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8751 Posts
A common suggestion made to a depressed person is to postpone major decisions until the worst of it has passed because the ability to reason is compromised. The suggestion is very clear in its intent but very vague in its reasoning. The vagueness is based in the lack of an objective reference. What is an acceptable level of ability to reason? And how much worse are things than normal, how much better can they get, and how much effort and how long will it take to get better? Depending on the answers to these questions, the suggestion to postpone can be absolute nonsense.
Relativity isn't very helpful here. If one of the greatest thinkers is depressed and her ability to reason has been lowered to the level of an above average thinker, should her authority over herself be forcefully removed by her society?
Depending on the ability to forecast how soon, how easily and how much better a depressed person will get, declining abilities could be the best reason to hasten a decision, not postpone it. That is, if the forecast for a rise in ability is not good, it is best to make decisions as soon as possible.
What special rights does a person have over himself? Assuming that a decision involves no subjective evidence unique to the person it concerns, everyone has an equal opportunity to make the correct decision. The people with the best ability to reason ought to make the decision. But even people with equal abilities may make opposite decisions. And how do we know who is in the best position to make the decision? The person with the best ability to reason may be outperformed by the person with more knowledge and experience. Decisions concerning people avoid these difficulties when people are allowed to be their own masters. People accept the responsibility of making their own decisions. But there are exceptions made in the name of paternalism (and others that don't concern this blog). So when is a compromised ability to reason sufficient enough to make an exception? To take a person's right to govern himself away?
We know of many things that compromise the ability to reason. Lack of rest, lack of nutrition, lack of exercise, improper diet, stress, drugs (even just caffeine)... These are obvious ones, but then you've got phenomena like girls doing worse on math tests when reminded that they're girls and African Americans doing worse on standardized tests when asked to fill in a bubble indicating that they're African Americans. Do depressed people reason worse when reminded that they're depressed? That's not the point, just a side thought. The point is that our abilities to reason are fluctuating depending on more variables than we realize and many negative effects can coincide to severely compromise the ability to reason. This could happen without anyone noticing because the variables are commonplace and acceptable. Depression is apparently an unacceptable variable.
We can imagine that humans are stupid. We normally think of intelligence relative to humans. But we can imagine an intellect much better than the average or even the best human intellect. When doing so, we must think of the intellect tackling problems beyond human capability. Decisions that we can't consistently get right, but must be made, require us to settle. We can imagine that a greater intellect could put forth more effort and ability and make the decision properly. Lacking that, we do what we can and give up when the time is right, settling on whatever we ended up at. An unimportant decision can be made quickly by a person of poor ability. An important decision can take years or even decades of collective effort of the best minds in society. For every decision, there must exist some objective standards of effort and ability that we are so far unable or unwilling to define.
It is troublesome that a person can make the suggestion that a depressed person's ability to reason has diminished and that that can take away the depressed person's self-authority. Where are the measurements? Where are the arguments, supported by facts and evidence, about the level of ability and amount of effort that a decision requires? How can a line of thinking so thinly logical and so fucking irrational be used to take away someone else's logic and rationality?
As if a depressed person's self-esteem issues aren't severe enough, the healthy people, the professionals trained to fix, fling accusations of incompetence that are complete fucking guesses. No they're not so insensitive and rude that they say "you are incompetent!" but that is the bottom line. I think it's a bullshit power grab made by a person who wants to go with a different decision and is too lazy or too god damned stupid to justify and defend it properly.
I would like to know psychology's best attempts at measuring a person's ability to reason. When someone tells me my ability is compromised, I'd like to know who is going to make the decision instead of me. And then we can take some tests and see who is really better qualified, a compromised me or a regular them. I'd like to know how much effort they'll put into their decision. There's no way it'll match mine. I'd like to know their arguments why my subjective experience is not valuable enough evidence to weigh in on the decision. I can't imagine a definitive one.
 
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I don't know if there is any good measurement of a person's ability to reason in psychology. It's usually just based off of arguing facts and logical connections, in the theme of cognitive behaviourism. I think the concept of reasoning should be thought of as a medium, allowing one to make a conclusion from a beginning point. Thus the measurement or critique of reason should be based on the fluidity and conductivity of ideas to their fruition. I'm not really far in psychology so I'm probably way off though.
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Due to the way we all have our own lives to live, and see things our own way... I really think I agree with you in distaste about the vague guidelines for ability to reason for one's self.
Who's to say Doc knows better than you, anyway?
I don't agree with advice to postpone major decisions because of the "lack of competence"..
Why don't we all just put our lives on hold until it's the way we want it.. wait...don't we have to make changes now to get there?
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5003 Posts
What I'm about to say may not apply to depression, but it's something that I realized over the last few months over being emotional and decision making.
I would like to know psychology's best attempts at measuring a person's ability to reason. When someone tells me my ability is compromised, I'd like to know who is going to make the decision instead of me. And then we can take some tests and see who is really better qualified, a compromised me or a regular them. I'd like to know how much effort they'll put into their decision. There's no way it'll match mine. I'd like to know their arguments why my subjective experience is not valuable enough evidence to weigh in on the decision. I can't imagine a definitive one.
