> seem to ignore that depression, anxiety, panic disorders, etc. happen for a reason
...no?
In almost all cases, these syndromes are not appropriate responses to the environmental stimulus. OCD is not adaptive in any situation. Neither is Tourette's. Neither is anorexia nervosa. Neither is akinetic mutism. Neither is tardive dyskinesia.
(Hypomania and ADHD-PI might be adaptive in exceptional environments — there's some fun hypotheses about that. But these are the exception. Most neurological conditions have no such "advantageous situation" where expressing the phenotype in a lifelong way—or even the constant lifelong potential to trigger the response—would be always advantageous to your reproductive success.)
Instead, as we now understand, these syndromes happen almost always because of random genetic mutations to genes coding for proteins/enzymes responsible for creating, transporting, receiving, and destroying neurotransmitters.
Like, for example, https://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs53576. Get an A;A mutation, and your brain's ability to react to oxytocin is toast. (And this is common! And just look at all the reported downstream effects when it happens!)
There's no purpose to this mutation. Just like there's no purpose for a gamma ray bit-flipping a DRAM memory cell. Your genes aren't set up carefully so that randomness will intentionally introduce this SNP every so often, to ensure there are some people like this in the population. Rather the opposite: your cellular machinery will, in fact, try as hard as possible to ensure that this mutation doesn't happen (with introns, redundant coding sites, gene silencing, etc.)
And, to be even more clear, these are unfit mutations, that lower their subjects' reproductive success. They weed themselves out of the gene pool, rather than being passed on. Non-functioning versions of beneficial genes are always-recessive vs. their working versions, and so will be bred out of the gene pool. These are un-selfish genes.
So, that (hopefully) being clear: why should my mind listen to the goals my broken brain is setting for me? I know better than it does. Like the fault-tolerant software running on a Mars rover "knows better" than the rover's individual CPUs do, blasted with radiation as they are.
I, as a mind (and even better, I as a cyborg of mind + written storage), can perform the sort of long term comparative analysis of my own emotional states, that my brain on its own simply can't. And therefore, I know things about my brain that my brain doesn't.
My brain isn't a wise old wizard with mysterious purposes, who I should trust to tell me what to do. It's an overclocked gaming PC during a brownout, that desperately needs a UPS.
Yikes. You make some pretty strong claims that are not credible on their face.
1. "Not adaptive in any situation..."
Putting aside the many problems with evolutionary psychological explanations (just-so theory, underdetermination, so-called disjunction and grain problems), there's actually an very strong argument to OCD's adaptive role, both at the individual (threat response) and group. I think the group argument is most compelling, as various degrees of neuroticism have very high upside for risk management over time.
Or take depression for example. It can serve, theoretically, to reduce risk of conflict and death when social hierarchies might be in flux, it's a way to honestly signal a problem to ones group, it could be a mechanism to accurately try and signal a problem to oneself like physical pain does, its been theorized to potentially reduce risk of infection, etc.
2. These genes very clearly do not weed themselves out of the gene pool. In fact, mental illness has been on the rise, probably mostly because neurodiversity has been increasingly pathologized. The social construct in which these are considered disordered is hugely important.
3. Your comment about that empathy snp is extreme genetic essentialsm and determinism. Moreover, it's a single snp. I don't know of a single researcher who'd claim that something as complicated as empathy is either toast or not toast from a single snp.
Like all evolutionary psychology you can argue forever about the 'adaptive value' of any behaviour and characteristic and never know whether what you're saying is true or just completely and utterly wrong. It has a reputation for a reason. I could make a list full of hundreds of reasons why depression might be adaptive - that it's so darn easy should serve as a warning why it's often a bad idea to theorise like this.
Do you have a source for the claim that these mental disorders or syndromes occur due to genetic mutations in almost all cases?
Also, you seem to be saying that even in the cases where a person is left with a bad brain (due to genetic bad luck), their I/mind is still perfectly capable of a rational analysis of their emotional states (here you seem to agree with GP) and can thus act reasonably despite a broken brain. But why wouldn't a bad brain almost necessarily result in a mind that is not capable of such analysis, or on acting on the result of such an analysis?
> And, to be even more clear, these are unfit mutations, that lower their subjects' reproductive success.
I don't believe this first claim is true and from my understanding the second isn't supported by current evolutionary thought. Could you explain more about why you believe these syndromes are never appropriate responses?
I can offer my own anecdotes that OCD gives me a competitive advantage in many aspects of life despite its drawbacks. But I'd like to hear more of your thoughts.
I would love to hear your anecdotes about OCD’s competitive advantage, if only because I find it extremely hard to believe.
