That sort of observation is really tough to untangle from potential confounding variables though. Seems to me that the causation could go in the other direction just as easily - maybe people who generally have an optimistic outlook on things are more likely to overlook their own flaws and rate their abilities more highly, and vice-versa for depressive types?

This is a known phenomenon among psychologists. People who are more realistic tend to be more likely to be clinically depressed.

Below is a link to a really really brief podcast that talks about the phenomenon. It's very interesting.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/segments/91618...

Exactly.

And there are healthy and unhealthy types of “false confidence.”

There’s the confidence to take on and commit to (reasonable) challenges with the self-belief you’ll be able to conquer them, even if you have no relevant experience. Then there’s the odious, narcissistic type which functions purely on its own desires, rather than reality.

You're talking about important, related ideas. Confidence is just the expectation of positive outcomes. "Self-belief" or more commonly self-esteem is just about one's own valuation of themselves. Both are related, and both positively correlated to happiness. Finally, "narcissistic confidence" is just arrogance. Also related, and you're right, it is a type of confidence.

>those who tend to be more realistic in their self expectations are more prone to depression.

No, depression comes when you are only applying logic to life and essentially seeing that there is no meaning to it. Logic can not live without meaning, but life is tremendously bigger that our limited logic, regardless how fanciful we make it.

>False confidence may be the route to happiness or at least optimism.

No, this comes from the same point of view. Actually there is no route to happiness because it's here already. There are only routes away and making logic dominating in your life is one of them.

to quote Bill Hicks

>The world is like a ride in an amusement park

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/494647-the-world-is-like-a-...

Logic tells me there's no objective meaning to life. Logic also tells me that I can pick whatever subjective meaning (for life, myself, my actions, people around me and whatever else).

>> depression comes when you are only applying logic to life and essentially seeing that there is no meaning to it.

Depression is not a question of philosophy of your life.

Philosophy may help you approach the depression, but you can’t get depressed because life is too logical - you may get sad, on the other hand.

> Depression is not a question of philosophy of your life.

Oh I strongly disagree with this assessment. I am not a psychologist, but have suffered from depression on and off my whole life, and I assert that depression is indeed a philosophical problem.

Depression, I think, is the experience of one's mind realizing that its model of reality (philosophy) is too flawed or incomplete to see a concrete path towards meaningful change in one's life, and attempting to build a better model.

This is evidenced by:

1) depressive realism. the mind is being careful to make more accurate assessments.

2) a preference towards inaction. The mind does not trust its model of reality, and is reluctant to take actions with unpredictable results.

3) similar behavior in children undergoing cognitive schema shifts.

Further, I assert that part of the reason society is unable to effect meaningful treatment (for lack of a better word) of many cases of depression is that society's baseline philosophy (empiricism) is part of the model known by the subject to be flawed, and so it has no pre-existing better model to guide the individual towards (though I contend such models do exist if actively sought).

Depression, in my experience, is overcome in only 2 ways:

1) The mind gives up and returns to its previous, known flawed, philosophy and simply rejects the information that highlighted the flaws. This is an unstable state prone to relapse for obvious reasons. In the worst cases, the subject seeks to actively destroy the source of such information. This, I suspect, is essentially the cause of religious or ideological violence.

2) The mind constructs a better model that allows it to once again place confidence in its prediction of the outcomes of its actions. This is more stable, but the new model may still have significant flaws that will ultimate result in a new round of depression.

Needless to say for anyone who has actually been through severe depression, the experience is intensely unpleasant. If a mind is unable to resolve the dissonance between its current model and reality, it may take desperate action to relieve this suffering.

Anyways, I guess what I'm saying is that if my hypothesis is accurate then you can indeed become depressed from trying to apply logic to your life and discovering that logic (empirical logic anyway) alone is not sufficient.

This is the most accurate description of my depression and why it is seemingly impervious to therapy. It's not debilitating to the point of not being able to function in daily life, but is instead a constant, low-grade friction resulting in less drive and confidence and more inaction. Basically, life has taught me that my self-esteem was misguided, and I'm unsure of how to meaningfully act without it, so I just sort of fade away.

Well, if you know that every time you've built a mental model and it didn't work, isn't that logical to assume that _any_ mental model you can imagine isn't perfect and thus you can't empirically assume it will work all the time?

I hear your opinion of "logic" as "I have a passion for being right, and it makes me unhappy when I am not". Is that logical?

baller comment, just wanted to say

>but you can’t get depressed because life is too logical

Can you elaborate? In my experience this is pretty much the only reason for depression, eg life does not happen how your logic tells you it suppose to happen.

Given the articles subject, I’d like to clarify...

Are you an authority or somehow involved in research on depression? Or are you simply feigning knowledge on a subject you know little or nothing about?

I don't have anything to support what I'm saying nor I need to. My knowledge does not come from a billion dollar research, and it does not have to. The question is only are you looking for a solution or a solution proven by authorities of your choice.

This statement, given the previous comments and the context of the article, belies a certain depth, a conundrum I find myself facing periodically.

The basic notion being that, that which we believe, is true. This is nonsense on the face of it. Being nonsense doesn't prevent it from being a seemingly fundamental and perplexing aspect of being a human.

"Love is giving something you don't have to someone who doesn't exist."—Jacques Lacan

Generalizable to: Life has no meaning, but we can give it a meaning.

Also: "Divorce is taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love."—Zadie Smith

With this I agree, the problem comes when we forget we give meaning and we become too serious about something we made up.

There's a federated structure to it too. Some groups will have false confidence in their habits as long as they can make a living. Cue php group having their own rituals, same for python, or java. Each group will feel happy because they share the same false confidence over a similar point of view.

The 'healthy positive delusion' idea is really poisonous. It's more like almost all productive work is stepping into the unknown, so our collection of tools and abilities are going to be stretched regardless of our confidence in them or not.

This is a widespread meme on the Internet, but it's far from an established fact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism

That wikipedia page is unintentionally hilarious

>This theory remains very controversial, as it brings into question the theory underlying cognitive behavioral therapy, which posits that the depressed individual is negatively biased in their perceptions

CBT is simply a way of coaching the depressed into normative thoughts. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with that. But CBT fancies the whole thing up with a thin veneer of science-sounding words as a confidence trick. The theory is a tool for congestive dissonance where you don't have to face the fact mental disorders are defined by severe inabilities to function within contemporary norms.

Would you rather be a happy idiot or a miserable know-it-all?

> It is better to weep with wise men than to laugh with fools.

-- Spanish Proverb

I agree, especially since the fools are the major source of things to weep about.

A happy idiot I guess. Since the miserable know-it-all is actually also an idiot, they just don't know it. So they're just a miserable idiot.

Can you really know-it-all? I mean really, whole Universe with its infinity in all depth and dimension? No, this is what makes you miserable not the knowledge itself - but taking on an impossible quest and knowing it but pretending you don't know.

Perhaps the know-it-all is miserable because they’re acutely aware that they’re outnumbered by happy idiots?

> False confidence may be the route to happiness or at least optimism.

For many indeed this leads to some kind of 'happiness'. Buffering our inabilities with lying to ourselves about it. Why did we never learn to be truly happy while being average or even below average. Why did we never learn to tame the ego? It's a curse for life.