Not going to talk about "psychology", but for me, I think the biggest way to judge this is hindsight. Generally whenever I got emotional, I got advice from other people, but I ended up doing my own thing anyway. You look back, and you see the decision you made versus the decision you could have made... nearly every time the decision I made while emotional ended up being quite the destructive, stupid one. Being too involved in the situation, or "caring too much", etc etc... all usually ended up blinding me, and nowadays I really just try and have some trust in close friends whenever I get into situations similar.
Of course, you'll never have a perfect control for it (ie: you never know for certain if advice given to you by other people was actually better than yours), but I don't think it takes much reason to gauge between whichever ones work out and whichever ones do not. Being emotional is a fringe extreme case though I think, since it makes you completely myopic.
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There is no absolute scale to measure someone's ability to reason. But relative scales are possible, especially comparing the same person to themselves. When depressed, person is more likely to be make illogical decisions or view the world in a negative light than that same person would if not depressed.
Of course depression doesn't effect all decisions and depressed people aren't more incompetent that others. Just look to history and some of the greatest decision makers of all time struggled with depression (Lincoln, Churchill, etc.).
But when it comes to large decisions knowing that there is a chemical imbalance in your brain has to at least bring in some doubt about whether or not you would make the same choice if you weren't depressed and all other things equal. This doubt shouldn't be so strong that it paralyzes you or that it justifies someone else making decisions for you, but it should exist and encourage you to hold a higher standard of scrutiny for decisions that have irreversible consequences.
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On July 02 2012 04:08 Liquid`NonY wrote:
SNIP
I would like to know psychology's best attempts at measuring a person's ability to reason. When someone tells me my ability is compromised, I'd like to know who is going to make the decision instead of me. And then we can take some tests and see who is really better qualified, a compromised me or a regular them. I'd like to know how much effort they'll put into their decision. There's no way it'll match mine. I'd like to know their arguments why my subjective experience is not valuable enough evidence to weigh in on the decision. I can't imagine a definitive one.
I think it all comes down to your final statement here. I don't think the person of interest would be able to ever truly see their own ability to reason in a logical manner. You need those outside parties. The outside parties will always have less than ideal information, though. It's a situation psychologists are forced to make the best of, I think. As for them not caring as much as you, I don't know the answer to who cares more. I think dismissing their efforts compared to yours may not give them enough credit, but I fully understand why you would feel that way.
Edit: And Milkis brings up a very good point about being too invested in solely your point of view as opposed to having an "unbiased" (does such a thing truly exist?) outsider's view of the situation. I'm not entirely sure of the relevance here, though.
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Indeed Cake,
It's important to do it by case by case and even then.. people do change.
I treat those as excuses now. Nothing more; nothing less. Then again, I'm more intune with myself more than I was before.
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I don't think there's much useful to say on this level of generality. Sometimes it's right to let others influence your decisions even if you don't agree with their reasoning 100% and sometimes it's not. It really depends on the specifics of the situation. You just need to talk to people you're comfortable sharing these important details with.
But in general there's probably nothing wrong with listening to what others have to say, whether you end up using their advice or not.
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I think its unreasonable to try and make comparisons between one persons emotional well-being and anothers. It would be silly to say that things like that were based on FACTs. The truth is that when something is considered a fact there is still a chance it is not a fact, just a stubborn unfact.
I think that "a person who is depressed has a limited ability to make proper decisions that they could reasonably make when not depressed" is generally a true statement. I don't think that means depressed people should not be allowed to make their own descisions but they certainly should be careful making important decisions about important things.
"Lack of rest, lack of nutrition, lack of exercise, improper diet, stress, drugs (even just caffeine)" All contribute to depression, maybe thats why they have a negative affect on decision making? Even drug addicts in outpatient treatment (like me the last 4 months) are allowed to make their own decisions but are warned that they should postpone important decision making until later (like quitting your job or your marriage). Its reasonable advice (< Lulz)
Our brains are far from being a science, and reasonable advice for one person might not be reasonable to another depending on the situation. I hope if someone is taking away someones right to make decisions it is to protect said person, and not stroke someones ego, but that shit happens as well.
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On July 02 2012 04:08 Liquid`NonY wrote:
As if a depressed person's self-esteem issues aren't severe enough, the healthy people, the professionals trained to fix, fling accusations of incompetence that are complete fucking guesses. No they're not so insensitive and rude that they say "you are incompetent!" but that is the bottom line. I think it's a bullshit power grab made by a person who wants to go with a different decision and is too lazy or too god damned stupid to justify and defend it properly.
As a former depressed person, this is what irritated me the most about treatment.
