Totally anecdotal, but I took escitalopram (the first depression medication mentioned in the study) for years. It worked all right for a while but I was always very low on energy, and after a while it stopped working for me. After some trial and error my doctor and I landed on bupropion (which is also used for ADHD treatment) and it made an enormous difference. I would absolutely believe there is a lot of overlap in treating the two conditions, especially for helping with the the willpower/doing things side of the symptoms (e.g. having energy to do anything in the first place, completing tasks that need to get done, overcoming executive dysfunction, and not getting “stuck” in negative thought spirals).
But of course, it depends on each person and their kind of depression. My doctor warned me that it could make anxiety worse, for example, because the added focus and energy could feed right into someone’s anxiety and make them feel mildly panicked all the time. It’s highly individual.
To the same extent that every trait is relative, I suppose. There’s not a big physical block of stupid somewhere we can point to, so we have to judge it relative to others. If someone is kinder than most people we say that they’re kind, if someone is smarter than most people we say they’re smart, if someone is more beautiful than most people we say they’re beautiful - it’s not something unique to stupidity or to negative traits. It ‘doesn’t exist’ in that it’s not something you can pick up and hold in your hand, but it can be measured as an identifying trait when compared to other people and generally agreed upon.
I could say my dog is brown and my friend’s dog is white. I can’t go touch ‘brown,’ it exists only in my mind and my brain’s perception of wavelengths of light, but the brown dog is still more brown than the white dog. As long as you have 2 objects you can come up with these kinds of differentiated descriptions of them. (I wouldn’t say “my dog exists in 3-dimensional space and breathes air” because all dogs exist in 3-dimensional space and breathe air, therefore it isn’t usefully descriptive the way “brown” is.)
Hm, I’d say it’s individual actions that are stupid, and if a person does a lot of stupid actions, then they get called stupid as a person by association. Same for being smart - you can say one smart thing and not be considered smart in general, but if you do a lot of smart things consistently you get called a smart person. (Or any other trait, really - if you sing a song once in the shower that’s just one action, if you sing every day for a living you get called a singer.)
I think that probably all people are smart and stupid in different ways. Steve Jobs was stupid about his health but smart about his business. People can be amazingly intelligent doctors, but horrible at social skills, or incredible artists but terrible at money management. I suppose it depends on how often you act one way or the other and how much impact your actions have. Steve Jobs dying because of his juice cleanse choice makes that action have more weight than if he was wearing an amethyst healing necklace but also getting regular treatment. The consequence of the former was that he died; yhe consequence of the latter would be that he’d look silly but (probably) live.
There’s nuance to it, for sure. In the case of religion, I think it can be either or neither. If someone makes a bad faith-based choice because they’ve been raised in a cult, or they’re a kid who has been fed a lot of religious doctrine but doesn’t have any real world experience, or they live in a super religious community and only know scary lectures about atheists or people of other faiths, that’s ignorance. They don’t know any better and don’t have many avenues to fix that. If it’s something like Steve Jobs doing spiritual juice cleanses instead of getting cancer treatment despite having all the best medical resources and doctors in the world available, that’s stupidity. If it’s somebody who has a religious belief but doesn’t let that affect their decision-making detrimentally (they believe in miracles, but they’ll still go to the doctor for treatment when they’re sick) then they’re not stupid or ignorant. They may not be totally right but that’s some other fallacy - being too optimistic? Rose colored glasses? - that’s less harsh than stupidity or ignorance.
Your question about believing without understanding is a good one. There are a lot of things people believe without total understanding or proof. I believe Canada exists even though I’ve never been there. I suppose the difference there is the possibility of learning and proving it, as well as common consensus - I could go to Canada, I can talk to Canadians, I can see that Canada competes in the Olympics and is labeled on a globe. There are lots of different ways to verify it, and if all of the maps in the world vanished overnight people would find Canada again. But if I believed in a new undiscovered continent named Lemmy then I’d have to insist on believing it’s there despite there being no Lemmy citizens, no flag, no presence on a map, and so on, which makes it a much sketchier thing to ‘believe’ in than Canada.
