[whatshisface]

>Some cultures wouldn't recognize some things as a disorder if it wasn't difficult for those people.

There are a few mental disorders like that, but it's important to bear in mind that most of them (major depression, mid to low functioning autism, anxiety, schizophrenia, and so on) lead to objectively reduced functioning independent of society and a lot of suffering in whoever has them. It's not something to be romanticized.

[Nasrudith]

There is also the converse - what is accepted as "normal" or even praised as a virtue is harmful and destructive.

To give real examples smoking was normal, as was pedestray and ironically the Roman gladiatoral combat which is considered peak decadence was intended to combat decadence!

Normal is a pretty shitty heuristic for being good.

[admax88q]

> Normal is a pretty shitty heuristic for being good.

A few counter examples doesn't mean that the heuristic is bad. Heuristics will always have counter examples, that's why they're heuristics, not rules.

[shkkmo]

I would argue that inherent discrimination against minority traits is what makes that heuristic bad.

Given a single counter example, the burden of proof should be on the users of the heuristic to show why the use of that heuristic is an improvement over the alternatives (which have no counter examples).

[50656E6973]

How many counter examples do you need before determining if a heuristic is bad, in your opinion?

[SirLuxuryYacht]

IMO, probably when the counterexamples outnumber the examples by which the heuristic is defined.

[coldtea]

And maybe even not then: the negatives from the counterexamples should also outweigh the positives from the heuristic.

If a heuristic has 100 majorly good applications, and 1000s of counter-examples of minor or no real consequence, it will still be good to use...

[jeroenhd]

I don't see how Roman gladiatorial combat is so different from modern sports. The only major difference is the fact that nearly all gladiators were slaves, but otherwise I see no difference between gladiators and UFC fighting tournaments (or for that matter, American football).

I just don't see the peak decadence point.

[coldtea]

>I don't see how Roman gladiatorial combat is so different from modern sports. The only major difference is the fact that nearly all gladiators were slaves

How about modern sports aren't "to death"?

[tk75x]

Only a small fraction of gladiatorial combat was to the death. Gladiators were expensive to acquire, train, and maintain so their masters didn't prefer them to be killed.

[notahacker]

Whatever you think about the risks and violence of modern combat sport, they don't use the certainty of somne of the combatants dying and/or the involvement of the crowd in determining whether they had fought well enough to be permitted to live after defeat as marketing strategies...

[Nasrudith]

Well let me know when sports stars sack a city and lead to massive damages and people still decide to keep on doing it that way. (Third Servile war - although slavery was involved.)

Although often well paid gladiators often were slaves which brings up the next big difference - consent!

[balfirevic]

> I don't see how Roman gladiatorial combat is so different from modern sports.

If someone were to properly incentivize you (say, by offering to give you $10000 or whatever) I bet you would be able to come up with few more very important differences.

[Dylan16807]

"You'd change your opinion on a trivial matter if I paid you a giant pile of money" is a very strange way to argue a point...

[thaumasiotes]

> what is accepted as "normal" or even praised as a virtue is harmful and destructive.

> To give real examples smoking was normal, as was pedestray

From an objective perspective, in what way was classical pederasty "harmful and destructive"? What was the harm and destruction that resulted?

[watwut]

They were society in which violence had completely different meaning. Just like slave holding was something normal in other societies. ISIS was stoning and beheading people just few months ago.

These are differences in moral values that have nothing to do with mental health.

[coldtea]

>Just like slave holding was something normal in other societies.

Well, until the 1860s in the US too. And until the '70s, open segregation.

[LifeLiverTransp]

Almost like biological determined scoutships for a group, arent they?

Imagine a bunch of hunte/gatherers, who just entered a new continent (like north-america)- having those loonies orbiting the group, reporting new ressources, scouting ahead- sounds well adapted.

[chubot]

Yeah I agree with this. I thought I read that scientists claim there's no such thing as "group selection" in evolution, i.e. where one individual in a group will do something bad for himself but good for the group (reproductively speaking).

Yeah it looks like wikipedia has a page on this controversy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection

Richard Dawkins apparently doesn't believe in it, and neither does Steven Pinker.

But just based on casual observation I think group selection is real (yes I know that's not scientific). Humans are like ants in many ways... some of us are "programmed" to perform specific roles.

[jadyoyster]

Don't ants in a colony all share the same genes and have the queen do all reproducing? (From the sperm of a single male possibly? I'm not super familiar.)

[chubot]

Yeah I'm not sure. I think ants are an extreme case, but I do think groups of humans have similar sorts of "mechanisms".

The book Sapiens repeats this over and over and I tend to agree. Religion, government, corporations, etc. are ways in which we cooperate with thousands or millions of others. We don't have to have the exact same genome, and it's not perfect cooperation, but there's something there.

[koverstreet]

If group selection wasn't a thing, multicellular organisms wouldn't exist.

[sevensor]

In the case of dromomania's "patient zero", his wanderlust appears to have resulted from traumatic brain injury. I don't think this squares with your theory.

[izzydata]

Would you happen to know if there is some classification difference between a mental disorder that may involve some kind of chemical imbalance and a personality disorder which would be more like having a personality that makes daily life difficult? I feel like they get lumped together, but maybe I'm just ignorant about how these terms are used.

[whatshisface]

Here is a link describing the categories. They are divided up into AMI (any mental illness) and SMI (serious mental illness). Illnesses categorized in AMI may even involve no impariment, those are probably what people are referring to when they talk about fresh air and a walk being the best medicine.

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness.sh...

[coldtea]

There's no "chemical imbalance" per se. People can and do have "serious mental issue" with no specific chemical markers to tell...

It's mostly a marketing slogan for drugs, and a gross over-simplification.

[DanBC]

> that may involve some kind of chemical imbalance

This mostly doesn't exist.

> a personality disorder which would be more like having a personality that makes daily life difficult?

Go careful with that. People with the dx have usually been harmed by early childhood abuse (although there's some difference between UK and US diagnosing) and many people with the dx feel it's an entirely unhelpful construct.

[50656E6973]

The "chemical imbalance" theory is a Big Pharma marketing slogan, not a real scientific fact.