I have depressive tendencies and have noticed having pessimistic ideas about the universe has nothing to do with evidence. Fatalism and compatibilism are both different, I’d say emotional, interpretations of the same evidence, so does picking either one really have anything to do with arguments?
It’s better to pick interpretations that make you happier, if you don’t have evidence either way. If you want to be emotionally neutral, don’t pick any interpretation. You don’t need fatalism or compatibilism for anything, they’re really not beliefs that do any useful ontological work.
I’m not alone then, what a relief. I can’t seem to suck any long lasting joy out of the universe presently. The best I can do is keep myself away from depressive thoughts. How do you combat those tendencies? They always seem to get the better of me.
If you’re generally tired, you should see a doctor so that common physical causes can be ruled out.
No matter what, I try to get quality sleep. If I’m sleep deprived, I’m absolutely useless. This is easily the number one thing far above others.
The other lowest hanging fruit for me roughly in order are: avoiding alcohol and recreational drugs, work and other kinds of mental exercise, social interaction, SSRIs, basic breath meditation, physical exercise, eating healthy, some caffeine and low dose nicotine. Improving your life situation in various mundane ways should work too, like gjm pointed out.
I try to avoid free thinking and interaction when I’m tired, which is usually in the evening. That’s when I’m the most vulnerable to being moody and confrontational and making the kinds of mistakes that haunt me afterwards, or getting racing thoughts on stupid shit that doesn’t really matter. I probably have other useful habits I’m not even aware of that I’ve developed over the years.
I recommend you study and experiment with yourself and try to make a habit of the things that work and ditch the stuff that doesn’t. Reaping the rewards can take some time, so try to be patient. You can’t improve everything at once, but every good decision makes the next good decision easier.
If you’re generally tired, you should see a doctor so that common physical causes can be ruled out. No matter what, I try to get quality sleep. If I’m sleep deprived, I’m absolutely useless. This is easily the number one thing far above others.
A few years ago, I used to be tired most of the day. Then I fixed a few things and the problem seems gone. Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly which of these things contributed to the outcome (maybe it was something else).
First thing was to get enough sleep. So I started a habit that when I go to sleep, I set my alarm clock to T + 8 hours. Then I tried going to sleep at 23:00 (but if despite my plans I go to sleep later, I still set my alarm clock to T+8). Second was regular exercise: at least 20 push-up each day. Third was having enough light during the day: I turn on all the lights at work. Fourth was going outside for a few hours walk every week. Fifth was getting iron suplements (by blood tests I was at the bottom of the healthy range, but I had some of the anemia symptoms listed in Wikipedia, so I decided to get in the middle of the range).
As a result, instead of feeling tired during most of the day, I feel okay. Which allows me to do things I was previously too tired to do.
The chemistry of the body has a huge influence on the mind. Minds are made of atoms, not of magic. Sometimes a simple hack (such as taking a 20-min nap if you are too tired, unless it is late evening) provides better results than trying to use willpower. Yet for some reason, many people (including me) are prone to think about the “mental” solutions only.
EDIT: It is bad for sleep to exercise before going to bed. So an important step in building the exercise habit was to exercise right after I get home from work. Otherwise other stuff starts interfering.
I bet all of those things you mentioned helped, and perhaps none of them would have been enough alone.
It’s also worth mentioning sleep needs can vary a lot. I need 9-10 hours to feel refreshed. Some people do fine with 5-6 hours. If you have sleep debt, you might need several longer nights to recover.
You might also be able to try siestas. It depends on your school/work conditions, and quite possibly your biology, but I’ve found that taking half an hour out just after lunch helps me a lot.
Generally I sleep about 7.5 hours if I take siestas, 8.5 otherwise, so I’m actually getting net positive waking time out of this in addition to generally being smarter for more of the day.
I think this question is basically equivalent to “How do you combat depression?”. I have heard good things about cognitive therapy, and ambiguous things about SSRIs. There’s a book called “Feeling Good” that’s alleged (by at least one person on LW) to capture enough of the techniques of cognitive therapy that using it is a pretty good approximation to doing actual cognitive therapy. (And of course much cheaper. But also easier to stop doing without anyone noticing.)
