Depressed Thoughts

At least half, if not more, of my depressed thoughts involve trying to figure out my depressed thoughts:

What is this.... am I feeling lonely? But I was hanging out with cool new people this weekend. Am I afraid? Why can't I just do what I need to do... Is it because people expect things of me? I had a good run of not being depressed, but that seems to be coming to an end. But I was feeling so good yesterday! How do other people manage? Why can't I focus! I just need to make some plots, just get something going. My brain is out to get me again. I'll never make it as a scientist...

It is the ultimate mindfuck. I become at war with myself. "Oh man, I suck because X and Y." "But X and Y are irrational, and what's more, not even true. Here's some empirical evidence." "I know, I'm so irrational! I SUCK!"

I've read better descriptions of how depression messes with you, but they are lost on the internet.

Currently, I'm not quite at the "I SUCK" part, and nowhere near the complete lack of motivation for anything phase, but my brain feels like cotton and I feel inadequate. Even writing this is making me feel guilty, like I am making up excuses for laziness.

So, what can I do about it?

My first response was to eat some chocolate. But my bar of Green & Black's 85% is getting small. Then I started writing this. Next I will identify some small and easy things to put on/check off my To Do list. After that, I might go home. Whether I can go home without guilt is the tricky part. If it doesn't seem like I can get rid of the guilt, I might stare at some code for a while to give myself a chance to do work. I will also look through a special esteem-boosting email folder I started a little while ago, prompted by more internet advice. I don't know whether reading things that once upon a time made me feel good about myself will do the same now, but it's better than letting the depressed thoughts feed on themselves, using my brain as a host.

Finally, what I'm going to do is post this, because writing it seems to have helped. Because even though I'm not looking for sympathy, not making excuses, and even though I'm not that depressed... this shit is real and sucks and I'm going to complain about it on the internet.

Some thoughts while reading a philosophy blog over lunch

Today's post at Scientia Salon is a series of blurbs from an academic philosophical article. That means it is difficult to understand for two reasons:

1. It was not written with a general layperson audience in mind.
2. The blurbs are just snippets of the arguments and won't convey the whole picture.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed it because I am interested in the topic, and I have done enough philosophical background reading to know what most of the jargon words mean. The topic and title is "Structural realism and the nature of structure." It addresses a specific model of scientific realism, which advocates for the reality of either our scientific theories or the objects in nature described by them. I think this article deals specifically with the epistemic question of scientific realism: are we in a position to know that our theories of nature are true?

The article is a critique of Ontic Structural Realism.

Ontic Structural Realism is a version of realism about science according to which by positing the existence of structures, understood as basic components of reality, one can resolve central difficulties faced by standard versions of scientific realism.

These difficulties are:

1. Pessimistic meta-induction, the view that since theories in the past have been shown to be false, there is reason to believe that our current theories will one day be shown to be false as well, so it is unreasonable to believe in their truth.
2. The "underdetermination of metaphysics by physics, which arises in non-relativistic quantum mechanics".... I will admit to not really getting what this means.

My point with this blog is not to go through and try to explain the blurbs of the philosophical article, not least because I don't understand it enough in the first place. I have defined pessimistic meta-induction here because it will come up later. My point is simply to share some thoughts I had while reading the blog over lunch.

I have recently been thinking about the nature of expertise, how we come about it, and why expertise in some fields (e.g. physics) is recognized and deferred to but not in others (e.g. racism in America). One day I may get around to formulating ideas into a blog, but with that as background, somewhere around this blurb I had to slow down:

The deflationary nominalist grants that mathematics is indeed indispensable to science, but resists the conclusion that this provides any reason to be committed to the existence of mathematical objects and structures. This is achieved by distinguishing quantifier commitment (the mere quantification over the objects of a given domain, independently of their existence) and ontological commitment (the quantification that commits one ontologically to the existence of something).

This is a good example of how understanding complex ideas is a difficult process. I had to think hard to translate "nominalist" into something meaningful (it has something to do with physical law), and I ignored "deflationary" as jargon I don't get. I had to re-read sentences a couple of times, and split them into chunks to understand phrases separately before bringing them back together into something coherent.

