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The Art of Negativity

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Re: The Art of Negativity

#21

Post by ldbooth »

ldbooth wrote: post #20

Optimism is socially useful. guarded pessimism is unavoidable from evolution. Humans psychologically want reinforcement of their own security i.e. group positivity. Evolution in groups means our unconscious does this without awareness. Negativity undermines the feeling of group security.

Good comment self, alsoHard to be an engineer without practicing 'worst case' thinking for design. Maybe this is why switching from design to sales is so hard. Long and critical thought versus short and optimistic.

Re: The Art of Negativity

#22

Post by username90 »

ldbooth wrote: post #20

Optimism is socially useful. guarded pessimism is unavoidable from evolution. Humans psychologically want reinforcement of their own security i.e. group positivity. Evolution in groups means our unconscious does this without awareness. Negativity undermines the feeling of group security.

Groups tend to be pessimist to change and outside influence though so aren't inherently biased to optimism. Groups just value optimism when it is optimism towards the groups current values and goals, but it sees optimism towards stuff the group doesn't do as a negative.

For example, if you join a company and tell the manager in the first meeting "If we reorganized the working groups like this it will greatly increase productivity due to reasons, it will be great!", he wont see you as an optimist, even though you have plenty of optimism, what he wants is optimism towards his ideas and not your own optimistic ideas.

Re: The Art of Negativity

#23

Post by bsenftner »

hvasilev wrote: post #17

Started strong, then the anti-capitalist rhetoric was too much for me.

It's a Polish Intellectual magazine site, so an Eastern European perspective on Capitalism. If you can't read such global opinions, you're gonna be a one-sided citizen. You need to grasp the wants and desires of others to find middle ground peacefully.

Re: The Art of Negativity

#24

Post by getlawgdon »

FriedrichN wrote: post #3

I find the dichotomy of pessimism/optimism and positive/negative not very useful in daily life, I prefer to think of defeatism and naivety. To me realism or (practical) optimism lies between those two. You can't go through life either distrusting everyone and everything, nor can you do the opposite and live a good life. People don't like negativity because it ruins their mood, but you sometimes have to be critical. P…

Exactly. I often say pessimism/optimism are astrology. Realism is astronomy.

Re: The Art of Negativity

#25

Post by lucideer »

FriedrichN wrote: post #3

I find the dichotomy of pessimism/optimism and positive/negative not very useful in daily life, I prefer to think of defeatism and naivety. To me realism or (practical) optimism lies between those two. You can't go through life either distrusting everyone and everything, nor can you do the opposite and live a good life. People don't like negativity because it ruins their mood, but you sometimes have to be critical. P…

> People also don't like positivity because ...

There's a third (and possibly many more) variation(s). People don't like positivity because it often triggers a prejudgement of naivety, which in turn leads to defeatism (since you can't connect with someone; you feel disconnected from them due to their positivity and your inability to empathise with their perspective).

That's a trickier one to overcome with pure hubris, and imo a much more common one than some may think.

Re: The Art of Negativity

#26

Post by username90 »

getlawgdon wrote: post #24
FriedrichN wrote: post #3

I find the dichotomy of pessimism/optimism and positive/negative not very useful in daily life, I prefer to think of defeatism and naivety. To me realism or (practical) optimism lies between those two. You can't go through life either distrusting everyone and everything, nor can you do the opposite and live a good life. People don't like negativity because it ruins their mood, but you sometimes have to be critical. P…

Exactly. I often say pessimism/optimism are astrology. Realism is astronomy.

Pessimism/optimism are mostly to signal social support for things. If you act with irrational optimism towards someone's ideas you are showing that you support the person. Similarly if you don't act with irrational optimism many will take it as evidence that you don't support them, which can cause them to become hostile against you.

This means that acting with irrational optimism is often the rational choice when you consider social factors, and that is what managers are looking for when the job ad says it wants an optimistic person.

However that kind of irrational social based optimism isn't what entrepreneurs means when they talk about optimism. Their kind of optimism is that you need to see yourself as better than others so you wont conclude that since most others fail you too will fail, which is kind of the opposite kind of optimism managers are looking for in their reports.

