> We might have found that we prefer to be certain about the future, however grim it may be. One of my favorite pop-psychology ideas was an idea about managers

> We might have found that we prefer to be certain about the future, however grim it may be. One of my favorite pop-psychology ideas was an idea about managers. Apparently there was some study (probably never peer reviewed or even sufficiently well founded, but what do I know?) where people were given bosses that were one of: "super nice", "super mean", or "usually nice and sometime mean". The result, as I recall, was that the bosses people disliked the most were the usually nice bosses. The speculation was that with a horrible boss you at least knew what to expect. You could plan around someone who is consistently mean. The "usually nice" bosses were unpredictable which lead to higher stress amongst the participants. I may be mis-remembering and filling in more details, but I think this result held regardless of the frequency of the "usually nice". > Heidegger claimed that the fundamental human experience is alienation, felt as homelessness, anxiety, and a pervasive fear of death For more on this, Lex Fridman recently had a talk with Sheldon Solomon [1]. They discuss a path from Heidegger toward Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death". 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfKyNxfyWbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfKyNxfyWbo