Depressed People See the World More Realistically (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8x9j3k/depressed-people-see-the-world-more-realistically <comment><USER4> > researchers presented both depressed and non-depressed participants with a > button and a green light. They then asked the participants to figure out to > what degree their responses (pushing the button) controlled that light. > Depressed participants were much better at judging the degree of their > control, while participants who weren't depressed tended to assume that they > had more control over the light than they actually did.

so they gave a depressing scenario to people and the depressives were quicker to identify that it was, in fact, a depressing situation.

however, put depressives into a fun party where people are open and accepting and the depressives will often instead focus on a negative, antisocial view that is manufactured by their mood disorder and takes them out of this very welcoming and positive situation.

As a lifelong depressive I've struggled to see reality for what it is and not as what my depression is constantly misrepresenting. I of course also have the experience where I can see an actually depressing situation for what it is more readily than others, but I think the premise of the article is still generally absurd. The world seems like a very hostile and dangerous place to me, and while you can of course find limitless examples of this being completely true, it nonetheless it prevents me from doing things that other people do quite safely and successfully all the time and for which this dark perspective is completely exaggerative and distorting.

<comment><USER5> Or maybe the person is just an introvert or has sensory issues - then a fun party becomes a torture chamber. As me how I know.

<comment><USER6> Neutrally overstimmed and negatively stimmed are different though! If you're just neutrally overstimmed you can find a quiet corner, another room with less noise and fewer people, or hang out on the porch. Negatively stimmed you won't be able to be in or around the place at all. Depression or anxiety is a "general" upset, whereas overstimmed is a "local" upset.

<comment><USER5> That really makes no sense to me. Let me explain. Certain types of places / events are extremely distressing to me because of sensory factors. Now, when I have to attend a conference for work, I have extreme anxiety - the anxiety is caused because of the sensory distress I know I'll be facing. "Local" vs "general" doesn't seem to be a useful distinction for me. I could be misunderstanding you.

<comment><USER6> The anxiety is what I mean by general stress. I'd bet you probably suffer more from the anxiety about the sensory distress more than you do the sensory distress! I had a problem with this as well - the anxiety totally took over, and was much worse. Over time, I managed to keep the distress local to when I was actually feeling overwhelmed, and then could start to work to mitigate the sensory overload, by taking frequent breaks outside, wearing noise cancelling headphones, sunglasses, or finding quiet corners with fewer people.

Its not much of a problem for me anymore, and over time my senses have become a bit more fine tuned and won't be piqued by much more than very loud/unexpected sounds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not so depressed these days (thankfully) but this "realism" does tend to manifest is different ways. I'm very self-conscious about not dragging people down because some thoughts that I think daily that are normal for me, seem to be absolutely psychologically crippling for people who previously hadn't, or didn't want to think such things.

Usually when I do express these thoughts they're in the form of semi-dark humor ("You don't like the boss? Don't worry, you'll only have to deal with him for a couple more years (because you won't quit) and then the company will go under and you'll have to work somewhere else with a similar boss"). The humor is to mostly try to diffuse how harsh these statements can seem to others, and because I find them legitimately morosely funny, but for some reason I tend not to get laughter when I say them... So I try to keep this "depressive realism" to myself most of the time.

I promise I have social skills. That's probably my biggest consistent faux pas. But sometimes I wonder why I can lose friends so fast by just saying things that are true or are very likely to be true. I guess a lot of people don't like to see that clearly? I don't know.

<comment><USER8> I've found a lot of correlation between this sort of sense of humour and the type of place I enjoy working at.

Me and straight laced folk just don't get on. It doesn't work. There's an impedance mismatch whereby there are all of these invisible lines that I cross without even realising.

Like yeah, dude, your job is bullshit. So is mine. Life is, and then you die. If you're not fucking around and having (harmless) fun, what are you doing?

Those sorts of people need to exist - society would fall apart if everyone were so freewheeling - but I definitely seem to self select out of those groups.

<comment><USER9> To paraphrase Alan Watts, don't trust anyone who isn't in on the Great Cosmic Joke :)

<comment><USER10> This isn't a direct response to you, but moreso to this thread. There are some who are in on the joke and have even found quite a bit of humor in it, but no longer find that humor useful. It's like an old joke which was hilarious and insightful at one point but has been told too many times to remain interesting.

I for one tend to envy those who either don't know or don't care. Being cynical seemed cool and somehow "smarter" for some time, and then eventually it can, for some, seem just as naive.

I'd rather look at life earnestly. Yes, it's all fucked and we've no control over it. Society is a fiction, etc. But I'd rather love my wife, do work I enjoy, and not point out the absurdity all day every day to myself and others, because it's just an old stupid joke to which we _all_ happen to be the punchline.

<comment><USER11> I've found that I need the humor more when I'm doing less/less well.

When I'm doing/doing well, I don't need the humor as the crushing weight of of existential dread and absurdity is drowned out by my involvement in life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think it's the case that all depressed people are realists, but that realists in general may be more predisposed to depression or being depressed.

It seems likely some people suffering from depression have real mental illness, and a much much smaller number of people are ultra realists and get depressed over real negative events and facts.

I know there have been times in my life where I have suffered from depression because of my realism. On occasion bad things have happened to me and I've found people will try to comfort me by saying things like, "everything happens for a reason", "it will all work out in the end", etc, but being a realist, I know there often isn't a reason and it won't work out. At best I can only hope that I find it in me to continue through the rest of my life with the regret or loss that I'm experiencing. And even then, even if I make it to the end of my life, what's the point? Our lives and suffering is all pointless in the grand scheme of things.

My cat died this morning. Sorry.

<comment><USER13> I'm really sorry to hear your cat died. From one cat lover to another - it's awful. It doesn't "happen for a reason".

But please do remember all the good times you had, too. Being a realist also means acknowledging how much joy you had together, how much unconditional love you got.

</comment></comment><comment> dawg- Here's an important thing from the article:

>it's most likely to occur in mildly depressed people—those suffering from major depression, by contrast, are more likely to suffer from larger distortions in their thinking.

I wonder if we have overly-pathologized the regular melancholy that comes with every day life? If mildly depressed people actually see the world realistically, maybe nothing is actually wrong with them? Should we call them depressed or should we just call them human?

I think we need to recognize the constant striving for happiness, and the inevitable disappointment when we don't reach it, as the unhealthy behavior that it is. It's okay, normal, even _necessary_ to feel sad and pissed off at the world sometimes. It doesn't automatically mean something is wrong with you.

Of course, it would be absolutely unacceptable for the makers of Prozac to lose half of their customers, so it is a major thoughtcrime in many circles to even suggest the possibility.

