That isn't well-documented. That is like saying that cars get 5 miles to the gallon and are as cost effective as a horse. You are relying on really old and poorly designed research that included subpar clinical methods.

Face-to-face socializing is very helpful. Obviously social isolation is just plain bad emotionally for most people.

When part of the problem is rumination, a lack of specific coping skills and a faulty/unhelpful belief system which appears to be the case here* it is not sufficient.

Really?!? From this and multiple other threads: Meditate, exercise outside regularly, get a dog, socialize face-to-face with others consistently regardless of whether he feels like it or enjoys it directly, seek professional help, do helpful things for others, tedious discussions of what a lack of objective meaning for life implies (answer: absolutely nothing to be upset about), why everyone else seems to be enjoying themselves more, what we all individually do to keep ourselves entertained, why work is necessary, materialistic pleasures vs strong belief that non-materialism leads to happiness, how unpleasant moods causes poorly designed philosophies, why nihilism should be a happy philosophy, what qualia being subjective means, etc.

The only reason I would suggest checking with someone about medication (in addition to the other stuff) is because anhedonia sounds really unpleasant and medication can sometimes help with that.

*repetitive themes across multiple threads implying rumination; asking 'how do I' questions implying lack of coping skills, some strange beliefs about subjectiveness implying a faulty/unhappy belief system.

That doesn't imply that not responding for the peanut gallery's benefit is correct.

As an ex-psychologist taking on a "broadside attack," I guess I won't teach him psychological techniques to help him have lucid dreams so he doesn't have nightmares anymore and can consistently have wonderful ones.

Lol. I missed it too.

See if you can find the humor:

http://www.conservapedia.com/Psychotherapy

Why do you think I brought it to the attention of the resident expert(s)?

FWIW, my life is getting better and better (or at least I'm more and more contented). I used to be depressed and I'm very glad I didnt take any drastic action based on that depression or I would have missed all the good stuff. I dont think the choices you present about how to respond to life are exhaustive - fight it/get tangled up in it/ignore it... it's possible to revel in it/embrace it/enjoy it...

I wouldnt want to speak to your specific situation, but I dont think you should assume that how you feel is indicative of how everyone does (or should) feel. It's possibly you'll change your perspective isnt it?

Are there specific books you (as a professional) recommend?

No, sorry, I'm not familiar with them really. My only thought would be that if you're interested in this particular therapy (ACT), then I'd think a book by it's developer, Steven Hayes, would be good.

This is not exactly representative. I seem to recall at that time I was involved in two threads related to this topic, and in the other thread I caved in and challenged others on the integrity of current university-level research and journal studies, and I don't remember receiving a response.

Ok - thx!

I know other people are happy or that they can be happy I just can't see it when I apply it to my life. There subjective reasons may be valid to them but not to me (when I look for the reasons in my life).

Yes I have. The say I have mild depression.

Already have on numerous occasions they say there is nothing wrong me (other than mild depression). I am fit, healthy and capable young adult male who has a job he dislikes a lot and may be in need of speaking to a careers advisor and more social interaction (to get out more). And have been recommended to look into mindfulness and meditation after doing a crash course in CBT (which lead me to Alan Watts, Zen, John kabat Zinn etc..)

I do and will make continual effort to exercise.

I actually have a meditation room (will post pictures in my blog) I don't meditate often if I do I loss interest after 1 minute. Can you recomend a good book on how to mediate? (this is a question to the board) or self help books in general. Been reading a lot of zen stuff. Its puzzling.


I promise you, the board and myself from this day forth I won't be posting to whine. Any updates of my progress in life can be found in my blog.

So I bid you adieu.

Occam's razor suggests the hypothesis that atheists are mostly antisocial trolls with no family support or friends.

That's just plain hurtful, but I have no shoulder to cry on.

Statistically insignificant.

I have already written a reply to this comment. 10 million suicides in the last 10 years, 800 suicide bombings. So suicide bombings does not make much of a difference.

However, it is not statistically insignificant. Statistically insignificance would imply that it was due to random chance (or to be more precise: Lack of probability of it not being random chance), and we know very well that suicide bombings are not random occurrences.

So your comment is wrong.

It's certainly statistically insignificant, even though it is not insignificant.

To repeat myself: Statistical insignifance as you tout it here would imply that the relationship between intentional self-inflicted death and suicide bombing has a "substantial chance of being random".

This is an absurd claim, and your continued insistence in this regard is equally absurd.

De Finetti taught us that probability does not exist; at least we had better be careful and clear when we speak of "randon", for the meaning of the word is far from obvious, has it any at all, in an operational sense. The usual meaning of statistical significance is that the probability of an observed event conditioned on some null hypothesis is above some predetermined threshhold. This notion gives a criterion for accepting or rejecting the null hypothesis. Whether this all makes much sense or not is at the core of debates between orthodox statisticians and Bayesians, but this is not the place for discussion of foundational issues in statistical inference. However, I meant something much simpler, less precise, and nonformal, when I originally said that suicide bombers were statistically insignificant. I meant simply that the number of suicides that are suicide bombers is clearly much smaller than the noise (error) in the data regarding the total number of suicides. From the perspective of epidemiology, suicides are common events, while suicide bombings are very rare events. They are irrelevant to the discussion that was being had.

Ironic, no?

(This isn't a larger criticism of anything else you wrote.)

Which is all rubbish in this context, since no statistician who has ever lived would ever agree that if you look for someone who has survived a deadly disease your search has failed if you find 800 out of 10 million.

Yet you clearly stated that the suicide bombers were statistically insignificant, but not insignificant, but now now suddenly you are claiming they are not statistically insignificant, but insignificant.

Regardless, there is no need to use an expression like statistical insignificance informally. It is very commonly misunderstood concept.

Can we agree that you are statistically insignificant?

No. tame_deuces is absolutely correct in his description of the meaning of the specific phrase "statistically insignificant".

Whatever "random" means, suicide bombings are just as "random" as any other kind of suicide. Mechanistic causality is completely irrelevant in a probabilistic context. You are making the same error as those who think that the outcomes of professional sports leagues, or poker, are not random.

That's interesting. So basically if you register 10 million apples, and 800 of those apples are red - then you can claim from numbers alone that the existence of those 800 red apples is random variation. When someone shows you that red apples can be specifically grown you claim this is random because all apples are random, and that this person does not know what he is talking about.

This raises the question: Why did you state conclusions about the patterns of red apples, if your contention all all along was that apples is not a pattern?

Or to ask more directly:


Anyway, your "error" stems from not understanding (or more likely: Unwillingness to understand) what randomness means in inferential statistics. It does not mean objective unpredictability. It means that we can't find a pattern between observations. Needless to say, if we repeatedly observe this pattern outside the dataset then we must question and likely reject the inference of it not existing.

Re: spoiler

How did they know what religion they were. Did they ask them before or after they committed suicide?