Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2010 October 29

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October 29

Death certificate of an executed criminal

When a criminal is legally executed in the United States, what would the coroner or medical examiner (or whoever) list as the manner and cause of death on a death certificate? Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 03:48, 29 October 2010 (UTC))

According to this, Timothy McVeigh's death cert. read: "‘MANNER OF DEATH: homicide, HOW INJURY OCCURRED: “judicial execution by lethal injection.” Dismas|^(talk) 04:04, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, state or federal executions are always marked as homicides in the US, and the cause of death is whatever the execution method happened to be. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:16, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

When I lived in Italy, one of my friends told me she had heard that the executioner must always be tried for homicide, and acquitted. This of course is not true. I wonder if she was conflating English homicide with Italian omicidio (as far as I know Italian has no word exactly equating to "murder" — there's assassinio, but that's not really a legal term, I think). Or she might have been thinking of the coroner's inquest, which they do hold in some states, to no evident purpose. --Trovatore (talk) 01:35, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

That's very interesting. Thanks for the info! I appreciate the replies. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 22:29, 29 October 2010 (UTC))

One normally thinks of homicide as the unlawful killing of a human being, which initially made it odd to see state-approved execution classified as "homicide". Yet a glance at homicide reminds me that it's wider than just murder, as it could refer to execution or killing in self-defence. Given that, why do police conduct "homicide investigations" and not confine themselves to "murder" cases? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 23:05, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, not every unlawful homicide is technically murder; it could be manslaughter. But in any case the police do not necessarily know whether a given homicide was lawful or not — that's what the investigation is for. --Trovatore (talk) 23:09, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Makes sense. Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 23:21, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Who does Rambo fear?

David Rubitsky claimed to have killed 600 Japanese soldiers by himself in a single battle, but a U.S. government investigation discounted this claim. So who was the most lethal soldier in a single engagement? The bidding starts at however many Alvin York bagged (the article doesn't say). Clarityfiend (talk) 04:18, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

The Red Baron has 80 confirmed air combat victories. Grsz¹¹ 04:21, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I specified "single engagement", otherwise we'd have to include snipers like Vasily Zaytsev. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:44, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

The guy who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima? Or does "engagement" implicitly mean "by firearms"? TomorrowTime (talk) 08:01, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

According to WP, Simo_Häyhä has killed the most enemies in a single war. Quest09 (talk) 08:48, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

For a single battle, I'd also look into who were manning the machine guns at the Battle of the Somme and other trench warfare battles in World War I. Jørgen (talk) 09:03, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

You might be interested in this Cracked article, which probably doesn't answer your question directly but is in a similar vein. Vimescarrot (talk) 10:43, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

The Rubitsky article points to this source, which says, "The largest number on record for World War II by an American was 75 Japanese soldiers killed by one marine on Iwo Jima in 1945". That's apparently above what York did (28, I think). --Sean 14:49, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I wrote Rubitsky's article, so I was aware of the Marine. However, it isn't clear if this body count was from one battle or the entire campaign. Also, Tibbets came to mind after I turned off my PC. The WWI machine gunners don't really qualify because there's no way to assign kills to any particular individual (even if anybody was keeping track). I'm looking for the single identified and officially acknowledged soldier who amassed the highest body count in a single, well-defined engagement, "up close and personal". Clarityfiend (talk) 00:55, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Oh, wait. Douglas T. Jacobson did take out 75 Japanese on February 26, 1945, and got a Medal of Honor for it. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:59, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if you want to consider this an "engagement", but there was the contest to kill 100 people using a sword during the Rape of Nanking... WikiDao ☯ (talk) 01:36, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Why does psychological trauma exist?

