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If you look up at the sky and say "oh its sunny today", you are overgeneralizing because you haven't seen the rest of the city. If you had worn masks or started

If you look up at the sky and say "oh its sunny today", you are overgeneralizing because you haven't seen the rest of the city. If you had worn masks or started being cautious before COVID was widely acknowledged, you were catastrophizing. If you ever talk or act based on a mental model you have of a friend, you are mindreading. "Cognitive distortions" are the only tools we have to reason about anything in the presence of limited information (which is basically always). Its basically a toolbox to let you discredit any thought whatsoever, which is convenient when a patient writes down negative thoughts and the psychiatrist can just hand them a list. But it would work just as well on positive thoughts or any thought whatsoever.

Swizec 5y ago
> But it would work just as well on positive thoughts Have you heard of toxic positivity? There’s a growing movement against incessant positivity that has become endemic to a lot of online discourse in particular on Instagram (def not on twitter). Nothing ever sucks, it’s a challenge! Nobody is sick, they’re a fighter! Nobody is a mean prick, you just need to understand their perspective! Nothing you do is ever stupid, people are just haters!
- austincheney 5y ago
  I more frequently encounter toxic negativity on HN in subjects that devolve to anything remotely social. * That parent isn’t setting boundaries for a child, they’re just mean. * Isn’t that they fully acknowledged your thoughts and chose something to the contrary, they aren’t listening. * Isn’t that they fail to shed tears when trying to understand other people, it’s that they have no empathy (this is actually sympathy, but whatever). I want to say it’s teenagers or highly sheltered people having an emotional moment, but these wonderful people claim otherwise. Worse, like teenagers, when comes to anything remotely social everybody is an expert, never wrong, and somehow knows all about other people real life situations.
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  > Have you heard of toxic positivity? I suspect it’s a byproduct of “enlightenment now” movement which asserts that humans haven’t had it so good as they do now. Worldwide poverty is the lowest ever, least violence etc. There’s a minor issue of growing inequality and impending climate disasters but that’s all ok and will work out well. Its torchbearer is Steven Pinker and he’s ably supported by, unsurprisingly, the richest 0.1%.
  - exo-pla-net 5y ago
    He's also supported by people who believe in empiricism. If it feels like everything is terrible, I suggest watching less news.
Zak 5y ago
The phrases that the study treats as overgeneralizing are: all of the time, all of them, all the time, always happens, always like, happens every time, completely, no one ever, nobody ever, every single one of them, every single one of you, I always, you always, he always, she always, they always, I am always, you are always, he is always, she is always, they are always It's not always overgeneralizing to use one of these. "Every single one of them wore black" is (potentially) completely factual. A large increase in their use in books, however suggests that authors are overgeneralizing more than they did previously. Phrase list: https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/suppl/2021/07/22/2102061118.DCSupplemental/pnas.2102061118.sapp.pdf https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/suppl/2021/07/22/210206111...
- teej 5y ago
  Or that the meaning of these phrases has changed over time.
  - deertick1 5y ago
    Word. In fact, most of these phrases, to me at least, imply sarcasm. To say "social science studies are bullshit" implies a more generalized claim to me than "social science studies are always bullshit" People use overt generalization words like these, in my experience, to indicate generalization with obvious exception. This study is selecting for precisely the wrong thing, imo, or is not properly interpreting what they've selected.
    - sitkack 5y ago
      I'd like to see their analysis of the phrasing on a forum such as this, where one would have to outline the myriad of corner cases and exceptions lest we get speared by the pedantic knights of the internet.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    From the abstract: > This pattern does not seem to be driven by changes in word meaning, publishing and writing standards, or the Google Books sample
codingdave 5y ago
You are correct that it is a toolbox. You are also correct that the tools could be used inappropriately. Neither of those truths invalidates the actual tools. Every tool in the world can be used either correctly or incorrectly.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> If you look up at the sky and say "oh its sunny today", you are overgeneralizing because you haven't seen the rest of the city. Oh? You have seen the sky over the rest of the city. You can see a long way, in the sky.
- MauranKilom 5y ago
  > You can see a long way, in the sky. ...at least when it's sunny, that is.
armchairhacker 5y ago
