5 ms·

I found the slide for "Cognitive behaviour model of depression" very interesting, it's probably the best visualisation of depression taking over someones mind l

I found the slide for "Cognitive behaviour model of depression" very interesting, it's probably the best visualisation of depression taking over someones mind leading to a paralysis where simple tasks become something else and chaos emerges. Ego does, sometimes, gets in the way of getting things done but without it we wouldn't care to launch anything new/groundbreaking. Without our Ego as creator, we would have no soul in my opinion. Anyone who freelances, creates something alone, goes solo as a startup founder etc. needs these "cognitive distortions"/"mental disorders", I see them as necessary beliefs. The opposite would be someone who just blends into and becomes yet another functional toothed wheel without any manifestation of desires. A good portion of our society is like these, some people don't want more and are happy/contented. We need these self beliefs/"lies" to wake up on the next day and keep moving forward. I guess this is a form of inner power/motivation without relying on our environment and/or friends. As a solo freelancer, I do "suffer" from some of these because at the end of day: this is what drives me forward.

liamzebedee 8y ago
We had a thread a couple weeks ago "What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?" - I'm wondering if anyone can help me rediscover this Wikipedia article. It was a theory on the cognitive bias of depression/anxiety, applied to the locus/worldview of someone, wherein a person interprets with a smaller outlook on the future i.e. the opposite of "looking at the bigger picture". I've found many anecdotal parallels in people I know, but am absolutely teething to find this article.
- spullara 8y ago
  Maybe this one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beck%27s_cognitive_triad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beck%27s_cognitive_triad
- matthewwiese 8y ago
  In addition to spullara's Beck link, the "construal level theory" seemed to ring true to what you were describing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construal_level_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construal_level_theory
  - andai 8y ago
    I recently heard that the same brain regions are involved in processing temporal and spatial distances.
    - matthewwiese 8y ago
      In my own anecdotal experience, this appears quite reasonable; oftentimes, especially in childhood, stretches of time as short as 1 week into the future would "feel" (i.e. encompass the same emotions/sensations) as knowing how far away my relatives in Canada were from me. The perception of time seriously befuddled my brain for years -- no matter that it still does to this day! If you happen to recall the outlets you read this at, I would be interested in learning more. Hopefully the article would have links to papers as well... perhaps including fMRI scans? Truly fascinating stuff.
      - Izkata 8y ago
        > especially in childhood Think of time spans as "percentage of life lived so far", and a lot of that particular time stretching suddenly makes sense.
        matthewwiese 8y ago
        Sure, but if science (especially neuroscience) were that simple then we'd have all the answers already. I'm more interested in quantifiable/demonstrable knowledge of this topic beyond a mere thought experiment.
    - agumonkey 8y ago
      would make sense: space, environment, reality, decision, hope .. not unrelated IMO
- andai 8y ago
  It might be on this list? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/The_Cognitive_Bias_Codex_-_180%2B_biases%2C_designed_by_John_Manoogian_III_%28jm3%29.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/The_Cogn...
- jdmichal 8y ago
  Incoming thread hijack: I wish I had seen that thread! I've been looking for an article I'm pretty sure I found on HN. It was an idea of the development of consciousness from the basis of developing models for action planning. It starts with purely reactive, non-planned actions as the low rung. Then development of models of physical self and environment, allowing planned actions. Then adding social modeling, eventually yielding a model of self that allows for self reflection and consciousness. Or, at least, that's what I think I remember. Can't find the article for the life of me...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
1996 8y ago
We need all that. Still, it can be frightening. I have "launch fear": I delay by another week every week, because I found one or more bugs the day before, which to me is unacceptable. Also it would crush my ego if people said I hadn't noticed or bothered to fix it, because it would mean I don't care about my users. When I am launching, I want users to have the best experience possible. MVP is minimal, not bug ridden. When I find a bug, it hurts, and it is almost depressing - as in, leading to paralysis.
- jf- 8y ago
  A piece of advice I heard once - if you’re not embarrassed by your first release, you waited too long. Just do it.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  Wow - this. I didn't quite realize that this was a thing. I share the same tendency and it may have as much to do with something else: the 'epoch' moment which implies change, i.e. a 'decision' or outcome which could be bad. 'Development' is a grind, but at least you're alive. After launch it may go well, but you could get wiped out - I think people may fear this. Also, launch brings so much chaos, unclarity ... in 'development' you're in charge of what's going on. After launch, your users and investors definitely own your time.
  - 1996 8y ago
