Maybe this is helpful in the USA, but I hardly see how knowing anything about this counts as "personal growth"? There are plenty of things you can know that actively make you a worse person by making you depressed and thus less engaged with things you can actively act upon.
"Poor models of reality are a Hallmark of depression."
Is that a fact? I recall from studies with pessimists and optimists, where they should self report some progress on learning something - and the reports of the pessimists were way more realistic, than those of the optimists. (But the latter probably enjoyed the whole thing)
Is there any particular correlation between pessimism and depression? I'm sure there would be something on the extreme edge but I don't see why there would be anything particularly powerful there in the median case.
Pessimism is more of an understanding that things will go wrong (which is often just factual correctness; any vague understanding of risk makes most people sound like pessimists). Depression is more of an "it is hopeless" take which is not logically sound - even if life is meaningless the sensible thing to do is leave a peaceful & cheerful existence as best can be managed.
There'd be a bit of an overlap in some cases (depression would make someone an extreme pessimist), but the pessimism that comes from being realistic doesn't lead to depression.
"Depression is more of an "it is hopeless" take which is not logically sound - even if life is meaningless the sensible thing to do is leave a peaceful & cheerful existence as best can be managed."
It is usually more concrete in the sense of "it is hopeless, that I get into a state of happiness again". Which might or might not be correct. So calling depression not logical .. is a potential tough thing to say.
Life is tough, unspeakably horrible things happen daily. Never feeling happiness would be on the bad end of even that spectrum.
But nevertheless, as someone who is acutely aware that unspeakable horrors surround us, an accurate prediction of never feeling happiness again doesn't logically lead to feeling a sense of hopeless, so it doesn't follow that depressed people are more likely to be working from an accurate world model.
The logical thing to do is to either look for ways to feel happiness or ignore it and salvage some meaning from whatever is left besides happiness. Easier said than done I know, particularly for someone who is depressed. But logic is what it is.
Yes, that is a fact. Not just the personal opinion kind, but the kind in text books, accepted by 200k therapists in the US, and supported hundreds of research papers. .
As others posted, pessimism and depression different topics.
Come right out and say what you mean. No sense being coy, unless you know that your hypothesis actually is encouraging hate and will not be tolerated by this community.
Why dont you come out and say what you actually mean? It seems like you have a strong position you are not stating as well.
Im not afraid to read between the lines. They are saying the gun violence risk to the average person is low, and the risk is focused on certain groups. Namely the suicidal and gang members.
Suicide makes up 55% of gun deaths, and the US is literally the only country in the world that counts these as gun violence. The remainder is primarily gang violence. Shooting of non-gang affiliated people is extremely rare, and noteworthy because of this rarity.
Most discussion and statistics about gun violence intentionally obfuscates these facts. We could speculate about the motivations why, but it is largely irrelevant.
Which part of this do you think encourages hate?
Now, I happen to think that gang violence is a real problem. It does massive harm to those involved, causes massive damage to the local community, and is an economic deadweight on society.
Letting people die, wait no, misinforming people so they choose the option where they die, is criminal. Which also explains why you protect and defend criminals.
I’ve never understood what’s the point of harassing people until they lie about crime statistics, or even creating laws to hide the truth. What’s the point of being on the bad side?
Yeah you do. Australia has roughly 25 million people and yet we have had no mass shootings in 2024. America has had 200+ mass shootings this year but only 10x the population of Australia. The relative risk between Australians and US citizens risk of dying by mass shooting is a divide by zero error. The public discourse means that while the risk of dying by mass shooting in the US is tiny, the actual effect on mental health is massive.
If you bothered to look at the actual data behind "mass shootings", you'd already know they're mostly gang related, and avoid making such an abhorrent post.
Australia had literal internment camps during COVID, and Australians had to video chat to "check in" with police to prove they really were where they were. Fuck that. I'd rather have the 2nd Amendment.
Maybe this is helpful in the USA, but I hardly see how knowing anything about this counts as "personal growth"? There are plenty of things you can know that actively make you a worse person by making you depressed and thus less engaged with things you can actively act upon.