I thought that too, but then read the second paragraph:
> That finding was independent of other factors thought to influence life's length — such as "socioeconomic status, health conditions, depression, social integration, and health behaviors," the researchers from Boston University School of Medicine and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health say.
It is possible to imagine a potential casual process that leads to earlier death. What if pessimism creates a constant presence of key stress hormones (Adrenaline, Cortisol and Norepinephrine) and these are already linked to higher likelihoods of heart disease, cancer, ...
Anecdotally, Ive been very fortunate to have a positive brain chemistry. When bad things have happened, my brain pretty much doesn't worry on them. Eventually things work out (or something good eventually happens) and I get through the bad times.
There is no way to explain or describe this positive brain chemistry in a way that anyone can believe. But since I was a kid, my parents have been worried that Im too happy as they know dissatisfaction is what drives people to achieve. They would say things like "your only problem is you are too happy".
I do annoying things to avoid bad things from happening in the future. If one is very optimistic, then one would not believe the bad things would happen and thus one would not be very motivated to do the annoying things.
For example do you wear a seat belt or brush your teeth? I know the questions may sound a bit offensive but I'm honestly interested in hearing people's motivations.
I do, because wearing a seatbelt is not that annoying. It just doesn't bother me. Being optimistic doesnt mean that I don't think bad things will happen to me, just that it will be ok, or not be ok. Either way there is always something positive to come out of every situation.
There are some paths that I would prefer, but even the bad paths have lots of positives.
During the 2010 recession we had a client that owed us 700K and I could tell from reading the 10Q was on the verge of bankruptcy. I had my team work very hard to collect our money. We got it and when they went bankrupt we survived while a lot of our peers went out of business. It isnt that I believed we would be ok, but that if we had not been able to collect the money and went out of business that would have been an incredible learning experience and something good would have come out of it.
Every outcome is not equally desired, I would rather be in business than not be in business. But not being in business, losing your home, becoming bankrupt etc. just doesnt stress me out. I have lived on 10K/year before and been incredibly happy. Even when I was digging change out of the couch to afford to buy food.
I guess one could map it very crudely so that the pessimist sees the alternatives as A = -10 and B = -8 and the optimist sees them as A = +4 and B = +6. Both estimate pairs will lead to the same action but the latter person will have a more positive outlook.
Does it ever bother you when people find that youre "too happy" which people might take it to mean that no outcome to any given event, can really displease you?
Have you read up on what such a "condition" - if it can be called that - is called medically? Do others share it as well?
Medicine and science, being subject to the limitations of a falsifiable-evidence style of thinking as well as technical limitations, are understandably way behind the curve in this sort of thing.
From the reading I've done, the underlying physiological explanation for "the enlightened state" seems to be downgraded activity in the Default Mode Network of the brain, and evidence suggests this can be achieved in a variety of ways.
Meditation, prayer, and psychedelics often seem to put the rationalist-oriented mind into a sort of defensive, hyper-skeptical mode, but that the same phenomenon can also be observed in stroke patients hopefully makes such minds more open to considering the idea.
the way people see it is that I dont react to bad situations. I have been called "stone cold". I have sometimes wondered if it is related to sociopathy. I am a giving person and would rather give than receive, so am not very selfish. However, bad things just dont bother me because there is always something positive that comes out of everything.
When my wife had an aortic dissection and had a high chance of dying, people had a hard time understanding how I could be so calm and not be stressed. It wasnt that I was sure she was going to make it, just that no matter the outcome I would still find happiness.
Sincere question here: what makes you certain that you would have found happiness?
I guess the fundamental difference between your way of thinking and most peoples' is that you seem to be absolutely convinced that happiness exists and is continuously experienced regardless of the state of reality. Therefore, regardless of what happens, there will be some form of happiness and you will experience it.
I'm in awe of this, because my personal view is that happiness is a fleeting chaotic state that mostly has no easily measurable probability of emerging, despite my attempts to grasp the shape of the distribution and its evolution in response to my actions. While I would consider myself not to be pessimistic, I definitely tend to have extremely rare encounters with what one would call happiness, which seems to be so starkly different from your life experience.
There's a book by Tony Hsieh (Zappos founder) called Delivering Happiness.
Near the end, he talks about three types of "happiness."
The first is pleasure. It's from food, fun, or other external experiences. While it can bring temporary happiness, you will always be looking for the next fix.
The second is happiness from passion, such as a hobby or working at your startup. You can go for years without success and still feel happy. However eventually you'll need some type of progress to keep going.
The third type is happiness from purpose. Think of it as working towards something bigger than yourself. This type of happiness can last a lifetime, even if all you do is sacrifice for it.
happiness cant come from external factors. Happiness comes from within. I have come to believe that it has to be fortunate brain chemistry. Events dont make me happy, Im already happy and optimistic. Some events are easier to find the good in of course.
There is a downside which is that I dont get that happy over good events, I also dont get sad over bad events. I dont need anything to be happy so when good things happen, they are nice, but simply not necessary. Overall though I feel very fortunate, satisfied, optimistic, and happy with life.
