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Jan 3, 2024Edited
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Thanks, I'll look that up.

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>a great job preventing obesity, keeping people the same weight even on 10,000+ calorie diets through extreme fidgeting and movement

I was skeptical, so I clicked the link, expecting some academic paper, but instead it linked to some website selling services, with no indication of where on that page the claim was even being made.

It looks like the link is redirecting and it should go somewhere else.

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Thanks for sharing that. It looks like my skepticism was warranted, and that page doesn't support the contention that fidgeting will keep people the same weight on a 10,000 calorie diet.

On the contrary, it states:

>Some people were made to eat upwards of 10,000 calories/day. 10,000 calories per day! One man only gained 10 pounds with all that. However, most people did gain upwards of 20% of body weight. What happened to their energy expenditure? Metabolism, or Total Energy Expenditure (TEE) increased by 50%.

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i was disappointed to find the same but it is followed by

> When the experiment ended, what surprised researchers the most was the rapidity with which body weight returned to normal. In fact, most of these people did not keep any of the weight they gained. So, here we see that overeating does NOT, in fact, lead to obesity. The body is more like a thermostat. While body weight may temporarily go above the set weight, it quickly reduces things back to normal

so the weight was rapidly lost, and presumably without effort after moving back to their normal diets. this still seems important, but it’s not as strong as “your body will burn 10k excess calories through fidgeting”

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Thank you, you're right, I wrote this post piecemeal over a few years and lost track of my examples. I've corrected the sentence.

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https://www.stoneageherbalist.com/p/the-fat-farms-of-mauritania

"MODERN ANTHROPOLOGY & WITCHCRAFT

The Fat-Farms of Mauritania

Force-feeding girls for marriage" some more examples of 10k-diets that do fatten, as intended

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Importantly, though, the study as presented (without citation) by that post doesn't support it's claim that:

>So, here we see that overeating does NOT, in fact, lead to obesity.

On the contrary, the study caused people to gain a lot of weight by forcing them to eat a lot of food, and then observed them losing weight, by eating much less food.

The study was mostly relevant to the question of why people overeat. It seem to be claiming that people overeat because their bodyweight equilibria are set incorrectly. [Not that there's a direct correlation between calorie intake and weight gain; greater calorie intake can increase energy expenditure somewhat, but overall, the study doesn't seem to support the conclusion from it.]

I'm also curious about how well this replicates to even say anything about bodyweight equilibria. If prisoners are force fed massive quantities of prison food and are then freed from this torture, is it really surprising that they would go from a calorie surplus to a calorie deficit (and therefore lose weight)? Is that evidence that their bodies yearned for a lower weight equilibrium, or simply that if you force someone to eat 10,000+ calories of prison food every day, and then let them stop that they'll switch to eating very little for a while, perhaps being grossed out by the ordeal?

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I think a better way of phrasing it might be that while overeating might cause *acute obesity* (whatever your objections, CICO is very strongly correlated to weight gain) but it does not result in *chronic obesity* (the actual disease of interest) - they returned to normal weight quickly after the forced calorie surplus ended.

Likewise, we usually see the same thing with dieting: it should cause acute weight loss, but will likely have little effect in the long term unless you continuously apply a forced calorie deficit.

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I've noticed that when I'm anxious, I often think thoughts that make me more anxious. So, if I'm worried about work, I'll also start to worry about my health or loved ones. I think most people already understand that as a sort of state that they're in, like saying "I'm in an anxious mood" or "I'm on high alert", but we can also think of it as the mind trying to keep itself anxious/aroused. For that one, at least, there's some obvious evolutionary explanations too

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I've heard before from someone I know with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), that the way they understand the disorder is very much like a higher set point on anxiety. In there case it was from an anxiety inducing childhood, that left them with a very hard to reset set point later in life.

Looking into that again now, after reading this post, there does seem to be some evidence for this understanding of GAD. This study for instance shows positive correlations with a variety of childhood sources of anxiety and a later diagnosis of GAD as well as Major Depressive Disorder. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Barry-Milne/publication/6599040_Generalized_anxiety_disorder_and_depression_Childhood_risk_factors_in_a_birth_cohort_followed_to_age_32/links/553ea4c50cf20184050f8a72/Generalized-anxiety-disorder-and-depression-Childhood-risk-factors-in-a-birth-cohort-followed-to-age-32.pdf

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I'm not sure what it means, but the number one takeaway I've had from talking with my GAD-having sister is that she views our shared childhood as significantly more anxiety-inducing than I do. She tends to explain this as "our family is very judgmental and this causes many of us to have anxiety" whereas I tend to weight toward "you got a lot of the family genes for anxiety, and therefore you see everything as anxiety-inducing."

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Hmm....that's not my experience with anxiety. My interpretation was more like the following: I feel anxious for no obvious reason, so my brain gets confused and starts searching its archives for things that have caused anxiety in the recent past, and it then fixates on those things as if they were a current problem that would normally be anxiety inducing, like an angry bear charging at me or something. It does this because an angry bear charge is a big problem that needs to be solved and fast. Not seeing an angry bear anywhere in the vicinity, it goes to the memory banks, pulls something out, annoints it the source of the current state of anxiety, and then fixates on it, treating it like a problem that needs to be solved. This doesn't work, though, and the fixation and resulting thought loops only serve to reinforce and often exacerbate the general state of anxiety.

