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Personality Basins

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160 points qouteall | 2 comments | 21 Nov 24 12:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.42s | source
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wavemode ◴[21 Nov 24 13:18 UTC] No.42204042[source]▶
This article approaches human psychology from the perspective that, we are all neural networks and our output (actions) are all a learned function of our inputs (experiences).

This is a common (and convenient) perspective, especially among engineers, but doesn't reflect reality particularly well. We know large swathes of a person's personality is directly linked to their genetics.

The article extrapolates this neural network perspective onto other topics like, mental disorders and depression. The solution is made clear then - just learn how to not be mentally ill! Again, convenient. But not really reflective of reality.

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1. jonnycomputer ◴[21 Nov 24 14:21 UTC] No.42204546[source]▶
>The solution is made clear then - just learn how to not be mentally ill! Again, convenient. But not really reflective of reality.

And you know this because?

Cutting edge theories of depression link it to alterations in the reward learning system. There is some evidence that training persons with depression to attend to certain aspects of the reward learning mechanism can reduce depressive symptomology [I am involved in this research]. But speaking more broadly, cognitive behavioral therapy, one of the most successful non-pharmaceutical treatments for depression, involves people "learning how not to be depressed" by unlearning problematic patterns of negative thinking and coping with negative events: first by recognizing what those problematic thoughts and behaviors are, and working to adjust those ... to move you out of that basin.

The main issue with this article imo is that it does not consider the meta-problem: how the reinforcement learning system can be altered by experience as well.

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2. wavemode ◴[21 Nov 24 14:52 UTC] No.42204837[source]▶
CBT can work, sure. It can also not work. As with any treatment.

And depression is only one mental illness, there are countless others. And there are also many different forms and causes of even depression itself.

As I mentioned in another comment, my point isn't that the article's advice is necessarily harmful, just that it oversimplifies a lot of things by assuming that all psychology can be boiled down to learning and unlearning. Ignoring the role of biology may also cause one to ignore possible paths to progress.