OCD is not a knack for being organized or orderly. Without even mentioning the compulsions, it’s a never-ending onslaught of intrusive thoughts and corresponding anxieties.
Managed well, it’s still a permanent distraction that’s always in the background. Managed poorly, it’s life-ruining. I don’t see how either could yield a competitive advantage in any scenario.
OCD isn't double-checking your line-spacing in a document, it's being unable to leave the house in under 45 minutes because you check the stove twenty times, then the door lock twenty, then turn around 5 minutes down the street to check again, then make a deal with yourself that you'll check the stove 3 times in a row and then not allow yourself to do it again, only you do it again anyways and finally take a picture of it so you can discretely check the photo on your phone when you're out on your date that you showed up half an hour late to.
I’m not the person you responded to, but I’ve lived with a person who had a case of OCD that I’m confident saying is definitely not adaptive. To give one anecdote among many, this person would spend the entire day in the shower because they got a spot of grease on their pants. Episodes of this severity were common (ie. sometimes happening daily for extended stretches of time). They explained the cause of the behavior as a failure of communication between the part of the brain and solves a problem and the part that needs to acknowledge that the problem has been solved so the solving can stop. I don’t know if that tracks with psychiatry, but explanation made sense to me.
I don't think it is even closely true that mental problems like this are sorely caused by genetic mutations. There is a careful chemical balance in your brain and it can get out of order by food, drugs, trauma and probably a lot of other factors unknown to us.
Our lifestyle isn't very natural, we have long left natural selection behind for that matter.
> There is a careful chemical balance in your brain
Homeostasis processes, and redundant gene-coding sites in our DNA, mean that your body is mostly robust to environmental onslaughts. Animals have evolved in a competitive environment where these problems already existed: parasites want to control your brain; predators want to envenomate you before they eat you; prey species want to stop you in your tracks with toxins. But life evolves to adapt to these problems, becoming able to shrug most of them off if it's a consistent part of their niche. Most of the "spices" we eat are plant toxins we've adapted to be fine consuming.
When mutations happen, they don't always immediately cause a problem. What they more-often do, is to cause the body (or in this case, the brain) to lose some of its homeostatic mechanisms — to become less robust to these environmental onslaughts. The affected system becomes more vulnerable, or loses compensatory capacity — it remains able to function in the normal case, but loses the ability to function in the edge case.
Of course, some of our body processes are more robust/protected than others. Some systems (reward; inflammation; sleep) are very easy to "hack", for some reason; while others (libido; fear) are nearly impossible.
...no?
In almost all cases, these syndromes are not appropriate responses to the environmental stimulus. OCD is not adaptive in any situation. Neither is Tourette's. Neither is anorexia nervosa. Neither is akinetic mutism. Neither is tardive dyskinesia.
(Hypomania and ADHD-PI might be adaptive in exceptional environments — there's some fun hypotheses about that. But these are the exception. Most neurological conditions have no such "advantageous situation" where expressing the phenotype in a lifelong way—or even the constant lifelong potential to trigger the response—would be always advantageous to your reproductive success.)
Instead, as we now understand, these syndromes happen almost always because of random genetic mutations to genes coding for proteins/enzymes responsible for creating, transporting, receiving, and destroying neurotransmitters.
Like, for example, https://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs53576. Get an A;A mutation, and your brain's ability to react to oxytocin is toast. (And this is common! And just look at all the reported downstream effects when it happens!)
There's no purpose to this mutation. Just like there's no purpose for a gamma ray bit-flipping a DRAM memory cell. Your genes aren't set up carefully so that randomness will intentionally introduce this SNP every so often, to ensure there are some people like this in the population. Rather the opposite: your cellular machinery will, in fact, try as hard as possible to ensure that this mutation doesn't happen (with introns, redundant coding sites, gene silencing, etc.)
And, to be even more clear, these are unfit mutations, that lower their subjects' reproductive success. They weed themselves out of the gene pool, rather than being passed on. Non-functioning versions of beneficial genes are always-recessive vs. their working versions, and so will be bred out of the gene pool. These are un-selfish genes.
So, that (hopefully) being clear: why should my mind listen to the goals my broken brain is setting for me? I know better than it does. Like the fault-tolerant software running on a Mars rover "knows better" than the rover's individual CPUs do, blasted with radiation as they are.
I, as a mind (and even better, I as a cyborg of mind + written storage), can perform the sort of long term comparative analysis of my own emotional states, that my brain on its own simply can't. And therefore, I know things about my brain that my brain doesn't.
My brain isn't a wise old wizard with mysterious purposes, who I should trust to tell me what to do. It's an overclocked gaming PC during a brownout, that desperately needs a UPS.