It’s hard not to talk about complexity or systems1Complexity theory, system dynamics, et al. all refer to the same basic thing for the sake of right now. without sounding like you just came back from Burning Man: “Everything is connected!! IT’S ALL ABOUT ENERGY!!!”

And yet…

IT’S ALL ABOUT ENERGY!

EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED!

WE’RE ALL JUST FLOATING PARTICLES MADE OF STARS!

I love data. I make a portion of my living teaching people how to discuss their data in clearer, more useful ways. Numbers are seen as the pinnacle of objectivity; the problem is that numbers exist in an ecosystem of subjectivity:

  • Researchers are humans; all humans are biased and have blindspots that they’re unaware of
  • Researchers tend to be experts at justifying their beliefs, and gain notoriety for sticking to their “intellectual brand”
  • People collecting data have unique motivations and interests
  • The subjects of studies are typically college undergrads, and not representative of the population at large
  • The more we hear something, the more likely we are to believe that it’s true
  • Researchers tend to run studies until they find something of statistical significance

Because of all of these caveats, the replication crisis is real. When we read about a “finding,” most people assume that it’s a deep insight about human behavior; in reality, it’s closer to: “This researcher. had a hunch about X, and they thought it was sexy enough to get funding, so they ran a study 15 times and finally got a result of a change of 2 points from 15 undergrads.” As a result of all of this messiness that doesn’t actually represent a reliable finding, when it comes to behavioral science, most findings are false.

Coyan Tromp. “Wicked Philosophy: Philosophy of Science and Vision Development for Complex Problems.” Wicked Philosophy (2018): 1-240.

But What About Dopamine?

In short, attacking dopamine or serotonin to address your mental health is necessarily incomplete.

Here’s what a 2022 meta-analysis showed in Nature:

The main areas of serotonin research provide no consistent evidence of there being an association between serotonin and depression, and no support for the hypothesis that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations.

The serotonin theory of depression: a systematic umbrella review of the evidence

There’s a huge disconnect between the numbers and insights we get in a lab and what actually works in the real world.

Causal Loop Diagrams

Let’s make a causal loop diagram of your life.

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