(no subject)

[dreamer_easy]

Another rather strange idea from evolutionary psychology: a couple of scientists suggest an evolutionary advantage to depression. That it helps us think analytically, encouraging us to withdraw and obsess when faced with difficult social problems.

My own experience makes it very difficult to accept that it has anything other than a catastrophic effect on thinking. Depressed, I can't focus on anything, I can't remember things, I am unable to make even simple decisions - and I don't care.

Even if the scientists are onto something, the evolutionary advantage would have to be spectacular to balance the immense damage caused by a condition which kills the appetite, the libido, and sometimes the patient. Frankly, if there was such an advantage, I think it'd be blaringly obvious.

I think these guys have got sadness and depression mixed up. Which is rather like confusing a punch in the nose with decapitation.

Comments

[iblis-kukl.livejournal.com]

[mad-fool.livejournal.com]

I am not sure I would completely reject the idea out of hand.
To my (admittedly rather limited) understanding the evolutionary advantage afforded by an adaptation may lead to all sorts of other problems down the line. The example I seem to remember being given was the size of our brains in relationship to the size of the birth canal – making us clever but prone to painful and problematic (if not fatal) childbirth.
Perhaps the unpleasant suffering some of us have to go through with depression is the price we have to pay as a species for being capable of introspective thought.
Cold comfort even if it is true though.

P.S. You know more about Biology than me and I may have got this completely wrong.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I reckon what you're saying is a much more likely explanation - these dudes think there's some direct advantage to depression, not that it's a side-effect of something else that's advantageous. One of those "spandrel" things.

[rainbowjehan.livejournal.com]

I, uh. Huh. Okay. Interesting. When I'm depressed, I can't think analytically because I can't actually look at information anything like objectively. Everything just becomes a reason the world hates me and I deserve to die. I'm not seeing this.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I thought it was an interesting notion. It doesn't necessarily mean that depression as we know it has an advantage, it may be that depression as we know it represents the mechanism gone badly wrong, but the mechanism itself still has an advantage -- I'm thinking here of something like the way auto-immune diseases represent a valuable mechanism gone haywire.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

What you're suggesting is (a) not what they're claiming and (b) a whole heck of a lot more likely IMHO!

[jvowles.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the distinction is between the sort of temporary depression or "blues" that most everyone gets, and the clinical disease that one gets treatment to handle.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Glancing at the links they've included, I think that's exactly the case.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Chris Lawson at the Talking Squid gives us a nice parody of the original article
http://www.talkingsquid.net/archives/915

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

he he he he he >:)