What if pessimists are less likely to engage in self-preserving or self-improving behaviour (because why bother), creating a self-sustaining negative feedback loop?
If you stress out mice even their grand children will also be stressed even if you remove any stressors from them? Essentially, this area of research is extremely complicated.
I'm sure it would seem like there is a link between the two somewhere, even if it is very threadbare or even spurious for that matter.
More principally, these things just seem very believable because being optimistic is just a positive attribute that society rewards and approves of much more than it does pessimism (some would say being pessimistic is almost an universal negative, some outlier societies notwithstanding).
This imparts a definite bias in the believability of the study, no matter what the findings of the study actually are - even if the study were to only indicate a mild association between being optimistic and longevity.
Just consider the findings of a study from some years ago:
"High social status has its privileges when it comes to
aging – even in wild animals."
...
“High-ranking members in hyena clans reproduce more, they
live longer and appear to be in better overall health,” said
Nora Lewin, MSU doctoral student of zoology and co-lead
author. “If you want to see the hierarchy of spotted hyenas,
throw down some fresh meat near them. It’s quickly apparent
who’s dominant and who’s not.”
...
Lewin and her teammates focused on telomeres, caps at the end
of each strand of DNA that protect chromosomes from
deterioration. These biomarkers are regarded as important signs
of aging and stress in many species, including humans. Shrinking
telomeres are a signal that cells are sliding into defensive
mode, stressful actions that could soon lead to cells’ – and
to the organism’s – death.
“This work shows, for the first time, the effects of social
rank on telomere length in wild mammals,” Lewin said. “This enhances
our understanding of how social and ecological variables may
contribute to age-related declines of hyenas, and in organisms
in general.”[1]
High social status humans live longer lives is the natural assumption here even if the suggestion is only mild.
Such stuff seems more believable due to a chain of assumptions about - low status mammals, stress levels, food security, likelihood of physical harm etc.
Its safe to assume those, it would seem - however light the actual evidence for it.
There are scores of studies like this with very light suggestive conclusions yet the believability is high.
I just wish these things are fleshed out with a lot more rigor and thoroughness by the science journalists or journalists at large. This isn't trivial, easily ignored stuff. These things have real world consequences if true.
Very palpable, sizable and profound consequences on people's lives.
[1]
Social Status Has Impact On Overall Health of Mammals
Thanks for the excerpt of the study, it is interesting. As persistent stress causes visible signs of aging, for example the seemingly accelerated growth of gray hair and wrinkles of U.S presidents, it is not big a leap to suspect more.
Some of the most positive people I’ve met have lived in the worst of circumstances. The mind decides what it wants about the situation. Optimism is a powerful tool, even if only the person using it can feel the difference.
But that’s not what’s being discussed. Does optimism actually make you live a longer and more successful life, or is your life equally short and shitty, you just enjoy it more?
There is a lot of data over many decades that supports the expectation that optimism (which ISTR has pretty clear
a definition) creates all sorts of positive life event outcomes. (e.g. you're more likely to succeed in whatever endeavors you choose if you're optimistic, which in turn tends to create a safe and supportive environment.)
How could you possibly measure that? By the time that children even understand the concept of “optimism” (or even “future”), they have already had years (decades?) of positive or negative signals (either from their environment, or from their genes) that likely cause both optimism and success (such as non-abusive parents, health, etc.).
If you assume that everything will turn out bad, you wont even try. If you assume all people around you are assholes, you wont even try good relationships. Plus, people like better optimistically looking people and reward them more then pessimistic people with equal merit.
Moreover, outward apparent optimism create illusion of success even when there is not actual real success backing it. (The optimism does not even have to be real, you just have to be committed to consistently pretend it.)
If you assume that everything will turn out well, you're not going to be cautious
If you assume people around you are all good you're in for some surprise, not of the good kind , especially if you are a girl in a dark alley
Plus, I dislike optimism, I find it's childish, but I get a lot of rewards nonetheless from people around me for being honest.
The illusion of success is not success, believing in the illusion of something is called faith, and it's what killed the people who prayed together for the black plague to stop, spreading the diseases.
This is the root of it, and something most on HN won't accept. Optimistic people generally see and seek opportunity (either knowingly or unknowingly) more frequently than pessimists.
Won't accept? It seems startups are the same. "Rationally" a poor way to get rich, but if enough people miscaulate their odds (or enjoy it for nonmonetary reasons) we'll get a few big successes.
Most millionaires are those who started their own businesses or are self employed. Certainly not SV unicorns, but they run businesses you've never heard of started by ordinary people.
Yeah, there is that thing when optimism becomes euphemism for naive, not allowed to talk about problems and disadvantages. But I think that is manipulative way to see optimism.
Sometimes chances are low or times are bad and optimism should not equal refusing to see that.
