From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Oct 11 1998 - 15:26:07 MDT
> At 04:04 AM 10/11/98 -0400, Mary Therise Gleason wrote:
>
> >I once suffered from Clinical Depression as a teenager. (snip)
> >Gradually, I burnt it out of my system, but with it I think
> >I lost something. Like the other side of the coin, "happiness", if you can
> >understand that...
Who says clinical depression is bad, anyway? Negative thinking is inherently
more powerful than positive thinking, despite the silly fad in
willpower-worship. The response sets of unhappiness evolved to handle tougher
problems; the analytic abilities that deal with failure are considerably more
powerful than the skill-formation abilities evoked by success. Whatever price
chronic depression exacts, it's more than worth it.
I speak from experience, of course.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/AI_design.temp.html
http://pobox.com/~sentience/sing_analysis.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.
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