15 ms·

Optimism

617 points by chair6 10y ago

mping 10y ago
Great and honest post. I hope people pay more attention to these topics that apparently are not tech-centric, but imho it's where the tech stuff actually comes forth. 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).
xrd 10y ago
Beautiful.
lotyrin 10y ago
Certainly, an unbiased symmetrical appraisal should be the goal? If the premise is that the effects upon your past success are equally likely to be general or specific regardless of their sign, and any asymmetry between your appraisal of the specificity between positive and negative effects indicates bias, isn't either bias problematic? 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.
- mping 10y ago
  Problem is that it's very hard to get rid of your own bias.
- phantarch 10y ago
  I think based on what the post was saying that an optimistic attitude doesn't necessarily equate to ignoring reality. To me, the post was more about opinion and self-esteem than facts about a project. It sounds like whatever things have crashed and burned around you in your career were led by people who superimposed their self-esteem onto fact-based decisions.
- resu_nimda 10y ago
  I think the idea is to recognize which side of the coin you naturally or subconsciously tend to fall on, and to consciously apply an asymmetrical or biased force to correct for that. The author naturally struggles with pessimism, so his presentation and experiences are framed around forcibly developing more optimistic thought patterns. For the people you describe, perhaps the inverse should be applied (the same article from that perspective would be an interesting read!). I would say that it's probably generally better for you (and those around you) to err on the side of optimism.
  - greenshackle 10y ago
    I've read Learned Optimism, Seligman at no point makes the recommendation that overly optimistic people should be less optimistic. He doesn't seem too concerned with accuracy, he just says that optimism will make you happier and more productive, so you should pursue it. He comes very close to explicitly stating that mild optimistic self-delusion is good, because it will make you happier. He acknowledges depressive realism, that is, the finding that depressed people make more accurate judgments in certain situations, but doesn't really address it.
- greenshackle 10y ago
  I agree with you that accuracy should be the goal, but Seligman doesn't. I read most of the book, he thinks that delusional optimism is good, because it will make you happier and more productive. He's used his research to teach optimism to soldiers so that they are more effective. But perhaps it is appropriate for soldiers in the middle of a war to not feel super optimistic? >If the premise is that the effects upon your past success are equally likely to be general or specific regardless of their sign I don't know if that's a true premise. It's an empirical question. There's no fundamental reason why the universe should be even-handed. I read a good portion of Learned Optimism a while back. I think it's a dangerous book to read for certain types of depressive personalities. Ironically, there's a reading of the book that reinforces pessimism.
- pdonis 10y ago
  > Certainly, an unbiased symmetrical appraisal should be the goal? I have not read Seligman's work, but I can see at least one way in which the asymmetry in response to positive vs. negative can be justified. If someone is doing something positive, you want them to keep doing it--so you want it to be permanent. And you want them to internalize whatever it is that makes them do that thing, make it part of themselves--so you want it to be personal. And you want them to expand whatever that positive factor is to other domains--so you want it to be general. If someone is doing something negative, you want them to stop doing it--so you want it to be temporary. And you want them to not make it part of themselves--so you want it to be impersonal. And you want them to keep it confined and not let it affect other domains--so you want it to be specific. In other words, the "optimistic bias" is an asymmetric strategy to achieve an asymmetric goal--maintain positives, but change negatives.
- samscully 10y ago
  I have not read the book so I can't comment on that but I have done a good deal of cognitive behavioural therapy. Mostly I was taught to consider the optimistic explanation and assess how realistic my negative thoughts were. The main exercise we used was to write down my thoughts, feelings, physiology and actions in response to a situation. Then we did it again for a more positive imagining of how the same situation could have played out. It's useful to see how each aspect effects the others and identifying how things could be changed helps a lot when the same situation arises again. For sure it wouldn't be helpful to be wildly over optimistic, it must be very stressful to intentionally delude yourself. But the error bars on most of these judgements are so wide I don't see anything wrong with erring on the optimistic side. Of course another skill is learning to avoid unhelpful judgements altogether. But that's a different topic and I won't pretend I have much insight there.
- ucarion 10y ago
  It's an open question in philosophy (what isn't?), but isn't happiness our ultimate aim, or at least a very important component of the ultimate aim? It's pretty easy to try to bias yourself toward happiness, but still have a daemon in the background making sure you're not diverging from reality too much. If you're very concerned about being biased, then you can probably trust yourself to be reasonable when being biased in this way. For many of us, we're more inclined to be irrationally biased against ourselves than in favor of ourselves. The conscious, monitored, and controlled bias the OP describes can counteract our natural pessimistic inclinations.
gommm 10y ago
Let me give an optimistic feedback because Reginald's work is well worth it. Reg's essay and his combinator book have had a huge influence on my career and my way of thinking as a programmer. I really recommend everyone here to take a look at the combinator book at http://combinators.info http://combinators.info 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.
- matt4077 10y ago
  Reginald's writing is of the kind where you immediately know you're learning from an incredibly smart and creative guy. I'm somewhat sad to have lost him to the JS-world, but at least he has expanded into 'soft' topics like management. As it turns out he's not just analytically brilliant but also full of humanity. To have done all he has with 'a frontal lobe tied behind his back' makes it even more impressive.