You beat me to this by 5 minutes. It seems pretty obvious that the path of causation tends in this direction, rather than the other. And even if there is a signal going the other direction, extracting it from the noise caused by "people who have health and financial stability" seems impossible, unless the sample group were all of people who have lived to at least 85 without having these traits.
Thank you for your fantastic insight! If you read the part of my comment that is not the first sentence, you'll see where I give logical reasoning supporting that first sentence... Sort of how a paper supports it's abstract. "Seems pretty obvious" translates to "becomes clear with simple logical reasoning", probably should have revised that for the snob crowd. I actually prefer logical reasoning in my science, what about you?
Yesterday, my wife stumbled upon a "20 pieces of good news" article and read it to me. Things like initiatives being taken to save the bees etc. At first I thought it was a bit silly but I realized that hearing all those good things did something wonderful: it made me feel quite optimistic on behalf of the world, which I can't say I have in a while (in spite of my own life going quite well).
Keeping informed is the duty of a citizen in a democracy and I don't want to live in a rose colored bubble but I do think I am going to try and curate my news harder. For now, I started following The Good News Network and The Constructive Institute on Twitter and I will try and look for other similar sources.
I briefly read some "good news" sites years ago, but stopped because they started to depress me as I looked deeper into the individual reports. Most of the stories I've read were of the pattern of, "an inspiring but meaningless TED talk", or "an individual doing something completely inconsequential, but positively-looking", or "an individual or a small group working hard on a project that's completely bogus, but of course it's going to save the world!" (see e.g. solar roadways, uBeam). Note the focus on individuals, and bogus or unimportant work used to generate good feelings.
Trust is a finite resource. When constantly abused like this, it's bound to get depleted, and optimism goes down the drain along with it. Personally, I'd like to see some good news reporting, but not like the above. I'd like to see stories about organizations over individuals - about government bureaucracies doing a competent job, about NGOs making an impact. About technology that incrementally progresses and yields results. About actual, not potential or imagined breakthroughs. Something that would stand up to the most basic fact checking, most brief critical skimming; something that would demonstrate that actual good things are being done, that some parts of the system work.
Gapminder (of Hans Rosling fame) does a good job of this, I think. Although they do not shy away from mentioning what could be better, they do a good job of highlighting positive developments on a larger time scale that often go overlooked because they're slow-moving.
> I briefly read some "good news" sites years ago, but stopped because they started to depress me
I think it was also a site like science-daily that makes it sound like they have an extraordinary scientific finding that will revolutionize the world every single day, except that most of it is just PR or badly designed studies.
"Keeping informed is the duty of a citizen in a democracy"
Sorry, but I have no such duty. We are free to do or not do as we wish. News media has evolved to make us angry and stressed and to pit us against each other, while encouraging us to come back for more. It's gotten much worse over time. After years of fulfilling my "duty" and forever frustrated that the more I learn, the more obvious it becomes that our problems are intractable the problems because most people are only superficially informed enough to know that the other side is wrong and our side is right. I've sworn it off as it's just an unrelenting source of stress and madness from the left and the right.
> Sorry, but I have no such duty. We are free to do or not do as we wish.
Well sure, depending how one thinks about it. From an individualist perspective/philosophy, you're correct. But this is only one of many ways of thinking about the matter. For example, would you advocate an individualist approach such as that for someone who is married with children? Could a similar argument be made for overall mankind?
I can agree that it is technically true that we are all individual mammals living on a rock hurtling through space, but I don't think it is also true to say that we are just that.
> After years of fulfilling my "duty" and forever frustrated that the more I learn, the more obvious it becomes that our problems are intractable because most people are only superficially informed enough to know that the other side is wrong and our side is right.
I can appreciate this perspective, you're certainly "not wrong", or at least not entirely. But consider this perspective:
"...the more obvious it becomes that our problems are intractable because most people are only superficially informed enough to know that the other side is wrong and our side is right." Indeed, it seems clearly true that our problems are intractable (not easily governed, managed, or directed; not easily relieved or cured) - but is it conclusively true that they are unsolvable?
How many different approaches have we taken thus far toward cracking this nut, really? From where I sit, the majority of activity at both the individual and political levels seem to consist of people criticizing the (perceived) actions and (perceived) beliefs of their out-group, and the overwhelming consensus seems to be something like "if those other people would just start acting according to my philosophy, all these problems would be solved."
It seems crystal clear to me that this style of thinking is obviously sub-optimal, but at the same time the vast majority of people seem passionately devoted to it. I wonder, might studying the problem from higher, more abstract perspectives such as this yield some new ideas, and how might this approach gain traction?
With 8 billion people around something bad is always happening every second. For that reasen I uninstalled all news apps years ago.
I'm never bothered with 'breaking news' or anything. I pick a few moments a day to look at some news sites. And I always start with world news, and end with HN, keeps me positive :)
You should read "factfulness". It annoys me when people talk of the current world and time in negative tones when it is best we have ever had by many measurements. Not that we are having a terrible time, but it is cool to think negatively of the world it seems to me.