And then I had some thoughts about how important it is for us as a society, for humans committed to learning, to be comfortable being confused. ("If you aren't confused, you aren't paying attention." TM) Digesting complex ideas and turning them into increased understanding is a skill that should be learned in school and then used repeatedly as an adult, but the brain is a lazy and energy-saving organ. All too often we accept "common sense" answers because they are easier to understand, not because they are right.

Anyway, this is tangentially related to the differing types of expertise. Physics is acknowledged to be difficult to understand; ideas about physics are communicated via jargon and mathematics, so there is little chance of laypeople convincing themselves they understand when they really don't. On the other hand, much of the humanities - sociology, political science, literature - communicates with a mix of jargon and everyday words, and the subject of these fields are not quarks or electrons but people and groups of people. So, when a layperson is confronted with physics, they will usually defer to an expert, but when confronted with a subject like racism, they can refer to their everyday experience and may not even acknowledge that expertise on the subject exists. In this respect, the illusion of understanding is an impediment to understanding. (Abandon Certainty, etc.!)

Well... I wasn't planning on writing all that, but that happened. Let's move on. Here's the blurb from the article (remember, we were talking about ontic structural realism) that inspired me to start blogging today.

The very idea that there is a true, fundamental, underlying structure of the world - in whose existence we must believe - is difficult to make sense of, as the above arguments have indicated.

 My thoughts proceeded something like:

• I was following the argument and maybe agreeing, but I find it difficult to commit to this characterization. Even if we never can know what the structure is (because of the nature of our ever-changing scientific theories, i.e., pessimistic meta-induction), that doesn't mean that there is no fundamental structure to the world.
• But if you can't define what that structure is, how can you say that it exists?
• Exactly.

... I'm not sure I can sufficiently explain where that last thought came from. But if we are thinking about some fundamental structure to the world, it is easy to slip from an abstract notion of scientific theories (though they may not be the structure itself) that describe the way the world works, to more metaphysical notions of Brahman or the Tao, something indefinable that transcends all notions of being and non-being. Well, easy for me anyway. Also, my favorite movie contains this quote:

Dude: "I have an appointment to check out this African guy."
Other dude: "What African guy?"
First dude: "Exactly. What African guy?"

I haven't yet decided whether I believe there exists some fundamental structure to the world. If there is, on one hand, it seems reasonable that in order to say that something exists, you should be able to define what that thing is that exists. On the other hand, being able to define something doesn't fully get at what the thing really is... we have an idea (which already doesn't fully contain the essence of the thing) then distill that idea into language (getting further away from the real thing) in order to communicate... so whatever the fundamental structure of the world is, if one exists, cannot be defined, since surely it exists independent of human language and thought?

If I keep going I will go back and forth and this will become "some thoughts about my thoughts about a philosophy blog I read over lunch"... but I hope my thoughts sparked your own thoughts!

It's Okay to Be a Fool

I don't like doing April Fools' Day pranks, and (or because?) I don't like getting pranked. If I think about it, it's probably some social anxiety related fear of looking stupid in front of people. But honestly, most April Fools pranks involve straight up lying to people, and if they believe the lie they are a "fool". HAHA?

But maybe it's good to have one day a year where it is okay, even expected, to be a fool. To not take things so seriously. You thought something was true and you were wrong, but laugh about it, it's aight! You can't trust people, even friends and family, to be straight with you and not lie to your face for a laugh at your expense.... ain't life a hoot!

Life is absurd.

April Fools' Day is a good day to celebrate being silly and, if you can manage it, not giving a shit what people think. Kids are good at this, but at some point we learn to worry about being judged for not behaving "appropriately" i.e. like somber Adults. Eff that. Being an adult is overrated. One of the things I love about playing with my niece and nephew is doing silly shit and not caring because a kid is making me do it, that's how it works. If you don't make a fool of yourself in front of a baby that baby will be unimpressed. (And will miss out on working their face muscles trying to imitate you? That is a plausible theory, someone should look that up...) That baby wants you to be a fool and will reward you with a smile.

The interesting thing I learned from the internet today is that April 1 used to be when people celebrated the New Year. A possible origin of April Fools' Day is that when New Year's Day was changed to January 1, some people either didn't hear about the change (there was no internet back then) or refused to move their day of celebration, so they were made fun of. New Year's on April 1 is kind of great though (for the Northern hemisphere anyway): it's Spring! Things are new! Plants and animals that hibernated over winter are coming back to life! Gods are resurrected! Eggs and bunnies! The Chinese New Year also marks the beginning of Spring. What better time to celebrate newness than when things are new?