If people have "mild depression", maybe sometimes it's okay to tell them to toughen up, put their head down and keep grinding because that's what life consists of. If you are not mildly depressed then you are an idiot - <USER2> shouldn't be called mild depression, it should just be called "existing as a human being". You grind and suffer and struggle through life, because you were born into a broken world and have no other choice. Sometimes all the struggle gets you good things to be proud of and appreciate. And sometimes all the suffering doesn't amount to anything of worth at all. That's life, not a pathology. It's amazingly beautiful if you can learn to come at it from the right angle, but that doesn't mean it will ever hurt any less.

<comment><USER14> "It's okay, normal, even necessary to feel sad and pissed off at the world sometimes. It doesn't automatically mean something is wrong with you."

But this is not what mild depression is like. It is when feeling sad and pissed off at the world is the baseline. It is OK to feel sad, but I kinda wish I felt something else a bit more often.

<comment><USER15> Have you seen what (most of) the world looks like? Feeling sad and pissed off at it is the _correct_ baseline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I used to feel this way, then I discovered meditation and now I am almost always in a positive state of mind. In my experience, it is depressed people who are not seeing realistically, and they are caught in cycles of mental delusion. Happiness achieved in this way is just about truly accepting the "depressing" realities and being okay with it all including your own depressing reactions to the realities, and then not identifying with these mental processes, not letting them define, own or move you as a conscious being. After some practice, a person can cope with life's unending, unexpected, negative surprises by processing the negative event in a single moment and then returning the mind to a calm and positive state. For some reason, in our society, we are not taught that it is possible (and in fact imperative) to observe, guide and ultimately control one own mind and thought stream. This has been practiced in other societies for thousands of years, and even in our own society mindfulness/meditation is steadily becoming a mainstream fixture.

<comment><USER17> Is it fair to acknowledge all of the worlds atrocities and then dismiss them so you can be happy?

<comment><USER18> You don't dismiss things in the world, you dismiss unhelpful patterns of thinking, and cultivate helpful patterns.

<comment><USER17> It can be more helpful to the world around you even if it is less helpful for yourself to not dismiss these patterns of thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My therapist said to me once: "I really like pessimistic patients a lot more than overly optimistic ones. A depressed, pessimistic person is judging the world very accurately and is not crushed by a negative outcome, as they have already thought about exactly that. They might even completely circumvent the negative outcome, because they thought about every possibility beforehand. Optimists on the other hand can be crushed and become very depressed when the positive outcome is not the result they are presented with."

<comment> Funes- >A depressed, pessimistic person is judging the world very accurately.

Absolutely not. I've dealt with a lot of pessimistic, depressed people--I've been clinically depressed, as well, in the past--, and we can be the most closed-minded, whiny, oblivious people out there. I think that's exactly how depression actually works: one is enslaved, kept away from experiencing the world as it is, by their extraordinarily reduced perspective, which is seemingly unescapable to the depressed individual.

I don't think it's reasonable to conflate negativity--which _leads_ to bad outcomes--with a realistic mindset--which takes into account potential bad outcomes. I find the opposite to be true, in my experience: the more positive and proactive a person is, the stronger they can become--and not crushed by a negative turn of events.

<comment><USER20> This is absolutely true in my experience. Going to my therapist I realized that I spent all my time focusing on negative outcomes for a given life problem of mine. So much so that the failure to imagine a more optimistic outcome left me paralyzed to act. This paralysis left me feeling hopeless and depressed. As I talked things over I realized that:

1) We have a perverse tendency to reinforce our existing views in new experiences. For example, if one believes he/she is not a very charming and likable persom, every opportunity to make a new friend may thrown away because the person doesn't have confidence to present themselves in an interesting way or the person may misinterpret another's neutral body language as a negative signal during a conversation.

2) Experience is the best teacher. Experience etches things into our subconscious. If negativity is etched in our brains then it takes a strong conscious effort to over turn it. This can potentially scary because the effort to experience a positive outcome may result is us being beat down further. But we have to see it for what it is, one experience, the next may end differently. Overcoming depression requires concious effort, hope and resiliencey. This is not something that happens overnight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That seems reasonable to me. I've often found optimism in others to be foolish. And for bipolar me, extreme optimism is a sign of hypomania.

But there's a lot more to depression than seeing the world realistically. There's a tendency to feel inadequate, hopeless and disempowered. And there's more to that than seeing oneself and ones capabilities realistically.

One aspect is failing to break out huge problems into manageable pieces.

<comment><USER22> While this is valid view. It is a view. Language can be used to describe reality or to create it.

>That seems reasonable to me. I've often found optimism in others to be foolish.

"Stay hungry, stay foolish",- Steve Job's commencement speech at Stanford.

Sometime foolishness is what make a difference. It is really all about timing and context.

<comment><USER23> My basic understanding is that Steve Jobs was a manipulative, mentally ill child abuser who gets a pass because he made the iPod. Everyone has their own perspective, but I'd rather not be those things than do them and make a difference by manufacturing popular consumer goods. But this is of course not an argument for depression.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This statement is way too sweeping... Some forms of pessimism probably reflect that, I'm an optimistic, not-depressed person who sees things that way - but I know plenty of often-depressed people who fail to see their circumstances clearly, and spiral because as a result of it.

Friend: "I'm such a failure and my future is definitely going to be horrible!"

Me: "So, who's judging you as a failure, why does such judgments even matter, and how exactly do you have no options or influence over your future?"

I've had this dialog plenty, and it has little to do with realism.

<comment><USER21> Right. They may be realistic about their circumstances. But they're not realistic about their ability to transform them.

<comment><USER25> Or they realistically assume that they have average ability but they have above average expectations. Most people will have to face the reality that they will never be special in some way, so if you aren't fine with just being another face among the masses you will be depressed. Or someone they care about just died, their expectations was that they would have this person for most of their life is now broken and nothing they can do can fix this, unless they believe in spirits and ghosts and ouija boards of course.

<comment><USER21> It's my operating hypothesis that people's abilities are generally limited mainly by their ways of being. Except for the few with physical and biochemical disabilities. And with general human limitations.

I mean, we're all familiar with "math anxiety". And the argument that women have generally been conditioned to think that they're bad at math. Or bad at spatial reasoning. Or that men are less empathetic, or better with tools, or whatever.

Consider scientific thinking. Based on my admittedly limited experience with young children, I believe that they're all scientists. For children in the "why phase", when I've actually taken time to help them consider how one might answer their questions, I've consistently been impressed.

Also, it's clearly not so much about having answers. Indeed, focusing too much on answers tends to stifle creativity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > The people most likely to experience depressive realism? Introverts, males, > and people with high IQs

I cringe every time I see Vice on the front page. To be "depressively realistic", I think they care less about scientific accuracy, and more about making their introverted, male, mildly-depressed audience feel smart.