I think the main point I got from Factfullness was not that "the world is getting better stop being so pessimistic", but rather that we are biologically wired to seek bad news and we will automatically try to find the bad angle in everything. This is useful when you're living in a survival situation, not much so in modern society. If you zoom out a bit and look at history from a decade or even century perspective it is ludicrous to say that the world hasn't gotten better, or to say that the positive trend will somehow stop 2020.
The trend away from democracy is alarming yes, and we shouldn't ignore it, but there is no way of knowing if it will be a short blip in history (like the trend of Communism 50s-80s) or something more permanent.
"when it is best we have ever had by many measurements"
Not really. By an ecologist measuring it is the worst world we have since the last ice age and getting worse every day.
So sure, when you don't give a sh*t about nature, you can have your happy bubble of constant happy developement and improvement, but otherwise not.
Oh and of course you also have to have a good air filter installed, as air pollution is a real thing too and not linked to good health. And streets and cars and noise is something new, too and also not considered healthy.
Burn out and other civilisation diseases exist as well ...
Do not misunderstodd, I love technology and I don't like the "back to the trees" solution, as most who propose it, have never spend a full day without running water and emergency phone 24/7, but I also don't like getting blinded by only half of the facts.
Yes, thanks to technology we did improve amazingly, but there are many dark sides to it, we have to deal with now.
"it is the worst world we have since the last ice age"
It isn't.
We have more forests now than 35 years ago [1]
Ecological footprint is decreasing in Europe [2]
Death rates from air pollution are dropping [3]
Thanks to technology we can have an amazing quality of life that not even nobility could dream of a hundred years ago, but we are also doing it in a more sustainable way.
Honestly, I'm more concerned that people are blinded by an ignorance of history. If people truly think the average human life was better or 'not that bad' 200+ years ago I don't know what to say. Sure some things are getting worse, but proportionally the average quality of life has MASSIVELY increased in the last 100 years, and is still increasing especially for the poorest people in the world.
Yes and no. By some measures we have; CO2 and other greenhouse gases for example. Other things have improved; the ozone layer is repairing itself, and many countries have much better standards for clean water and so on.
We should address the problems we have but it's easy to despair and do nothing if we're too pessimistic.
I also read it. You have to be really careful with lots of the fact given in that book in the end, they focus on some specific numbers that are indeed positive but forget that the general tendency is definitely not going that way. It gives a false sense of "everything is going great".
I think that the best example was about the fact that some animal species are actually going back in number (in France we have that with the reintroduction of the wolves in the mountains). They gave a few example with species that had specific plans to protect them. The general fact is that 60% of the insect (not species, the total number of individuals) are gone in 40 years and 52% of the vertebrates in 40 years.
By only focusing on those "facts" you are actually not trying to understand the complexity of the current system and missing some really important points that are, indeed, not positive.
We are aiming at +4°C, some reports says 6-7°C at the end of the century, that is not something positive and we need to act on that for example.
The problem with this view is that Easter Island was probably the best it ever was until the last tree was cut down.
Of COURSE your standard of living will be the highest it's ever been when you're on the upslope of resource utilization/credit expansion.
The few bears/grinches/negative nellies/chicken littles remaining aren't going around proclaiming how terrible things are right now - rather, we're pessimistic about what the future will bring. And we all want to be wrong, but don't think we are.
The reason for this had always seemed pretty clear to me. Numerous different political ideologies rely heavily on scare mongering, outrage and catastrophizing to motivate their base and inspire followers. Many of the most powerful people or groups around the world have an incredibly vested interest in getting as many people as possible to believe that some particular set of things is very, very wrong with the world, and that they should be granted the power necessary to fix them. A lot of political ideas become obsolete if people realise that the world is a better place than its ever been, and that it continues to improve at a consistent pace.
You make such a great point here. Social media has amplified and enabled these groups that relentlessly create outrage and spin everything to suit their worldview to get inside everyone's head. Following or reading the daily news is depressing enough, but social media just makes it worse by forcing me to endure a relentless stream of people reacting to it.
That’s also a good point. Both social and traditional media profit hugely from outrage and catastrophe. Fear mongering drives a huge amount of clicks...
> it is cool to think negatively of the world it seems to me.
This is one of these temporary fashions, with several factors at play such as Trump rising to power and climate change. But if you take many other into account, such as violent crime from the 80s/90s, we're living in a paradise. As a human, you can handle a limited number of factors. So it really boils down to a personal choice at this point.
> But if you take many other into account, such as violent crime from the 80s/90s, we're living in a paradise.
In the US.
It's not really a temporary fashion; whatever the time and age, people sensitive to injustice and human suffering will find something systematically broken somewhere. Sure it's cute that violent crimes went down in the West in the 90s, it's less fun that innocent slave labor (including children) was being forced at gunpoint to mine tantalum for the capacitors in 2000s so that we here could have our smartphones, all under tacit approval and sometimes control of western corporations. That's one random story I remember being deeply bothered by in my high school years.