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This just seems definitionally true to me. I don't (think that I) have Anxiety, but to me "feeling anxious" and "thinking thoughts that make you anxious" are the same thing.

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>But why? Try setting aside all your internal human knowledge: wouldn’t it make more sense for sad people to listen to happy music, to cheer themselves up?

This begs the larger question: why would anyone - even someone not depressed - ever want to listen to depressing music.

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Because I want to hurt myself? It's basically just the mental equivalent of cutting yourself, but a lot better since it doesn't leave any visible scars. I would rather feel pain than feel nothing.

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I'm sorry you feel that way. I hope you find happy emotions that you can feel.

As far as the post in general, it seems to make a lot out of depressed people supposedly seeking out depressive stimuli, with the depressive stimulant being a product consumed by all sorts of people - presumably not just people who would openly admit that they are seeking pain. So I think we need to first better understand why people in general listen to depressing music, before trying to work out why depressed people in particular also listen to it.

The post doesn't even claim, let alone demonstrate, that depressed people are any likelier than non-depressed people to listen to depressing music! So constructing a model meant to explain this anomaly, without demonstrating that the supposed anomaly exists, seems questionable.

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You know what, I'm going to take back what I said 24 minutes ago. The whole self-harm thing was what my brain told me, and honestly it's starting to seem pretty stupid to trust anything it says now. Which is stupid, since who the hell do I(?) think is writing this?

Anyways, thinking about this too hard makes me want to die, so I suggest you avoid doing it too. Pretending that you're not just applied statistics is probably better for mental health.

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Hey buddy, it sounds like you're in a really tough situation. I hope you're able to find resources that can help you feel better. You may be interested in this previous thread about how to find a therapist: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-305/comment/44783786.

One thing I'll say is that brains are weird, and nobody understands them 100%. It doesn't have to get us down too much; we can find ways to deal with elements of our thinking that seem strange, like intrusive thoughts, etc. This is just like the world at large. Not everything in the universe is known, or even knowable, but that doesn't mean we should be terrified to get out of bed, facing the unknown. We can still find patterns and things that consistently work, even if we don't understand everything.

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This is the "paradox of tragedy", that has been discussed in philosophical discussion of art at least since Aristotle. Horror raises a similar question, as does spicy food.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/imagination/puzzles.html#TragHorr

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Right. And that calls into question the premise of this post. If there is a more universal phenomenon of people seeking out stimuli that make them fearful, sad, or pained, and there is no evidence that this is more common among depressed people, then developing a theory for why depressed people do this is probably misguided. And the particular theories proposed there for the more general phenomenon do not seem particularly consistent with the one proposed in this post.

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I think the premise here was that listening to sad music *is* more common among depressed people.

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Right. Which is why it's unfortunate that the post never states that explicitly, let alone demonstrates it. At most one of the linked studies may claim it, but the full study is behind a paywall, so it's hard to tell.

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To me, the first three paragraphs of the post state it explicitly. One of the study links supports it in the abstract, at least:

> In the replication music task, MDD people were more likely to choose sad music.

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The second study linked (Yoon et. al.) does appear to state so quite explicitly in its abstract. But also just anecdotally in my own experience it is nearly obviously true to the point where I don't need much in way of evidence that people prefer sad music when they're sad/depressed.

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The key point IMO is that depressed people think that depressing music is relaxing or in some way helpful, whereas most people engaging with negative-emotional-valence art recognize that it will make their emotional state more negative. The analogy to fever might be people going in hot tubs to intentionally overheat themselves, whereas the feverish person doesn't typically think of what they're doing as intentionally overheating.

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Somebody who expects the depression to be temporary, serving some necessary function, might actually be correct that the negative-emotional-valence art will make them feel better - not in the short term, but by getting the depressive episode over and done with faster.

Immune system response driving a fever could be looking for something along the lines of an integral, where high fever for a short time, or mild fever for a longer time, may be equally sufficient to kill the pathogens, and it'll take whichever it can get. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OvenLogic Severe itch could be scratched in five frantic minutes with fingernails, or half a second with a belt sander. Precommitted evopsych incentive structure needs to cash out its actual rewards and punishments at some point, in order for back-propagation to update decision trees appropriately.

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Women have a greater preference for horror than men in general, maybe they have a lower set point for being scared than men, and more often get a “I don’t deserve to feel this safe” feeling that inspires them to seek out horror

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The claim here is the opposite, that men are more likely to be fans of horror movies. https://hbr.org/2021/10/the-psychology-behind-why-we-love-or-hate-horror

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As do BDSM, rollercoasters, extreme sport, and defending EA in the wake of the FTX scandal.

I think the appeal of pathos is threefold:

1. The desire to stimulate one's empathy instincts. As the internet will tell you, crying over fictional characters proves you have a soul.

2. The relief that comes with witnessing someone in a worse situation than you. It's kind of like how snuggling feels better when it's pouring outside. Might be related to people's attraction to big scandals.