    I think we all share the same concern. I am told to lauch by everybody (even here) but I can't until I have at least fixed the MVP to fit my minimal standards. It is hard to explain but you've nailed it. In development, you are alive and can fix things. I do not want things to go wrong for my users. By myself, I have a lot of leeway. There are many things I can tolerate, and I often strive for "good enough" But I can't do that with future users involved, even if they don't exist yet. Because they will trust me to deliver a good product, and I want to be worthy of their trust.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
SZJX 8y ago
> Anyone who freelances, creates something alone, goes solo as a startup founder etc. needs these "cognitive distortions"/"mental disorders", I see them as necessary beliefs. The opposite would be someone who just blends into and becomes yet another functional toothed wheel without any manifestation of desires. A good portion of our society is like these, some people don't want more and are happy/contented. I don't think those two things are dichotomous. (Is this dichotomous thinking being displayed right there?) One can very well be motivated by what they're doing but still understand and accept that they're fundamentally not very different from any other human being, and that they can look at the evidence, listen to others' ideas, and admit their mistakes, without jeopardizing their pursuit. Sure, if somebody has excellent ability in performing correct inferences and a healthy dose of self belief as he knows what he's doing and knows he has indeed accumulated more than many others trying the same thing, those can indeed be positive personality traits. However if one goes as far as really "distorting" the reality/self perception, or look down upon others, I don't think it can end well at all. I would hypothesize that some founders succeeded despite being jerks, but most jerks are not successful founders, and most successful founders aren't jerks.
- mariopt 8y ago
  My 2 cents on this: Being a jerk can work sometimes. Take the fictional character Gavin Belson from the show Silicon Valley as an example: He's not what we would call a Leader but he has this egocentric selfish view of himself. He shares no emphatic towards people around him, which means that he can virtually do anything without caring too much. You might say he is an asshole (he is) but he will carry his vision on no matter what. Is this guy healthy? He represents someone that no one likes. Every single employee hates hims, his ideas are terrible, he will run over people without blinking, etc. In sports look at Cristiano Ronaldo, you can find early interviews when he was younger and didn't had any awards. If you asking who is the best football player in the world he would instantly reply: Me Some years later he actually become one of the best all time football players. You might say he has an unhealthy amount of self confidence which can be seen as arrogance. From a young age he carried this belief system/mindset that brought it several awards and broke record after record. He is completely obsessed with training that at age 33, his body has a metabolic age of 23! About 6 years ago I saw an article saying that, according to his physical therapist, he would play at a world class until age 36 and, so far, it is happening. We can question if Ronaldo has a healthy dose of self belief. He gets things done on the pitch and we might ask at what cost? He could work a LOT less and be a decent player with millions on his bank account. No need to push his limits every single. The same happens with developers: If you believe in open source you'll be willing to use and write open source tools despite the fact that there are closed source solutions. We could argue that this is not healthy because you're wasting your time when you could get things done in a much shorter amount of time. Same with CEO: They all believe their product is the best and sometimes (I work with several) they seems nuts and as a developer I've to be their therapist sometimes so that their product doesn't looses touch with reality and becomes something wild that no one understands. In the examples above it's very subjective to quantify/measure what an healthy dose of self belief looks like. You could say that they are all nuts and you would have a point: Gavin Belson believes he is the next Steve Jobs. Ronaldo believes he is the best no matter what. Open source developers believe that closed source code is evil. CEOs believe they're the next Steve Jobs or some cliche like changing the world for better If we kill the Ego/"Cognitive Distortions"/"Mental Disorders", there is nothing extraordinary about these people. Having a belief, regardless of being true of false, will have the effect of you acting upon it. Can you make 10 million dollars? Answer 1: No Answer 2: yes If you answer No, I'm 99.9% sure you won't because you won't even try. If your answer is Yes, you'll try and you might succeeded at it. You won't might suffering along the journey to make it. I find it very hard to classify what is a mental disorder or a personality trait. It can go both ways: wonderful or terrible. It's a very subjective topic, to classify this as a "Cognitive Distortions" (in a negative way) is like saying that creative people and leaders should be placed in a mental institution or something like that. Some traits like kindness, empathy, helping the poor, etc. are nice things that we should nourish in our society but they might get in the way of creating value/getting things done. The idea might be scary but a psychopath doesn't gets dragged/delayed like "normal"/empathetic people. They try to get what they want without caring about the cost.