  - kakuri 10y ago
    We're very grateful to have him in the JS world!
- sotojuan 10y ago
  No exaggeration: I want to be like raganwald.
grabcocque 10y ago
I learned everything I need to know about optimism from Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander when it explains why optimists are dangerous. --- 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.
- phantarch 10y ago
  This feels like a very sad way to view optimism. It's from a work of fiction which only makes a guess about Hitler's worldview. If optimism is a delusion, then so is pessimism, but only in the other direction. Neither view can tell us more than how we feel about the things around us.
- braythwayt 10y ago
  As the presentation says right at the beginning, "Optimism" in this context has a specific meaning defined by Dr. Martin Seligman for his work. It refers to the way people explain good and bad things that have happened to them in the past. It does not speak to people's expectations for how things will happen in the future. In technical contexts, practitioners often use words in ways that do not match the common parlance.
- sdegutis 10y ago
  Yeah, that's not really optimism. But rhetoric is a powerful thing and can make pessimism seem like optimism, and Shalom knows that. Real optimism is waking up and saying "I have hope that this world can be a better place, all I have to do is do my part to be a better person, and be encouraging and inspiring to others that today can be a better day than yesterday." Speaking of rhetoric, is it any wonder why journalism, media, and politics are all pure rhetoric, with no real substance? About 2500 years ago, there was a large group of people who said rhetoric was the path of the future, and a small group that said "the truth" is the real key to a better future. They had a great debate, and the smaller group lost. For losing, the leader of the smaller group had to drink poisoned hemlock.
braythwayt 10y ago
Author here. Ask Me Anything.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  > Optimists explain good things as being personal, general, and permanent, and explain away bad things as being impersonal, specific, and temporary. Can't this be taken to unhealthy extremes? Sounds exactly like how narcissists think. Just look at Trump. He claims personal responsibility for his successes, but his failures are always one-time events that were other people's fault. Where should one draw the line?
  - braythwayt 10y ago
    My understanding is that narcissism is a slightly different thing: > Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a long-term pattern of abnormal > behavior characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an > excessive need for admiration, and a lack of understanding of others' feelings. Seligman claims that people who have the "optimistic" asymmetry are happier and more productive than those who have the "pessimistic" asymmetry. Unfortunately, he makes no claims about other aspects of people's personalities, such as whether they are ethical. I think you can be optimistic without having an exaggerated feeling of self-importance, and certainly it has nothing to do with a need for admiration or lacking understanding for the feelings of others. So... I think the answer as to where to draw the line is, "If you are aware enough to worry about the line, you don't need the line."
  - drewrv 10y ago
    > Where should one draw the line? Engage in self reflection and be honest with yourself, something I doubt Trump does.
    - PSeitz 10y ago
      According to the research he must be pretty happy.
busterarm 10y ago
Make America Great Again!
- merpnderp 10y ago
  Which candidate was it that was running on the pessimism platform?
- pc86 10y ago
  I'm no fan of Trump myself but the fact that this off-topic trash has gone 6 minutes without being flagged is shocking.
  - kevinwang 10y ago
    It is relevant to this question in the OP, though >How many times since Never Again has it happened again?
    - busterarm 10y ago
      Yeah, I'm really just responding to: > when someone rises up and promises that things are going to be better, run. Hide. Pessimists don’t build gas chambers.
- sctb 10y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12299512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12299512 and marked it off-topic.
alexashka 10y ago
'Personal, permanent, general' - all of this is easily explained with 'feeling vulnerable'. 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 :)
jwcrux 10y ago
I love this quote: "the plural of anecdote is not data"
- braythwayt 10y ago
  I first heard it from Alan Armstrong, CEO of Eigenworks.
- matt4077 10y ago
  It's quite old and I like to say: If you think about it, it actually is.
- laughinghan 10y ago
  While that version is much more popular, it's a mutation of the original quote which actually stated the exact opposite: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2011/04/the-plural-of-anecdote-is-data-after-all.html http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2011/04/the-plural-of-an...
- aidenn0 10y ago
  I dislike it because it is counterfactual. Each anecdote is a datum. The plural of anecdotes is non-experimental data, but data nonetheless.
caub 10y ago
that's one heavy-ass .md
unabst 10y ago
The thing we tend to overlook about our inner dialog is that we actually have very little control over our thoughts. You know you have a problem when they become suicidal, because healthy minds simply do not have them. 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. --- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_statistics 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 :)
dominotw 10y ago
>I LIVE WITH Depression The word 'depression' is so over used by everyone from a angry teenager, a new mom or a dying old man that it doesn't hold any meaning to me at all. I now mentally equate Depression with attention seeking self-importance. I feel absolutely no sympathy for anyone 'suffering from depression' these days because I've heard it so many times.
- braythwayt 10y ago
  The entire point of the presentation was to talk about my journey to the place where I think this comment says far more about you than it does about me.
  - dominotw 10y ago