Our ancestors, 10,000 years ago, had to put up with much more than us, so why do some people develop phobias or have traumas after a scary incident? (like being robbed in the subway or almost dying in a car accident). Shouldn't we be resistant against it?--Quest09 (talk) 09:33, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

My view on why this kind of traumas was not selected out, is because it usually does not prevent survival. Of course it is not good for an office life, and for having loads of friends, but it does not make you starve or prevents you to reproduce. --Lgriot (talk) 11:29, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I'd rather say psychological trauma is not good for a life on the woods, when you can be attacked at any time. Strangelly, if you have an office life, you should be relatively secure from harm. Nevertheless, office workers also get panic attacks or phobias. We should be much more resilient towards attacks than we indeed are, shouldn't we? Quest09 (talk) 12:37, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

For a non-scientific view, this is covered in Buddhism. Desire to have things different creates internal conflict. By giving up the desire to change the past, the internal conflict ends. -- kainaw™ 12:45, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Buddhism is only 8,000 years old, though. You can't claim our ancestors 10,000 years ago were Buddhists and therefore immune to this internal conflict. Besides, it seems likely that Buddhists can get PTSD as easily as anybody else. I suppose it would be unethical to experiment. 81.131.53.127 (talk) 13:45, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Buddha lived roughly 2500 years ago... AnonMoos (talk) 13:57, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I beg your pardon, I checked the Buddhism article but got my centuries mixed up with millennia. How embarrassing. 81.131.53.127 (talk) 14:55, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Just as not all Christians are saints simply by virtue of being Christian, so not all Buddhists have achieved liberation from dukkha ("suffering") simply by virtue of being Buddhist. And that liberation comes, in part, through the recognition and acceptance that just living necessarily entails dukkha. Buddha himself, after all, got sick and died from eating some bad mushrooms; it is never possible to completely escape suffering as long as one is alive; it is not suffering itself that a Buddhist aims to "escape", but more like the need to try to escape it. WikiDao ☯ (talk) 14:07, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

So, Buddhists aren't all that great at avoiding psychological trauma, and our prehistoric ancestors weren't Buddhists. So Buddhism is not relevant. 81.131.53.127 (talk) 15:00, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

The question above asks: "Why does psychological trauma exist?" That particular question is addressed in Buddhism as a result of desire to change events in the past. It is not a scientific answer, but it is an answer. -- kainaw™ 15:05, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Neither the Four Noble Truths nor the Eightfold Path make any specific reference to a "desire to change events of the past" actually, Kainaw. WikiDao ☯ (talk) 15:32, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

It's a difficult question to answer. It's like asking, "Our ancestors, like 10,000 years ago, had to live with much more difficult physical conditions and much more frequent physical violence, so why do people still break bones and get infected wounds? Why haven't we evolved so that we don't get hungry, or tired, or sick, or injured, or dead...?"

Is that basically what you are asking, OP? WikiDao ☯ (talk) 13:40, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

What potential was there for prehistoric psychological trauma? These ancestors didn't necessarily spend all that much time hunting mammoths (which were dying out 10,000 years ago) or aurochs. They also had the less traumatic option of hunting things like deer and nuts. To the extent that they did hunt scary animals, you might think they'd have lots of traditions about it and be fairly good at not being maimed and traumatized. Then there is tribal warfare. While this undoubtedly went on a lot and was horrific, that doesn't mean it was so constantly present in prehistoric life that being able to be traumatized by warfare would be a major hindrance to passing on your DNA. Besides, those who passed on their DNA were probably the ones who were good at winning the tribal wars, which is a less traumatic experience. Another couple of points are that modern life is more varied, which means more potential for unexpected and therefore scary experiences; and we are more psychologically complex, and accustomed to less practical lifestyles (creating potential for sillier phobias); and that an unpleasant experience resulting in a phobia (say, eating a poisonous mushroom, and henceforth being scared of all mushrooms) isn't necessarily bad for your survival in a prehistoric world, although it's bad for your functioning as a richly-experienced and outgoing modern human. 81.131.53.127 (talk) 14:35, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