<comment><USER27> I just cringe whenever I see Vice linked anywhere. They've gone from being a great source of raw and "outsider" news to being an edgy rag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I see this as sort of the main riddle (or catch-22 if you're the pessimistic type) of life. The semi-unrealistic hope of optimism is what motivates us to get things done.

For the HN crowd, consider startup founders. The vast majority of startups fail, yet virtually all founders go into it overestimating their chances of success. After all, if they were realistic about their chances, they'd find the whole business too crazy to begin with.

<comment><USER29> Most startup founders are rich, they are just gambling with some money they have. Akin to a salaried worker gambling a small amount of their salary in a night at the casino.

<comment><USER30> Do you have any references for most startup founders being rich? Qualitatively this does not align with my experiences at all with almost any founder of a company I've ever met. Almost all of them risked everything.

<comment><USER29> I didn´t meant Gates or Jobs rich but wealthier than average. For them an startup is just a gamble they can afford to do comfortably.

For example: a couple of months ago I talked to a guy that was trying to decide between founding an startup or going to India to study yoga/meditation for a year (and he was not going to travel on the cheap, believe me). For him failing meant going back to work in his fathers company for a while until he gets motivated to start some other company again (or quit an go to India).

Way above most people possibilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Let's be realistic: there are only humans with subjective narrow view of the world out there. And whoever will tell you that you are more/less realistic than some other category of people are judging you by their own narrow opinion of what is the ultimate-true-real-reality™.

I hope this helped you to feel more depressed.

<comment><USER32> So the flat earthers are just as tuned into reality as the rest of us?

<comment><USER33> I use their model of reality all the time when arranging things in my house. Like Newton's formulae it works well in certain contexts, even though Einstein proved Newton wrong.

<comment><USER34> This is a bad analogy that makes it sound like you're defending flat-earthers.

It's like saying you use Hermeticism's Principle of Rhythm to build a pendulum-powered clock...

And unlike both Flat-Earth theory and Hermetics, Newton was actually demonstrably _right_. Flat-earthers and Hermeticists spin their theories out of whole cloth.

<comment><USER35> The shape of the Earth is just a model [1] - an approximation. All models have margins of error. All models are wrong, some are useful [2]. The map is not the territory [3]. All scientific models are scale variant [4] e.g contextual.

Scientific models are pragmatic at best. Useful for a particular purpose within some domain of applicability

When last did you take the curvature of the Earth into account when arranging your furniture?

Of course, you can always dismiss my perspective as "Just another nihilistic, depressed anti-realist"

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model- dependent_realism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-dependent_realism)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_invariance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_invariance)

<comment><USER25> > When last did you take the curvature of the Earth into account when > arranging your furniture?

I don't do that, but neither do I assume that the entire earth is flat just because my living room is. Saying that all theories are born equal is nonsense, some things are more correct than others.

<comment><USER35> It doesn't matter what we SAY about the shape of the Earth though, does it?

It only matters how we use/apply those theories in practice.

Practical errors have consequences. Theoretical errors don't. It's just lip service without follow-through.

I can SAY that the Earth is triangular and nothing will happen. Q.E.D If you insist that it is in (some way) wrong or incorrect for me to say that the Earth is triangular. Well. The best I can do is to tell you to mind your own business.

I can't remember the last time the Earth's shape mattered to my practical, decision-making process.

<comment><USER31> >I can't remember the last time the Earth's shape mattered to my practical, decision-making process.

Did you use a GPS lately?

[http://www.astronomy.ohio- state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps....](http://www.astronomy.ohio- state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html)

<comment><USER36> I imagine flat earthers use GPS too and rationalise it somehow.

<comment><USER35> No different to "round-earthers" using technology which uses "flat earth" as a simplifying assumption in the design (hello! Google Maps).

Neither party seems to want to acknowledge that the other party's model works just fine within its domain of applicability.

<comment><USER31> >Neither party seems to want to acknowledge that the other party's model works just fine within its domain of applicability.

There are two very different points here.

Yes you can make most of your daily actions with a "flat earth" model. Actually, this is even an overkill model for most daily actions. A first person video game generally don't include such a model, so you can extrapolate that a "sight sized box model" is enough, and that any concept of earth is superfluous.

Then you have the part of you that seek to find a model of the world through concordant items of evidence, be it for practical reasons or simply for the matter of trying to make sense out of them.

You can _use_ a GPS without any specific opinion on physical models. But you won't even send a satellite in space with an attitude stuck into a "my flat earth model is true" belief. That doesn't mean physical models that are used to put satellite on orbits are true, but at least they proved accurate enough to lead to that kind of exploits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Could it be that people who see the world Realistically, get depressed?

<comment><USER38> > Could it be that people who see the world Realistically, get depressed?

This fits my experience quite well.

To give a software development analogy:

The more you learn about deep, esoteric details of various parts of computers (i.e. you get to see computers more realistically than idealized), the more depressed you get about the current state of software development. And yes, late at night, I often work privately on how to improve this situation - but I talk to a brick wall.

<comment><USER39> Could you give an example? What's depressing about the current world of software?

<comment><USER38> > What's depressing about the current world of software?

For example the insanity that it is impossible to understand what actually happens below the surface. The ideal that I have in the back of my mind is that a highly gifted person who can afford to spend a few years of intensive study can really understand each individual line/byte of code that gets executed on the computer (i.e. all of the software that runs on it) completely.

\---

An interesting lecture by Jonathan Blow:

Jonathan Blow - Preventing the Collapse of Civilization

> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW- > SOdj4Kkk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk)

\---

Also read some texts of Alan Kay's STEPS project:

For a well-readable overview, consider [https://blog.regehr.org/archives/663](https://blog.regehr.org/archives/663)

Some progress reports:

> > [http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2007008_steps.pdf](http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2007008_steps.pdf)

> > [http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf](http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf)

Lots of additional papers about STEPS (and other topics): [http://www.vpri.org/writings.php](http://www.vpri.org/writings.php)

(I want to make it clear that I consider what came out of the STEPS project to be very disappointing :-( ).

<comment><USER39> I had this sentiment quit often in the beginning of my career. Now, I simply realize that my lack of understanding crosses every single piece of technology there is. Fridge? No idea. Cars? Well, I can drive it almost as well as I can open a fridge, everything else is magic. How about bicycle? That's easy, right? Well, I challenge you to just now sit down and write a detailed schematic, describing everything that is needed to make a bicycle what it is. Extra points if you can explain why driving on two wheels actually works out.

I know nothing about anything and almost don´t care anymore. The last bit of wanting to understand is bathed the absurdity of it all.

Thanks for the links, sounds interesting.

<comment><USER40> I'll take up the challenge:

Fridge - well, the standard compressor powered refrigeration system is essentially a heat moving system. What we are doing is moving heat from the inside of the system (which is insulated and mostly "isolated" from the outside of the system) to the outside of the system. This is why you can't cool your house by opening your refrigerator's door, because the heat from the inside of the fridge is moved to the "outside" (the room it is in) - eventually, it would reach equilibrium (and the compressor would probably be overheated). So anyhow, how does this work?