3. If you're in a bad place, it's reassuring to know that there are creators out there who could empathize with you.

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My wife watches horror films in order to watch people be killed in "interesting" ways... Think about the people who would go out to watch public executions...

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sadness isn't inherently unpleasant, in small quantities? even when i'm at my least depressed, i really enjoy a beautifully melancholic work of fiction or whatnot.

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Right. And that calls into question the evidence in the post. If it's true that depressed people like depressing music, but it's also true that even the least depressed people like depressing music, and there is no demonstration that depressed people are particularly likely to like depressing music, then a theory meant to explain particularly why depressed people like depressing music probably isn't very robust.

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i mean i think the post certainly asserts that depressed people listen to depressing music disproportionately often, or something along those lines

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It actually never states that depressed people listen to depressing music any more frequently than anyone else. Instead, what it claims is that:

>depressed people prefer to listen to sad rather than happy music

But it never tells us whether that is unique to depressed people. Maybe people who aren't depressed also prefer to listen to sad music rather than happy music.

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The modern commanding dominance of poptimism across several artforms (most especially music) seems to be evidence against that hypothesis. Although I guess that invites the further category-spitting of "what is sad music"? Plenty of upbeat happy songs about truly horrific things, plenty of downbeat sad songs about teddy bears wrapped in puppies. What matters more, the subject or the wrapper? Part of why I don't really like rounding it off to "blues" - lots of blues-genre music is just, yknow, relaxing. No one cries while listening to Cantaloupe Island.

(I'd read the study to see what definitions they use, but the link seems to have moved...)

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> No one cries while listening to Cantaloupe Island.

I was struck by a comment on a youtube video of a recording of Kilkelly ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVWUth6SjlU , though this might not be the same video), saying "I first heard this song when it came on the radio while I was driving, and I had to pull over and cry".

It is especially striking, to me, because the events described in the song are by most metrics a huge success for the protagonist and for his family. But despite that fact, everyone instinctively rejects the idea that the outcome might be viewed as positive.

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I wonder whether sad, blues, and depressing are different things..

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Sad and depressing are definitely different things.

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But "least depressed" is a strange qualifier. Compare that to people who are happy as a room without a roof. If I am truly giddy I avoid sad/melancholic art.

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Well, I'm usually only truly giddy when I am like actively having a blast hanging out with friends? But if I'm just generally content I don't particularly avoid sad art.

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My experience is that sadness and melancholy(that's what you feel when depressed?) is not quite the same. When I was depressed I felt something like a dull emptiness, pain, anger but not sadness. Once I was able to feel sadness I felt much better and more alive. As if sadness implied there is something valuable and worth living to be sad in relation to.

So in that sense sadness is sometimes an appropriate healthy emotion.

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This description made me think of Inside Out.

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No, I don't mean melancholy to refer to the dull emptiness of depression—I totally agree with everything you're saying.

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I resonate with that experience - I get the sense that a sort of grey, lifeless feeling that I would call depression (even if it does not last long enough to be clinical maybe) can be a sort of repressed sadness that is not being felt fully. I have had the experience that once I am able to feel properly sad, I can cry, which will not only relieve the sadness but also the depression, returning me to a state where I have more energy and ability to enjoy things. This motivates me to seek out sad music when depressed: It helps me give myself permission to fully feel the sadness, maybe partly by creating the sense that it is not normal, I am not alone with this, so I do not need to hide it. Hence I believe that listening to sad music can help me get out of depression, essentially by helping me grieve. Opposite action on the other hand sometimes seems like a bandaid, with sadness / depression still buried underneath a surface layer of energy generated (it can still be helpful sometimes I think).

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Yes, exactly.

I read this essay by Freud, which describes the same thing and found it interesting https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Freud_MourningAndMelancholia.pdf

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Actually isn’t it the same with fever? Body is overheating, starts sweating => loses heat

I remember the last fevers I had, and overheating always felt good exactly because of that rollercoaster release — push down too far to trigger different set of (extreme) regulatory systems (sweat, crying)

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Depressing music, media in general, can be beautiful in a way that other things cannot. It reflects something about the world not captured elsewhere. When you're sad it rings true in your mind, and this can give you a sense of consonance with the world and its inhabitants, it's a positive feeling and generally an improvement on your previous state of mind in my experience. I do actually believe mood set points are a good model but I am extremely skeptical of the claim about sad songs being an example.

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Part of that sense of consonance with the world is the feeling of being *at* your current set-point, rather than having the compulsion / pressure to continue adjusting something.

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People care about more than momentary happiness. For example, it's hard to imagine life having much meaning if there was never any hardship over which to triumph.

What are your favorite songs? I'm willing to bet many of them aren't just straightforwardly happy, even if you wouldn't consider them depressing.

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That would be my guess too. Personally, I love emotions in songs, and many of my favorites are quite sad, even though I am a generally positive and optimistic person.

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Same here, except that I'm a bit more extreme. I can't think of any happy music off the top of my head that I'd want to listen to.