@WikiDao: yours would be a good analogy if we had bones of glass. However, in the case of psychological trauma we can prove that many get traumatized by minor events, like a robber showing a knife to you in the subway. Since such threats occur much less in a civil society than in the dawn of times, should we expect that we had almost no psychological problems? However, even if our societies seem to be pretty secury, we still are afraid of thousand things... Quest09 (talk) 16:13, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Skinner might say that the behaviors we associate with someone who has been "traumatized psychologically" (note that he would disagree with the term) such as aversion to certain details of the incident, withdrawnness, etc. as well as physical feelings of anxiety are simply an attempt to avoid punishment. The punishment here is a conditioned response (your example of a man with a knife: even though you might not be stabbed, you know to associate a knife with being stabbed). We are not immune to psychological trauma even though our ancestors probably were because our own experiences as well as our genetic background determine our responses to stimuli: for example, most of us did not grow up in the woods where we could be attacked at any time, so we are not prepared with effective behaviors that enable us to deal with such attacks (for example fighting off an attacker, whether a bear or a mugger). Our responses, due to lack of experieince and environmental selection, are therefore somewhat maladaptive and inappropriate. But I'm just a second year psych student hanging around here to procrastinate writing my paper. 24.92.78.167 (talk) 16:26, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Okay. I guess one way of looking at it is that our psyches evolved (ie., the associated biology/genes did) over the course of hundreds of thousands of years to a vastly different social or "experiential" environment than that which most of us encounter today in the modern world. So there are many ways for our psycho-emotional systems to "go awry" in the face of all the "new" complexities and challenges that we simply have not had enough time to adapt to yet biologically. WikiDao ☯ (talk) 16:38, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

A quick skim-read of everyone's responses seems to ignore the key thing to note here. Pain and suffering is pretty relative, particularly mental pain. Generally speaking if you've been brought up in an environment where bad thing X happens regularly (to you or to others around you) you become desensitized to it and so if bad thing X happens you're less likely to be traumatized by it. If, however, that thing is a major-ly unusual thing in your life it's going to stick-out, it's going to be more likely to be something you'll be traumatized by. It's not a hard and fast rules but really I don't see why people try to tie everything to evolution. It's not evolutionary good or bad to be traumatized by something that happens. It will have impacts on your future actions either way - you could say those that are traumatized over-state the risk and lose potential reward as a result, or those that aren't traumatized under-rate the risk and leave themselves vulnerable to the same happening again. Neither is particularly quantifiable, but in a modern society we can hope to 'educate' people to try help them deal with their issue and lead the best life they can following a trauma. ny156uk (talk) 16:48, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that's how desensitization (psychology) works. Just because you've seen your dad and your grandpa both attacked by something while walking in the woods isn't going to make you less apprehensive of being attacked while walking in the woods. 81.131.1.16 (talk) 19:26, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

The assumption that, "Our ancestors, 10,000 years ago, had to put up with much more than us…" is incorrect. Our ancestors 10,000 years ago had a sense of place in community that we lack. They knew the human components of their community and they knew their place in it. They didn't do meaningless jobs to earn meaningless currency to pay strangers to supply them with food, clothing and shelter that is largely of mysterious origin. Trauma was either real or nonexistent. Nowadays trauma can take on an imaginary dimension because we are so unhinged that we have no natural community to return to when the slightest insult invades our comfort zone. Bus stop (talk) 19:38, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Part of the reason has to do with the different expectations of daily life, now and then. Then, life was inherently very hard; it was physically demanding, 7 days a week, no breaks, no public holidays or vacations, no supermarkets full of goodies, no doctors to run to at the slightest twinge of pain, no cars, no restaurants, no clubs full of poker machines, no phones or computers, you get the picture. Nobody ever expected it to be anything different, they just accepted that hard was what life was, and didn't make comparisons. They might have had short lives, but they sure didn't die of heart disease or complications of diabetes or AIDS, and obesity was unheard of. But now, we're all constantly bombarded with ways of making our relatively excellent lives even better. We simply have to have the latest techno thingamy as otherwise we may as well be living in the dark ages. The big selling point for goods and services is "new", and quality or usefulness has relatively nothing to do with it. People know what the traffic is going to be like at peak hour, yet they still join it and still get into rages when things don't go their way. They know that eating junk food is a completely crap thing to do for their bodies, yet they still eat it by the bucketsful while sitting around watching 20 hours of junk TV every day (or sitting on Wikipedia for half their life) and wonder why their dress size has gone from 20 to 83. Their expectations of life have become completely unrealistic, and so they get stressed out by the slightest difficulties, and traumatised by the big ones. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:10, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I still think (and as a couple of people have essentially said since my last comment above) that the answer here is that we (as a species) simply have not had enough time (evolutionarily speaking) to adapt to the modern world, which is vastly different from the world we (as a species) have spent the vast majority of our time adapting to. We have all sorts of psychological mechanisms that are adaptive to a pre-civilization state, and those can at times lead to very maladaptive responses to the complexities and difficulties that we are only now for the first time in all our evolutionary history encountering in this over-populated technology-driven world we have built for ourselves. WikiDao ☯ (talk) 20:23, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually a good example just occurred to me involving ADHD (which I have been discussing recently at the Science Desk:).