I guess the other thing I’d advise is to look mundanely for areas of your life that could be improved, and see if there’s low-hanging fruit to pick. I believe some people report large improvements in affective state after improving their sleeping or getting a lot more exercise, for instance. Or if you’re in a boring ill-paid low-status job or a relationship where you don’t really get on with one another, maybe there are things you can do to improve (or replace) those. Someone else linked to the “Existential Angst Factory” article, which I think is correct in suggesting that many cases of general the-universe-is-useless wretchedness are really the product of “ordinary” unhappiness that might be fixable. Of course all this is easier said than done, especially if you’re already depressed.
Thanks really helpful post. I’ve never had a close physical partner relationship and I’m not sure the kind of damage that has done to my affective state. I suspect an awful lot. But it has become the norm for me and find it extremely difficult to even relate to someone who is not in that situation. I’ve also developed a strong distaste(hatred) for normative behaviour w.r.t settling down and having kids even having a partner. I’m in a situation where it comes across as a personality death sentence. Also I struggle with the having of kids idea. So there’s a lot there that I don’t even no where to begin unravelling the problem especially since the problem has become a part of who I am.
As for the exercise front for example, I’d say I’m in the 90th+ percentile of my local society or even the world I’ve no data on the amount of people with 6 packs(me: 85kg 1.85meters body fat level where I can see my abs) but most men my age (30.5 rotations of the sun) have double chins. This does not seem to translate well w.r.t attracting females I find attractive. Maybe I don’t get out enough? My housemate tells me that the physical attractiveness of a man can be distorted when they open their mouth. I’m pretty sure my conversational behaviour and body language are rank with inadequacy, maybe even, juvenile.
The job situation is a crisis zone. I’m a software engineer, quelle suprise but I’ve never really embraced it, while I’m a good coder and have great grades and some decent experience, I’ve wasted a lot of opportunity in the world of s/w dev. My guess is the powerful, “call the shots” kind of people in the industry are usually people I don’t like, I find the developer, manager personality split nauseating (or maybe I’m imagining that split). On meta level I think my analytical skills could be put to better use somewhere else (MSc in CompSci, Machine Learning/CogSci). Pay isn’t so bad but definitely not good enough for me to have the lifestyle of my contemporaries in Dublin.
I’ve also developed a strong distaste(hatred) for normative behaviour w.r.t settling down and having kids even having a partner.
Not wanting them is ok too, you know.
My housemate tells me that the physical attractiveness of a man can be distorted when they open their mouth.
Most of male attractiveness today is determined by signals of intelligence, wealth and social power. It doesn’t matter if you look like Brad Pitt if your social skills suck. Don’t commit the typical mind fallacy when thinking about attraction. Women don’t think like you do.
No and probably not. Don’t get me wrong, there are also important similarities between men and women. Social skills are complex, and I recommend you improve them more generally if you really care about becoming better with women. This will get you actual social power, and help with getting a better job. You could also gain allies that can help you with women both directly and by teaching you by example.
Here’s a resource on social skills that might help you get started.
Improving your life in other ways will make it more interesting to other people.
Hi, just wanted to chime in with a recommendation for dealing with times of feeling depressed: try moodscope.com. It’s a site that offers a very short survey / game that you can take / play to register your current mood.
You can use it daily, or just log in whenever you’re feeling especially up or down. I think I usually come off as a pretty happy person, but sometimes I get depressed too. I found it to be surprisingly helpful to acknowledge and express those feelings. Tracking these moods on moodscope helps me to see that how I feel is very much related to temporary circumstances and is subject to change.
Another feature of the site that I recommend is sharing your scores with a trusted friend. My best friend and I do this, so we each get an email when the other registers a score. One of the ways that this is useful is that it lowers the barriers to reaching out for help. If I’m feeling down, I don’t have to track someone down and launch into a big explanation. I can just fill out a moodscope, which I find useful on its own, and then if my friend sees it he might also ask me how I’m doing, which makes me feel better too.
I actually use Moodscope, probably because you mentioned it before? Unfortunately my average score since I started using it is 30%, there are large gaps for the summer time and my mood was better when I started using it first but not great. See my Moodscope Graph for a pic that’s worth a 1000 words. I don’t think moodscope is appropriate for me tbh. I need to avail of a stronger mental health treatment I think. :(
Oh, did I? I’m sorry to hear that it hasn’t turned out to be helpful. It sounds like you are serious about getting the help you need though. Identifying the problem is obviously one of the most important steps to the solution. :) Good luck, friend!