    what does it tell about me? >Those of you who have not had this affliction may question this Do you think there are people out there who don't suffer from 'depression' ? Is depression not common to all of humanity? >I have had many high points in my life, but I also have had many low points Do you think there are people out there who believe they never had any 'low points' in their lives ? Aren't you doing great injustice to people who need genuine (medical) help due to depression by lumping yourself with them just because you had 'low points' in your life?
    - braythwayt 10y ago
      Your statement is all about you, it's about your feelings. The fact that you feel compelled to make this statement again is about you, not me. Now you make this follow-up, which I will summarize as "You're not special!" And again, this is actually about you, not me. You feel compelled to point this out. You feel some kind of discomfort with other people voicing their experience, and this propels you to tone police them. That is entirely your bag, and I am not going to carry it for you.
    - metaphorm 10y ago
      dude, what are you even doing?
holman 10y ago
I think this might be one of those times where the title might lead to confusion in the comment section and leads people a bit astray. 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/
- donw 10y ago
  The best advice I received on this topic was that feedback should be actionable, specific, and kind. Actionable and specific mean that the person on the receiving end has a set of concrete actions to take to implement. For example, "get better at programming" isn't specific, and "get a PhD in Computer Science" probably isn't actionable, but "work on improving your ability to write readable code by working through the exercises in this book" is something that can be worked with (especially if you can spend some time to mentor that person!) Kindness matters a lot, though, and it is different from niceness. When giving feedback, some people say that they are brutally honest, but often the emphasis is on the first word, rather than the second. Things like "The module you wrote is crap because your code sucks and is hard to maintain." doesn't help in any way, shape or form. On the other hand, others that focus on being nice often heap on the praise, while excluding or downplaying the criticism. "You worked really hard on that module, and maybe should should spend a more little time refactoring and cleaning things up" is too nice. Kindness means sharing the good and the bad, but without being aggressive or accusatory: "Thanks for the hard work on that module. It does exactly what it needs to, but I'm really struggling to understand what's going on in there, as there are some really big methods and classes. Breaking those apart into smaller separate objects and functions would help a lot."
emodendroket 10y ago
It is often taken for granted that optimism is a positive but I don't think that is necessarily the case.
- GavinMcG 10y ago
  It seems as though you may be using "optimism" in a different sense than the article does.
cel1ne 10y ago
Optimism is just one side of the story. 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.
PSeitz 10y ago
TLDR; 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.
- dominotw 10y ago
  >There is research backing this thesis. Is there a way for a layman to assess the quality of this research. I've read many assertions of research on HN on topics similar to this. eg: Meditation is supposed to help with depression(among other things) but seems like most research is extremely poor quality [1]?. 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19123875 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19123875 Most clinical trials on meditation practices are generally characterized by poor methodological quality with significant threats to validity in every major quality domain assessed. Despite a statistically significant improvement in the methodological quality over time, it is imperative that future trials on meditation be rigorous in design, execution, analysis, and the reporting of results.
  - ryanobjc 10y ago
    There is a ton of research in this area and an entire field of clinical therapy called "cognitive behavioral therapy". There's literally too much to cite :-)
    - dahart 10y ago
      In that case, I'm sure there's a good survey paper and some decent places to start for interested non-experts. Googling for surveys, this was the top result: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/ (Conclusion: "In general, the evidence-base of CBT is very strong. However, additional research is needed to examine the efficacy of CBT for randomized-controlled studies.") And as much as I want to resist linking to Wikipedia, it really is a great place to find a bunch of reference material, as well as discover all the search terms you might need to know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy
iaci 10y ago
> Are optimists more likely to come up with specific explanations for things in their life? Or more likely to come up with general explanations? 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 https://sivers.org/book/TurningPro)
mherdeg 10y ago
This kind of dichotomous analysis of the world -- you explain things in X way, or in opposite-of-X way -- seems to pop up a lot in social psychology. 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).
ebbv 10y ago
I really enjoyed this, and I've been trying to do similar changes just based on things I've noticed work better but not formalized in any way. Now I have a better guideline to go by and a book to read.
iamleppert 10y ago
Am I the only one who read the paper in a kind of wise-man on high high voice, complete with deep sighs of self-reflecting pauses (perhaps denoted by the '^' characters?). Are those meant to make us think the author is saying something profound and important? 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
- braythwayt 10y ago
  The "paper" is actually the markdown source for a presentation, the ^ characters are markup indicating that what follows is a speaker's note that does not appear on the slide. Elsewhere in this discussion, you will find a link to a video of the presentation, and I trust that if you go looking for evidence that I am a self-important windbag, you will have no difficulty gathering evidence that is consistent with your preconceived beliefs. I'm sorry to hear that you think that if you gave a self-help presentation at a Rails conference, that nobody would come, and that if they did, they would hate you. This was not my experience at all, and I hope you learn to distrust these instincts and develop a more accurate ability to predict when such a thing would be well-received and when it would not. One of the things that helped in my case, is that I wrote many of these ideas up in an essay seven years ago, and it went to #1 on Hacker News that day. From time to time since then, people have rediscovered the essay and it has bene positively received. Other essays I have written about Learned Helplessness and my difficulty learning to play Go have also been well-received. To boot, this particular Ruby conference is actually not very Ruby at all, and the organizers go out of their way to invite speakers who will give non-technical talks. So... I had inside information.