The Hunter vs. farmer theory is a way of understanding something that is considered a "disorder" by us in our world today, but which is theorized to have actually been a highly adaptive trait (cluster of traits) in our pre-historic evolutionary environment:

"The hunter vs. farmer theory proposes that the high frequency of ADHD in contemporary settings 'represents otherwise normal behavioral strategies that become maladaptive in such evolutionarily novel environments as the formal school classroom.'"

This question is about "trauma" and afaik that is not generally considered one of the possible "causes" of ADD. The reason I mention it here is just as an example of how something that seems psychologically "disadvantageous" in our modern social context may have been quite advantageous in a pre-civilized context.

Psychological "disturbances" that are caused by trauma, eg. PTSD, probably have some psychological basis that was similarly adaptive in our pre-civilization environment, but which somehow comes into conflict with our more recent cultural adaptations and with the overall "state of mind" that we must now maintain as members of civilization (which brings us back to Freud again, and his Civilization and Its Discontents...). WikiDao ☯ (talk) 21:09, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I think you are all confusing 'trauma' with neurosis. In a primitive hunter/gatherer society one encounters strangers rarely, and there are very few social inhibitions to violence. One is unlikely to get within 50 feet of a stranger without a good deal of wariness, and if said stranger pulls a knife one is likely to pull one's own knife and have at him. this may produce psychological trauma, but it won't produce neurosis. In modern society, by contrast, we are constantly brought into close proximity with strangers and society creates strong pressures not to behave violently towards them. someone can easily be within 5 feet of you before you are aware they have a knife, and if they do have a knife your self-preservation instinct conflicts with the avoidance of violence that society drills into you, and leaves you paralyzed. this can easily produce both psychological trauma (from the fearfulness of the event) and neurosis (from the helplessness of being caught between conflicting psychological demands). --Ludwigs2 21:28, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Wand of Horus/Pharaoh's cylinder

I have been browsing the related names, but google returns lots of marketing stuff and few strings of historical info. Specifically, what exactly does Ramses hold in his hands? Is it all just about pharaoh' sceptre? Twilightchill t 11:50, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Our Pharaoh article has a section Pharaoh#Regalia. Apparently, there were various types of staff; the mks staff, the animal-headed was sceptre or staff, the crook-shaped heqa (sometmes heka), and the flail. This website[1] has an overview. Alansplodge (talk) 13:02, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

