[gustavo-fring]

I disagree. Depression appeared in humans for a reason. It is possible that one of the results of it, and the reason it sticks around is because there is value to it, even if it is exceedingly painful. Regardless, having a reason to endure, even if incorrect, has value in and of itself, even if you don't see it.

[bawolff]

Naturalistic fallacy.

Plenty of things appeared in humans for no positive reason. Its not like smallpox was valuable it some point.

Its possible that depression has some positive function, but its just as possible it does not.

[gustavo-fring]

I didn't say it was a good reason.

[bawolff]

Well strictly speaking, nothing in evolution happens for a reason - this isn't intellegent design, there is no agency or intentionality in evolution.

So if you didn't mean the usual metaphorical notion of, "was selected for by natural selection because it increased evolutionary fitness", what did you mean?

[unishark]

Well I can imagine a couple, though I don't have any particular reason to prefer them. If people who are unsuccessful in achieving status in their tribe or whatever (totally independent of their fitness otherwise) become depressed and as a result don't reproduce, children are more likely to be born to parents who can provide for them. All the suffering could just be side effects that are besides the evolutionary "goal". Sort of like how poisoning causes you to suffer a wide range of uncomfortable effects (nausea, vertigo), when perhaps the only real evolutionary "goal was to make you vomit the poison.

I think the prior poster may have been making a point more along the lines that depression is a downside of having benefits like neural plasticity or something, not that this disease state is necessarily beneficial in itself. More like how the downside of having high-performance tires is poor rain traction or something.

[scatters]

How does that constitute an evolutionary model? The genes for depression reach a dead end in the people who didn't reproduce; they aren't being passed on in the children of the people who did. Is this a kin or group selection model?

[unishark]

I assume you're talking about the first one? Having the gene for depression here would not always cause the individual to be depressed. Actually that would hold for both cases.

The trait is passed on because it benefits the species. You have to consider more than individuals in the evolution of social animals. In various circumstances some organisms will eat their own offspring. Obviously the "infanticide gene" if considered alone, would not make evolutionary sense, yet there it is.

[3grdlurker]

But what else could it be? You can’t just say that something has an evolutionary cause without also implying that the trait is for the purpose of survivability, which we associate with the notion of “good”.

[gustavo-fring]

Cancer has an evolutionary cause, that doesn't mean we associate it with good.

[sturza]

I actually am interested of understand more of where this statement comes from.

[anoncake]

Or, more likely, it's simply a result of the brain not being perfectly "designed".

[gustavo-fring]

Or, more likely, we don't know right now.

[anoncake]

What possible value could depression have?

[lawl]

There are e.g. some theories that it could be an evolutionary strategy.

> Another reason depression is thought to be a pathology is that key symptoms, such as loss of interest in virtually all activities, are extremely costly to the sufferer. Biologists and economists have proposed, however, that signals with inherent costs can credibly signal information when there are conflicts of interest. In the wake of a serious negative life event, such as those that have been implicated in depression (e.g., death, divorce), "cheap" signals of need, such as crying, might not be believed when social partners have conflicts of interest.

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

[bawolff]

It could also be the degenerate case of something good. E.g. feeling withdrawn and unmotivated can be good sometimes - it can tell you something is wrong. Depression is like an extreme version of that. Maybe its the brain taking things too far and getting stuck in a bad state or something.

I dont know, IANAD, but it sounds mildly plausible.

[anoncake]

Yes, feeling depressed can be good. Just like sadness and other negative emotions. But depression, the disorder, is not.

[gustavo-fring]

Resilience, endurance, learning to overcome adversity, learning to overcome yourself, learning to be self-aware, thinking "differently". I could think of dozens of other reasons. No?

[caddemon]

I'm not sure these are good examples, but depressive realism is a pretty legit hypothesis about a potential evolutionary benefit. There's also some hypotheses about energy expenditure - doing nothing is sometimes the right move, although that would have been more important a long time ago than now.

These sort of ideas are hard to evaluate definitively, but I do think it is plausible that mild depression had/to some extent may still have benefits. Of course certain traits can be taken too far though, and when viewed through that lens it is hard to understand how they could be beneficial at all. One could say a similar thing about Autism-like traits.

[anoncake]

> Resilience, endurance

Literal survivor's bias. If you are depressed but not resilient, you kill yourself.

> learning to overcome adversity, learning to overcome yourself

Overcoming adversity requires doing something. Depression prevents that.

> learning to be self-aware

I wish.

> thinking "differently".

In what way?

[bigfudge]

Relative To the numbers of people depressed, very few people kill themselves so I can’t see that this is a counter argument.

[bawolff]

Pretty sure these are not features of major depression.

[gustavo-fring]

Depression affects everyone differently. But it does not mean a constant unending, it can come and go and those peaks and valleys lead to what I'm talking about.

[FooBarBizBazz]

I'm convinced it's hibernation/torpor. No food? No opportunities? Must be winter. Go to sleep. Wait for spring.

[tsimionescu]

What exactly do you disagree with? The GP claimed that depression is a terrible malady, without any comment on why it exists. How is your tangent about a "reason" for depression in disagreement with what they said?

[gustavo-fring]

"There is no reason to create silly rationales to justify it."

I don't agree with that and I don't agree with how it is stated. It's an absolutist statement (poster is not an expert) and it is dismissive via "silly".

I don't understand your objection. I don't understand the pedantry across this entire thread over like two or three words that aren't even wrong. Just read the extra sentence in the post.

I know this sounds rude, but how many arguments are we going to have over bikeshedding? It's like yall are looking for things to jump on and bully people about without any empathy.

I don't personally care but I don't understand why you do it.

This is what I'm talking about.

You guys can't imagine any way in which depressions might provide benefits? That's how multiple people in this thread have acted. But maybe, just maybe, people that are depressed have a different perspective on life and maybe feel differently.

What is the issue?

[tsimionescu]

> You guys can't imagine any way in which depressions might provide benefits? That's how multiple people in this thread have acted. But maybe, just maybe, people that are depressed have a different perspective on life and maybe feel differently.

Yes, my own experiences with depression in those around me (thankfully not in myself) have left me seeing no way in which depression provides benefits. It is a terrible debilitating disease (or symptom, or whatever it is) that literally saps people of their will to do anything regardless of external stimuli. I find it very hard to imagine something so maladaptive being presented as possibly useful.

I would guess that sentiments like this are the main reason behind the powerful response to your thread. It is almost like claiming that "there is a reason for cancer".

Edit: I would also note that it's possible that we're simply talking past each other, as the term "depression" actually covers some quite different disorders; it's possible that what you're thinking of when you use this word is different from what I'm thinking of - to me, it mostly refers to a disorder where people feel either deeply sad or deeply anxious, but either way they are lacking almost entirely in motivation, finding it hard to even get out of bed sometimes; and all this with little relation to external stimuli.

[gustavo-fring]

There might not be a reason for us existing at all, that doesn't mean we can't and shouldn't make reasons.

This is all unsettled science. I've suffered depression for a decade. In my experience you learn to live with it and you learn from it even if you never fully get used to it.

[gustavo-fring]

You assume we're talking about different things with different results, but I understand your description of depression. I get different results from it than you because I handle it differently.

[coding123]

I absolutely agree with this. Depression is a wide array of emotions - and emotions have driven pretty much all human development to this point.

[anoncake]

> Depression is a wide array of emotions

Where did you get that absurd idea from?