4 ms·

I wonder if this title isn't a bit backwards. We are creatures that emerged from nature; being in nature is baseline to us. A better way to phrase this might be

by koboll 4y ago

I wonder if this title isn't a bit backwards. We are creatures that emerged from nature; being in nature is baseline to us. A better way to phrase this might be "being constantly trapped in a world made of concrete and drywall causes enormous emotional and cognitive detriments to people".

mjburgess 4y ago
They're only artificial caves, where we spent much of our time anyway.
playpause 4y ago
I imagine your comment was meant with a bit of humour, so don't read too much into the following! But it got me thinking about optimism and pessimism. The HN post title (at time of writing): > Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people Yours: > Being constantly trapped in a world made of concrete and drywall causes enormous emotional and cognitive detriments to people It's just "Things could be better" vs "Things are bad". They are pretty much the same in terms of what they say/imply about current reality. I think the HN title is actually closer to an objective statement than yours. Yours is ornately, floridly pessimistic. I think a lot of people (esp. engineering types, including me) suffer from a recurring tacit belief that: pessimism is better than optimism for getting at objective truth. I used to argue that both leanings are equally likely to result in poor judgement, with 'realism' smack in the middle. But I now go further and believe that fostering a slightly optimistic lean is actually better than 'no lean' – not just in the sense that 'you'll have a nicer time', but in terms of maximising how often you are correct in your observations of reality, in the long term. Because zero lean is impossible to maintain all the time. Our observations almost always rely on heuristics to accommodate for incomplete data or insufficient time. So you are going to err in your objective judgements about reality sometimes. And when you err on the optimistic side in a way that matters, reality tends to tap you on the nose and correct you fairly promptly. Which can hurt a bit, especially for someone who spends most of their waking life working with complex systems that are unforgiving about tiny details being incorrect - this trains us to to think of all the ways something might go wrong, so we feel bad when we failed to predict a negative event. But for most of life outside of solving engineering problems, eg, dealing with more organic/nebulous things like 'other people' or 'long term goals' or 'relaxing', being optimistically incorrect in your judgements and then being corrected by reality is better than being pessimistically incorrect and not being corrected. When you make pessimistic errors in judgement, you don't get actively corrected as much, so your ability to make objective observations drifts further pessimistic, worsening your decision making, worsening your situation, and it cycles downward. Eventually some kind of correction comes, but usually after hitting a new low, by which point a few things have gone wrong in your life and the climb back up is difficult. A slightly optimistic lean doesn't seem to have the equivalent problem (of drifting ever more optimistic until you're problematically divorced from reality). At least for me, anyway. I think this might be because a positive state of mind tends to be more active and therefore able to run more thoughts in parallel, including thoughts that can gently correct others that have gone a bit too far, while a negative mindset is more monotone.
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  We are (of course) also taught to be this way. So much of our education focuses on deconstructive and critical thinking versus constructive thinking.
carapace 4y ago
Thank you! Sheesh! Nature is the, uh, state of Nature. As you say, it's the baseline. So really: "Civilization has enormous emotional and cognitive burdens on people." is the actual situation. Natural systems are effectively infinite fractals, most urban structures are flat and relatively featureless by comparison. Living in a city is sensory deprivation combined with overwhelming discordant stimuli (engines and sirens mostly.) And that's before you get to the incredible chemical burden of living in a city. In fact, until very recently, cities were populations sinks. People died in cities faster than they were born.

by koboll 4y ago

mjburgess 4y ago

They're only artificial caves, where we spent much of our time anyway.

playpause 4y ago

I imagine your comment was meant with a bit of humour, so don't read too much into the following! But it got me thinking about optimism and pessimism. The HN post title (at time of writing): > Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people Yours: > Being constantly trapped in a world made of concrete and drywall causes enormous emotional and cognitive detriments to people It's just "Things could be better" vs "Things are bad". They are pretty much the same in terms of what they say/imply about current reality. I think the HN title is actually closer to an objective statement than yours. Yours is ornately, floridly pessimistic. I think a lot of people (esp. engineering types, including me) suffer from a recurring tacit belief that: pessimism is better than optimism for getting at objective truth. I used to argue that both leanings are equally likely to result in poor judgement, with 'realism' smack in the middle. But I now go further and believe that fostering a slightly optimistic lean is actually better than 'no lean' – not just in the sense that 'you'll have a nicer time', but in terms of maximising how often you are correct in your observations of reality, in the long term. Because zero lean is impossible to maintain all the time. Our observations almost always rely on heuristics to accommodate for incomplete data or insufficient time. So you are going to err in your objective judgements about reality sometimes. And when you err on the optimistic side in a way that matters, reality tends to tap you on the nose and correct you fairly promptly. Which can hurt a bit, especially for someone who spends most of their waking life working with complex systems that are unforgiving about tiny details being incorrect - this trains us to to think of all the ways something might go wrong, so we feel bad when we failed to predict a negative event. But for most of life outside of solving engineering problems, eg, dealing with more organic/nebulous things like 'other people' or 'long term goals' or 'relaxing', being optimistically incorrect in your judgements and then being corrected by reality is better than being pessimistically incorrect and not being corrected. When you make pessimistic errors in judgement, you don't get actively corrected as much, so your ability to make objective observations drifts further pessimistic, worsening your decision making, worsening your situation, and it cycles downward. Eventually some kind of correction comes, but usually after hitting a new low, by which point a few things have gone wrong in your life and the climb back up is difficult. A slightly optimistic lean doesn't seem to have the equivalent problem (of drifting ever more optimistic until you're problematically divorced from reality). At least for me, anyway. I think this might be because a positive state of mind tends to be more active and therefore able to run more thoughts in parallel, including thoughts that can gently correct others that have gone a bit too far, while a negative mindset is more monotone.

germinalphrase 4y ago
We are (of course) also taught to be this way. So much of our education focuses on deconstructive and critical thinking versus constructive thinking.

carapace 4y ago

Thank you! Sheesh! Nature is the, uh, state of Nature. As you say, it's the baseline. So really: "Civilization has enormous emotional and cognitive burdens on people." is the actual situation. Natural systems are effectively infinite fractals, most urban structures are flat and relatively featureless by comparison. Living in a city is sensory deprivation combined with overwhelming discordant stimuli (engines and sirens mostly.) And that's before you get to the incredible chemical burden of living in a city. In fact, until very recently, cities were populations sinks. People died in cities faster than they were born.