You might be interested in this[2] about the "Wands of Horus". Sounds a bit iffy to me. This apparently more balanced discussion[3] gives a good close-up of the items (I had thought that they were broken-off fragments of something larger) and gives this quote: "The hands grasp truncated cylinders which may represent document cases (mekes), or symbolic sceptres." (describing a statue of Tutankhamun, from Ancient Egypt: Treasures from the Collection of the Oriental Institute (Oriental Institute Museum Publications) [Paperback] Emily Teeter (Author)[4]p.52). Alansplodge (talk) 15:27, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I also thought they are broken pieces. Twilightchill t 16:05, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Bottom of the copyright page in Philip Pullman's Once Upon a Time in the North

"Random House Children's Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read." Is this a usual practice, or tailored for the book? Thanks. 65.88.88.75 (talk) 14:27, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

It is not a standard practice for copyright pages. It looks like something requested by a marketing department. Marco polo (talk) 15:52, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Members of some of the more insane religious denominations have attempted to have Philip Pullman's books banned from libraries and schools in the USA and elsewhere. I suspect that this is a response to that. DuncanHill (talk) 16:00, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Read His Dark Materials#Controversies. DuncanHill (talk) 16:03, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I just read this last night in some other book, too. It's not just Pullman's book. (I'm a part-time cataloguer in my library, so it could have been anything.) Point being, I thing this is a new thing that is getting popular, given the frequent book-banning initiatives in various communities around the world. Aaronite (talk) 17:24, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to ask for citations for that "around the world" thing there. TomorrowTime (talk) 18:03, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Really? You've never heard of book banning? I realize there is no First amendment as such in any country in the other than the US, but the spirit of the statement stands internationally. And I'm referring to books in general, not just Mr. Pullman's. Aaronite (talk) 00:37, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Ok, my comment was only half-on regarding what got my attention in your comment. I should have added "frequent" as well. I hardly think any developed country other than the US is even remotely as fervent in regard to book banning challenging books (to use the correct expression, although a rose by any other name...) as the US. Just look at this list - I mean for pete's sake, Captain Underpants is on that list. Captain Underpants! I don't think "book-banning initiatives" are nearly as frequent in Europe as they are in the US. In that light, I'm not sure what you want to prove with mentioning the First amendment. If the spirit of the First amendment was followed, the list I cite above or the practice of "challenging" books wouldn't exist. TomorrowTime (talk) 09:03, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Let's not over-react. All I'm saying is that it happens, whether by parents, teachers in classrooms or by governments on an official level. That's what the line means about protect kids' right to read. I see this every day in the course of my job, and would frankly be shocked if it didn't happen elsewhere. Aaronite (talk) 15:36, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Note in particular that there isn't a relevant "First Amendment" that is applicable "around the world". --Anon, 18:35 UTC, October 29, 2010.

Not really an issue in the UK. Some huffing and puffing from a few extremists but no book burning here. The only UK news item I could find was 'British author Philip Pullman has attacked leading American Catholics as "nitwits" after they called for a boycott of The Golden Compass'[5] Alansplodge (talk) 19:32, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

All you'd need to get it banned in Europe is having it be about Islam rather than Catholicism... let's not pretend that Europe is exactly going through the best days of free speech right now either... --Mr.98 (talk) 03:01, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

You have a point but one not universally prooved, since the Jyllands-Posten Cartoons were published in Denmark and many other European states; also, the Satanic Verses were first published in the UK where it won the 1988 Whitbread Award and us poor British tax-payers have expended much gold in protecting the author to this day. Alansplodge (talk) 12:11, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