Well - basically by compression and expansion.

A working fluid (the refrigerant - usually a gas in the low-pressure state, and a fluid in the high pressure state) is compressed using a compressor. This turns the gas into its fluid state, and also heats up the gas. It is moved (via the compressor) thru coils on the inside (insulated) of the system, where it is allowed to expand.

Note that in this system there is also a series of check valves and such to prevent the fluid and gas from "moving backwards" in the system; there are also stages where the gas and fluid exist at the same time (like a fizzy drink if you could see it).

During this expansion, it absorbs heat and it also gains volume (turns from a fluid back into a gas). It continues to move (with it's heat content) from the insulated side of the system (inside) to the outside of the system, where it goes thru other coils (radiator), usually with a fan or other cooling system blowing over them to remove the excess heat from them, before the gas goes back to the compressor to be compressed and turned into a fluid again - <USER3> begin the cycle anew.

That's the basics of how a refrigerator work. Now - usually, if there's a freezer section, the freezer is where the heat exchange really happens, and cold air from the freezer is periodically circulated from the freezer to the refrigerator portion to keep that side at a cooler temperature.

Air conditioners work the same way - except the "inside" is the house and the outside is...the outdoors. Heat pumps can run in reverse, so to warm your house, heat is moved from the "outside" to the inside of the house, by the very same process (even when it is "freezing" outside - there is still a ton of heat energy available).

This cycle can also be done with heat alone, provided you have a working fluid (refrigerant) which is liquid at the "outside" temperature (under whatever pressure the liquid is at); add a check valve, heat the liquid up, it will expand and turn into a gas, feed it into the insulated part of the system to absorb more heat and then into some outside coils to be cooled down and turned back into a liquid. You can make a fridge where the refrigerant is gasoline (petrol) if you so wanted to. Ammonia is another alternative. LPG can also be used like this, too.

That's basically how a propane or solar powered refrigerator works (I won't go into how dark-sky refrigeration works, suffice to say it is another form of "solar" refrigeration, more of a "backwards" method).

Car? Well - a four-cycle engine is basically this: suck (intake), squeeze (compression), bang (ignition/power), blow (exhaust). Also, for an engine to run, you need fuel, spark, and air - miss any of those (or wrong timing or proportions) things won't work. I won't go into further detail - I really could, I'm sure you can see.

Suffice to say - I could also describe that bicycle very exactly, how it works, how it is steered (the whole "turn in the opposite direction of the lean" thing...), etc.

I've got a ton of this crap shoved into my head; I relish learning new stuff all the time, no matter what it is. Sometimes (most of the time) I don't absorb it all in one shot. But I usually retain enough of it to be able to understand more a second and third time around. Some things I will probably never fully understand (higher math is my bane, though I try - also, I'll probably never understand chemistry or biology on anything more than a superficial level), but that doesn't keep them from my interest.

Why am I like this? Not sure, I've always been a very curious and inquisitive person since I was a child. I've found that having these tidbits and more of knowledge and such socked away has helped me make connections and analogies in other areas, to solve problems - and sometimes raise other questions, which just leads me down another rabbit hole at times.

As you can tell - take me to a library and I could easily get lost for hours. Don't get me started on any of the warrens available on the internet (or the internet itself for that matter)...

<comment><USER39> Just finished the Youtube talk on degrading technology / knowledge. Really liked that perspective, although I disagree with quit a bit of Jonathan Blows points.

About the challenge: I had the feeling, that you and a good chunk of readers here could go explain good deal of it all. But my point goes further: We all hit the wall of understanding sooner or later and all what is truly required is to know how use the technology. And that's exactly the same in information technology. I use databases daily. Do I know how they work? A bit, just enough for work and that is all what is needed. That's why I like to disagree with Jonathan Blow. Some people abstracted a great deal of complexity away, because it's simply irrelevant. As a result, we've seen an explosion in tech, just not in the nieces where he's looking. The modern ecosystem in tech is the normal way of economics, where everyone specializes him or herself further and further, understanding the specific domain better at the cost of everything else. Today, the average Joe can code as a result of all this simplifications. But Jonathan Blow compares the elites of coding, people who build engines, with Joe. That's misunderstanding what has happened, the level of analysis is wrong. Also, people like John Carmack are not gone, they simply work on new problems.

And as you mentioned yourself, there is so much technology surrounding you that you have no idea of how it works, like chemistry. Still, you use it to your benefit because other people who know this stuff simplified its use. And not just for you and me, also for other chemist, like coder for other coders.

Now a bit of a rand, skip it if you like: The school system, including university, killed so much of my curiosity, it's insane. I had to learn so much bullshit that I'm almost glad for one of my least great attributes, my bad memory. Because there was really no point remembering most of it. It's just too bad that I can't control my own garbage collector. Last year, I learned a great deal about machine learning (again, as I did it in college, too) and now can remember almost nothing. Despite really enjoying the course and throwing myself into it. What I don't use, I forget and of course I use only a tiny bit of skills and knowledge at work. I'm not happy with the way it is, but it simply is. I also learned so much about databases and liked that subject, but the only thing I really retain is what I use in my work.

That brings me to my final thought tidbit: My brain obsesses with ideas that you would put more in the category of philosophy. It's what you think about when you have nothing to do or start daydreaming that's probably where your brain is best at. I never asked people in tech what they think about in those moments. I'm really, really curious about the answer.

<comment><USER38> > My brain obsesses with ideas that you would put more in the category of > philosophy. It's what you think about when you have nothing to do or start > daydreaming that's probably where your brain is best at. I never asked > people in tech what they think about in those moments. I'm really, really > curious about the answer.

My experience with these is: I often think that I have some deep mathematical insight. The problem with these insights is that they "partly right" \- they are often based on a good mathematical intuition of mine. But unluckily the mathematical research typically has come a lot farther than my insight - i.e. my insight is actually a really old hat in mathematical research.

So instead of daydreaming about some clever mathematical insight of yours, better cram advanced math textbooks - they will teach you a lot more than what you will ever come up with by daydreaming.

<comment><USER39> For sure. Study the literature of your subject. The point is, what do you think about automatically when you don't focus on a specific task? My expectation is, that people who are great at what they do continue to think and daydream about their work. When I read about philosophy (or related subjects), I'm continuing to think about it for days or weeks. That doesn't happen with tech, although that's my daily business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> see terry pratchett's definition for "knurd": [https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Knurd](https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Knurd)

 _Consider the following scale:

Being drunk is to be intoxicated by alcohol to such an extent as to be unable to perceive the world clearly through the senses.

