Curiously, overestimating leads to the correct behavior here: since attempting to control the ball has no cost, the only bad outcome would be deciding to not control it when you could have done so. This can be avoided by always attempting to control it. I wonder if the result of the study would persist if inaction was sometimes the right choice?

Gets back to the distinction between life as puzzle and life as game. Depressives may be better puzzle solvers, but optimists play the game better.

Edit - or the distinction between the picture-theory of language and the tool-theory. Depressives draw a more accurate picture but optimists make better use of the "tools"

Which is why the optimal strategy is to be optimist most of the time, but fall into depressive mood when we encounter a lot of obstacles. Use that depressive time to assess your situation and then start changing it, fueled by your normal optimism.

The issue is, if the obstacles we encounter are too many then we remain in low mood for too long, and that state becomes permament. Early in human evolution, when we were all living at savanah all the dangers and obstacles were short-term. This is entirely different in civilized society.

Wow I really enjoyed reading your first paragraph. Thanks.

do you know that depression is a real disease and not some frame of mind you can choose to be in or excuse at will? i get the point of your post but the terminology is really wrong.

From Wikipedia:

> A DSM diagnosis distinguishes an episode (or 'state') of depression from the habitual (or 'trait') depressive symptoms someone can experience as part of their personality.

Depressive mood != depressive disorder. The terminology isn't wrong.

perhaps. but the original article was talking about actual depressed people.

Fair point. The research was already mixing philosophy with psychology, so I just ran with it.

I read "optimal strategy" as slightly tongue-in-cheek, considering we don't have direct control over our moods.

I don't mean this as a joke, I believe myself to be a deeply depressed optimist.

I have really bad depression, but I look forward to being able to make it ok. My kids keep me going

its an everyday struggle, but noting down the things which i am thankful for, such as wife, kid, some particular incident which could have been much worse but ended being manageable etc. has helped me a lot. It's a slow process though.

This dichotomy of depressives vs. optimists seems flawed to me. My optimism is often what creates the unmet expectations which lead to depression.

>This dichotomy of depressives vs. optimists seems flawed to me. My optimism is often what creates the unmet expectations which lead to depression.

An optimist will be continually disappointed.

A pessimist either has the satisfaction of being right, or will be pleasantly surprised.

What can I search to read more about picture theory of language vs tool theory? It sounds really interesting but when I google I only get results about picture theory of lang.

Read Wittgenstein. Or, don't read Wittgenstein, but read about Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein pioneered the picture theory of language--i.e. the idea that language represents the world. He later gave up on this idea and began to think about language as a tool. He coined the term "language-game". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language-game_(philosophy)

> Or, don't read Wittgenstein, but read about Wittgenstein.

I laughed, but there's some truth in that.

Yeah, [citation definitely needed]

There isn't a single "correct" behaviour here.

The only thing that can be said to be correct/incorrect is the answer to the question: "was your control actually affecting the outcome?".

There's a great book called "Learned Optimism" which at one point talks about a very similar phenomenon, established by research.

The gist of it is that depressed people perceive reality more accurately. The author posits that it's one of the reasons who depression even exists. The world is a nasty, brutal place, and interpreting it accurately has its advantages, especially in our early evolutionary time period.

Probably Alloy & Abramson, 1979, cited in the article posted above: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/528910

I shared this with my partner as I often (somewhat jokingly, somewhat seriously) say that I'm not depressed, just realistic.

But then she has just published a paper about non-reproducible psychology papers :)

Can you reproduce her paper? As a stocking stuffer for xmas...

Can you explain how this works? Why?

Further, what was different in each group amongst their constituent members who did/did not have depression? Did each subset perform differently within each group?