind of “mood setpoint” which the depressed individual’s actions are trying to reach:
Self-reinforcing “depression shards” are obviously a mechanism through which depressive states can be maintained. But then the question becomes why are some people more vulnerable to this kind of depression homeostasis than others?
There’s certainly a genetic component, but given how polygenic depression risk is (>30k variants involved) the mechanisms are likely multi-causal.