And since I brought up symbols (gods and eggs), let's look at the symbolism of the Fool. Or rather, let's watch Joseph Campbell talk about the Trickster god in Native American mythology who "represents the power of the dynamic of the total psyche to overthrow programs." The great thing about the Fool character/archetype (and of course I first learned this from Campbell's "The Power of Myth" special) is that he's "both a kind of devil and fool and the creator of the world" who "breaks through the notion of what a deity ought to be."

And of course, breaking through the notion of what a deity ought to be is important because our idea of God, and its many images and manifestations, is just a symbol, a mask of eternity. It is not eternity itself. If you forget that, the Trickster will fuck with you.

So, folks, it's okay to be a fool. God is a fool, and you are god too.

Happy New Year!

Cosmic Coincidences

There is a solar eclipse tomorrow, so obviously I have been pondering whether some coincidences in nature require explanation, how do we know which do, and what this means for scientific theories.

Eclipses occur throughout the Solar System, and indeed wherever there are planets that have satellites like our Moon orbiting around other stars. But on Earth, the apparent size of the Moon is about the same as the apparent size of the Sun. The Sun is obviously much more mega huge than the Moon, but it is also much farther away. By some cosmic coincidence, both of these ratios are 400, resulting in a Sun and Moon that appear the same size, giving them roughly equal importance in our mythic imagination.

Does this coincidence require a scientific explanation? Is there some physical process which can explain why these two numbers are the same, or is it down to statistics?

Let me give another example. The Moon both orbits around the Earth and rotates about its own polar axis, just like the Earth both revolves around the Sun once per year and rotates once per day. But for the Moon, these periods are the same: it rotates at the same speed which it orbits the earth, with the result that one side of the Moon always faces Earth, and we can never see its far side from the Earth's surface. When I first learned about this "coincidence" I thought, what are the chances?

But there is a physical explanation for why the orbital speed and rotational speed of the Moon are the same, and it's called tidal locking. There are other tidally locked systems in our Solar System, and once we figured out the subtler implications of Newtonian gravity and celestial mechanics, science could provide an explanation for this apparent coincidence. (1 point for Science!)

Another example involves the Universe itself. As the Universe evolves and expands, the densities of matter and radiation in the Universe decrease, but the density of radiation decreases faster. In the early Universe, the density of radiation was higher than matter, but most of the time the Universe has been matter dominated -- that is, until very recently, when the Universe began accelerating. We don't know what the "dark energy" causing this acceleration is, but the simplest explanation gives it a density that is constant over time (unlike matter and radiation whose densities decrease). But why is this period of acceleration happening so close to now, when we are able to observe it? This is called the cosmic coincidence problem, and in general any successful theory of dark energy is expected to explain it, though many theories ignore it. (1 point for WTF Is Going On, Nature?)

So, what is it about these coincidences that they require physical explanation? If the phenomenon of tidal locking didn't result from our theories of gravity, would we still be searching for an explanation of why the orbital period and rotational periods of some satellites are the same? What if only our Earth-Moon system had this property? (I realize I am mostly asking questions here, not answering, but I am doing philosophy. Abandon Certainty with me for a bit.)

I have the feeling that if only the Moon had the same orbital and rotational period in our Solar System, and if gravity offered no scientific explanation, we would still be looking for some way to explain the coincidence, either scientifically or statistically. It would be too special, and too human-centric. "Because humans are special" lacks explanatory power, and since the Copernican revolution, any scientific explanation which puts humans in a special place is met with great skepticism. This is the heart of why the cosmic coincidence problem is troubling, and why some scientists would rather believe that multiple universes exist than that we occupy a special place in our own.

The eclipse coincidence -- that the Sun and Moon have the same angular size from Earth -- strikes me as similarly human-centric. But there is no physical explanation, and scientists aren't actively searching for one. I say scientists because people are certainly putting explanations out there on the internet (you see, it was necessary for the development of consciousness...), but as long as two unrelated things have happened at the same time, people have come up with explanations. Human brains are great at finding patterns, even when they don't exist.