So no, I don't think it's a temporary fashion, and nothing to do with Trump or climate change. In every day and age there was something deeply broken somewhere on this planet. But you're right; seeking it out and being bothered about it is a personal choice, and it's an open question whether it's a wise choice - it feels right, but also, if you're not doing anything to help, then it feels like tormenting yourself for no reason.
This is the primary reason I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal (while avoiding the opinion section). It focuses on business, usually describing facts without judgement. Also, lacking are the local tragedies and most politics. In general, curating my own content makes a difference in my mood/anxiety levels.
> Keeping informed is the duty of a citizen in a democracy
Says who? Are we taking votes away from ill-informed people? I don't think so. And even the act of being informed would be a massive task in itself. Where do you start? What does being informed even mean? How much depth is enough? Just following local news in details would take the good part of one's day, so being informed on a much larger level is pretty much an impossible task with the amount of information readily available to us these days.
"Optimism Bias" improves our mental and physical well-being. Biases are irrational, by definition. Our mind is supposedly rational...and rationality is not always to our benefit.
This kinda blew my mind when I was reading up some philosophy. My key takeaway was that rationality and logic is not always helpful to make decisions, esp. when it comes to complex systems such as people (i.e. relationships). As an engineer, it's tough to get past this mindset. On a daily basis I am striving to disconnect everything as much as possible because of scale and performance, but the human brain is nothing like that.
Not all biases are irrational...in fact most biases are in rational predispositions based on knowledge and/or first hand experience. Basically its an attempt to apply logic/rationality to unknown situations.
Bias is always framed as a negative word/trait, and it certainly can be (like racial prejudice), but bias should also be looked at as an evolutionary tool humans can use to apply past learned experiences to similar situations in the future.
Just as an example, motorcycle riders may have a bias against certain types of vehicles because of their training/experience, and they apply this bias when making decisions that impact their safety on the road, even though the specific vehicle/situation may not pose a danger. In an evolutionary context, maybe you saw a fury 4 legged animal kill one of the members of your tribe, so you apply a bias against all 4 legged fury animals. Now you don't know if all fury 4 legged animals are dangerous, or pose a threat, but at the same time its no irrational to apply the bias because in potentially life/death situations it may be better safe than sorry. Obviously its good to keep and open mind, maybe you can train such an animal and it may even turn out to be your best friend, but nothing wrong with approaching the situation with your bias either.
We like to think of rationality as objectively true, but it’s not. Rationality is based on axioms that “feel right” and even the idea of being rational “feels good”.
Is it rational to believe the parallel postulate? In unchanging laws of physics? In using logic with creatures who tend not to share your axioms?
It comes down to a feeling. From a rational point of view, if rationality were always helpful it would be highly selected for, yet it is not.
Is it rational to believe the likelihood of violent physical harm directed at you if you use a transit station in a sketchy neighborhood as opposed to one in a non-sketchy one?
Does it "feel right" to use the sketchy one, despite everything you know about sketchiness of neighborhoods and crime in general?
Personally I've found the one reliable metric I have with which to evaluate decisions is: happiness. Everything else is inherently externally derived and I might have good models of how they affect me, but I can neither control nor reliably predict them. For example, I have a good idea of how something will impact me financially, but only to a point. I also can't actually control that outcome. How something affects my happiness, though, that is something I have the most intimate ability to determine. As far as I know something makes me happy, I can't know anything else more. Therefore I try to focus most decisions around what makes me happy, with other metrics thrown in as applicable.
One can choose to be rational and logical, but to what end? How does that serve you, does it? If it doesn't serve you, perhaps consider abandoning rational thought and logic for as long as it might serve to do so. We are not static beings and can be simultaneously rational and irrational. That's our power: to choose how we react and adapt.
Lastly, one thing I've learned the power of as I've gotten older, is the power and benefit of holding beliefs you know to be false. I used to never understand how people could believe demonstrably false things, but I now understand that even something as absurd as that has useful applications. Use it wisely.
To me this seems superior in that it seems to be more all-encompassing, and can be more easily applied to others and the greater world, for me. But then happiness could very well do the same for you - I think it's the style of thinking (the means by which one evaluates options when choosing a course of action) involved that is the main point.
Precisely, "happiness" is a pretty squishy term and I'm sure many a debate could be had on exactly what it means. The main principle I adhere to is focusing on what is in my control, which is really what's in my head, and since one can't always control even your own feelings, how I react to those feelings.
To understand "rationality is not always to our benefit" from an engineering perspective it can be helpful to bear in mind the ideas of evolutionary psychology - the evolutionary pressures on brain design are towards getting your genes into the next generation, not towards being perfectly rational. For example as to who gets the girl or the leadership role the guy who says I'm the greatest and believes it has an advantage over the guy who thinks he's mediocre even if in reality both are equally mediocre. So rationality works well for engineering things, less so for dealing with humans.
About three years ago I read someone on here recommend the book, “Learned Optimism”. They said it was life changing.
