by finnigja on 8/16/16, 5:10 PM with 160 comments
by holman on 8/16/16, 7:34 PM
I saw this talk in person at Nordic Ruby, and it was one of the best talks I've seen (and I've seen a bunch). Strangely enough, I don't really think back and think much about "optimism" when I think of the talk, though, even though the talk is about optimists.
My takeaway was the type of tooling and thought processes that are advantageous when approaching problems and conflict. In many talks — mine included — people will say something along the lines of "be nice to your teammates and leave good feedback", for example, but that's really vague. Reg's talk helped me understand what that type of feedback might be, how it can be explicitly phrased, and how I can give concrete feedback without being antagonistic. I think it makes for a more effective argument, especially when building product, but also it just makes for friendlier humans.
Yeah, this does lead to "optimistic people", hence the title, but I just thought it was weird to see discussion here about the merits of positive people versus negative people. I think the talk's a much bigger dialogue about interacting with humans and, possibly more importantly, yourself.
Anyway, I really liked the talk, and as much as this Markdown is great at getting the point across, this is one of the talks I'd suggest actually watching. \m/
by PSeitz on 8/16/16, 8:56 PM
To be more optimistic assess good stuff as personal, general, and permanent and negative as impersonal, specific and temporal.
Make notes everyday about your assessments and correct them.
There is research backing this thesis.
by braythwayt on 8/16/16, 6:35 PM
by alexashka on 8/16/16, 6:44 PM
When you feel vulnerable, every little thing is about to crush your soul, so you take everything personally, it will result in permanent damage because you're so vulnerable and the world of full of danger aka very general and accurate assertion.
This is an accurate worldview from the perspective of a child with parents who don't do a good job of building the kid up into a competent adult (everyone I know)
So the solution is to grow into a self-sufficient adult.
Most adults I know are incompetent at most things in life, the ones who are depressed/unhappy are either more sensitive/aware, or have just been dealt a harsher hand in life.
The solution is always the same, and it'll take years, decades even.
But a few small victories toward self-sufficiency will hopefully propel you to believe in your faculties a bit more - we're very capable little creatures :)
by gommm on 8/16/16, 6:23 PM
As to the point of the presentation, it's an interesting view of things. Making a note of my explanations explanations is something I should do. Introspective exercises like this can sometimes lead to surprising discoveries.
by mping on 8/16/16, 5:52 PM
Although I can't say that I agree with all, I can surely identify with the attempt to systematize our way of though, and the division of personal/impersonal, general/speficif and permanent/impermanent is interesting.
On a (not so quite) side note, one thing that comes to mind when reading this is that meditation can be used as an efficient way of controlling your thoughts, to the point where you can learn to avoid the pitfalls that the author mentions (ex: taking criticism to heart, pessimisn, etc).
by StanislavPetrov on 8/16/16, 11:12 PM
It's not controversial to say that our moods can affect our interpretations and decisions, but it is (to me anyway) to make a blanket statement that moods always do effect interpretations and decisions. I find it extremely controversial to suggest that the answer to this "mood bias" is to willfully delude yourself by forcing yourself to think "optimistically". The author suggests that mood is a binary decision between optimism and pessimism. In life, very few decisions are binary, despite human propensity to view things as black and white. I would suggest that there is a middle ground between optimism and pessimism (call it "realism"). As a poker player for several decades, I can tell you that you are forced to discard optimism and pessimism (at least at the poker table) and adopt "realism" if you want to be successful. You can't let your moods affect your judgement. In regards to the author's statement, when someone smiles at you, you have to dispassionately calculate what that smile means given the context and other "knowns" you have to evaluate the situation. If you allow your mood to effect how you judge that smile will ensure your long-term failure as a poker player.