That is not to say that scientists don't think about it. I mean, the Sun and the Moon have the same apparent size, isn't that cool?? But it's generally accepted that there is no underlying physical explanation, that the coincidence is purely statistical. Unlike with tidal locking, other celestial bodies in our Solar System don't have this apparent size coincidence, so any physical explanation would have to be unique to the Earth-Moon system. Further, the Moon is actually receding away from us (at the whopping speed of 4 centimeters per year), so in the past it appeared bigger than the Sun, and in the future it will appear smaller. Even today, the Moon actually changes its apparent size as it moves through its elliptical orbit. Given the billions of stars in our Galaxy, and the thousands of planets in other solar systems (just that we're aware of), it's likely that this apparent size coincidence is not unique.

Where does that leave our understanding of the explanation of coincidences? I have presented three examples:

1. The Sun and Moon are observed to have the same apparent size viewed from the Earth. This can be explained statistically: given enough planetary systems, such a coincidence can be expected.
2. The Moon has the same orbital and rotational period. There are many examples of this type of coincidence in our Solar System, and it can be shown to follow from laws of nature. 
3. The acceleration of the expansion of the Universe started relatively recently in its cosmic history, which seems to place humans in a special time. Both scientific and statistical explanations are being sought: either the coincidence will be explained by a theory of dark energy, or there are so many universes that such a coincidence can be expected in one of them (ours).

So some apparent coincidences turn out to follow from a fundamental law -- to put it in fancy philosophical language, the explanandum has an explanans which is nomological -- and some can be explained statistically instead of nomologically. Does that mean all coincidences require explanation? Either they are the result of a physical law, or they have a non-zero probability of occurring, and both count as explanation? Maybe this is because of my pattern-seeking human brain, but the statistical type of explanation does not seem fulfilling to me.

More importantly, what is the probability that I will wake up in time for the eclipse tomorrow AND that there will be clear skies, given that I live in England AND I hate mornings? Such a confluence of events would be rare indeed.

Ada Lovelace Day: On Role Models for Women in Science

Today, October 14, is Ada Lovelace Day. You have probably never heard of her (I hadn't before last year's Ada Lovelace Day), but she is often referred to as the first computer programmer. She was born Ada Gordon but had the good fortune of being married to an aristocrat named King who became the Earl of Lovelace, and so she became Lady Ada King, Countess of Lovelace. She lived in the mid-1800s, a time when people could have names out of fairytales, but even women of means were rarely educated.

Ada Lovelace Day was started a few years ago to celebrate the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (singular), commonly taken together as STEM fields. Women are underrepresented in these fields, and though there has been progress, it is frustratingly slow. And in this progress, white women are outpacing women of color. It is often thought that we need only wait until the old, white sexists in these fields are replaced by a younger more progressive population, but that expresses a complete misunderstanding of the causes of the disparity. Plus, I can tell you from experience that the younger scientific community still has a long way to go before becoming "progressive" on these issues, women included.

What are some of the causes, if not old white sexists? The Finding Ada site sums it up:

The reasons for this inequality are many, spanning issues such as social pressure on girls and women to pursue “suitable” careers, subtle misogyny in higher education and the workplace, and a lack of support for women who wish to have a family or re-skill when re-entering the workforce after having a family.

I agree generally, and though of course old white sexists do have their role in preventing the advancement of women (and not just in STEM fields), I tend to think of it as primarily the result of stereotypes. In cultures/countries where the stereotype that men are better at science and math doesn't exist - such as Italy, apparently - the representation of women is more balanced, or even skewed toward women. However, even in fields like nursing where the stereotype works toward the underrepresentation of men, the representation of men increases as you go up the career ladder (I saw this in a talk so can't reference the data); there is still the stereotype that men are better leaders and managers, which benefits the advancement of men over women even in female-dominated careers.

So, stereotypes are evil and allow people to make mental shortcuts, which affect their judgment even in the face of contradictory objective data (read "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman). What do we do about it? Ada Lovelace Day is about doing something positive by raising the profiles of women in science and stressing the importance of role models. People are encouraged to blog about women in STEM that they admire and participate in various events, online and in person.