Being sober is to be able to perceive the world clearly through the senses, yet humans are quite capable of giving themselves illusions and little stories to make life more bearable.

Being knurd is to be (un)intoxicated with Klatchian Coffee to such an extent that all such comfort stories are stripped away from the mind.

This makes you see the world in a way 'nobody ever should', in all its harsh reality.

People generally find being knurd excruciating, as their comfortable illusions are stripped away and all of life's terrors are exposed._

<comment><USER42> I'm pretty sure that what Pratchett calls "knurd" here, Buddists call "enlightenment".

<comment><USER9> The Buddhists certainly wouldn't agree that enlightenment is "excruciating." To the contrary, that's what a mind experiences when it's on the brink of awakening but can't let go of the fundamental illusion of 'self.'

</comment></comment></comment><comment> VvR-Ox Why am I not surprised?

The world is really going down right now and just following news what's going on is reason enough to cry like a baby or lose it completely.

That's one of the main reasons why many people take drugs - it helps to forget what's happening around us and it makes us numb enough to stop feeling the constant pain when we think about the things happening to our brothers and sisters who aren't lucky enough to be born in the right place, to have the right parents or live in the "right" place etc.

Too much information on how the people are screwed every minute may be reason enough to be depressed if you don't shut those thoughts out in the long run.

<comment><USER43> I hate to break it to you, but if the news is affecting your mental health you should realize that that is by design. The world may or may not be in a good state of affairs in an absolute sense, but it is better than it has ever been, and insofar as the news seems worse now than in the past, that has more to do with those in charge of the news media and their incentives and biases than actual changes in the state of the world getting worse.

<comment> VvR-Ox You are absolutely right about the design of the news but despite this very bad things are happening (just the facts).

Let me bring in some of those facts:

1\. "25.9 million refugees globally -- the highest level ever recorded" according to Amnesty International ([https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we- do/refugees-asylum-seeker...](https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/refugees- asylum-seekers-and-migrants/global-refugee-crisis-statistics-and-facts/))

2\. "Global emissions increased from 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 1900 to over 36 billion tonnes 115 years later" ([https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas- emis...](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions))

3\. "Plastic in the oceans" ([https://ourworldindata.org/where-does-plastic- accumulate](https://ourworldindata.org/where-does-plastic-accumulate))

4\. "52.4 percent decline in sperm concentration and a 59.3 percent decline in total sperm counts from 1973 to 2011 for men in the West" ([https://www.researchgate.net/blog/post/sperm-counts-in- the-w...](https://www.researchgate.net/blog/post/sperm-counts-in-the-western- world-have-declined-nearly-60-percent-since-the-1970s))

Ok I will stop it right here but of course there are many more tendencies that would speak against a too optimistic view on the world at the moment in my opinion.

Of course there is enough media, drugs and be-happy-every-day-mantras etc. to disturb your thoughts and allow to ignore all this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This reminds me of this amazing TED Talk:

Do we see reality as it is? (Donald Hoffman, cognitive scientist) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYp5XuGYqqY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYp5XuGYqqY)

The intellectual bomb in the video is this:

Organisms that perceive only "fitness" drive to extinction all organisms that perceive reality as it is. (in model systems simulating environments and creatures navigating them)

My take: at every level, it would seem, perceiving true reality is not favoured. Nevermind cognitive biases, that's just one level. Literally the fabric of the universe: spacetime, matter, language, etc. It means nothing that it might feel comfortable or intuitive -- we should question it all.

<comment><USER45> And Jordan Peterson turned this on its head by pretending that what is fitting is the truth :)

<comment><USER44> ah interesting. thanks! I hear a ton about him (he lives in my city), but i didn't realize that the above was one of the cruxes of his philosophy...!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Take a moment and consider this quote by the late Amos Tversky about his view on pessimism:

"When you are a pessimist and the bad thing happens, you live it twice,' Amos liked to say. 'Once when you worry about it, and the second time when it happens."

This is a rational explanation for why anyone ought not succumb to pessimism.

<comment><USER47> This is not black and white. Often we are optimist and we ignore the suffering of the ones closest to us because we simply don't believe they are suffering.

<comment> Funes- That doesn't have anything to do with being optimistic, as far as I can tell. Dismissing others' suffering is caused by a lack of empathy or by selfishness --the two go hand in hand. It can certainly _seem_ to a depressed person that an optimistic one is oblivious to their suffering, but it is not always the case. I think the best you can do with negative people is make it absolutely clear that you acknowledge their pain while getting them to progressively come out of it.

<comment><USER48> If another person's internal mental state isn't visible, so we have to work it out from things that are visible, there might be a wide range of possible guesses and so being optimistic or pessimistic might produce very different results.

Has my friend Joe stopped coming out with us because he's busy with a great new girlfriend he just hasn't told us about yet - or because depression means he can barely get out of bed in the morning let alone leave the house?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> > _In fact, "some psychologists concede that an element of self-deception may > be necessary for well-being," Feltham says._

I think about this every day, I thought it was an established fact for some reason. Perhaps I thought it was established since I know the saying " _ignorance is bliss_ "

<comment><USER49> I'm not sure if self-deception is the correct word. People cannot fit much in their heads. There is too much good and too much evil in the world for a single person to truly percieve. I don't think it's self deception if one tries to focus on good things. It becomes self deception if a person thinks the world is completely good because all they see are good things, though.

<comment><USER50> Self deception seems reasonable.

Most drivers rate themselves as above average, when in reality only about half are.

I'm sure most people view themselves as nice, reasonable people. The presence of idiots should indicate they aren't all correct.

I know that I'm an attractive guy, who makes extremely well reasoned arguments on the internet, unfortunately it's everyone else that isn't enlightened enough to appreciate my true genius.

I suppose you could file it under cognitive dissonance, self deception seems reasonable too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51>
      Illusion in the spirit is as nothing,
      behold a world that runs on illusions!

      Their war and peace are made upon illusion,
      their glory and their shame are from illusion.

\- Rumi [1]

[1] [https://bit.ly/31jwRUb](https://bit.ly/31jwRUb)

<comment> dawg- Just beautiful. We have our Baudrillard and The Matrix and think we are so different, modern, cutting edge, living in a 21st century hyperreality. Rumi saw it 800 years ago!

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> How do you guys think this relates to Cognitive Therapy? What I mean is:

My father was a therapist and a big advocate of the idea that people can be happy regardless of their circumstances and that emotion comes primarily from what someone thinks. There's a lot of truth in that, and it seems clear that Cognitive Therapy is an important treatment for depression.

However, he sometimes seemed to de-emphasize the importance of circumstances. For example, he was opposed to the idea that moving to a different part of the country could make someone happier. However, doesn't that ignore that fact that different places have different rates of depression and suicide?