IMO ignorance is chiefly a lack of knowledge. If you drop someone who has no knowledge of cars into a mechanics shop and tell them to fix a car, they’re going to be really incompetent and look bad compared to the mechanic. But, if they had car manuals to read and learned some mechanical engineering and watched the mechanic work and spent time tinkering with the engine, they could figure it out.
Stupidity is a failure of logic and self-reflection, like continuing to insist that obviously wrong things are true when presented with undeniable facts (“this isn’t a car at all, it’s a plane, nobody can fix planes, that’s why I’m failing!”) holding two ideas that are in opposition to each other and not acknowledging the dichotomy (“all car mechanics are really stupid but they make these cars so complicated that no reasonable person could ever figure it out”), flip-flopping back and forth between statements, blaming other people or things (“this is all Big Oil’s fault”) and generally not thinking things through.
Both might make equally terrible cars at first but ignorance is a lot more fixable and might not be the person’s fault (like if they grew up Amish and never saw a car’s engine before), while stupidity is more about refusing to learn or self-correct when given the option.
I find that the policies built on “logic only” tend to break down because they ignore emotion and feelings entirely. People are emotional by nature and our feelings, sense of well-being, sense of justice, sense of oppression, and so on are very real in that they drive how we react and respond to each other. Trying to make a utopia based on people not reacting to their emotions is like trying to make a utopia where people don’t need to eat - it might be nice, but it’s unrealistic.
Imagine if someone came up and kept stabbing you with a rusty pin every day, and whenever you jump away and say “ow!” they roll their eyes and say “logically, this shouldn’t bother you, because it only hurts for a second, you’re not bleeding and I know that this pin won’t give you tetanus. You’re being very irrational right now.” Based on their logic, they’re right, you won’t be measurably hurt, but it still has a real effect on you and you’ll want to do everything you can to stop getting randomly stabbed by a rusty pin every day. Your lived experience is real to you.
I literally can’t keep the wireless earbuds in! I don’t know if my ears are too small or weirdly shaped on the inside or what. Sometimes I can kind of wedge them in for a minute, but only by having them actively digging into the sides of my ear. That hurts and it still falls out as soon as I move my head.
My current phone doesn’t have a micro SD card slot, but that’s another improvement I would really like to have. I like to keep a lot of pictures and files on my phone and it would be great to be able to upgrade the storage as it fills up.
I may be one of the last hangers-on for this issue, but: my Android phone has a headphone port! That was non-negotiable for me last time I got a new phone. Earbuds do not stay in my ears, are super uncomfortable, and I don’t want to charge a wireless headset or mess with an adapter all the time. I have cheap wired headphones for going out and about that I don’t lose when they fall out because the wire catches them, and really nice wired headphones at home that are much better quality than wireless ones. My car also has a 3.5 mm hookup that sounds a lot better than Bluetooth audio.
Besides that: Having more customization and control. Firefox + adblockers and other extensions. ReVanced for YouTube. Easier access to the phone’s storage and files. Being able to block ads adds so much quality of life.
Wanted to add that if you’re looking at the Remarkable for the “feels like paper” feature, there are screen protectors you can get for tablets that replicate a similar effect. I use one of them with an iPad + Apple Pencil for digital art and I’m pretty happy with the feel.
It sounds like you could probably get by with an older, cheaper tablet to start if you’re not sure about the price or if you’ll really use it. Most notetaking and organizing tools don’t need that much processing power.
Seconding this. A doctor showed me one stretch for the backs of my upper legs that got rid of my back pain. Follow the other advice here and see a doctor if it’s bad, but leg stretches are free and easy so it’s worth a try.
Stand on one leg and put your other leg up straight on a surface like a chair or bed so your legs are pointing at 6 and 3 on a clock. Keep your raised leg straight so your toes are pointing at the ceiling (not bent at the knee or twisted). Lean into it as much as you can while keeping both legs totally straight.
It doesn’t seem like much of a stretch, but if it’s hard to do, that may be your problem muscle group that’s locked up and causing the pain.