Related, I suspect that other people are on average just really bad about picking up internal details about someone. For instance, it’s common for people to have depression for years without their friends noticing; people might even be driven to the point of suicide without anyone else suspecting a thing before that.
I think that in general, any outside demeanor is compatible with a huge range of different subjective experiences. Variations in the internal experience will only be noticed to the extent that it’s reflected in some pretty narrow set of variables that we’re picking up on.
I agree, but I suspect the causal relationship lines up the other way—we are very good at behaving a particular way in response to particular situations, regardless of our subjective experiences.
Related, I suspect that other people are on average just really bad about picking up internal details about someone. For instance, it’s common for people to have depression for years without their friends noticing; people might even be driven to the point of suicide without anyone else suspecting a thing before that.
I think that in general, any outside demeanor is compatible with a huge range of different subjective experiences. Variations in the internal experience will only be noticed to the extent that it’s reflected in some pretty narrow set of variables that we’re picking up on.
I agree, but I suspect the causal relationship lines up the other way—we are very good at behaving a particular way in response to particular situations, regardless of our subjective experiences.
That’s definitely true as well—a lot of the depressed people are putting up an act because that’s what (they feel) is expected of them.