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How about the glorious Ninth, by Ludwig van?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18ewcRuGdgQ

"Freude, schöner Götterfunken" And the original ending, on point for Scott's writing, "und die Hölle nicht mehr seyn." Although "Such' ihn über'm Sternenzelt!" would make a good motto for a space program.

There was a great one on the radio a few days ago:

https://www.yourclassical.org/story/2023/12/15/minnesota-orchestras-2023-new-years-day-celebration

Skip to 1:35:00 for the final encore performance of the last movement of the 9th, although the rest is excellent too, especially Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.

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Ah! Happy/triumphant classical / instrumental is often much easier for me to take than modern beat-driven pop/rock/edm/etc.

It's possible it's the beats that I *really* hate, although I don't hate them nearly as much in sadder music.

Anyway, it's hard to know how I really feel about certain ubiquitous pieces of classical music because I've heard them so many times, in so many contexts, across so much of media. The Minnesota Orchestra's performance is extremely competent, and the arrangement is just different enough that it's engaging, but I was *much* more pleasurably engaged in the calmer movement starting at 1:35 than I was when it got into the bombastic finale I've seen in 200 movies and 500 commercials.

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Yeah, I noticed when I was listening to this performance on the radio, that the calmer introduction built up to the finale in a way I hadn't appreciated before, and which heightened the experience. A number of years ago, I ran across a description of Beethoven which was something like "every note was inevitable given the previous notes", and while I think it's an exaggeration, I've noticed that I keep recalling it when I listen to Beethoven, and this was one of the times where I really **felt** it. But it sounds like you've gone deeper into classical than I.

How about this, for a modern beat-driven pop cheery music? (If you've seen what it's from, there's a big ;-) there.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_J3UhPK-Zo

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Sticking within Scott's metaphor, a straightforward answer is that their mood is too high and they're trying to adjust downwards. That's bad if they're in a depressive episode, but very good if they're in a manic episode (or are just sub-clinically 'too happy').

Anecdotally, I use music to regulate my mood and focus a lot. If I'm feeling tired and low energy, I'll put on something peppy. If I'm feeling anxious or fidgety or like my thoughts are racing, I can put on something sad and get a noticeable boost in my focus and productivity.

There are also some nominally sad songs that I like for non-sadness reasons, like enjoying the sound of the music or because they're associated with happy memories.

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So depressed people music like depressing music because they're trying to achieve a more depressed equilibrium, while people who are sub-clinically 'too happy' also like depressing music, because they don't want their moods to be too high?

That doesn't seem like a very useful model. Why don't the depressed people seek out happy music, just as the 'too happy' people seek out sad music, and vice-versa?

And if this were true, it would imply that desire to listen to depressing music would have a quadratic relationship with depression. That is, that desire to listen to depressing music would be highest in very depressed people and very happy people, and lowest in medium happiness people.

Is that true? Who knows? Nothing in the post showed that anyone has any greater proclivity for depressing music than anyone else.

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Because...as with the other thermostatic models given, depression itself makes it really hard to do things that "obviously", objectively make one happy rather than sad, and in fact tends to encourage sadness-perpetuating activities instead? (Not in post: and cognizance of such dissonance makes one even sadder, due to digging the hole deeper, the same way failing at dieting while eating donuts induces shame rather than motivation to Git Gud, thus exacerbating the problem)

The second link says right in the abstract that depressed people do, in fact, prefer listening to sad music more than non-depressed people. It also cites the first link given here. You're correct that Scott himself did not state such in this post, but I mean...that's what links are for.

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I was going to get to the links. I already followed up one link, saw it didn't say what was claimed, and Scott updated the post, accordingly. But when I tried to click the first link to Sci-Hub for the Millgram study, nothing loads for me. Sci-Hub doesn't have the second study, which is unfortunate, as studies are often misrepresented in abstracts. Importantly, the abstract is somewhat ambiguous, as it states that "MDD people were more likely to choose sad music" but that could either mean that they are more likely to choose sad music *than healthy controls*, or more like to choose sad music *than happy music.*

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Here's a thought: maybe listening to sad music "tricks" a healthy brain into believing that its environment is sadder than it actually is, thereby making their internal sadness seem less sad by comparison, thereby raising one's mood. This could just feel like being "understood" (by someone else, like the singer, or some higher entity) from the inside.

This would mean the mechanism at play is different depending on whether someone is depressed or just sad. I suppose you could disprove this by trying to look for whether healthy sad people feel more or less sad after listening to sad music.

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This has always been my suspicion. At least, that's how I feel when I'm doing it. I make up these dramatic stories behind the song that are way worse than my current problem.

It's sort of like a release valve for my issue, then when that's done I'm seeing it against a worse situation and feeling better.

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My first thought is that depressed people seek out sad music because it makes them feel like they're not completely alone. There's the old saying, "Misery loves company", though I'm not sure what was intended by it.

It can be a strain to be around a mood which is much happier than one's own. Possibly depressed people need mildly cheering music.

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This is probably the explanation for me at least. Especially if someone manages to express the particular mood or thoughts I'm having, too - the effect is similar to getting to rant about my problems to a friend.

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Like how someone who's never been in love might hate love songs, but then once they fall in love, all of a sudden they like them? Or how someone working at a miserable job might gain an appreciation of old union songs?