There’s nuance in almost everything. When writing or speaking you have to generalize, or you’ll just end up rambling. So when someone says something, you can almost always say they’re being too general and point out some obscure exception. It’s better to just take every statement and implicitly “… in most cases”.
ajross 5y ago
> "Cognitive distortions" are the only tools we have to reason about anything in the presence of limited information No, clearly they aren't. But you know what does qualify as a cognitive distortion? That very statement[1]. The "only" way to reason about "anything" based on limited evidence? Really? I mean, Kalman and Bayes would maybe like to have words. [1] I can see a few, but I'll go with "dichotomous" as the biggest mistake you made. You lept straight from "Sometimes these mental tools produce correct results" (which is true) to "These tools are the only way to produce correct results" (a ridiculous distortion).
- dalbasal 5y ago
  One of the results that stood out to me was that (a) dichotomous thinking was the most notable distortion in germany during nazism and (2) they (and the rest of us) are back to peak levels.
- zaptheimpaler 5y ago
  I'm talking about reasoning in day-to-day life. It's cool that you are able to use bayesian models & kalman filters to decide whether you should try diet X, or whether someone is lying, or if crypto is a sound investment, or whether to take an umbrella with you when going out today. This is not even scratching the surface of the kinds of nuanced & personal problems that people go to therapists for. I'm a little dumber, I just overgeneralize to "fad diet X is probably not that great" and skip the hours long scientific paper review & construction of bayesian models and priors. Here is a recent tweet[1] claiming this paper is badly flawed because of changes in the content of the Google Books data this study was based on. Make sure to update your bayesian models accordingly! Should I lower my prior of "this recent scientific study is trustworthy so i should take it at face value" by 1%, or 5%, or 50%? [1] https://twitter.com/benmschmidt/status/1419497587296571395 https://twitter.com/benmschmidt/status/1419497587296571395
  - ajross 5y ago
    > It's cool that you are able to use bayesian models & kalman filters to decide whether you should try diet X, or whether someone is lying, or if crypto is a sound investment, or whether to take an umbrella with you when going out today. This part isn't dichotomous, it's just a strawman (something that I'm guessing would go into the "overgeneralizing" bucket in the linked article). I didn't say you had to use fancy math to live your life. I replied to your statement that one had to use distorted reasoning, and cited the existence of two named techniques (about reasoning from limited evidence) as a fun way of making the point. My point wasn't about what you said anyway, it was that you were shouting and flaming about it using exactly the techniques the linked article was noting are on the rise. You see that, right?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
anigbrowl 5y ago
This ignores the whole argument about the proportionality of such rhetorical tools in discourse.
agucova 5y ago
"Oh it's sunny today" doesn't imply anything about the area it is supposedly describing, so it's not an overgeneralization in any way. "If you had worn masks or started being cautious before COVID" you wouldn't be catastrophizing, because the identifying symbol of catastrophizing is concluding with high confidence a catastrophe from limited or contradictory evidence. We had plenty of evidence for pandemics (and most epidemiologists saw this coming for decades). I believe you might be confusing cognitive distortions with heuristics (which are similar, but not the same). Cognitive distortions correspond to irrational thought patterns or lines of reasoning. If you have limited information, by example, you're not supposed to just jump to a conclusion (except in a matter which requires immediate response), and this is often seen in many mental health disorders where, by example, a person may jump to conclusions such as "everyone hates me" or "I'm screwed for life" from isolated events which predict no such overarching conclusion. Those kinds of cognitive distortions are not the only tools we have to reason about anything in the presence of limited information, we can often do much better, which is why it's used on CBT.
Pyramus 5y ago
No, that's not how 'cognitive distortions' work. Think of the process of mental modelling as a hugely complex input-output function. CDS are specific patterns of mental output, that have been associated with changes to the thinking apparatus that we associate with certain psychological disorders. These are not simple bugs. In fact we know today that working on changing these thinking patterns can in many cases help alleviate the underlying disorders (that's the C in CBT)! To come back to your example: Being cautious is not catastrophising. Feeling a stress response or even a panic attack or anxiety because of pathogens is (we are taking a broad definition of catastrophising here). Also beware of the fallacy that positive thoughts are the opposite of negative thoughts - they aren't. They are distinct factors that share some correlation.

