The observation is fair: a population-level argument does not follow from one person’s mood. The diagnosis is a different question from the truth of the argument. Whether someone arrived at the asymmetry or the consent argument while depressed changes nothing about whether its premises are valid; a depressed evaluator and a cheerful one assess the same argument by the same standard. The principle that emotionally-caused beliefs are suspect also boomerangs: life-affirmation carries its own documented etiology, an optimism bias that inflates the estimate of life’s worth and is defended on adaptiveness rather than accuracy. Severe depression can under-value a life, but the only systematic skew on record runs upward. The worry about mood is legitimate in one form: naming a load-bearing premise and showing it is despair rather than reason.