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But then why do happy people listen to sad music too?

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As I said in my own comment, I hate happy music. I find it consistently grating. There is no time where I *ever* prefer it to something sad. The better the mood I'm in, the more I want to hear something romantically tragic.

Part of this is just a quirk of personality, but I should point out that no piece of happy content has ever given me the borderline-orgasmic sensation of physical frission which seems to be a vagus nerve response to the emotion of elevation, of witnessing something profound (be it hopeful, sacrificial, dignified, loving, etc). Straightforward happiness is a really terrific sensation, but for me, there's no "there," there.

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Dang, how can you hate happy music? Happy music is for getting up and dancing, and that's just a fun thing to do...Dance and celebrate life.

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Do you love the Baby Shark song? (https://youtu.be/XqZsoesa55w?si=rFT5Q1af_R6LaaQv)

If so, how many times do you want to hear it?

Is there *ever* a point at which it would be annoying, and you want to turn it off and never hear it again?

If so, then we're not that different. We just have a different level of enjoyment/tolerance. For me, basically all happy pop songs are Baby Shark.

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Don't like it, But Battu gets me moving every time, and when it's over I can totally say, "Again Again" and do it again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxtkhUF58oY

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I tried Battu and found it intolerable, way worse than Baby Shark, which is at least *simple,* if grating and ear-wormy.

I fully realize I'm the one with the extreme and unusual taste here; I'm just presenting myself as the outlier.

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This seems sort of circular. Getting up and dancing kind of requires a good mood in the first place! (it also requires not being physically ill or otherwise low on energy, but that's a whole other set of issues).

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I tend to agree with this. Is there really a "correct" level of happiness, such that some people are too happy and need to listen to sad music to regulate themselves?

I asked ChatGPT which were the five greatest pieces of music and it said (i) Beethoven's 9th (happy), (ii) Bach's Mass in B Minor (happy?), (iii) Mozart's requiem (sad), (iv) Swan Lake (sad), (v) the Rite of Spring (neutral). I had thought maybe that we were more likely to think of sad music as great, but it seems not.

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I asked it again for a top ten list of the greatest pieces of music ever and (after its usual caveats) this is what it said:

1. Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 ("Choral"): Often considered Beethoven's greatest work, this symphony is known for its final movement, which includes the famous "Ode to Joy."

2. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Requiem Mass in D minor, K. 626: An unfinished masterpiece, Mozart's Requiem is renowned for its emotional depth and complexity.

3. Johann Sebastian Bach - Mass in B minor, BWV 232: One of Bach's major compositions, this mass is a monumental achievement in the baroque choral tradition.

4. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake, Op. 20: This ballet, composed by Tchaikovsky, is famous for its beautiful melodies and has become a symbol of classical ballet.

5. Igor Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring: A revolutionary work in the history of music, Stravinsky's ballet score caused a sensation and changed the course of 20th-century music.

6. George Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue: A unique blend of classical music with jazz influences, this piece is one of the most famous American musical works.

7. Johannes Brahms - Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98: This symphony is often regarded as Brahms' magnum opus and is a staple of the orchestral repertoire.

8. Giuseppe Verdi - Aida: This opera is known for its grandeur and has become one of the most performed operas in the world.

9. The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Album): Widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential albums in the history of popular music.

10. Ludwig van Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor "Quasi una fantasia", Op. 27, No. 2 (Moonlight Sonata): One of Beethoven's most popular compositions for the piano, celebrated for its haunting beauty.

Interesting that the top five are the same pieces in the same order that it stated previously.

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> ii) Bach's Mass in B Minor (happy?)

Music in a minor key usually sounds sad.

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Also all of these pieces are long and complicated with multiple contrasting sections and even entire movements that don't track in a straightforward way onto a happy/sad dichotomy...

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+1

A Crucifixus is not going have the tone as an Et resurrexit.

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Johnny Cash, American legend. Not depressing to me, sad and somber, but I'm older and don't find (my) death all that depressing. (I wrote that sentence first with no (my) and you should read it both ways.) Awesome video BTW, thanks.

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For me, sad art/music (and some horror) are pleasant in a similar way as a tough physical challenge. It lets me feel good about myself for being strong enough to handle it.

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"This begs the larger question: why would anyone - even someone not depressed - ever want to listen to depressing music."

A couple of reasons I can think of:

1) Feeling depressed or sad at times is universal but can feel very lonely when you're in the midst of it. At least in my experience, sad music at those times makes me feel less alone and less like no one understands what I'm feeling.

2) There are times when I feel down and have a physical feeling that my body needs to cry, but the tears just won't come for whatever reason; some mental or emotional block holds them back. On those occasions, depressing music helps me feel what I'm feeling more intensely so I can push through that block. There are just times when stress and ignored emotions seem to build up inside to a point where it feels like I I need to cry it out like a sleep-training baby, and if I can't, it feels like the emotional equivalent of a sneeze that you can feel coming but never quite materializes.