I'd argue that, with some effort, the same mindset can be extended to every day life, neither optimistic or pessimistic. Calculating outcomes and probabilities based on what you know, see, and hear without "mood bias" because you expect good or bad things to happen. I would agree that if you are going to make deluded, biased assessments based on your mood that you are better off doing so with a smile then a frown, but you are best off if you reject self-delusion all together.
by lotyrin on 8/16/16, 6:03 PM
All the worst initiatives that have crashed and burned around me in my career, smoldering craters, were built and planned by people who thought they were generally competent and that things would generally be fine, we can bet big on this one. All their past failures, ruins crumbled under the pressure of unmanaged complexity or debris scattered by some unforeseen risk, were minor specifics, won't happen this time.
by iamleppert on 8/16/16, 10:34 PM
I wish I had the motivation to give a self-help lecture at a Rails conference. I'm sure no one would come though, and if anyone did come, they would probably hate me for talking about such self-important windbag topics like depression, motivation, and cognitive behavioral therapy.
Signed,
The Perennial Pessimist
by avindroth on 8/17/16, 2:16 PM
But the road has uphills and downhills: the cognitive boosters and roadblocks.
The optimist only sees the downhills.
The pessimist only sees the uphills.
The realist sees both, and makes a guess on whether this journey is worthwhile. Is the cake worth the effort?
The optimist, while appealing, will soon be met with unexpected uphills. He will be distraught, and maybe even give up.
Shoot for the realist, not the optimist.
by cel1ne on 8/16/16, 7:54 PM
A modern and experimentally grounded system of "emotional styles" is provided by neuro-scientist Richard J. Davidson, in his book "The emotional life of your brain".
A bit more nuanced than the "Big Five", he maps emotional traits along six axes: resilience, outlook, social intuition, self-awareness, sensitivity to context and attention.
Optimism would be "outlook" here, which is interesting because it's a different thing than resilience. Being optimistic isn't the opposite of being pessimistic, it's two different skills.
There are neurological explanations for each of the traits and there are exercises given to move your mind along each axis.
by snaky on 8/17/16, 3:20 AM
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111009140201.h...
by tedmiston on 8/17/16, 2:32 AM
http://braythwayt.com/homoiconic/2009/05/01/optimism.html
Also the 30-min talk was recorded as a video.
by RangerScience on 8/16/16, 11:49 PM
TL;DR, references to Pandora's recommendation algorithm:
Describe GOOD things broadly, permanently, and personally. Describe BAD things specifically, temporally, and impersonally.
Now let's think about Pandora. Specifically, Pandora's recommendation that you thumbs up (upvote) a few things, and thumbs down (downvote) many more things. Why?
Let's think about Pandora's recommendation algorithm, or, recommendation algorithms in general (pandora's is good because you can give input every ~5 minutes, as opposed to Netflix, where it's ~1hr). Note: Not an expert! I just read stuff on the internet a lot.
Pandora takes your upvote, and it promotes an entire region of music-space. Pandora takes you downvote, and it demotes a very narrow region of music-space. In other words, it broadly interacts with GOOD things, and specifically interacts with BAD things. Pandora isn't passing judgement on you, but it is a personal thing (or, really, per-channel), and you can un-vote anything; so it at first glance it doesn't apply on the other axis but I wouldn't put it past them if my upvotes carried across channels (so they're more personal, while the downvotes stay "impersonal" to each channel), and it might be better if downvotes decayed in some way over time.
In any event, you can imagine what this looks like in state-space: You start with a broadly defined region, and you start taking holes out of it.
by dredmorbius on 8/16/16, 11:48 PM
A straight-text extract would be a far more useful presentation online. Following an @idlewords-type presentation, with images to the side of the main text would also help.
I have modest interest in reading this, but not so much that I'm willing to put up with entirely self-inflicted idiosyncracies to do so.
by mherdeg on 8/16/16, 9:18 PM
I also see it in discussion of the idea of "fundamental attribution error" (when I analyze my own behavior, I attribute mistakes to external factors; when I analyze others' behavior, I attribute mistakes to internal factors).
by jlgaddis on 8/16/16, 11:12 PM
I've no idea where this was at, geographically/physically, so maybe it's a local custom or style or something?
by iaci on 8/16/16, 9:17 PM
It seems to me that is just correlation and not causation. It seems that the cause is the time we spend in action, not thinking about us. When we act, we are more likely to succeed. When we think about ourselves, we are more likely to be depressed.