But when I think about what inspired me to become a scientist/astronomer/astrophysicist/cosmologist (all of which apply to me, listed in decreasing order of the representation of women), I don't think role models ever played an important role (cheeky wink!) in my career choices at all. Perhaps the lack of female role models never bothered me personally because I was a tomboy and played sports, and if anyone ever said boys were better at something, I would probably reply "nuh uh!" Perhaps it is because I was blessed with the naive sense that I can do anything because I'm good at everything, which stuck with me until grad school. Even so, I remember trying to learn about astronomy in the career center and thinking, "That seems cool, but I don't want to be an astrophysicist, that sounds much too hard." Who knows what having a role model in science could have done. I do remember having a couple of great female science teachers.

After facing the realism in grad school that I'm not better than everyone (and that that's okay, that doesn't make me the worst), I didn't exactly have many female astronomers or physicists to look up to. The lone female tenured astronomy professor in my department was a hard ass that never seemed to support women (or anyone); but I was educating myself about "diversity" issues in science and learned that it's common for older women who achieved success in a much harsher climate to avoid anything to do with "women in science" as a survival mechanism. Plus, the women I saw (and continue to see) invited to give talks at conferences are all too awesome; but this can also be explained by sociological research.

First, girls at various stages in education out-perform boys, even in stereotypically male subjects such as science and math. In college, the representation of women in these fields starts to fall, and this continues to fall at each successive stage (graduate school, postdoc, professor), a phenomenon known as the leaky pipeline. So, first assume that male and female ability is equal (even if there is evidence that girls outperform boys): when women self-select out of the field, either because of social pressure (perhaps seeing chemistry as a more friendly environment than physics) or whatever reason, the women who stay are more likely to be at the top of the ability curve. There is a biased selection effect, something which astronomers should be familiar with. When there are barriers to advancement, the super awesome women make it, while the average men make it, resulting in a pool of female role models that doesn't reflect the average a few stages back in the pipeline. (This is also a reason why striving for a percentage of female invited speakers, for example, that matches the representation in the field (which is less than 50%), is misguided: there is evidence that women are MOAR AWESOME, so invite MOAR WOMEN!)

Secondly, throwing female role models at the problem might not be all it's cracked up to be. I can't find the reference so it may not be true, but I remember hearing that role models can have a negative impact: when the role models are too few or too awesome, it can be hard for younger people to identify with the supposed role model. Perhaps I remember this because I often don't feel awesome and don't see myself in the small pool of women cosmologists who are awesome and give ALL the invited talks. (As I said above, we could do with inviting MOAR WOMEN, not just the big wigs everyone knows about!) But there could be other issues with the role model solution: this study finds that both women and men are equally beneficial as role models for recruitment (contrasted with the benefits of women for retention), and another study "suggests that role models whose success seems unobtainable can make young students feel threatened rather than motivated" (which may support my "role models too awesome" theory). Just being female and being successful in STEM may not be enough to inspire aspiring young girls. 

None of this should be taken to mean that I don't support Ada Lovelace Day. It is a great chance to celebrate the achievements of women in STEM fields, and I've learned some interesting things already. But I remain unconvinced that role models are the solution many think they are, both from my personal experience and from a few snippets of sociological research I just dug up and half-remember. And when it is seen as a magical cure-all, it over-taxes the few women who have made it to senior positions in STEM, who, as one male said in a women in science meeting, need to "step up" and take on more responsibility, with no hint of irony at all.

Logic

Today I made a few observations of my mental state. It amused me to put them in an ordered list:

1. Being depressed makes it hard to get work done.
2. When I get work done, I feel good.
3. Feeling good is the opposite of being depressed.
4. Therefore, in order to feel good, I must first feel good.

I was going to post something like the above on facebook with some pithy comment about my brief training in formal logic. "Haha, logic shows the impossibility of ever breaking the cycle of depression!" I would say, then sit back and marvel in my own cleverness.

Then I actually thought about the formal logic of it... it turns out I made a pretty basic error. To show you how, we have to translate the above statements into symbols, which lay bare their meanings by removing the shiny words. We will use the following definitions:

• A = being depressed
• B = getting work done
• C = feeling good

Each statement is conditional - it can either be true or false. If it is false, then its opposite is true, indicated by "Not". So if A is false, then Not A is true.