That was one example, but my understanding (from various sources not precisely recalled) is that in general there a large amount of self-censorship in Europe regarding things that might provoke protests or even violence from their quite sizable local Muslim populations. It's not the same thing as the kind of censorship issues we have in the United States, I don't think. But my point is that seeing the US as some kind of freedom of speech backwater compared to libertine Europe seems wrong. Both societies have pressures on them related to religious groups and free speech. In the US, I would say the threat is economic or political in nature (boycotts, write-in campaigns, occasional school board hysteria, a general "culture war" that plays out in the polls every few years); in Europe, it seems that the threat of violence is seen as the main issue. Interestingly in the US I don't see anybody self-censoring for fear of Islamic violence with the one exception of that nutty pastor who was going to burn Korans, and then it was an issue of retaliation in the war zones, not a home-front issue. But anyway. All of this is certainly broad generalization on my part. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:59, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Exactly what I'm trying to say. Aaronite (talk) 16:45, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Really? When was the last time the Danish cartoons were reproduced in America? When was the last time any public official denounced Islam? Since the topic is raised, I've thought about it and it seems to me the unofficial prohibition against criticisms of religion in America extends to Islam in a wider sense that is the case in Europe. Imagine Reason (talk) 04:14, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Public officials don't "denounce Islam" in America (which would be problematic since we are, in fact, allied with quite a few Islamic nations which are pretty vital in our foreign escapades at the moment) but there is plenty of very explicitly anti-Islamic rhetoric expressed in public forums (e.g. news media). The American right wing is not very shy about offending Muslims. People like Ann Coulter (whom I am no fan of) have said pretty explicitly that they believe that the US should invade Muslim countries, " kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." I don't think this kind of thing helps anyone, frankly, but there has been nothing of the kind of protests and capitulation that one sees in European countries regarding inflammatory anti-Islamic speech. Fox News has as far as I can tell made quite a bit of its business by being inflammatory against Islam. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:19, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

You haven't named one public official. Imagine Reason (talk) 02:20, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Queen's Regulations

Hi, does anyone know where I could find, online, a copy of the most recent set of Queen's Regulations governing the British Armed Forces? Ta, ╟─TreasuryTag►stannary parliament─╢ 16:43, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

The relevant Act of Parliament is the Armed Forces Act 2006, which you can read here. DuncanHill (talk) 16:57, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Does anyone know where I could find, online, a copy of the most recent set of Queen's Regulations governing the British Armed Forces? ╟─TreasuryTag►stannator─╢ 17:06, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

If it does exist, which my googling suggests it does not, then these people would know. I'll just add that the different services all have their own regulations. DuncanHill (talk) 17:13, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Prompted by this question, I have started the page Queen's Regulations, but I haven't found an online edition. And see here. Moonraker2 (talk) 00:21, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Gambling addiction and depression: similar or opposite?

Intuitively, I would think that gambling addiction and depression would be mutually exclusive. The gambler persistently overestimates the chance of a good outcome from the casino machine, while the depressed person persistently abandons tasks that don't seem guaranteed to pay off; thus they seem like opposite extremes of pathological optimism and pathological pessimism.

Yet what I find on a web search says the opposite: that the two are related.[6] It makes sense, of course, that depression seems the proper response to bright ideas that throw away money; but if the gambler feels it, why doesn't it cure him of the gambling?

Perhaps gambling doesn't involve optimism, or depression doesn't involve pessimism? Wnt (talk) 17:59, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that optimism, pessimism, and rationality are the most useful ways to understand this. Like other forms of addiction, gambling addiction may begin as an attempt to try to counteract depression, unhappiness, or a mental feeling of lack through external substances or activities. It becomes addictive because it results in a high that includes euphoria that addicts come to crave, perhaps partly because it brings temporary relief from the mental anguish the addict sought to escape. This can result in a cycle of depression-addictive behavior-depression in which gambling losses may aggravate depression, which leads the addict to seek another gambling experience for temporary relief of the depression, leading only to further depression. Addictive behavior is not rational or necessarily related to optimism or pessimism. Marco polo (talk) 18:42, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree that optimism, pessimism, and rationality are the wrong categories here. Both gambling and depression are strongly related to dopamine levels in the brain, if I recall correctly. Compulsive gamblers do it for a dopamine rush (the same as people who skydive); depression comes from low dopamine levels (among other things). It's biologically not dissimilar from cocaine addiction — rush followed by loss leading to a heightened desire for the rush. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:54, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Gambling may be self-treatment for depression, in the same way that alcohol can be. 92.29.115.229 (talk) 10:53, 2 November 2010 (UTC)