liamzebedee 8y ago

We had a thread a couple weeks ago "What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?" - I'm wondering if anyone can help me rediscover this Wikipedia article. It was a theory on the cognitive bias of depression/anxiety, applied to the locus/worldview of someone, wherein a person interprets with a smaller outlook on the future i.e. the opposite of "looking at the bigger picture". I've found many anecdotal parallels in people I know, but am absolutely teething to find this article.

spullara 8y ago
Maybe this one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beck%27s_cognitive_triad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beck%27s_cognitive_triad
matthewwiese 8y ago
In addition to spullara's Beck link, the "construal level theory" seemed to ring true to what you were describing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construal_level_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construal_level_theory
- andai 8y ago
  I recently heard that the same brain regions are involved in processing temporal and spatial distances.
  - matthewwiese 8y ago
    In my own anecdotal experience, this appears quite reasonable; oftentimes, especially in childhood, stretches of time as short as 1 week into the future would "feel" (i.e. encompass the same emotions/sensations) as knowing how far away my relatives in Canada were from me. The perception of time seriously befuddled my brain for years -- no matter that it still does to this day! If you happen to recall the outlets you read this at, I would be interested in learning more. Hopefully the article would have links to papers as well... perhaps including fMRI scans? Truly fascinating stuff.
    - Izkata 8y ago
      > especially in childhood Think of time spans as "percentage of life lived so far", and a lot of that particular time stretching suddenly makes sense.
      - matthewwiese 8y ago
        Sure, but if science (especially neuroscience) were that simple then we'd have all the answers already. I'm more interested in quantifiable/demonstrable knowledge of this topic beyond a mere thought experiment.
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    would make sense: space, environment, reality, decision, hope .. not unrelated IMO
andai 8y ago
It might be on this list? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/The_Cognitive_Bias_Codex_-_180%2B_biases%2C_designed_by_John_Manoogian_III_%28jm3%29.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/The_Cogn...
jdmichal 8y ago
Incoming thread hijack: I wish I had seen that thread! I've been looking for an article I'm pretty sure I found on HN. It was an idea of the development of consciousness from the basis of developing models for action planning. It starts with purely reactive, non-planned actions as the low rung. Then development of models of physical self and environment, allowing planned actions. Then adding social modeling, eventually yielding a model of self that allows for self reflection and consciousness. Or, at least, that's what I think I remember. Can't find the article for the life of me...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

1996 8y ago

We need all that. Still, it can be frightening. I have "launch fear": I delay by another week every week, because I found one or more bugs the day before, which to me is unacceptable. Also it would crush my ego if people said I hadn't noticed or bothered to fix it, because it would mean I don't care about my users. When I am launching, I want users to have the best experience possible. MVP is minimal, not bug ridden. When I find a bug, it hurts, and it is almost depressing - as in, leading to paralysis.

jf- 8y ago
A piece of advice I heard once - if you’re not embarrassed by your first release, you waited too long. Just do it.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
Wow - this. I didn't quite realize that this was a thing. I share the same tendency and it may have as much to do with something else: the 'epoch' moment which implies change, i.e. a 'decision' or outcome which could be bad. 'Development' is a grind, but at least you're alive. After launch it may go well, but you could get wiped out - I think people may fear this. Also, launch brings so much chaos, unclarity ... in 'development' you're in charge of what's going on. After launch, your users and investors definitely own your time.
- 1996 8y ago
  I think we all share the same concern. I am told to lauch by everybody (even here) but I can't until I have at least fixed the MVP to fit my minimal standards. It is hard to explain but you've nailed it. In development, you are alive and can fix things. I do not want things to go wrong for my users. By myself, I have a lot of leeway. There are many things I can tolerate, and I often strive for "good enough" But I can't do that with future users involved, even if they don't exist yet. Because they will trust me to deliver a good product, and I want to be worthy of their trust.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