I read it, did the work, and it is life changing. People with a pessimistic outlook are much less happy than people with an optimistic outlook. The book teaches you how each type thinks (for example, optimists think everything good that happens to them is personal and permanent and every bad thing that happens is impersonal and temporary. Pessimists are the opposite). The book then teaches you essentially a cognitive behavioral therapy technique to retrain your brain to think more like an optimist. It’s work but so worth it especially if you ever experience anxiety.
Weren’t you troubled by the fact that he admits optimists are factually wrong compared to pessimists, blame others, don’t admit fault, and just seem like generally unpleasant people (insurance salesmen and the type of person who talks on planes, for example)? Yeah, okay, they are happier, live longer, are more successful, get elected... but at what cost to the world? I came away thinking we should train the optimists to listen to pessimists more, not the opposite...
The book is not for everyone. By that I mean that there are people in the world that think everything they do will fail. That obsess on every interaction with friends and significant others trying to look for signs that they don’t like them anymore. People that are riddled with anxiety on a daily basis because they always expect bad things to happen. That catastrophize every minor negative thing that happens in their lives.
Those people will have their lives changed significantly for the better by following the program in the book.
I am not troubled that reading a book will give you Narcissist Personality Disorder or as you said turn you into an insurance salesman.
this book really didn't seem very helpful for me. as another commenter described, the book seems to very heavily imply that being a pollyanna-ish person is a superior state of being -- AKA, ignorance is bliss.
sure, i believe that. but it doesn't help those of us who can't look away from the real world.
i get that my critique of the book sounds like a strawman, but i genuinely can't escape the interpretation of the argument that i proposed here on the basis of what the book says alone.
Statistically, I'll die in my mid-70s (although I'm being slightly disingenuous in saying that), but I never understood why we strive to live so old anyway. After a while, what can you do? Many older people already rot in nursing homes. Perhaps if you've built something of significant value like a company or family that you want to see as long as possible it makes sense, but how will achieve that?
or a simple mixup of causation. It may easily be the case that healthier people also happen to be more optimistic, from the article (I haven't looked at the study myself), this appears to be purely correlational.
A lot of cynicism in the comments here, but having an optimistic outlook has been a boon throughout history in almost all accounts. It's definitely harder today with all of the mass media and the constant negativity, but in my opinion it's hard to argue with the logic.. positive energy yields positive results.. at least more so than negative energy
Yep, so many things to be grateful of, but most of the people are just too "blind" to see them and acknowledge it. A gratitude journal is a really powerful tool.
This is a hidden case of confounding. In particular, you would expect a question such as "in uncertain times I usually expect the best" to be very heavily confounded with your chance of making it through uncertain times (in the past and in the future).
Yes, they controlled for basic things like some generic concept of health, diet and smoking, but there's so many things that are hard to control for.
As a simple example: what if you have some rare genetic disease that's not controlled for but will likely kill you?
For such studies, a randomized control trial should be done. For half the group, present the research on optimism and encourage them to be optimistic. For the other half, do nothing. I predict that telling people to be optimistic will not be effective.
I’d love to see a different question answered: is there an inverse correlation to be drawn between optimism and stress levels. From my experience significant stress can be just as debilitating as physical ailments and I find that optimists seem to handle stressful situations with more apparent ease than others.
I would guess causality runs the other way: people with high stress in life have lower life expectancy and also tend to be less optimistic because it’s easier to be optimistic if things are going well for you
I'd say there's even a third option, the causality runs back AND forth (both good thoughts can lead to good outcomes as well as bad outcomes can lead to bad thoughts and vice a versa)
Even in this third option there exist an infinite number of sub options on a gradient (where each direction carries more or less weight).
Of course, any meaningful conversation can only happen after definitions (like what is pessimistic) are agreed upon. I for one don't agree with the definition of pessimism as defined by the study.
It’s well known that two people can have the exact same experience (e.g. fighting in a war, experience a natural disaster) and have vastly different psychological outcomes from it. Some can deal with it easily, while others are crippled by it.
My dad survived flying 30 missions over Germany when his group had 80% casualties. He had accepted that he wouldn't survive.
He was always an optimist. I'd ask him why, and he'd say he survived the war when so many of his buddies didn't, and was going to enjoy every day of it. (He lived to 93.)
The "Optimism" + "Placebo" - theory is also interesting.
(2007)
"A prior investigation found that individuals low in optimism are more likely to follow a negative placebo (nocebo) expectation. The present study tested the hypothesis that individuals high in optimism are more likely to follow a positive placebo expectation."
"Results
Optimism was positively associated with better sleep quality in the placebo expectation condition (r=.48, P<.05). Optimism scores were not associated with better sleep quality in either the treatment control condition (r=−.17, P=.46) or the no-placebo control condition (r=−.24, P=.35)."
"The placebo effect works and you can catch it from your doctor" (October 22, 2019 )
"If there's one thing you do want to catch from a trip to your doctor, it's her optimism."