<comment><USER53> I read that moving to somewhere sunny like Southern California was several times more effective for depression than SSRIs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> People may think I'm depressed, but I'm the polar opposite.

I'm always discussing what it means to be depressed, only in an effort to find what is the will to live. I find it interesting.

"When driving on the interstate, each driver has the power, with the flick of a wrist, to end it all. But they don't. Why not? What prevents people from flicking? What's worth living for?"

My wife wants me to stop talking like that, because she fears I will be vacaracted.

I feel like you can always get a better perspective on things by swimming in the deep end. It's always good to stir your inner stew.

<comment><USER55> There's a comic somewhere depicting the two views of nihilism.

One frame is all dreary and dark with the caption "Nothing really matters" over a sad character. The other is happy and upbeat with flowers and rainbows over the same, much happier character with the same caption.

It sounds like you lean more toward the latter and choose to make your own meaning rather than embrace one of the common sources of meaning.

That's how I try to see the world. I don't understand how people find meaning in traditional sources like religion, family, or work, so I set out to find my own. Nonjudgmentally, of course. I respect the classics even if I favor avant- garde purposecraft.

<comment><USER54> I'd love it if you could find that comic!

<comment><USER55> I can't find it, but xkcd also had a take on it.

[https://xkcd.com/167/](https://xkcd.com/167/)

<comment><USER36> There are a few like that on the web eg

[https://66.media.tumblr.com/f2cfd1111f36dc195ab9e6aefc239faa...](https://66.media.tumblr.com/f2cfd1111f36dc195ab9e6aefc239faa/tumblr_p4shg2RaSK1r25vsmo1_400.png)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/nihilism/comments/b22xg0/may_i_offe...](https://www.reddit.com/r/nihilism/comments/b22xg0/may_i_offer_you_a_glass_of_optimistic_nihilism/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> "Terror Management suggests that human nature is actually wired towards self- deception: In order to avoid facing terrifying concepts like death, most of us live in a state of self-delusion." I very early on in life recognized this as a primary principle of human psychology. As soon as we begin to understand the concept of death, we unconsciously develop this as our primary defense mechanism. It's what all religious and spiritual belief systems are founded on.

<comment><USER57> I think the mind is constantly trying to avoid death, and when we learn death cannot be avoided we come up with "solutions" like an afterlife, reincarnation...

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Define "Realistically". Also define "desirability". You could make equally strong arguments both ways.

Example: If you are depressed you are more likely to focus on input data that is 'negative' and overlook the 'positive' data. For instance if your depressed, instead of focusing on the different ways people are trying to improve the conditions of existence, you could focus on "the shitty conditions in india/africa/china/etc.) You could say this is more "realistic".

Example: If you are optimistic on the other hand, you could say to yourself, I have no control over those variables that make the world 'shitty', let me try and focus on the variables that make the world 'positive' and see if I can affect them, so that the world as a whole can be more "positive". Some could say this is "unrealistic".

Which is more "desirable" I would argue the latter, but I hope the argument has shown that these are value judgements subjective to the individual.

</comment><comment><USER59> > It may be tied to certain other psychological theories, like the terror > management theory, Feltham says. Terror Management suggests that human > nature is actually wired towards self-deception: In order to avoid facing > terrifying concepts like death, most of us live in a state of self-delusion. > And maybe, when we're depressed, we're just less likely to be deceived.

For what it's worth, Terror Management Theory has pretty much failed to replicate: [https://psyarxiv.com/dkg53/](https://psyarxiv.com/dkg53/) ("Failed pre-registered replication of mortality salience effects in traditional and novel measures")

Just one study, whole theory doesn't depend on one replication attempt, etc. -- but the baseline rate for a set of social psych findings being legit should probably be <50% at the outset.

</comment><comment><USER60> More realistically than what? What is a criteria for realism?

>we tend to operate under happy delusions that lift away when we're depressed

Well this brings unhappy delusions in the same way. Just that it matches more with therapists world view and called "more real"?

</comment><comment><USER61> It's important to understand that realism is an "interpretation" stage. Before we get there, we selectively _attend_ to and process stimuli. It is at this attention stage, and usually for (personally) emotional stimuli that depression can affect the things which we "see" (attend to).

Biases in attention and interpretation in adolescents with varying levels of anxiety and depression [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02699931.2017.1...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02699931.2017.1304359)

</comment><comment><USER62> What most people describe as "realism" is often just a depressive view. There's always two sides of a coin, realistic or not. What seems "real" to you depends on which side you spend most of your time.

</comment><comment><USER63> Correlation is not necessarily causation. Unless they have scienced the causation it might be quite possible for people who see the world more realistically to be at greater risk for depression.

<comment><USER47> Well put, I thought about the same thing but I was not able to formulate it like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Being "realistic" is often linked to depressive mindsets because it focuses on how things _are_ , and lacks the imagination for how things _can be_.

A depressed mindset says, "There's no good food in the house", and focuses on this as a negative fact.

An imaginative mindset says, "No good food. Time to go grocery shopping".

The first is simply "realistic". The later is realistic, and imagines a solution to the realistic problem.

</comment><comment><USER65> What this means is that being realistic is maladaptive at least at a species level.

</comment><comment><USER66> To the degree to which we interact with the world and create our own reality.

It's lower effort to turn a pessimistic outlook into reality than it is to turn an optimistic outlook into reality.

I've been ready the Wayside School books to my daughter for bedtime recently, the character Kathy demonstrates this pretty well.

From [https://wayside- school.fandom.com/wiki/Kathy_(book_chapter)](https://wayside- school.fandom.com/wiki/Kathy_\(book_chapter\)) :

"The chapter opens by mentioning that Kathy doesn't like you, and that you are the stupidest person she doesn't know. She also thinks you are the ugliest person she doesn't know, and she doesn't know a lot of people. Even the people she does know she doesn't like. She thinks D.J. smiles too much and hates John because he can't stand on his head.

After the introduction, the chapter talks about a time Kathy had a pet cat named Skunks. She was afraid he would run away, but Mrs. Jewls told her that he would stay as long as Kathy took good care of him, and remembered to give him plenty of food and water. However, Kathy thought Mrs. Jewls was wrong, and to keep Skunks around, locked him in a closet, sometimes even forgetting to take care of him. One day when Kathy was looking for her other shoe, Skunks ran out and never came back. Kathy bragged to Mrs. Jewls, claiming that she was right all along, and tells her that next time she gets a cat, she'll kill him so he never runs away.

Afterwards it talks about a time Dameon was trying to teach Kathy how to play catch. Kathy complains that she'll just get hurt, but Dameon states that as long as she keeps her eyes on the ball, everything will be okay. However, worrying that she'll be hurt in advance, she closes her eyes and the ball lands in her face. She claims that Dameon was wrong and she was right as she runs away sobbing.