I have depressive tendencies and have noticed having pessimistic ideas about the universe has nothing to do with evidence. Fatalism and compatibilism are both different, I’d say emotional, interpretations of the same evidence, so does picking either one really have anything to do with arguments?
It’s better to pick interpretations that make you happier, if you don’t have evidence either way. If you want to be emotionally neutral, don’t pick any interpretation. You don’t need fatalism or compatibilism for anything, they’re really not beliefs that do any useful ontological work.
I’m not alone then, what a relief. I can’t seem to suck any long lasting joy out of the universe presently. The best I can do is keep myself away from depressive thoughts. How do you combat those tendencies? They always seem to get the better of me.
If you’re generally tired, you should see a doctor so that common physical causes can be ruled out.
No matter what, I try to get quality sleep. If I’m sleep deprived, I’m absolutely useless. This is easily the number one thing far above others.
The other lowest hanging fruit for me roughly in order are: avoiding alcohol and recreational drugs, work and other kinds of mental exercise, social interaction, SSRIs, basic breath meditation, physical exercise, eating healthy, some caffeine and low dose nicotine. Improving your life situation in various mundane ways should work too, like gjm pointed out.
I try to avoid free thinking and interaction when I’m tired, which is usually in the evening. That’s when I’m the most vulnerable to being moody and confrontational and making the kinds of mistakes that haunt me afterwards, or getting racing thoughts on stupid shit that doesn’t really matter. I probably have other useful habits I’m not even aware of that I’ve developed over the years.
I recommend you study and experiment with yourself and try to make a habit of the things that work and ditch the stuff that doesn’t. Reaping the rewards can take some time, so try to be patient. You can’t improve everything at once, but every good decision makes the next good decision easier.
A few years ago, I used to be tired most of the day. Then I fixed a few things and the problem seems gone. Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly which of these things contributed to the outcome (maybe it was something else).
First thing was to get enough sleep. So I started a habit that when I go to sleep, I set my alarm clock to T + 8 hours. Then I tried going to sleep at 23:00 (but if despite my plans I go to sleep later, I still set my alarm clock to T+8). Second was regular exercise: at least 20 push-up each day. Third was having enough light during the day: I turn on all the lights at work. Fourth was going outside for a few hours walk every week. Fifth was getting iron suplements (by blood tests I was at the bottom of the healthy range, but I had some of the anemia symptoms listed in Wikipedia, so I decided to get in the middle of the range).
As a result, instead of feeling tired during most of the day, I feel okay. Which allows me to do things I was previously too tired to do.
The chemistry of the body has a huge influence on the mind. Minds are made of atoms, not of magic. Sometimes a simple hack (such as taking a 20-min nap if you are too tired, unless it is late evening) provides better results than trying to use willpower. Yet for some reason, many people (including me) are prone to think about the “mental” solutions only.
EDIT: It is bad for sleep to exercise before going to bed. So an important step in building the exercise habit was to exercise right after I get home from work. Otherwise other stuff starts interfering.
I bet all of those things you mentioned helped, and perhaps none of them would have been enough alone.
It’s also worth mentioning sleep needs can vary a lot. I need 9-10 hours to feel refreshed. Some people do fine with 5-6 hours. If you have sleep debt, you might need several longer nights to recover.
You might also be able to try siestas. It depends on your school/work conditions, and quite possibly your biology, but I’ve found that taking half an hour out just after lunch helps me a lot.
Generally I sleep about 7.5 hours if I take siestas, 8.5 otherwise, so I’m actually getting net positive waking time out of this in addition to generally being smarter for more of the day.
I think this question is basically equivalent to “How do you combat depression?”. I have heard good things about cognitive therapy, and ambiguous things about SSRIs. There’s a book called “Feeling Good” that’s alleged (by at least one person on LW) to capture enough of the techniques of cognitive therapy that using it is a pretty good approximation to doing actual cognitive therapy. (And of course much cheaper. But also easier to stop doing without anyone noticing.)
I guess the other thing I’d advise is to look mundanely for areas of your life that could be improved, and see if there’s low-hanging fruit to pick. I believe some people report large improvements in affective state after improving their sleeping or getting a lot more exercise, for instance. Or if you’re in a boring ill-paid low-status job or a relationship where you don’t really get on with one another, maybe there are things you can do to improve (or replace) those. Someone else linked to the “Existential Angst Factory” article, which I think is correct in suggesting that many cases of general the-universe-is-useless wretchedness are really the product of “ordinary” unhappiness that might be fixable. Of course all this is easier said than done, especially if you’re already depressed.