My list of observations links together these individual statements by "if - then" connections. Though I never actually say, "If I'm depressed then I don't get work done," that is the meaning of observation number 1. Let's now translate them all:

1. If A then Not B
2. If B then C
3. C = Not A
4. If C then C

Let me first make it clear that there's no logical error in the above. The conclusion is obviously a pretty meaningless tautology. The error was in my thinking that 4 follows from 1, 2, and 3, by an implicit, "If I feel good, then I get work done," which translates to:

• If C then B

With 2 above that leaves us with "If C then B" and "If B then C", thus:

• If C then C,

or, "If I feel good then I get work done then I feel good." What a hilariously depressing joke!

Unfortunately, "If C then B" DOES NOT FOLLOW. It is a common mistake to assume that "If A then B" implies "If Not A then Not B", which wikipedia helpfully informs us is called denying the antecedent. What does follow, however, is:

• If B then Not A,

from the transposition of number 1. Then we can see, by number 3, that this is exactly the same as number 2, "If B then C". And since we can't have a discussion of logic without any Latin, I will point out that this is the same as the rule of modus tollens: If A then B; Not B; Therefore Not A. So my observations amount to two equivalent statements, a definition, and a tautology.

I hope we all have learned something today. I think at least a cursory introduction to formal logic should be required, perhaps in secondary education; no reason to wait for college. In practice it mixes algebra with reading comprehension, and the result is better reasoning and critical thinking skills. Plus, it can help you avoid making a fool of yourself on facebook, and by God we need more of That!

The Psychology of Gaming

[Note: this blog post contains gamer terminology. If some terminology is unknown to you, hopefully I have linked it to an explanatory website, since I don't want to have to make everything explicit to noobs. (See, that's a link to the Oxford Dictionary. Legit!)]

I don't like to think of myself as a "gamer," a word which invariably is associated with teenage boys secluded in basements and poor life choices. But, I play a lot of games and always have, so I guess the term fits. Whether an involved story-driven RPG or adventure game, a Strategy game, an FPS on my brother's console, or Minesweeper and Solitaire, they all have their place. They've all suited some purpose at some point in my life, both healing and destructive.

I've even gone to the dark side and paid monthly to play an MMO! Paid real money! This is the genre that World of Warcraft made popular - think Leeroy Jenkins and anecdotes about people playing so much they forget to eat. While I am proud to say I've never played WoW - the game I played was based on LOTR, and I enjoyed coming up with cool and grammatically correct Elvish names for my weapons (NERD!) - it's still not the sort of thing you brag about to your scientist colleagues and non-gamer friends. I don't necessarily regret the countless hours I spent wandering around Middle-Earth, but even at the time I knew I was using it as a coping strategy for depression.

Lorien is a good place to be sad.

Why do people play games? More specifically, why do some people get totally swept up in gaming, and not others? What needs or desires do games fulfill in the human psyche?

I didn't exactly ask myself these questions right away. While some part of me knew that I was playing too much, that not going into work (in so far as grad school counts as "work") was a real sign that things were not okay in my life, those types of thoughts were exactly what I was avoiding by gaming instead. Then at some point I came across The Guild and everything made sense: the first episode starts with the main character breaking up with her therapist in the middle of a raid.

I think the comedic value of breaking up with your therapist is obvious regardless of whether you've been to therapy, but I don't actually remember if I had a therapist at that point. I do remember, later, attempting to explain to my therapist the insights I had on the Psychology of Gaming that surely came from The Guild: there are clear goals and rewards, a continuous sense of advancement, an adjustable difficulty setting, all while acting like the perfect version of yourself and wearing immaculate armor. When your real life (RL) demons become too much, you can always conquer dragons in the gaming world and collect your well earned loot.

Loot. It's also a verb.

The Guild is worth watching, obvi, but I watched it again for you and picked off these quotes:

"at the end of the night you can always just log off"

"cartoon characters who let me feel a sense of achievement in an imaginary world"

"I've never really felt like I had any control over my life. I think that's why I like video games. It is so much easier to measure life in experience points."

"BAM! Rent Check! Die! Meter Maid!"

"If I get rejected, what's the down side? I'll cry a lot. I'll probably do that anyway."

"I can't wait until I'm the one picking someone instead of someone picking me. This way there's no way that I can be rejected!"