Allison thinks that if she is nice to Kathy, Kathy might be nice to her in return, so she bakes her a cookie. Kathy however, thinks it will taste terrible because Allison made it, so she keeps the cookie in her desk. Three weeks later, she decides to eat the cookie, which is now stale and dusty, and as expected, hates it. Kathy says that she was right about Allison's cookie, then the chapter cuts back to narration, explaining that Kathy thought she had very good reasons for hating everyone in Mrs. Jewls's class, alongside a very good reason for hating you. She knows that if you met her, you would hate her too, and already knows she's right. The chapter ends by saying it's weird how someone can always be right and still be wrong."

</comment><comment><USER67> As someone with depression, this has been my experience as well. When I'm depressed I feel like I'm seeing the world for what it really is, and that the times when I was happy was when I was deluded. When I started antidepressants, I was frustrated that they noticeably made me less lucid and totally unable to introspect. Even now that I've found what I consider to be a good combination and dosage of medications that's letting me be happy and function well, I fully admit that the mechanism by which they're affective is that they make me less aware, slightly more forgetful, and therefore less able to ruminate on all the "truths" that would make me depressed. I'm not thrilled about that but I chalk it up as a worthwhile compromise for being able to live well.

</comment><comment><USER68> Real_ism_ can mean passivity, and a lack of creation. If seeing things as they are means paralysis, how does it help us? Not being realistic can help make things happen.

I think it can be valuable to see things realistically, and then rejecting what you see.

<comment><USER69> Not being realistic can also mean that you are creative on false premises, and that the result might fail because of it. By being realistic about the world and the environment surrounding you be it work-, political-, economical- or otherwise you can see actual problems plaguing others, and _maybe_ you can generate something that solves a tiny part of what people struggle with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> How can you go from "we set up a very simple experiment that shows that depressed people can tell more if someone is controlling a light" to "depressed people see the world more realistically?"

</comment><comment><USER71> The studies seem flawed in a very obvious way

> If you set up a circumstance where there's no relationship between the > button and the light, depressed patients might be able to better pick that > out, because that set of circumstances happens to conform to their somewhat > biased view of the universe, that bad things happen for no reason," Moore > explains. "That doesn't necessarily mean that they're more accurate broadly, > but under that very narrow set of stimulus conditions, they come out looking > more accurate.

</comment><comment><USER72> There's a fine line between "depressive" and "realistic" viewpoints.

But yes, in my experience rose-tinted glasses generally also come with a narrower field-of-view.

</comment><comment><USER73> Adding some context that came from living with a person who suffered from depression. I am not sure if they see the world more realistically or more negatively. They are generally stuck in a cycle and need to get out of the cycle of feelings influencing actions and reverse this cycle by CBT. The negative cycle creates delusion which is exactly the opposite of reality. They view the world in a very cynical way and won't let go of past.

</comment><comment><USER74> To my mind, depression is basically a feeling of being _powerless_. When lab researchers want to see if a mouse is depressed, they pick it up by the tail. The normal mice struggle, however uselessly, the depressed ones just hang there.

In my experience though, The worst is being powerless and not knowing why. If you can gain understanding of the world, even though your situation might not change right away, it still helps.

</comment><comment><USER75> Yeah when you're depressed you definitely are more realistic about the challenges you/the world faces.

But, you are in a state of fear where you are over-exagerrating the things you could lose.

In a happy state or happy manic state, you don't overvalue these things. You accept the fleeting nature of moments moving on, and this frees you up to make bolder choices.

It's all a spectrum of how bold you want to be in your life and day to day.

</comment><comment><USER76> > Put people in a room and ask them to push a button

> It seems like the button is doing something, but actually it's not attached > to anything

> Ask people if they felt like they had any effect on the world

> Depressed people say "nothing I do matters", non-depressed people say "Well, > I'm not sure, but there might be some effect, yeah"

"DEPRESSED PEOPLE SEE THE WORLD MORE REALISTICALLY"

</comment><comment><USER77> One can see the world more realistically without being depressed. Depression IMHO isn't necessarily a byproduct of a pessimistic worldview. If anything, nihilism (if we consider it a pessimistic worldview) had helped me to be more realistic. To accept that there is no intrinsic meaning in my life. If anything, it has brought me down to earth.

<comment><USER78> Not every form of depression is pathological. I think our current culture doesn't really provide many avenues to express sadness, so people probably don't tell the truth when they have doubt. And doubt is an uninvited guest for business.

Not directly applicable to the article though, that is probably a completely different effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Had a realization the other day that: "almost everyone around me is actually very sick".

This world we have created tends to encourage people to eventually become sick: whether it be diet, emotional, spiritual, physical, etc.

When we look around, we to have a positive outlook.

It's easy to see that a plant is not doing very well. We aren't very good at seeing this in humans.

</comment><comment><USER80> The depressive episode I suffered and recovered from was not me thinking realistically. With the way the world is at the minute, if you're not angry then you haven't been paying attention. But anger and realism are not the same as clinical, psychological, physically unexplained depression.

</comment><comment><USER81> That's right, because when you are depressed,you will be aware to make new friends, you will judge them by reality, and any situation you will face, you will judge it by reality. Emotion doesn't work that much for depressed people.

<comment><USER76> It depends on whether you're talking about actually depressed people, or people just "feeling a bit down". It seems like you're referring to the latter.

Depression is a very serious medical condition, often leading to suicide, and involves mostly just sleeping, crying in bed, and not wanting to do or see anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Yes. The problem is, when you're not always depressed.

You feel good, get too optimistic, things don't work out because you underestimated everything aaand you're back to being depressed.

</comment><comment><USER83> As a former sufferer, the headline is pretty dangerous, IMO. It'd be more correct to say that such people see _some aspects_ of the world more realistically, while others are totally bent out of shape. E.g. anything related to optimism and self-worth is totally out of whack: even if the person can _logically_ conclude there are reasons for optimism and non-zero self- worth, they still don't _feel_ like it's true.

So it's dangerous to suggest that their lack of optimism and self-worth is "realistic" in any way, because it never is.

</comment><comment><USER84> That might be true. As a person who always find himself between dark and winning days, I started to wonder if something in middle could be achieved.

</comment><comment><USER85> This article being on the front page seems to mean a lot for our industry....

</comment><comment><USER86> Reminds me of an old definition:

"A pessimist is what an optimist calls a realist".

</comment><comment><USER87> Realistically, it might be that realism is the cause of depression.

</comment><comment><USER88> Is "realistically" synonymous with nihilism...?

</comment><comment><USER89> I can confirm that.

</comment><comment><USER90> This makes me very uncomfortable to say the least.

</comment><comment><USER91> Probably why we are depressed to begin with?

</comment><comment><USER92> So what?