Thanks really helpful post. I’ve never had a close physical partner relationship and I’m not sure the kind of damage that has done to my affective state. I suspect an awful lot. But it has become the norm for me and find it extremely difficult to even relate to someone who is not in that situation. I’ve also developed a strong distaste(hatred) for normative behaviour w.r.t settling down and having kids even having a partner. I’m in a situation where it comes across as a personality death sentence. Also I struggle with the having of kids idea. So there’s a lot there that I don’t even no where to begin unravelling the problem especially since the problem has become a part of who I am.
As for the exercise front for example, I’d say I’m in the 90th+ percentile of my local society or even the world I’ve no data on the amount of people with 6 packs(me: 85kg 1.85meters body fat level where I can see my abs) but most men my age (30.5 rotations of the sun) have double chins. This does not seem to translate well w.r.t attracting females I find attractive. Maybe I don’t get out enough? My housemate tells me that the physical attractiveness of a man can be distorted when they open their mouth. I’m pretty sure my conversational behaviour and body language are rank with inadequacy, maybe even, juvenile.
The job situation is a crisis zone. I’m a software engineer, quelle suprise but I’ve never really embraced it, while I’m a good coder and have great grades and some decent experience, I’ve wasted a lot of opportunity in the world of s/w dev. My guess is the powerful, “call the shots” kind of people in the industry are usually people I don’t like, I find the developer, manager personality split nauseating (or maybe I’m imagining that split). On meta level I think my analytical skills could be put to better use somewhere else (MSc in CompSci, Machine Learning/CogSci). Pay isn’t so bad but definitely not good enough for me to have the lifestyle of my contemporaries in Dublin.
Think there is a causal link from your observation #1 to your observation #2?
Can’t get the ones I’m interested in so I don’t want them, perhaps? Bit of a catch 22.
Not wanting them is ok too, you know.
Most of male attractiveness today is determined by signals of intelligence, wealth and social power. It doesn’t matter if you look like Brad Pitt if your social skills suck. Don’t commit the typical mind fallacy when thinking about attraction. Women don’t think like you do.
Ya that’s for sure. Does that mean I have to think like them to get with them? Am I even capable of that. Sorry for the off topic post.
No and probably not. Don’t get me wrong, there are also important similarities between men and women. Social skills are complex, and I recommend you improve them more generally if you really care about becoming better with women. This will get you actual social power, and help with getting a better job. You could also gain allies that can help you with women both directly and by teaching you by example.
Here’s a resource on social skills that might help you get started.
Improving your life in other ways will make it more interesting to other people.
Hi, just wanted to chime in with a recommendation for dealing with times of feeling depressed: try moodscope.com. It’s a site that offers a very short survey / game that you can take / play to register your current mood.
You can use it daily, or just log in whenever you’re feeling especially up or down. I think I usually come off as a pretty happy person, but sometimes I get depressed too. I found it to be surprisingly helpful to acknowledge and express those feelings. Tracking these moods on moodscope helps me to see that how I feel is very much related to temporary circumstances and is subject to change.
Another feature of the site that I recommend is sharing your scores with a trusted friend. My best friend and I do this, so we each get an email when the other registers a score. One of the ways that this is useful is that it lowers the barriers to reaching out for help. If I’m feeling down, I don’t have to track someone down and launch into a big explanation. I can just fill out a moodscope, which I find useful on its own, and then if my friend sees it he might also ask me how I’m doing, which makes me feel better too.
I hope that helps!
I actually use Moodscope, probably because you mentioned it before? Unfortunately my average score since I started using it is 30%, there are large gaps for the summer time and my mood was better when I started using it first but not great. See my Moodscope Graph for a pic that’s worth a 1000 words. I don’t think moodscope is appropriate for me tbh. I need to avail of a stronger mental health treatment I think. :(
Oh, did I? I’m sorry to hear that it hasn’t turned out to be helpful. It sounds like you are serious about getting the help you need though. Identifying the problem is obviously one of the most important steps to the solution. :) Good luck, friend!
I should really ring the GP today.
Sounds like a good plan!