Swizec 5y ago

> But it would work just as well on positive thoughts Have you heard of toxic positivity? There’s a growing movement against incessant positivity that has become endemic to a lot of online discourse in particular on Instagram (def not on twitter). Nothing ever sucks, it’s a challenge! Nobody is sick, they’re a fighter! Nobody is a mean prick, you just need to understand their perspective! Nothing you do is ever stupid, people are just haters!

austincheney 5y ago
I more frequently encounter toxic negativity on HN in subjects that devolve to anything remotely social. * That parent isn’t setting boundaries for a child, they’re just mean. * Isn’t that they fully acknowledged your thoughts and chose something to the contrary, they aren’t listening. * Isn’t that they fail to shed tears when trying to understand other people, it’s that they have no empathy (this is actually sympathy, but whatever). I want to say it’s teenagers or highly sheltered people having an emotional moment, but these wonderful people claim otherwise. Worse, like teenagers, when comes to anything remotely social everybody is an expert, never wrong, and somehow knows all about other people real life situations.
vishnugupta 5y ago
> Have you heard of toxic positivity? I suspect it’s a byproduct of “enlightenment now” movement which asserts that humans haven’t had it so good as they do now. Worldwide poverty is the lowest ever, least violence etc. There’s a minor issue of growing inequality and impending climate disasters but that’s all ok and will work out well. Its torchbearer is Steven Pinker and he’s ably supported by, unsurprisingly, the richest 0.1%.
- exo-pla-net 5y ago
  He's also supported by people who believe in empiricism. If it feels like everything is terrible, I suggest watching less news.

Zak 5y ago

The phrases that the study treats as overgeneralizing are: all of the time, all of them, all the time, always happens, always like, happens every time, completely, no one ever, nobody ever, every single one of them, every single one of you, I always, you always, he always, she always, they always, I am always, you are always, he is always, she is always, they are always It's not always overgeneralizing to use one of these. "Every single one of them wore black" is (potentially) completely factual. A large increase in their use in books, however suggests that authors are overgeneralizing more than they did previously. Phrase list: https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/suppl/2021/07/22/2102061118.DCSupplemental/pnas.2102061118.sapp.pdf https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/suppl/2021/07/22/210206111...

teej 5y ago
Or that the meaning of these phrases has changed over time.
- deertick1 5y ago
  Word. In fact, most of these phrases, to me at least, imply sarcasm. To say "social science studies are bullshit" implies a more generalized claim to me than "social science studies are always bullshit" People use overt generalization words like these, in my experience, to indicate generalization with obvious exception. This study is selecting for precisely the wrong thing, imo, or is not properly interpreting what they've selected.
  - sitkack 5y ago
    I'd like to see their analysis of the phrasing on a forum such as this, where one would have to outline the myriad of corner cases and exceptions lest we get speared by the pedantic knights of the internet.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  From the abstract: > This pattern does not seem to be driven by changes in word meaning, publishing and writing standards, or the Google Books sample

codingdave 5y ago

You are correct that it is a toolbox. You are also correct that the tools could be used inappropriately. Neither of those truths invalidates the actual tools. Every tool in the world can be used either correctly or incorrectly.

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> If you look up at the sky and say "oh its sunny today", you are overgeneralizing because you haven't seen the rest of the city. Oh? You have seen the sky over the rest of the city. You can see a long way, in the sky.