"I've never gotten into Real Time Strategy games.... How is that fun? I have a hard enough time coping with real life in real time!"

Suffice it to say I completely empathized with the main character. There is a fine line, I found, between a helpful coping strategy and a destructive one, but it didn't take cutting down on gaming to feel better. Quite the reverse. Once I was able to actively address my depression, I was able to appreciate the positive aspects of gaming instead of feeling guilty about it, before, during, and after. The playing itself wasn't nearly so destructive as the guilt.

Plus, it's so pretty!

The Guild is ultimately about people who play an immersive, social role playing game, which is why so many people get completely drawn into MMOs; but there are other psychological needs that different types of games meet. Many types, but especially RPG and adventure games, provide a sense of escapism to an alternate reality, in which you act out specific roles. Adventure games in particular (for example, Myst) involve puzzle-solving, but instead of a static crossword or sudoku you are solving puzzles in an immersive world to advance a story. First-person shooter (FPS) games (for example, Halo) are sometimes also set in other (alien) worlds and thus provide escapism, but often they attempt to be realistic war games. I'm not generally drawn to these, but I find a gross satisfaction in pulling off a head shot - a test of hand/eye coordination and BOOM! another enemy is down. FPS games make me afraid for humanity, and of myself.

Strategy games are a different type of puzzle solving, but long-term; they are often about managing resources and as such involve taking a character out into the world to explore. The game I played most in middle-school to high-school, and even college, was a fantasy strategy game called Heroes of Might and Magic. Explore the map to gather resources, build an army, find and defeat your foes. It was a turn-based strategy, so I had plenty of time to decide my next move. (I tend to take a long time deciding....) Real-time strategy games can offer more of an adrenalin rush, but I personally think they depend too much on clicking speed. Starcraft is a popular example of these.

"Gil-galad was an Elven-king...."

Then there are the social aspects of games. You can play with people or against people, whether strangers or friends, for most of the game types I mentioned. Humans are social creatures, so the benefits of gaming with other humans are self-evident. I tend to prefer solo games, but occasionally in my MMO life I would group up with 6, 12, or 24 people to defeat monsters for epic rewards. After a few times I could tell why people get addicted. It was an incredibly focused and intense experience. If only I could find such focus in my research!

And then there was HabitRPG. One day I told facebook, "I wish real life were more like games," and magically a friend told me about Habit. It was exactly what I needed. Send a work email, gain experience and gold. Use that gold for whatever rewards you like: health potions (so you won't die), a fancy new sword, or real-life cake. Perform bad habits, which you set for yourself, and you lose health. Good habits, and checking off To Do items, gain you experience and gold. Level up to increase your stats! All of a sudden, the "Submit that proposal and DING! Level up!" scenario was a real (fake) possibility!

Habit is now my To Do list, and my Dailies list (in MMOs, these are quests you can do every day), and occasionally I grow a baby dragon into a big dragon for my character to ride. I have long since bought the top level weapons and armor, but I don't want to pay real money to start anew at level 1. Maybe this means everything will be easy once I reach RL level 50, but meanwhile in my Habit game/life, I make things as difficult as needed, because if a game/life is too easy, what's the point?

Perhaps that's good advice from gaming that I can bring to my real life character. (By that I mean myself....) If things seem difficult, that is a sign that they are worth going for; epic loot could be gained, after all. And if they really are too difficult, I can always take a break to play a game and kill a dragon.

There is more on the subject of the Psychology of Gaming to talk about, like for example why the hell Candy Crush and FarmVille are so popular, why unlocking levels and achievements is so satisfying, etc. These can probably be explained by various psychological studies into the benefits of seemingly mindless tasks, or focused attention, but I will leave it to you... there are plenty of TED talks for the interested. As to why some people get drawn into games and some don't, that could be a mixture of personality and susceptibility to addiction. It really is interesting how much of a stark contrast there is between people who play games and people who don't get the appeal at all!

I was also going to talk about the experience of losing my ability to play games, but that is too traumatic... I may have a permanent fear that my mouse will start to move by itself, but I have a virus-free computer now and everything is right with the world. EVERYTHING IS OKAY. I AM SAFE.

Excuse me while I go kill some dragons....

Noro lim!