I spent many years completely disconnected from nearly all emotions except anger. I was convinced that honestly expressing my real feelings when those feelings were sadness, disappointment, hurt, etc. was a display of weakness, and would provoke disgust from & abandonment by others. I was unable to even acknowledge those feelings to myself because to do so was offensive to my cherished self-image as an entirely autonomous man who handles whatever comes up on my own and takes pride in needing nothing, no help or support or connection of any kind, from anyone. As I eventually began to realize what that impenetrable armor was doing to myself and my relationships, I began to feel a shift inside that allowed me to at first start being vulnerable with my feelings to myself, and then gradually with others.

Stoicism is an indispensable strength in some situations but if one is unable to ever step outside of that way of being, my experience at least is that the negative emotions that are suppressed or repressed leak out in other ways to a limited extent and otherwise build up inside until a blowup takes place (a fight with a partner or loved one, a substance binge, etc.). For me it resulted in a constant low-level simmering irritability with accompanying reactivity as well as somatic symptoms like frequent headaches, all of which led me to generally withdraw from my wife & kids. When everything built up inside to the point where I now allow myself to cry, I used to act out in a way that provoked an acrimonious fight with my wife.

TL;No way I'm reading all that: Depressing music sometimes helps me process the kind of emotions everyone has at times but that I used to make a lifestyle out of suppressing or repressing to my own detriment as well as that of everyone around me.

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Could be something to do with release? Recently I watched an experiment on a comparison between flipping and not flipping the steak while cooking.

The result was that flipping was better because it cooked the steak more evenly, because overcooking it caused by increasing the energy on the steak in really big bursts, like when you only flip it halfway during the cook. So spacing out the energy spikes by repeatedly flipping makes it cook more evenly since there aren't as massive spikes like with the traditional method.

Anyways, maybe listing to sad things when you're sad is like that. Applying a ton of energy onto your sadness to make you get over it faster like shock therapy. Basically being able to look back on short periods of like and say those were the sad times. Coraling your feelings into a big sad event, like overeating ice cream and watching sad movies, lets you compartmentalize your feelings easier.

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In this theory, everyone has a "thymostat" set to some point on the sad-happy scale, not just people with depression. This theory predicts that everyone should occasionally be driven to listen to sad music, whenever they are "too happy" for their thymostat set point. (Of course, people respond differently at a conscious level to these drives; sad music, movies, thoughts; just like people eat different food when they're consciously hungry).

Your question is like asking: if people with fevers shiver and wear jackets because they want to warm up, why does anyone without a fever shiver and wear a jacket? Sometimes your environment is actually cold.

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Because people like having their internal experiences validated by external sources. When you're depressed you don't want people telling you to be happy, you want people telling you they know what it's like to be sad. Misery loves company.

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> Opiate addiction [could be considered] a recalibration of endorphin set point? I'm not sure.

You're not? I was under the impression that that was considered a fairly well-established fact about drug addiction at this point, that addictions "break" the ability of the body to maintain various biochemical levels to the point that dependency develops because you need the boost from the drugs to get back to normal. That's not *exactly* "recalibration of a set point" but it sure sounds pretty similar, don't you think? Or is there some nuance I'm missing?

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Jan 3, 2024
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'complimentary' should be 'complementary'.

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You describe depression as a problem of set points, as if depression were _accidental_. I don't think that's correct. Instead, I think depression is often the result of *incentives*.

I was depressed. I remember wondering, “Why am I so depressed? What’s wrong with me? Why are brains so dumb?” There’s a five month period where I don’t know what I did. In fact, I was so depressed that I just didn’t bother to interact with anyone new.

I expected that I would just get hurt whenever I interacted with other people:

- A girl seemed to really like me. We hung out a few times and it was great. I texted her the day after one of these times and she never replied. For months after that, I felt like I had to make her respond, and I blamed myself for her ghosting me.

- A friend didn’t like my ideas about psychology, called me “dangerous”, and terminated our friendship. I felt like I had to fix his reaction.

- At a party, someone asked me, “I heard you quit your job. Why did you quit?” I didn’t want to answer, but I felt like I had to answer.

Near the end of my depression, I wondered, What if my depression wasn’t a symptom? What if it was a solution?

When I am depressed and low energy, I don’t want to interact with other people. So, if interacting with other people means getting hurt, then, here’s an interesting theory: a way to avoid getting hurt is to be depressed.

Maybe my depression was actually adaptive. And maybe I didn’t have a ‘dumb brain’ after all…

If that was true, all I would have to do was find a way to interact with other people without getting hurt as much. But how?

I think the most common way that people in my position cope with this problem is by becoming numb and rejecting any negative feelings they feel. This is not what I learned. In fact, I had already learned this strategy of numbness, and I would have to unlearn it as I learned a better way.

Instead, with help from a counselor and a little-known method called Coherence Therapy, I gradually altered the ways I was interpreting social interactions and my feelings. As I made progress, I had less incentive to avoid other people and it became less useful for me to be depressed.

These days, I’m not afraid of social interaction anywhere near like I used to be. I’m comfortable being really social now.

---

The above is from a draft for a series I'm writing about unlearning social insecurities, supported by Epistea Residency and CFAR. It will be posted on my blog soon. https://chipmonk.substack.com/

I don't think this is the case for everyone, but it was the case for me and I would venture to say it's the case for most people. I was INCENTIVIZED to be depressed. I could not have told you that at the time, but looking back, yep: I was afraid of social interaction and I didn't know how else to cope.