  - iamleppert 10y ago
    It's a little ironic that you used this insider information to gauge the reception and audience to your talk about optimism? It's easier to be optimistic when you can more easily expect an outcome, isn't it?
StanislavPetrov 10y ago
> It is not controversial to say that our moods affect the explanations we make up for things that happen in our lives. If we are in a good mood and someone smiles at us, we think they like us. If we are in a bad mood, we wonder if they have read some awkward code we just checked in, and if they are laughing at us. 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.
- Firadeoclus 10y ago
  That's an interesting observation. In poker, if you have a clear and consistent bias other players will move to exploit that bias. However, it's worth pointing out that poker is a zero sum game if you choose winning as the measure of success. But many situations are not zero sum. There's the possibility that optimism could increase the pot for everyone. Furthermore, enjoying the process can be a reward in itself. If you enjoy playing poker losing does not necessarily equate to failure.
jlgaddis 10y ago
Way off-topic but I'm intrigued... anyone know what's up with the presenter and several members of the audience (primarily in the front row) and their clothing (dress?)? I've no idea where this was at, geographically/physically, so maybe it's a local custom or style or something?
- braythwayt 10y ago
  The conference is http://www.nordicruby.org http://www.nordicruby.org. It was held at a Japanese-styel spa. When you check in, they give you the robe and slippers, and lots of people choose to retain them throughout the conference.
  - jlgaddis 10y ago
    That's very interesting, reading about it now. Thank you!
marmot777 10y ago
Hey, way to go, it's brave and cool to write about this sort of thing!
dgudkov 10y ago
>the explanations we make up for things that happen in our lives I guess that's how religions are born.
dredmorbius 10y ago
I'm finding the in-content markup and heavy in-stream visuals tremendously distracting. 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.
- braythwayt 10y ago
  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.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Having it in markdown form should make outputting to a consumable Web format (HTML, ePub, PDF) possible. I'm on a platform (Android) which doesn't have a Markdown translator readily available. Not even via Termux. You're publishing, for the public. If you want to provide editorial sources, that's one matter. If you want to make consumption easy for your readers, that's another. You've failed at it. And repeatedly defended that failure rather than remedied it.
    - readymade 10y ago
      Wow
      - dredmorbius 10y ago
        I'm not unaware of Ravenwald's reputation on HN. I've liked some of what he's done myself. Part of the reason I'm making a bit of a stink about presentation is that 1) this is a technical site, technique is what we discuss, and 2) I'm aware of the tools and capabilities for doing this. If you've got a system with the tools on it (my tablet, as noted, isn't one), then it is completely trivial to output a usable and useful format. I do this fairly routinely myself, and on third party sources. E.g., a 1793 document, running 72 pages formatted, which apparently doesn't have a high-quality contemporary formatted version available: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/lhw2eq4qmnnwxijlcrfyba https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/lhw2eq4qmnnwxijlcrfyba On my desktop system, where it's supported (again, tablet, not), I've written 1800+ CSS stylesheets (most pretty similar and fairly simple), to fix annoyances with sites. It's not that I can't fix this, if arsed enough to do something about it. It's that deliberately fucking up presentations is hugely disrespectful to readers. It's why I try to take pains in what I write and style to not fuck shit up. Which is sometimes difficult (client systems are a complete and total shitstorm). But not falling over the low-hanging fruit such as providing mark-ed up rather than rendered text for readers helps a tad. (And yes, I've ranted at blog editors, magazines, The New York Times, and Hacker News about various foul-ups.) There's a greater irony, perhaps, in that my own psychological state is giving me a literal headache looking at Ravenwald's presentation here, given its topic. I really don't have the damned spoons for it. Just sayin'.
RangerScience 10y ago
Fake-Edit: I wrote all this, and then realized, I could just ask: Can someone very familiar with recommendation algorithms comment on the content of Reginald's presentation? 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.
tedmiston 10y ago
The author linked this written essay form below but it's in a deeply nested comment that might get overlooked. I found this much easier to read. http://braythwayt.com/homoiconic/2009/05/01/optimism.html http://braythwayt.com/homoiconic/2009/05/01/optimism.html Also the 30-min talk was recorded as a video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xjntzo-mYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xjntzo-mYc
snaky 10y ago
> In a study published October 9 in Nature Neuroscience, researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London) show that people who are very optimistic about the outcome of events tend to learn only from information that reinforces their rose-tinted view of the world. This is related to 'faulty' function of their frontal lobes https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111009140201.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111009140201.h...
avindroth 10y ago
Imagine you are a cyclist. At the end of the 100 miles is a sweet, sweet piece of cake. 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.
- zeveb 10y ago
  The engineer hops in car and drives there. The cynic figures the cake is a lie.

