I believe that this is the main reason newcomers are reluctant to post anything here. Right now, I notice that I am reluctant to reply to you because I am uncertain if my acknowledgement and agreement with your comment is ‘LW-worthy’. While the high standard of posts maintain Lesswrong as a well-kept garden, it discourages people from starting stimulating, although not strictly Hollywood-esque ‘rational’, discussions.
glorius_lasagne
Karma: 13
A majority of people openly disagreeing with others are doing so out of pride, not a desire to learn. The exact flavour of pride varies. Some feel that they are righteously doing their duty to defend their opinion and remain true to themselves and/or their tribe, some want to feel like they are doing a favour to humanity by enlightening others, some disagree to humiliate a person with a contradictory opinion because they dislike the person, some disagree to challenge a person’s social status rather than challenging his opinion, some because they take pride in being edgy or non-conformist, some just want to flaunt their opinion and superior knowledge. The fact that people interpret open disagreement as arrogance is quite a reasonable assumption since the probability of a person openly disagreeing with them not out of pride is negligibly low, at least outside the rationalist community. (Even within the rationalist community, it is still relatively unlikely that a person disagree for an opportunity to refine their model of the universe. Even rationalists regularly fall prey to emotions such as pride.)
Blue Spotted Tail by Fleet Foxes
It’s a very philosophical song, not strictly rational or humanist. It’s the first song I thought of:
Why in the night sky are the lights hung?
Why is the earth moving ’round the sun?
Floating in the vacuum with no purpose, not one.
Why in the night sky are the lights hung?Science STYLE Cover—Related
This is such an incredibly well researched and well thought out post, it’s a surprise and a disappointment that there has been no comments even four years later (I had been looking forward to reading the discussion section). I really have to thank you for the effort you put into compiling the data. It had helped me decide what to try first.
Also, all the top 5 rated antidepressants significantly affect either the dopaminergic system or the norepinephrine system or both, while most antidepressants primarily affect the serotonin system. The treatment of atypical depression is known to improve with the supplementation of psychostimulants like modafinil, buproprion and occasionally ritalin to typical antidepressant therapy. These drugs increases the amount of dopamine and norepinephrine (only dopamine in the case of modafinil) in the synapses. So that could just be the shared thread for why certain antidepressants are more effective than others—by not just increasing serotonin.
By the way could you reupload the excel file? I cannot seem to download it but would really like to look through the data in more detail.