"The new study both demonstrates that the placebo effect is transmitted from doctor to patient, and shows how it might work. Researchers randomly assigned undergraduate students to play the role of a patient or a doctor. The "patients" were given a controlled heat stimulus to the forearm, after receiving one of two types of cream from the "doctor.""
Seriously Who the hell do and fund these "being optimist makes you live longer, eating healthy makes you longer, water found to be wet" researches? Is this because of the so much supply in graduate schools or researchers/schools want to see their names in the press?
It is completely valid to study. There are plenty of "every knows that" bits of wisdom that are wrong. Or the degree of the effect is unknown. Or the mechanism of effect is unknown.
Let me be concrete. Everyone knows that it is better to eat more fruits and vegetables and less processed food. Off the top of your head, how much must one eat to make a difference? Does it help people live longer, or just reduce sickness? Does it help by 1%, 5%, 20%?
If you just read the title of the report it is easy to be cynical and say, "duh, I knew that", but if you read the actual study it surely will give insights that you were not aware of.
When I read the tile and skimmed through the article, I thought: define pessimism.
I mean, I consider myself pessimistic, but what do THEY who designed the study consider pessimistic. I tend to find the fault in things, see how they are wrong, or in general anticipate some negativity that most people will overlook. It's literally what makes me good at my job.
So I clicked through to the study. Which mentioned it used the Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R) to test for pessimism.
So I looked up the Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R) and found what questions and answers they consider pessimistic.
These are questions a 'pessimist' is supposed to answer as being 'very true':
3. If something can go wrong for me, it will. (R)
7. I hardly ever expect things to go my way. (R)
Welp I can't say these are views of pessimists. More of someone depressed or someone who has been beaten down in life.
I admire what they are trying to do, but I'm not sure this study really is proving anything until there is a clear measure of someone's pessimism. And for that we need I think better testing for someone's natural inclinations toward belief and skepticism. I've always associated skepticism as highly correlated to pessimism (seeing why not) and a tendency to believe in something at first sight as highly correlated with 'positivism' (seeing why yes).
Objectively speaking, of the 7,000,000,000 people in the world, some percentage will have objectively way less things 'go their way' then for others. It's simply how distributions work. So for someone like that to answer question 7 affirmatively, they might not be pessimistic, just someone who has objectively had a shitty life. And for someone like that, well, less life expectancy should be expected. I know I've been lucky in life and would answer 7 and 3 as absolutely no despite myself considering myself a pessimist (and I've been called that enough to suspect others view me as such too)
I feel like usually the pessimistic complaining posts like this in hackernews are much more negative. It feels like there's a lot of hesitancy in this one and it's much more accepting/positive because you're afraid of being pessimistic because of the article :P
(Mostly just being cheeky. It's not fair to judge people on the internet when you don't know them)
I read the article title and wanted to see how accurate it was.
If it was accurate, it would cause me, like a rational creature, to question my tendencies. I have list of pros and cons for all my proclivities and try to use/taper my tendencies accordingly. It's not like I'd abandon my tendency toward pessimism all together, but adding something to the list of cons would put it's utility into greater question. I'm always questioning my beliefs and the utility of my tendencies, it's how I constantly improve and progress in life.
But I also question other peoples assertions. It's the natural thing to do for me. I think to question how they define pessimism is also quite logical when trying to objectively measure something.
I'm curious though, can you please tell me how I was complaining? I'm genuinely interesting in knowing why you perceive that.
Correlation does not imply causation. The paragraph stating that the “finding was independent of other factors” doesn’t really inspire confidence, there are countless factors that might impact the results.
Cohort studies cannot show causation, indeed, but that's not very relevant for what's being claimed.
And what they are saying with "finding was independent of other factors" is that they adjusted for demographics and health conditions.
Yes, there are countless factors that could impact the results, the adjustments are not perfect, but cohorts are useful clues and in the large scheme of things, if you are optimistic, this shows you have a higher likelihood to live longer.
I might have read too much into it, but it’s easy for readers to extrapolate to “if you become more optimistic you’ll live longer”. A parallel would be to read “people who wear XXL are more likely to be fat”, where forcing to wear a smaller size won’t make them thinner.
Doesn't matter. You can be optimistic or pessimist in the same exact situation. E.g. when in dire economic situation. The pessimist is "right" sure.
But being right doesn't make you stronger.
If you give up hope, you lose all kinds of benefits of the hopeful - including fighting till the last minute, and perhaps reversing the situation.
Not to mention that whether you're right or wrong to be hopeful, some situations just reverse themselves, or something good happens out of nowhere, in which case the pessimist just got a more expended period of internal suffering for no good reason.
The last couple years I've become interested in gut bacteria, especially as it relates to health. Long to short, I'd like to offer this theory:
People who are optimistic have more friends. People with more friends have more robust and more diverse gut bacteria. That (i.e., gut bacteria) help the optimistic live longer.
Maybe optimism is profitable on an individual basis. But at the collective level, I am not sure it is such a good idea. Anyway, not being optimistic does not mean you must be pessimistic : We just have to be realistic. That mean, accepting the world for what it is, and not what we want it to be.