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On July 02 2012 05:46 ranjutan wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 04:08 Liquid`NonY wrote:
As if a depressed person's self-esteem issues aren't severe enough, the healthy people, the professionals trained to fix, fling accusations of incompetence that are complete fucking guesses. No they're not so insensitive and rude that they say "you are incompetent!" but that is the bottom line. I think it's a bullshit power grab made by a person who wants to go with a different decision and is too lazy or too god damned stupid to justify and defend it properly.
As a former depressed person, this is what irritated me the most about treatment.
I'll speak for myself when I say I've never ever let that happen in any treatment I did. ._.
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Well I don't know how the psychologist phrased it, but at the very least there is a kernel of good advice in there:
"If you can afford to postpone a decision in order to maximize your own potential, then you should."
This advice is not specific to depression either. It could easily be applied to any number of situations where we know that we are compromised.
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The way you view one's "ability to reason" is way too black and white.
Depressed people are vulnerable in so many fucking ways.
Issue ain't the ability to reason properly (that has no meaning), but rather the lack of perspective over situations, because of your condition.
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When it comes to mental health the first thing I learned is that you should never generalize ever.
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Information by itself is warped and as biased as the decisions made that created said information; so when I've received advice from people regarding my life I find that their advice is often missing the mark. It's isn't even necessarily that they don't have enough information, and sometimes an overabundance of information can be just as problematic as knowing nothing at all, it's that their information has been biased to account for depressed person. What I am trying to say is that someone takes in to account the person's poor state, the advice that they would give to a normal person is discounted and instead they advice for marginal improvements. I can only speak for my personal experience, and I have never seen a professional, but the less than optimistic advice ends up making me feel more depressed. An example of this would be that when I was out of work, many people advised me to lower my career expectations/or that I should settle for something halfway to what I wanted to reach (despite me being a straight A student all through school). That advice was based off of the information that I gave them for at the time my confidence was low and while I secretly held (or hoped) that my capabilities were higher nothing was more devastating to be nonchalantly advised to settle for what I had.
I hope that made sense; and in summary I'm mirroring what Nony is saying.
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Well the bottom line is that, going to a psychologist due to mental reasons is a catch-22. If you are mentally capable of recognizing that you are mentally unhealthy, than do you really need support? Not to mention the acceptance that going to a psychologist means that you agree that someone can tell you what to do without knowing what's going through your head, i.e., someone is "smarter" than you.
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really interesting post. i am a grad student in a social science field, and i'm often struck by how much psychologists etc. focus on 'reason' as an objective process with no emotional inputs. obviously if you are in a particularly bad place, you're going to make different decisions than you would if you were feeling totally healthy -- but i'm persuaded by the evidence that emotion is *always* a key input into reason (e.g., the 'somatic marker hypothesis' advanced by damasio among others). essentially, i would say that your mind is not constituted by a unitary process; your decisions are always multiple i.e. influenced by diverse factors, and drawing a line for when you become 'reasonable' is mostly just baggage of the enlightenment (the rational man as the basis for judgment).
[edit: btw you are the best writer i've seen among starcraft players and clearly a really smart dude, if you ever decide to stop progaming (please dont!) i hope you'd consider going into academia]
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intrigue
Washington, D.C9935 Posts
seems impossible sometimes even for totally healthy people. it's really difficult to identify the forces in your own mind that shape a decision... they're kinda like anonymous campaign donors. let's campaign against superpacs to keep mental elections honest!
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This is super nerdy but the discussion reminds me from the plot of Ultima VII: The Serpent Isle. The plot involves a land called New Sosaria which is essentially ruled over by three giant serpent/gods who represent three principles; Order, Chaos, and Balance. In a time long before the followers of Order defeated the followers of Chaos, and the Chaos serpent was destroyed - leaving Order to rule - only without the counter-balance of Chaos it became a mindless being flaoting the ether.
Just to put it into context the principles of Order in the game were Logic, Discipline, and Ethicalty (sounds to me a lot like everything we focus on in modern society) and the principles of Chaos were Emotion, Tolerance, and Enthusiasm. Balance was the combination of the two being Rationality, Dedication, and Harmony.
It only really now dawns on me the relevance of that story to modern society. We put *so* much emphasis on the world of logic, reason, stability - all those things which differentiate us from other animals. But it's left our society unbalanced... we don't celebrate or nourish the other aspects of ourselves; our feelings, our impulses, our instincts, and our bodies.
I find a lot of classical psychology an attempt to place an inherently chaotic aspects of human nature into an ordered and rigid model. And not just psychology, it's everywhere. How often do you hear a person (or yourself) refer to your body objectively; "my hand", "my head", "my foot". It's not just your foot or your head, it's you. Human beings are all of it - a mind, a body, feelings. Yet somehow we've been conditioned to buy into this absurd context that we are a disembodied brain.
(As a side note; I trained as a professional actor and some of the stuff I came into contact with was pretty powerful in terms of addressing this. Especially voice work. If anyone's interested check out the work of Kristin Linklater or if you live in New Zealand there's an amazing voice teacher Sylvia Rands who lives in Auckland and engages with this a lot in her work.)
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