In my experience, the root of these two things is too much thinking about ourselves.
Quote: Don't think about what is a good man, be a good man. It's alright to think about that but it doesn't seems to be a good idea. Taking periods twice every week seems to be a good idea[1].
[1] Turning Pro (https://sivers.org/book/TurningPro)
by marmot777 on 8/16/16, 11:15 PM
by unabst on 8/16/16, 7:24 PM
But even healthy minds will be pessimistic or optimistic from day to day. The author suggests the explanations we think of dictate our mood, which is true, but also our mood already dictates those thoughts. Our explanations tend to be negative when we're feeling negative. You're just sad already.
The question is this: Is your explanation an objective description of truth, or is it an honest expression of your mood? And it's almost always both. Most explicit negative or positive explanations are also implicit expressions of your mood. Our inner dialog is always emotional, so when we reason with ourselves, we're already reasoning with our emotions, except, they have already happened.
And here is how it works. Intellectual people are capable of coming up with an infinite number of reasons. Give it enough thought and you'll find yourself cataloging reason after reason. The sleight of hand happens when we choose the reason to go with. If you let your gut choose, you'll go with the one that most closely aligns with how you feel, because it will physically feel right. It just clicks. So we reason because of our mood, and further towards that mood. And if you have a working brain, you are an intellectual person.
And here is the common misconception. A reason does not have to be subjective or false to be emotional. All your reasons can be true. The problem is with your selection. Think misuse of statistics [1]. All your data can be true, but can be made to say whatever you want. Conclusions can be written first, then made true. If we can do it with statistics, we can certainly do it with our perception. And this article along with Dr. Martin Seligman methods basically covers the various ways in which we do just that.
So whenever possible just make your mood explicit. Monitor your mood, and take hints from the implicit emotions in whatever thoughts that are about something else. If they're in any way negative or positive, then that's already a clue, because if you think about it, nature isn't inherently either. And if you're down, act on it, don't reason with it. Just hit mute, and physically do things that make you happy (I splurge on a hard root beer or a premium cup of coffee). If your body and mind are healthy, this will work every time. If nothing you do makes you happy, don't feel guilty, just go see a doctor.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_statistics
(right when I try to block HN to concentrate on work, I find articles like these, and am heavily rewarded again for my procrastination :)
by jwcrux on 8/16/16, 7:03 PM
by emodendroket on 8/16/16, 7:37 PM
by caub on 8/16/16, 7:03 PM
by xrd on 8/16/16, 6:03 PM
by dgudkov on 8/16/16, 11:44 PM
I guess that's how religions are born.
by ebbv on 8/16/16, 9:31 PM
by grabcocque on 8/16/16, 6:32 PM
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Optimist, said Professor Jove. Hitler was the most unabashed doe-eyed optimist of the last hundred years. That’s why he was the biggest monster. Have you ever heard of anything as outrageously hopeful as the Final Solution? Not just that there could be a solution — to anything, mind you, while we have yet to cure the common cold — but a final one, no less! Full of hope, the Führer was. A dreamer! A romantic, even, yes? If I just kill this one, gas that one, everything will be okay. I tell you this with absolute certainty: every morning, Adolf Hitler woke up, made himself a cup of coffee, and asked himself how to make the world a better place. We all know his answer, but the answer isn’t nearly as important as the question. The only thing more naively hopeful than the Final Solution is the ludicrous dictum to which it gave birth: Never Again. How many times since Never Again has it happened again? Three? Four? That we know of, mind you. Mao? Optimist. Stalin? Optimist. Pol Pot? Optimist. Here’s a good rule for life, Kugel, no matter where you happen to live or when you happen to be born: when someone rises up and promises that things are going to be better, run. Hide. Pessimists don’t build gas chambers.