Thiel has a good chapter on dichotomizing optimism/pessimism as it relates to building the future in his Zero to One book. Someone else can probably quote it better, but it basically boils down adding a definite/indefinite qualifier also.
He posits:
- Definite pessimists have a concrete negative potential future in mind and often work to subjugate it
- Indefinite pessimists have a vague "the future looks negative" and don't act on concrete plans to improve it
- Definite optimists have a concrete positive potential future in mind and often work to make it a reality
- Indefinite optimists often have a vague "everything will be fine" mindset and rely on others to make that a reality
On a general sense, I'd wager that both optimists and negatives are a good idea to have at the collective level, as both are driven by similar but different motivations. I'd say it's the definite subsets of each group that are "realistic" and "useful" as it pertains to the future, rather than either larger group as a whole.
Being optimistic and realistic will always be better than just being realistic. The two aren't at odds and having things to look forward to is what separates the miserable from the successful.
A pessimist and an optimist will probably consider various interpretations as realistic, yet neither will see the world "as it is".
Even just the idea of the world as something that can be seen, thought of, considered, described etc. is squeezing it through a very human-shaped filter, and what you get out of the other end is always more about us than about the world.
I haven't read the article yet but I've heard stats like this before. Is it simply the effect of a positive emotional state? When my friend and I were talking about this I said:
I wish to be optimistic. My wife says that my pessimism and low energy is negatively impacting our kids. The article does not go into detail about what methods one can train on to become more optimistic. Does anyone know of some methods?
As someone else has mentioned in the thread, the book Learned Optimism is all about this. I have also found learning meditation from the book The Mind Illuminated to be helpful. You could also check out CBT, and/or the writings of Albert Ellis.
Fundamentally, you will need to learn to let go of your negative perspective. One thing that helped me with this is realizing that the facts of reality are one thing, and how I feel about them are another. These are entirely orthogonal, and rewiring yourself to react differently to things is very doable, especially if you realize that your negative reactions are not helpful.
Pessimists write more reliable code. Optimists assume users won't do funny stuff. Society owes the early croakers gratitude for their dedicated pessimism. Oh, and git off my lawn!
Maybe because One of the the side effect of being a pessimist is giving up and just letting it go. That should nudge the data points to support this study
If you lie to yourself you'll know you're lying... Also that's a great way to keep yourself in a bad job or relationship when you could leave and get a better one.
I think self lie is a defining characteristic of humans. We also use our big brains to rationalize the decisions we have already made, not using our capacity for rationalism to make the best decisions.
When we are truly rational, it is highly damaging to our egos.
I really wish articles written about studies like this, where all they found was a association between stuff, and not a causal relationship, would explicitly say so. Perhaps through a little box near the end of the article stating, in simple terms, "the authors found that X and Y are associated. This does not necessarily mean that doing X will cause Y"
I know the people who read the actual study in journal, entitled "Optimism is associated with ...", will notice the word "associated" and know what to make of the results. But Im pretty sure a good number of people who read pop-science articles like this dont know that "correlation doesnt imply causation". They will come to the wrong conclusion, and we cant blame them! Ive found this to be true in friends and family.
And in this case, you could easily imagine the arrow of causation pointing in the other way. If you have the good fortune of being generally healthy, and make enough income to have access to good healthcare, it's likely that you will live to 85. But these same factors also make you a likely optimist.
Just copy-pasting neonate's quote from the article, responding to a similar comment:
_That finding was independent of other factors thought to influence life's length — such as "socioeconomic status, health conditions, depression, social integration, and health behaviors"_
Literally the second paragraph on the article.
Read the article before posting comments, folks! :)
That finding was independent of other factors thought to influence life's length — such as "socioeconomic status, health conditions, depression, social integration, and health behaviors"
And then - as one of the possible explanations behind the correlation - they speculate that "optimistic people might be more motivated to try to maintain good health — such as maintaining a decent diet, engaging in regular exercise and not smoking".
Surely this would have been controlled for already, as maintaining diet and exercising falls under the category of "health behaviors"?
For those repeating the “correlation isn’t causation” mantra: if you click through to the original article (https://www.pnas.org/content/116/37/18357), you’ll find its title is "Optimism is associated with exceptional longevity in 2 epidemiologic cohorts of men and women”, so the authors of the paper are aware of that.
They tried hard to adjust for demographics and health conditions.
So, any critique should be on where those adjustments fail. The article is paywalled, so, even if I were knowledgeable about how that can be done, I can’t tell whether they are valid.
The authors of every paper are aware of that. It's a thing that's being hammered on to them from early days at the university, and they are either studying for their PhDs or seasoned researchers when they create a paper.
It's mostly geek arrogance and facile dismissal from HN crowd to put this tired cliche mantra up.
When papers seem to ignore this, it's willingfully so (to get grants, pad their publications, etc with a nice result), not because they don't know this.