MauranKilom 5y ago
> You can see a long way, in the sky. ...at least when it's sunny, that is.

armchairhacker 5y ago

There’s nuance in almost everything. When writing or speaking you have to generalize, or you’ll just end up rambling. So when someone says something, you can almost always say they’re being too general and point out some obscure exception. It’s better to just take every statement and implicitly “… in most cases”.

ajross 5y ago

> "Cognitive distortions" are the only tools we have to reason about anything in the presence of limited information No, clearly they aren't. But you know what does qualify as a cognitive distortion? That very statement[1]. The "only" way to reason about "anything" based on limited evidence? Really? I mean, Kalman and Bayes would maybe like to have words. [1] I can see a few, but I'll go with "dichotomous" as the biggest mistake you made. You lept straight from "Sometimes these mental tools produce correct results" (which is true) to "These tools are the only way to produce correct results" (a ridiculous distortion).

dalbasal 5y ago
One of the results that stood out to me was that (a) dichotomous thinking was the most notable distortion in germany during nazism and (2) they (and the rest of us) are back to peak levels.
zaptheimpaler 5y ago
I'm talking about reasoning in day-to-day life. It's cool that you are able to use bayesian models & kalman filters to decide whether you should try diet X, or whether someone is lying, or if crypto is a sound investment, or whether to take an umbrella with you when going out today. This is not even scratching the surface of the kinds of nuanced & personal problems that people go to therapists for. I'm a little dumber, I just overgeneralize to "fad diet X is probably not that great" and skip the hours long scientific paper review & construction of bayesian models and priors. Here is a recent tweet[1] claiming this paper is badly flawed because of changes in the content of the Google Books data this study was based on. Make sure to update your bayesian models accordingly! Should I lower my prior of "this recent scientific study is trustworthy so i should take it at face value" by 1%, or 5%, or 50%? [1] https://twitter.com/benmschmidt/status/1419497587296571395 https://twitter.com/benmschmidt/status/1419497587296571395
- ajross 5y ago
  > It's cool that you are able to use bayesian models & kalman filters to decide whether you should try diet X, or whether someone is lying, or if crypto is a sound investment, or whether to take an umbrella with you when going out today. This part isn't dichotomous, it's just a strawman (something that I'm guessing would go into the "overgeneralizing" bucket in the linked article). I didn't say you had to use fancy math to live your life. I replied to your statement that one had to use distorted reasoning, and cited the existence of two named techniques (about reasoning from limited evidence) as a fun way of making the point. My point wasn't about what you said anyway, it was that you were shouting and flaming about it using exactly the techniques the linked article was noting are on the rise. You see that, right?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

anigbrowl 5y ago

This ignores the whole argument about the proportionality of such rhetorical tools in discourse.

agucova 5y ago

"Oh it's sunny today" doesn't imply anything about the area it is supposedly describing, so it's not an overgeneralization in any way. "If you had worn masks or started being cautious before COVID" you wouldn't be catastrophizing, because the identifying symbol of catastrophizing is concluding with high confidence a catastrophe from limited or contradictory evidence. We had plenty of evidence for pandemics (and most epidemiologists saw this coming for decades). I believe you might be confusing cognitive distortions with heuristics (which are similar, but not the same). Cognitive distortions correspond to irrational thought patterns or lines of reasoning. If you have limited information, by example, you're not supposed to just jump to a conclusion (except in a matter which requires immediate response), and this is often seen in many mental health disorders where, by example, a person may jump to conclusions such as "everyone hates me" or "I'm screwed for life" from isolated events which predict no such overarching conclusion. Those kinds of cognitive distortions are not the only tools we have to reason about anything in the presence of limited information, we can often do much better, which is why it's used on CBT.

Pyramus 5y ago

No, that's not how 'cognitive distortions' work. Think of the process of mental modelling as a hugely complex input-output function. CDS are specific patterns of mental output, that have been associated with changes to the thinking apparatus that we associate with certain psychological disorders. These are not simple bugs. In fact we know today that working on changing these thinking patterns can in many cases help alleviate the underlying disorders (that's the C in CBT)! To come back to your example: Being cautious is not catastrophising. Feeling a stress response or even a panic attack or anxiety because of pathogens is (we are taking a broad definition of catastrophising here). Also beware of the fallacy that positive thoughts are the opposite of negative thoughts - they aren't. They are distinct factors that share some correlation.