Reality is for people with poor imaginations :)

</comment><comment><USER93> But does it make them happier? /s

</comment><comment><USER94> A lot of people in this thread are justifying their own pathologies with the title. Nothing more powerful than a story that soothes the ego.

Maybe there is some truth to the idea. I wouldn't be surprised, although we probably can't make that general of a statement.

Either way, don't let something like this article stop you from improving your life. One thing is for sure, we can't accurately predict all of the possibilities for ourselves. Might as well aim for a few improvements, eh?

For what it's worth, I'm currently dealing with mild / moderate depression and anxiety. In my opinion, it's a shit way to be and I aspire to experience less of it in the future.

<comment><USER95> From the text of the article, the title ought to be "Although the idea is 40 years old, there is no conclusive proof that depressive realism exists and the evidence suggesting that it does may be an artifact of experimental design."

I'm not actually sure what to make of this article, to be honest. The two sources interviewed are very clear that 'depressive realism' is a poorly supported and not particularly useful concept, but the inertia of the article leads in the opposite direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> well thats depressing...

</comment><comment><USER97> Perhaps if so many of us are depressed then that is the natural reaction to the environment we have been placed in, which is why it takes some level of delusion to be happy.</comment>


Clojure tutorial: fetching web comics - <AUTHOR> http://gnuvince.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/fetching-web-comics-with-clojure-part-1/ <comment><USER2> this is a good practical example of clojure</comment>


Fixing the External Monitor Color Problem with Your 2018 MacBook Pro - <AUTHOR> https://spin.atomicobject.com/2018/08/24/macbook-pro-external-monitor-display-problem/#.W4BTLloh-SE.hackernews <comment><USER2> I have worked for a few years on developing computerized vision tests for research purposes and did not realize just how difficult it can be to guarantee the accuracy of the stimulus on different monitors. There is so much that can effect the output image that it's a nightmare. Often the Edid info monitors return is missing data or has marketing values listed instead of actually values. (Screen size of 21" vs 20.5"). There can be differences based on whether the monitor is plugged in via dvi, dp, hdmi whether you have nvidia,amd,intel gpu's. Is scaling being done on the GPU or display or both? How is windows color profiles effecting your image? How are font settings effecting your image? Are you running fullscreen or windowed cause that matters. What if timing is critical to your stimulus? Is your software aware when displays are added and removed ? I originally wanted the software to support arbitrary displays and gpus but the problem of showing actually the light you want to on a monitor is way harder then I ever would have imagined.

<comment><USER3> Fascinating!

> I originally wanted the software to support arbitrary displays and gpus

So, do you instead have a specific list of supported displays?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In that screenshot, the gamma is also set wrong - it says "PC" instead of "Mac".</comment>


The Brains of the Voyager Spacecraft: Command, Data, and Attitude Control (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/voyager-mission-anniversary-computers-command-data-attitude-control/ <comment><USER2> > "The Voyager FDS would be the first spaceflight computer to use CMOS > volatile memory. This was a big step since it was a fairly new technology > and, if power was lost to the ICs for a moment, all memory would be lost, > too. However, a direct line from the radioisotope generators, which provided > direct current, was used to ensure the CMOS ICs would never lose power > unless something happened to the generators. It was decided that, if > something had happened to the generators that rendered them inoperable, > there would unlikely be a need for the FDS, anyway."

Sort of like having a PCI-Express bus RAM drive card full of DDR4 DIMMs, in a computer that'll never be powered off, because it has the most ridiculously protected N+1 power supply and UPS system imaginable.

Since there's a single RTG per craft, and failure of the RTG would very quickly kill the entire craft due to lack of power and extremely cold temperatures, seems totally logical.

</comment><comment><USER3> One day the voyagers will be gone from our perception. I'm not happy about that. We need something else chasing them into the dark. We should send another. It doesn't need to be a massively complex craft. Slap a big antenna and some RTGs onto a satellite bus. Then an ion engine as a slow boost stage and launch the package. Do a lap or two between earth and mars to build up speed, then aim for Jupiter. Science is great, but having that candle out there should be reason enough.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if the technology has advanced enough to make this feasible for a (large enough) private org. Maybe not exactly for a kickstarter campaign, but for a group of wealthy sponsors who would donate several dozen millions each.

The cost of the space launch went down dramatically. Many components are standardized and thus less expensive. CAD systems allow a much smaller number of engineers to design the custom parts. New materials, like maybe carbon fiber, could help make the thing lighter weight. Computing the orbital mechanics with great precision is within capabilities of a laptop.

This seems to be just on the brink.of achievable.

<comment><USER5> Has anyone reached to S R Hadden to see if he's willing to chip in? I think sending a satellite in the direction of Vega might be of his interest.

<comment><USER6> Yeah he died a few months ago but nobody is supposed to know about that yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's incredible, today we can't keep a bunch of apps running in virtualized containers in virtual machines in some data centre across the world... But these two little things are still chugging along on the outskirts of our solar system in the harsh conditions of space.

<comment><USER8> I don't get such comparisons. The voyager had a single purpose - to travel through space. It was purpose built for that and that alone. Things were simple. Definitely an engineering marvel for that time. Between now and then, we've had reusable rockets, multiple landers, developing nations launch rockets at a tiny cost of the original project. Things have improved. Let's compare that.

Data-centers serve billions of people and have significantly more challenges in maintaining SLAs. It's not a trivial problem to solve.

<comment><USER9> They serve billions of people and serve them cheaply!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was actually more impressed by one of the references of the article than the article itself: [https://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch6-2.html](https://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch6-2.html)

Did not know history.nasa.gov existed...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I read this after seeing this submission earlier today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21285793](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21285793)

</comment><comment><USER11> Luckily it was v1/2.

Not v6 that leads to Star Trek the first movie. Lost the memory might lose the mission - to collect all info and return to the creator.

</comment><comment><USER12> any friend who keeps in touch no matter how far away they get is a friend worth keeping

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_drama](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_drama)</comment>


Ruby Hoedown 2009 Wrap-Up - <AUTHOR> http://lylejohnson.name/blog/2009/08/31/ruby-hoedown-2009-wrap-up/ <comment><USER2> For me the blog displays as dark text on dark background (I have a pretty bad laptop screen, perhaps it's ok on desktop lcds). And he is complaining about the exact same thing done by someone else ;-)

It's a good summary though.

<comment><USER3> The blog is sort of a light grey on black background, but your point is well- taken. ;)

I think that Ben realized in the middle of his presentation that the text he was showing up was illegible, even to those of us who were sitting up close. It didn't really take anything away from what he was saying, it just got a little frustrating after several slides in that color scheme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Had a great time this year, only gripe was that hotel food was exorbitantly expensive. The first talk on Cucumber/BDD moved really quick for 9AM, but it was still informative and introduced me some new things.</comment>