SZJX 8y ago

> Anyone who freelances, creates something alone, goes solo as a startup founder etc. needs these "cognitive distortions"/"mental disorders", I see them as necessary beliefs. The opposite would be someone who just blends into and becomes yet another functional toothed wheel without any manifestation of desires. A good portion of our society is like these, some people don't want more and are happy/contented. I don't think those two things are dichotomous. (Is this dichotomous thinking being displayed right there?) One can very well be motivated by what they're doing but still understand and accept that they're fundamentally not very different from any other human being, and that they can look at the evidence, listen to others' ideas, and admit their mistakes, without jeopardizing their pursuit. Sure, if somebody has excellent ability in performing correct inferences and a healthy dose of self belief as he knows what he's doing and knows he has indeed accumulated more than many others trying the same thing, those can indeed be positive personality traits. However if one goes as far as really "distorting" the reality/self perception, or look down upon others, I don't think it can end well at all. I would hypothesize that some founders succeeded despite being jerks, but most jerks are not successful founders, and most successful founders aren't jerks.

mariopt 8y ago
My 2 cents on this: Being a jerk can work sometimes. Take the fictional character Gavin Belson from the show Silicon Valley as an example: He's not what we would call a Leader but he has this egocentric selfish view of himself. He shares no emphatic towards people around him, which means that he can virtually do anything without caring too much. You might say he is an asshole (he is) but he will carry his vision on no matter what. Is this guy healthy? He represents someone that no one likes. Every single employee hates hims, his ideas are terrible, he will run over people without blinking, etc. In sports look at Cristiano Ronaldo, you can find early interviews when he was younger and didn't had any awards. If you asking who is the best football player in the world he would instantly reply: Me Some years later he actually become one of the best all time football players. You might say he has an unhealthy amount of self confidence which can be seen as arrogance. From a young age he carried this belief system/mindset that brought it several awards and broke record after record. He is completely obsessed with training that at age 33, his body has a metabolic age of 23! About 6 years ago I saw an article saying that, according to his physical therapist, he would play at a world class until age 36 and, so far, it is happening. We can question if Ronaldo has a healthy dose of self belief. He gets things done on the pitch and we might ask at what cost? He could work a LOT less and be a decent player with millions on his bank account. No need to push his limits every single. The same happens with developers: If you believe in open source you'll be willing to use and write open source tools despite the fact that there are closed source solutions. We could argue that this is not healthy because you're wasting your time when you could get things done in a much shorter amount of time. Same with CEO: They all believe their product is the best and sometimes (I work with several) they seems nuts and as a developer I've to be their therapist sometimes so that their product doesn't looses touch with reality and becomes something wild that no one understands. In the examples above it's very subjective to quantify/measure what an healthy dose of self belief looks like. You could say that they are all nuts and you would have a point: Gavin Belson believes he is the next Steve Jobs. Ronaldo believes he is the best no matter what. Open source developers believe that closed source code is evil. CEOs believe they're the next Steve Jobs or some cliche like changing the world for better If we kill the Ego/"Cognitive Distortions"/"Mental Disorders", there is nothing extraordinary about these people. Having a belief, regardless of being true of false, will have the effect of you acting upon it. Can you make 10 million dollars? Answer 1: No Answer 2: yes If you answer No, I'm 99.9% sure you won't because you won't even try. If your answer is Yes, you'll try and you might succeeded at it. You won't might suffering along the journey to make it. I find it very hard to classify what is a mental disorder or a personality trait. It can go both ways: wonderful or terrible. It's a very subjective topic, to classify this as a "Cognitive Distortions" (in a negative way) is like saying that creative people and leaders should be placed in a mental institution or something like that. Some traits like kindness, empathy, helping the poor, etc. are nice things that we should nourish in our society but they might get in the way of creating value/getting things done. The idea might be scary but a psychopath doesn't gets dragged/delayed like "normal"/empathetic people. They try to get what they want without caring about the cost.