Re: The Art of Negativity

#27

Post by feralimal »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #9
feralimal wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You can't go through life either distrusting everyone and everything, nor can you do the opposite and live a good life." I distrust everything and can make a convincing case for it. Where is the trust to be found? In societal structures? In people who have been indoctrinated into a society and think its perfectly normal to spend time in an office looking at screens and in their downtime look at screens too? And what…

If you want to be productive in life and cooperate with people you need at least some level of trust. For example if you are meeting up with someone, do you distrust that they will not show up and not go at all or do you demand they send their GPS location every minute of their way to know that you are not wasting an hour of your time going to the meeting? This is just one minor example. There's several other things…

I'm happy to co-operate. I don't have to trust them for that. I extend my hand to others first. I can trade. I go in with the possibility that I can be ripped off - I'm happy to do so.

I don't think most people are nefarious. Most are incredibly ignorant though. Despite apparent intellectual abilities, most people are unable to think for themselves - they have been programmed. They have received their values and behaviours, etc and believe them to be their own, even though they have never considered them deeply for themselves. They believe its perfectly normal to spend their whole lives working at screens for money. Unbelievable! This is 'normal'. Wearing masks is now normal too, and no travel, ever greater government management of one's life is also normal. Etc.

So yes, there is the day-to-day trust - but what I'm thinking is that trust requires that 2 agents have freewill and a similar reasoned understanding. But we don't. I live in different universes to most, I think.

When I'm talking about trust, there is a relation to truth. Most people accept the truth they are provided without question. There is no debate - the TV doesn't lie, the government has your best interests, corporations aim to make profit but in a 'ethical' way, the law is independent, etc, etc. In dealing with people who accept all that uncritically, we cannot have trust. We do not have individuals interacting according to a common understanding. We have a herd that acts in a predetermined way. It looks like its made up of individuals, but its not. In fact the only thinking that's occurring is small, and relates to personal preferences (I prefer the taste of chocolate, I like watching sport, I will work hard for money to get the house, etc). The behaviour is hardwired, there is no element of free will there. No more trust to be had there, that you could have with a door or wall.

Re: The Art of Negativity

#28

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

bsenftner wrote: post #23
hvasilev wrote: post #17

Started strong, then the anti-capitalist rhetoric was too much for me.

It's a Polish Intellectual magazine site, so an Eastern European perspective on Capitalism. If you can't read such global opinions, you're gonna be a one-sided citizen. You need to grasp the wants and desires of others to find middle ground peacefully.

I disagree. I read the full article and enjoyed it a lot. But the attempts to pull in “late capitalism” and gender / queer issues were just poor writing. It’s like mixing all the paint colors and just getting an ugly gray. There was no convincing connection to “structural inequality” in this at all, nor any sense of significant radical opposition to entrenched powers that be. Piling that stuff on just made the essay bloated. It felt more like having an unsupported agenda of radical left issues forced upon me with no serious intellectual basis or connection, with lots of language thrown in to make sure you know that the author feels those radical aspects are 100% correct (without justification) and must be taken as truth and as an assumed shared starting point for the reader. It significantly detracts from the article, lowering both the basic writing efficacy and the intellectual merit, and watering the whole thing down as an assertive (but unsupported) criticism of capitalism instead of the rather interesting discussion of negativity that it used as a bait and switch.

Re: The Art of Negativity

#29

Post by ldbooth »

sn41 wrote: post #15
FriedrichN wrote: post #3

I find the dichotomy of pessimism/optimism and positive/negative not very useful in daily life, I prefer to think of defeatism and naivety. To me realism or (practical) optimism lies between those two. You can't go through life either distrusting everyone and everything, nor can you do the opposite and live a good life. People don't like negativity because it ruins their mood, but you sometimes have to be critical. P…

"Trust in God, but keep your powder dry" - Oliver Cromwell (attributed) [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_in_God_and_keep_your_pow...

"trust but verify" -every construction job ever
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