Optimism

As mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, this is the markdown source for a presentation. A program called DeckSet turns it into a conventional presentation.

Having it in markdown enables some useful things like git/github.

I like the idea of shaking permanent beliefs/attitudes. From reading your talk, it sounds like taking the optimistic mindset is partly as an antidote to a pessimistic attitude, or to the idea that a person can be reduced to a (negative) rule.

The thing I worry about, however, is that this further entrenches the idea that there is anything that is permanent! If someone tells me I am good/bad at something, I think "well, I am good/bad at this particular thing in this particular way right now." General, permanent praise can ring hollow for me because it doesn't seem like something which can even "actually" be true, but at least I'm symmetric about this with criticism. (I also can't discount the fact that I heard so much general praise growing up that my brain tends to automatically ignores it as being likely ungrounded.)

I suspect adopting the growth mindset has an underlying mindset of impermanence, since if things aren't guaranteed to remain fixed, changing for the better is always a possibility.

Here's an anecdote I find interesting about people and how they view themselves: I was teaching an introductory calculus course, which tends to be full of freshmen, people generally known to be exploring their identities. After a quiz early on in the semester, a student came up to me, pointing to the score, with disbelief "how could this be? I am a good student!" There was a strong cognitive dissonance, and they were blinded because, I suspect, they didn't want to believe they might have been someone else this whole time. Exams don't know whether or not you are a "good student." (The student was bright and creative, and I think went on to do architecture instead.) (This was my first semester as a graduate student. I tried to handle the situation as well as I could given my role, ability, and right to interfere, but I'm no psychologist.)

Sometimes thinking about believing something just because it is emotionally beneficial reminds me of the following exchange from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (by everyone's favorite pessimist):

    Slartibartfast: I'd much rather be happy than right any day. 
    Arthur Dent: And are you? 
    Slartibartfast: Ah, no.  (laughs)

But it doesn't seem to me that rejecting positive/negative impressions of yourself as being who you are is unhappiness-inducing. If anything, it might reduce cognitive dissonance. Here's a scenario where this might fall apart: there is a skill you know you have deficiencies in, someone asks you to do something which requires you to put that skill on display, so you are hesitant, because you don't want to signal to people that you thought this was good work, since you know people might take this as indication that you are "bad" because people have generally bought into the whole permanence mindset, and then you'd have to spend more effort to manage how people perceive you, otherwise people might take you less seriously overall for future things you would like to do. If you're fine with perception management, then there's no issue, but otherwise there is some unhappiness because of an effective insecurity derived from the interaction between the secure self and the social sphere.

Anyway, to steal your signoff: But I don't know. Unlike you I haven't read Seligman and Dweck, and unlike them I am not testing and measuring.

This is actually one of the strongest criticisms of Seligman's work. There's a clear example of this - after his work was published, the US Army adopted this as part of their training. After all, the results are fantastic - people become more psychologically robust in all sorts of ways if they're more optimistic, and soldiers are frequently in very stressful situations.

However the flip side of this is that it essentially trains people to disclaim any personal responsibility for bad events, and this has been mentioned in investigations into atrocities committed by the US military. Unfortunately the only citations I can find with a quick Google search are from pretty shady or biased sources, but I do remember seeing some more reliable-looking ones in the past.

It's also a common claim that CEOs tend to exhibit sociopathic tendencies, and it's not hard to see how this might apply there. I read Seligman's book several years ago (and like Reginald, I recommend that almost everyone reads it - it's fascinating) but when I took the test I only came out as mostly optimistic. On 4 of the 6 axes I was considered optimistic, but the other two could be colloquially translated as "when I do bad things I think it's my fault". Now according to Seligman, if I didn't think like that I'd be way better off, but I think I'm ok with maintaining the psychological equivalent of a moral compass there.

I had a temporary fit of pessimism where I thought that HN would never get any better. But we now know better.

No, but I will look into it. Tools are always interesting!