From this perspective, it makes total sense to me that many people who are depressed seek stimuli that brings sadness. I don't think they're depressed _accidentally_. I think they're depressed as the result of an INCENTIVE. The Coherence Therapy Institute has documented many case studies of exactly this: https://coherencetherapy.org/discover/examples.htm

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Jan 3, 2024
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I think control systems theory has a good shot at modeling bipolar. Oscillating mechanisms can be due to poorly calibrated attempts to restore balance. But severe mania might also be inherently damaging such that your brain needs time--years, in my experience--to repair itself (cf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-023-02073-4).

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My experience with depression is that most cases aren't like this:

- Some are clearly the result of external biological shocks, like seasonal depression or hypothyroid.

- Some are clearly the result of random psychosocial shocks, eg a friend dies.

- In some cases, the patient knows the depression is maladaptive ("every time I go out, I have a good time, I just don't want to go out")

- I just don't think this explains most features of depression. If you were rationally following incentives, it would be reasonable to think "I got pretty far with a girl I liked, but then she ghosted me, so I should try to meet ten more girls, and maybe it will work out with one of them". Or "I feel embarrassed whenever anyone asks me about my job, so I'll work hard to get a job I'm proud of". Or "I hate social interaction, so I'll do something else useful, like learn to run marathons". Not "I'll lie in bed all day, doing nothing, thinking about my failures in an unproductive way, listening to sad music, and maybe having random sleep and appetite disturbances".

I think what you're saying is part of some kinds of depression, but that you need ideas like a trapped prior (incorrectly generalizing from one example to a much stronger pattern), frozen set points, and attempts to maintain these in order to make full sense.

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> In some cases, the patient knows the depression is maladaptive ("every time I go out, I have a good time, I just don't want to go out")

Both of our theories explain this example.

> If you were rationally following incentives[…]

It doesn't need to be entirely rational. I certainly don't think it was "conscious", even if some more less conscious part of me did have the incentive and responded to it.

Just because you're responding to incentive doesn't mean that you're use all of your intelligence.

I agree with trapped priors bit

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You've actually hit on *another* conceptual scheme we can use to think about the maintenance of depression and anxiety--good old fashioned reinforcement learning. Avoidance readily becomes self-sustaining via negative reinforcement, and further entrenched by habit. The first time you don't go to a party because you're afraid to talk to people, you successfully avoided the unpleasant thing (or stressful anticipatory thoughts about it), and unless you missed out on something really cool as a result (which you may be systemically discounting the likelihood of anyhow, see below) that's probably going down in the logbook as a win for avoidance.

I'm a little skeptical of the idea that your depression resolved just because it was no longer useful, if only because it doesn't usually do that! It seems more probable to me that your therapy shifted thoughts and behavior patterns which helped you expose yourself to circumstances where alternative behaviors (social engagement) brought greater rewards, in a virtuous upward spiral. One way to think about mood in general is as a representation of the likelihood that interaction with your environment will result in rewards vs punishments; if you were successfully convinced that there were more rewards to be had by engaging vs withdrawing, that's taking most of the wind out of depression's sails right there.

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I think the OP's model is close to right but can be improved even further. In particular, I believe that all the intrusive-type thoughts, like ruminating on bad things, also serve a purpose. Not to stay unhappy but to find a feeling of being understood and empathize when. When a person is made to feel unsafe, (from sudden shocks or chronic shame or whatever), their body is concerned with avoiding the feeling if unsafety. When it doesn't know how to prevent it from happening it retreats into isolation to avoid any sort of repeat of the situation. Meanwhile it studies the feeling over and over, looking to understand it, and it studied stories of people being unhappy in hopes of finding answers-- some kind of way that it can be sure it won't be hurt again.

At least, that's how I came to understand my own depression, and it seems to resonate with other people's experiences.

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This feels very accurate to my experience.

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I will be posting much more about this on my blog soon

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Depression & anxiety are ways to be in the world when things dont quite line up with your predictions.

Lisa Feldman Barrett

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>I texted her the day after one of these times and she never replied.

I guess now is the perfect time to tell you that phones just eat texts sometimes; my landlord just told me I never got back to him about a good time to repair something, but I'd never gotten the question because the phone ate the text. Important stuff does require a call.

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Yeah, this is along the lines of what I was wondering about: How does psychoanalytic theory fit into Scott's framework of trapped priors or set points? I feel like psychoanalysis might view any of the patients in the original piece as having a specific defense mechanism against change. Which is to say a defense against addressing and healing from previous trauma or a formerly adaptive personality construction that has become maladaptive at the patient's current stage of life. So, a depressed person turns to sad music as a logical part of an ingrained, familiar strategy for maintaining psychological homeostasis (however miserable that may be at the present time). Anorexia often can be like this, too. So, "untrapping the prior" becomes especially fraught as the person is essentially having to dismantle a very familiar and previously CRUCIAL part of their capacity to function in life. I think physical therapy is a good metaphor. Someone's body has tried to adapt around an injury or malformation and, although the person is able to at least function as well as possible given their injury, the consequences of their body's adaptation is very painful and has itself become the #1 priority problem. Physical therapy will require that person to gradually and consistently work against the body's attempt to cope with the injury, building muscles in other places to help counteract the patient's lopsided gait (or whatever). The process for the patient is long and painful, but the end result is that they are both able to function as well or better than before AND without chronic pain. But it's an understandably big ask!