617 points by chair6 10y ago

mping 10y ago

Great and honest post. I hope people pay more attention to these topics that apparently are not tech-centric, but imho it's where the tech stuff actually comes forth. 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).

xrd 10y ago

Beautiful.

lotyrin 10y ago

Certainly, an unbiased symmetrical appraisal should be the goal? If the premise is that the effects upon your past success are equally likely to be general or specific regardless of their sign, and any asymmetry between your appraisal of the specificity between positive and negative effects indicates bias, isn't either bias problematic? 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.

mping 10y ago
Problem is that it's very hard to get rid of your own bias.
phantarch 10y ago
I think based on what the post was saying that an optimistic attitude doesn't necessarily equate to ignoring reality. To me, the post was more about opinion and self-esteem than facts about a project. It sounds like whatever things have crashed and burned around you in your career were led by people who superimposed their self-esteem onto fact-based decisions.
resu_nimda 10y ago
I think the idea is to recognize which side of the coin you naturally or subconsciously tend to fall on, and to consciously apply an asymmetrical or biased force to correct for that. The author naturally struggles with pessimism, so his presentation and experiences are framed around forcibly developing more optimistic thought patterns. For the people you describe, perhaps the inverse should be applied (the same article from that perspective would be an interesting read!). I would say that it's probably generally better for you (and those around you) to err on the side of optimism.
- greenshackle 10y ago
  I've read Learned Optimism, Seligman at no point makes the recommendation that overly optimistic people should be less optimistic. He doesn't seem too concerned with accuracy, he just says that optimism will make you happier and more productive, so you should pursue it. He comes very close to explicitly stating that mild optimistic self-delusion is good, because it will make you happier. He acknowledges depressive realism, that is, the finding that depressed people make more accurate judgments in certain situations, but doesn't really address it.
greenshackle 10y ago
I agree with you that accuracy should be the goal, but Seligman doesn't. I read most of the book, he thinks that delusional optimism is good, because it will make you happier and more productive. He's used his research to teach optimism to soldiers so that they are more effective. But perhaps it is appropriate for soldiers in the middle of a war to not feel super optimistic? >If the premise is that the effects upon your past success are equally likely to be general or specific regardless of their sign I don't know if that's a true premise. It's an empirical question. There's no fundamental reason why the universe should be even-handed. I read a good portion of Learned Optimism a while back. I think it's a dangerous book to read for certain types of depressive personalities. Ironically, there's a reading of the book that reinforces pessimism.
pdonis 10y ago
> Certainly, an unbiased symmetrical appraisal should be the goal? I have not read Seligman's work, but I can see at least one way in which the asymmetry in response to positive vs. negative can be justified. If someone is doing something positive, you want them to keep doing it--so you want it to be permanent. And you want them to internalize whatever it is that makes them do that thing, make it part of themselves--so you want it to be personal. And you want them to expand whatever that positive factor is to other domains--so you want it to be general. If someone is doing something negative, you want them to stop doing it--so you want it to be temporary. And you want them to not make it part of themselves--so you want it to be impersonal. And you want them to keep it confined and not let it affect other domains--so you want it to be specific. In other words, the "optimistic bias" is an asymmetric strategy to achieve an asymmetric goal--maintain positives, but change negatives.
samscully 10y ago
I have not read the book so I can't comment on that but I have done a good deal of cognitive behavioural therapy. Mostly I was taught to consider the optimistic explanation and assess how realistic my negative thoughts were. The main exercise we used was to write down my thoughts, feelings, physiology and actions in response to a situation. Then we did it again for a more positive imagining of how the same situation could have played out. It's useful to see how each aspect effects the others and identifying how things could be changed helps a lot when the same situation arises again. For sure it wouldn't be helpful to be wildly over optimistic, it must be very stressful to intentionally delude yourself. But the error bars on most of these judgements are so wide I don't see anything wrong with erring on the optimistic side. Of course another skill is learning to avoid unhelpful judgements altogether. But that's a different topic and I won't pretend I have much insight there.
ucarion 10y ago
It's an open question in philosophy (what isn't?), but isn't happiness our ultimate aim, or at least a very important component of the ultimate aim? It's pretty easy to try to bias yourself toward happiness, but still have a daemon in the background making sure you're not diverging from reality too much. If you're very concerned about being biased, then you can probably trust yourself to be reasonable when being biased in this way. For many of us, we're more inclined to be irrationally biased against ourselves than in favor of ourselves. The conscious, monitored, and controlled bias the OP describes can counteract our natural pessimistic inclinations.

gommm 10y ago

Let me give an optimistic feedback because Reginald's work is well worth it. Reg's essay and his combinator book have had a huge influence on my career and my way of thinking as a programmer. I really recommend everyone here to take a look at the combinator book at http://combinators.info http://combinators.info 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.

matt4077 10y ago
Reginald's writing is of the kind where you immediately know you're learning from an incredibly smart and creative guy. I'm somewhat sad to have lost him to the JS-world, but at least he has expanded into 'soft' topics like management. As it turns out he's not just analytically brilliant but also full of humanity. To have done all he has with 'a frontal lobe tied behind his back' makes it even more impressive.
- kakuri 10y ago
  We're very grateful to have him in the JS world!
sotojuan 10y ago
No exaggeration: I want to be like raganwald.

grabcocque 10y ago

I learned everything I need to know about optimism from Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander when it explains why optimists are dangerous. --- 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.

phantarch 10y ago
This feels like a very sad way to view optimism. It's from a work of fiction which only makes a guess about Hitler's worldview. If optimism is a delusion, then so is pessimism, but only in the other direction. Neither view can tell us more than how we feel about the things around us.
braythwayt 10y ago
As the presentation says right at the beginning, "Optimism" in this context has a specific meaning defined by Dr. Martin Seligman for his work. It refers to the way people explain good and bad things that have happened to them in the past. It does not speak to people's expectations for how things will happen in the future. In technical contexts, practitioners often use words in ways that do not match the common parlance.
sdegutis 10y ago
Yeah, that's not really optimism. But rhetoric is a powerful thing and can make pessimism seem like optimism, and Shalom knows that. Real optimism is waking up and saying "I have hope that this world can be a better place, all I have to do is do my part to be a better person, and be encouraging and inspiring to others that today can be a better day than yesterday." Speaking of rhetoric, is it any wonder why journalism, media, and politics are all pure rhetoric, with no real substance? About 2500 years ago, there was a large group of people who said rhetoric was the path of the future, and a small group that said "the truth" is the real key to a better future. They had a great debate, and the smaller group lost. For losing, the leader of the smaller group had to drink poisoned hemlock.

braythwayt 10y ago

Author here. Ask Me Anything.

smallnamespace 10y ago
> Optimists explain good things as being personal, general, and permanent, and explain away bad things as being impersonal, specific, and temporary. Can't this be taken to unhealthy extremes? Sounds exactly like how narcissists think. Just look at Trump. He claims personal responsibility for his successes, but his failures are always one-time events that were other people's fault. Where should one draw the line?
- braythwayt 10y ago
  My understanding is that narcissism is a slightly different thing: > Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a long-term pattern of abnormal > behavior characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an > excessive need for admiration, and a lack of understanding of others' feelings. Seligman claims that people who have the "optimistic" asymmetry are happier and more productive than those who have the "pessimistic" asymmetry. Unfortunately, he makes no claims about other aspects of people's personalities, such as whether they are ethical. I think you can be optimistic without having an exaggerated feeling of self-importance, and certainly it has nothing to do with a need for admiration or lacking understanding for the feelings of others. So... I think the answer as to where to draw the line is, "If you are aware enough to worry about the line, you don't need the line."
- drewrv 10y ago
  > Where should one draw the line? Engage in self reflection and be honest with yourself, something I doubt Trump does.
  - PSeitz 10y ago
    According to the research he must be pretty happy.

busterarm 10y ago

Make America Great Again!

merpnderp 10y ago
Which candidate was it that was running on the pessimism platform?
pc86 10y ago
I'm no fan of Trump myself but the fact that this off-topic trash has gone 6 minutes without being flagged is shocking.
- kevinwang 10y ago
  It is relevant to this question in the OP, though >How many times since Never Again has it happened again?
  - busterarm 10y ago
    Yeah, I'm really just responding to: > when someone rises up and promises that things are going to be better, run. Hide. Pessimists don’t build gas chambers.
sctb 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12299512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12299512 and marked it off-topic.

alexashka 10y ago

'Personal, permanent, general' - all of this is easily explained with 'feeling vulnerable'. 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 :)

jwcrux 10y ago

I love this quote: "the plural of anecdote is not data"

braythwayt 10y ago
I first heard it from Alan Armstrong, CEO of Eigenworks.
matt4077 10y ago
It's quite old and I like to say: If you think about it, it actually is.
laughinghan 10y ago
While that version is much more popular, it's a mutation of the original quote which actually stated the exact opposite: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2011/04/the-plural-of-anecdote-is-data-after-all.html http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2011/04/the-plural-of-an...
aidenn0 10y ago
I dislike it because it is counterfactual. Each anecdote is a datum. The plural of anecdotes is non-experimental data, but data nonetheless.

caub 10y ago

that's one heavy-ass .md

unabst 10y ago

The thing we tend to overlook about our inner dialog is that we actually have very little control over our thoughts. You know you have a problem when they become suicidal, because healthy minds simply do not have them. 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. --- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_statistics 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 :)

dominotw 10y ago

>I LIVE WITH Depression The word 'depression' is so over used by everyone from a angry teenager, a new mom or a dying old man that it doesn't hold any meaning to me at all. I now mentally equate Depression with attention seeking self-importance. I feel absolutely no sympathy for anyone 'suffering from depression' these days because I've heard it so many times.