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I find most of what you say convincing but I don't think the sad music part fits the theory.

As you point out, even non-depressed people seem to prefer to listen to sad music when feeling down. I don't know about other people, but while I almost always prefer bright popy songs when I'm really bummed more melancholy music makes me feel like my sadness is heard and has meaning. It's the musical equivalent of someone empathizing with your break up by telling you how awful they felt after their break up instead of telling you about how great their relationship is going.

There are all sorts of ways this may differ for depressed people. For instance, maybe you can hope for catharsis for momentary pain but not for the general feeling everything is bad. And maybe they react differently.

So I don't think it's in conflict with your story but it seems like it isn't obviously predicted by it either.

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I think my theory predicts that non-depressed people would also prefer sad music. My model of normal sadness is something like:

1. Bad thing happens to you

2. Brain goes "Huh, seems like a good time to be sad, better lower the happiness set point for a few hours."

3. Happiness set point lowers. Your body makes you sad automatically, and you also do things to make yourself sad, like listen to sad music.

4. After a few hours, the brain raises the happiness set point again and you feel better.

I realize this makes it hard to differentiate "change in set point" from "the types of shock that set points exist to solve", and "successful control" from "your body changes the set point back to normal", but it does seem like "you get sad when bad things happen" is a feature and not a bug.

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Why does step 2 happen? Why should an outside event making you sad make your brain think "now's a good time to be sad", when an outside event making you hot doesn't make your brain think "now's a good time to be hot"? The latter effect would mean that a non-feverish person would seek out blankets and hot drinks when their body temperature rises. (Oddly, I have heard some Europeans talk about espresso on summer days this way.)

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I'm not exactly saying a sad event makes you sad - sadness isn't a property of events. I'm saying a negative event makes you sad.

I don't know why exactly sadness exists. But whyever it exists, it seems to be some kind of adaptation where, when bad things happen to you, you should react by adopting a specific emotional posture. Without knowing why, I think I can argue that, when a bad thing happens to you, the brain realizes it's time to adopt that emotional posture, and takes steps to make it happen.

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On your theory if you get a negative shock and then a positive shock you should be less happy afterwards than if you got them in the opposite order since moving the set point down decreases impact of the good shock right? This is the opposite of my experience (at the very least isn't generally the case).

Alternative theory, when bad things happen you remember them so you feel crappy. It's just like being hot except that the stimulus often is pretty persistant (if you got dumped yesterday you are still dumped today) but usually set points bring you back to baseline if a bad situation persists long enough to become normal.

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Agree. there's data about coloscopies without anesthesia. Not nice altogether but when its nice near the end of the procedure people like it much more.

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Also can't we test this by looking at patients with memory impairment? If someone gets bad news (loved one dies) and then forgets that do they still act more sad for the rest of the day?

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I think to answer why sadness exists we first need to determine whether its social or nonsocial. Is there a model of sadness in, e.g., fruit flies or snakes?

Here's a straw model for non-social sadness: happiness = risk appetite. (Can you have gamblers that are depressed while gambling?) You're more willing to take risks when happy, less willing to take risks when sad. The setpoint moving is about learning that you're miscalibrated on the likely success of risks you take in general.

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I think risk appetite is definitely part of it. Or perhaps rather novelty seeking. That's similar, but not exactly the same.

Another aspect of sadness could be that it reduces your learning rate and how much you update your connections in the brain. When you are sad (but not depressed), it may be a good heuristic that you shouldn't repeat whatever you have been doing in the last hours. That heuristic won't always fit (when a beloved one dies and it wasn't your fault), but it does often enough (you said mean things to your friend and now they won't talk to you). I assume that our body doesn't want to reinforce the activation patterns from that day.

I would guess that depressed patients have impaired memory formation and impaired learning capabilities, and that the same is true for normal people when they are sad.

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Now it gets more complicated. There must be a rodent model for depression for all the lab work. And rodents' risk behaviour can be radically changed by toxoplasma parasites. Human risk behaviour seems to be modulated a bit by these little worms as well. Are toxoplasma positive humans less depressed as well as less risk aversive?

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So according to this it looks something like:

Normal people: bad event -> sadness regulator activates -> sad music -> feel sad

(analogy: Fever happens -> heat regulator activates -> wear extra jacket -> heat up)

Depressed person: bad event -> sadness regulator activates -> sad music -> feel sad -> brain interprets sad feeling as evidence of new bad thing -> baysian self-updating spiral into unreasonable sadness?

I think this is a plausible model, but it requires slightly more complexity than the other parts of the mood regulation system you suggest, so somewhat less credence in it on priors. More centrally I think this is a different mechanism than the anorexia one, which is just a lower set point but not a self-reinforcing spiral.

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