braythwayt 10y ago
The entire point of the presentation was to talk about my journey to the place where I think this comment says far more about you than it does about me.
- dominotw 10y ago
  what does it tell about me? >Those of you who have not had this affliction may question this Do you think there are people out there who don't suffer from 'depression' ? Is depression not common to all of humanity? >I have had many high points in my life, but I also have had many low points Do you think there are people out there who believe they never had any 'low points' in their lives ? Aren't you doing great injustice to people who need genuine (medical) help due to depression by lumping yourself with them just because you had 'low points' in your life?
  - braythwayt 10y ago
    Your statement is all about you, it's about your feelings. The fact that you feel compelled to make this statement again is about you, not me. Now you make this follow-up, which I will summarize as "You're not special!" And again, this is actually about you, not me. You feel compelled to point this out. You feel some kind of discomfort with other people voicing their experience, and this propels you to tone police them. That is entirely your bag, and I am not going to carry it for you.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    dude, what are you even doing?

holman 10y ago

I think this might be one of those times where the title might lead to confusion in the comment section and leads people a bit astray. 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/

donw 10y ago
The best advice I received on this topic was that feedback should be actionable, specific, and kind. Actionable and specific mean that the person on the receiving end has a set of concrete actions to take to implement. For example, "get better at programming" isn't specific, and "get a PhD in Computer Science" probably isn't actionable, but "work on improving your ability to write readable code by working through the exercises in this book" is something that can be worked with (especially if you can spend some time to mentor that person!) Kindness matters a lot, though, and it is different from niceness. When giving feedback, some people say that they are brutally honest, but often the emphasis is on the first word, rather than the second. Things like "The module you wrote is crap because your code sucks and is hard to maintain." doesn't help in any way, shape or form. On the other hand, others that focus on being nice often heap on the praise, while excluding or downplaying the criticism. "You worked really hard on that module, and maybe should should spend a more little time refactoring and cleaning things up" is too nice. Kindness means sharing the good and the bad, but without being aggressive or accusatory: "Thanks for the hard work on that module. It does exactly what it needs to, but I'm really struggling to understand what's going on in there, as there are some really big methods and classes. Breaking those apart into smaller separate objects and functions would help a lot."

emodendroket 10y ago

It is often taken for granted that optimism is a positive but I don't think that is necessarily the case.

GavinMcG 10y ago
It seems as though you may be using "optimism" in a different sense than the article does.

cel1ne 10y ago

Optimism is just one side of the story. 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.

PSeitz 10y ago

TLDR; 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.

dominotw 10y ago
>There is research backing this thesis. Is there a way for a layman to assess the quality of this research. I've read many assertions of research on HN on topics similar to this. eg: Meditation is supposed to help with depression(among other things) but seems like most research is extremely poor quality [1]?. 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19123875 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19123875 Most clinical trials on meditation practices are generally characterized by poor methodological quality with significant threats to validity in every major quality domain assessed. Despite a statistically significant improvement in the methodological quality over time, it is imperative that future trials on meditation be rigorous in design, execution, analysis, and the reporting of results.
- ryanobjc 10y ago
  There is a ton of research in this area and an entire field of clinical therapy called "cognitive behavioral therapy". There's literally too much to cite :-)
  - dahart 10y ago
    In that case, I'm sure there's a good survey paper and some decent places to start for interested non-experts. Googling for surveys, this was the top result: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/ (Conclusion: "In general, the evidence-base of CBT is very strong. However, additional research is needed to examine the efficacy of CBT for randomized-controlled studies.") And as much as I want to resist linking to Wikipedia, it really is a great place to find a bunch of reference material, as well as discover all the search terms you might need to know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy

iaci 10y ago

> Are optimists more likely to come up with specific explanations for things in their life? Or more likely to come up with general explanations? 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 https://sivers.org/book/TurningPro)

mherdeg 10y ago

This kind of dichotomous analysis of the world -- you explain things in X way, or in opposite-of-X way -- seems to pop up a lot in social psychology. 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).

ebbv 10y ago

I really enjoyed this, and I've been trying to do similar changes just based on things I've noticed work better but not formalized in any way. Now I have a better guideline to go by and a book to read.

iamleppert 10y ago

Am I the only one who read the paper in a kind of wise-man on high high voice, complete with deep sighs of self-reflecting pauses (perhaps denoted by the '^' characters?). Are those meant to make us think the author is saying something profound and important? 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

braythwayt 10y ago
The "paper" is actually the markdown source for a presentation, the ^ characters are markup indicating that what follows is a speaker's note that does not appear on the slide. Elsewhere in this discussion, you will find a link to a video of the presentation, and I trust that if you go looking for evidence that I am a self-important windbag, you will have no difficulty gathering evidence that is consistent with your preconceived beliefs. I'm sorry to hear that you think that if you gave a self-help presentation at a Rails conference, that nobody would come, and that if they did, they would hate you. This was not my experience at all, and I hope you learn to distrust these instincts and develop a more accurate ability to predict when such a thing would be well-received and when it would not. One of the things that helped in my case, is that I wrote many of these ideas up in an essay seven years ago, and it went to #1 on Hacker News that day. From time to time since then, people have rediscovered the essay and it has bene positively received. Other essays I have written about Learned Helplessness and my difficulty learning to play Go have also been well-received. To boot, this particular Ruby conference is actually not very Ruby at all, and the organizers go out of their way to invite speakers who will give non-technical talks. So... I had inside information.
- iamleppert 10y ago
  It's a little ironic that you used this insider information to gauge the reception and audience to your talk about optimism? It's easier to be optimistic when you can more easily expect an outcome, isn't it?

StanislavPetrov 10y ago

> It is not controversial to say that our moods affect the explanations we make up for things that happen in our lives. If we are in a good mood and someone smiles at us, we think they like us. If we are in a bad mood, we wonder if they have read some awkward code we just checked in, and if they are laughing at us. 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.

Firadeoclus 10y ago
That's an interesting observation. In poker, if you have a clear and consistent bias other players will move to exploit that bias. However, it's worth pointing out that poker is a zero sum game if you choose winning as the measure of success. But many situations are not zero sum. There's the possibility that optimism could increase the pot for everyone. Furthermore, enjoying the process can be a reward in itself. If you enjoy playing poker losing does not necessarily equate to failure.

jlgaddis 10y ago

Way off-topic but I'm intrigued... anyone know what's up with the presenter and several members of the audience (primarily in the front row) and their clothing (dress?)? I've no idea where this was at, geographically/physically, so maybe it's a local custom or style or something?

braythwayt 10y ago
The conference is http://www.nordicruby.org http://www.nordicruby.org. It was held at a Japanese-styel spa. When you check in, they give you the robe and slippers, and lots of people choose to retain them throughout the conference.
- jlgaddis 10y ago
  That's very interesting, reading about it now. Thank you!

marmot777 10y ago

Hey, way to go, it's brave and cool to write about this sort of thing!

dgudkov 10y ago

>the explanations we make up for things that happen in our lives I guess that's how religions are born.

dredmorbius 10y ago

I'm finding the in-content markup and heavy in-stream visuals tremendously distracting. 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.

braythwayt 10y ago
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.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Having it in markdown form should make outputting to a consumable Web format (HTML, ePub, PDF) possible. I'm on a platform (Android) which doesn't have a Markdown translator readily available. Not even via Termux. You're publishing, for the public. If you want to provide editorial sources, that's one matter. If you want to make consumption easy for your readers, that's another. You've failed at it. And repeatedly defended that failure rather than remedied it.
  - readymade 10y ago
    Wow
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      I'm not unaware of Ravenwald's reputation on HN. I've liked some of what he's done myself. Part of the reason I'm making a bit of a stink about presentation is that 1) this is a technical site, technique is what we discuss, and 2) I'm aware of the tools and capabilities for doing this. If you've got a system with the tools on it (my tablet, as noted, isn't one), then it is completely trivial to output a usable and useful format. I do this fairly routinely myself, and on third party sources. E.g., a 1793 document, running 72 pages formatted, which apparently doesn't have a high-quality contemporary formatted version available: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/lhw2eq4qmnnwxijlcrfyba https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/lhw2eq4qmnnwxijlcrfyba On my desktop system, where it's supported (again, tablet, not), I've written 1800+ CSS stylesheets (most pretty similar and fairly simple), to fix annoyances with sites. It's not that I can't fix this, if arsed enough to do something about it. It's that deliberately fucking up presentations is hugely disrespectful to readers. It's why I try to take pains in what I write and style to not fuck shit up. Which is sometimes difficult (client systems are a complete and total shitstorm). But not falling over the low-hanging fruit such as providing mark-ed up rather than rendered text for readers helps a tad. (And yes, I've ranted at blog editors, magazines, The New York Times, and Hacker News about various foul-ups.) There's a greater irony, perhaps, in that my own psychological state is giving me a literal headache looking at Ravenwald's presentation here, given its topic. I really don't have the damned spoons for it. Just sayin'.

RangerScience 10y ago

Fake-Edit: I wrote all this, and then realized, I could just ask: Can someone very familiar with recommendation algorithms comment on the content of Reginald's presentation? 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.

tedmiston 10y ago

The author linked this written essay form below but it's in a deeply nested comment that might get overlooked. I found this much easier to read. http://braythwayt.com/homoiconic/2009/05/01/optimism.html http://braythwayt.com/homoiconic/2009/05/01/optimism.html Also the 30-min talk was recorded as a video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xjntzo-mYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xjntzo-mYc

snaky 10y ago

> In a study published October 9 in Nature Neuroscience, researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London) show that people who are very optimistic about the outcome of events tend to learn only from information that reinforces their rose-tinted view of the world. This is related to 'faulty' function of their frontal lobes https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111009140201.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111009140201.h...

avindroth 10y ago

Imagine you are a cyclist. At the end of the 100 miles is a sweet, sweet piece of cake. 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.

zeveb 10y ago
The engineer hops in car and drives there. The cynic figures the cake is a lie.