7 ms·

Lessons from a Pessimist: Make Your Pessimism Productive

136 points by earthboundkid 4y ago

prpl 4y ago
I’ve been around pessimists, which can have different flavors, and while it can be draining, it can also be strangely motivating - some of my best work is frankly adversarial pessimists.
- skeeter2020 4y ago
  I (half-jokingly, half-serious) refer to myself as a naive pessimist: I expect the worst then I'm continually surprised when I get it. It's not about being overly (and overtly) negative, but more your perspective on risk & mitigation. If you are a pessimist like me I would caution you to not surround yourself with many other pessimists, as there's definitely a tendency to ride the junk food high of the downward spiral when we congregate.
  - prpl 4y ago
    I’m personally pretty optimistic which is probably why I enjoy proving the pessimists wrong.
luhn 4y ago
If you read any Emotional Intelligence self-help books, you'll find a definition of optimism/pessimism that's similar to what OP is talking about. The lay definition of optimism is thinking things are great, Emotional Intelligence defines it as "rolling with the punches" when things get bad, and most importantly avoiding vicious emotional cycles where a small problem can spiral into an entire day ruined. A lot of so-called "optimists" are actually pessimists that are in denial about bad things because they're unable to emotional handle them. I think that's a good lens at which to look at it, because it doesn't matter whether you think a situation is "good" or "bad", what matters is how you deal with it. OP's "pragmatic pessimism" is actually optimism by this definition, and I agree with OP that it's overall a positive trait—Although it does require maintaining some social cognizance, because many people do not particularly like a tendency to proactively identify problems.
trashface 4y ago
Destructive pessimists are often formerly functional pessimistic. Once life throws enough hardballs at you, its easy to devolve into this state. Economic strife is one big reason. People who are unemployed or underemployed often realize they made some bad choices, but they also know they have been screwed by choices their society has made, which often seem quite arbitrary or even malicious. This is the case with inflation, it changes the game of living "just because", and some people feel the pain and others not so much. Those who can't renegotiate for higher income are just going to be more negative, and that will percolate one way or another up to those who are better off. Right now in the US we have the spectacle of big banks being bailed out for irresponsible management at the same time food assistance for poor people is being cut back (the expiration of pandemic-related SNAP expansion). Wealthy people are being rightsized while poor people literally starve. Threats to banks are considered a systemic risk, but hunger in the population isn't. I'd like to find an optimist to explain what is good about that to me, unfortunately I don't know any.
clumsysmurf 4y ago
July Norem described "defensive pessimism" in "The Positive Power Of Negative Thinking" (2001). I found it useful as a musician at the time. I always wondered, how my setup / gear would fail while setting up before a concert.
SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
As soon as he wrote about worries regarding retirement I knew he was European. I assume Austria is having the same issues and debates as UK and France?
- ornornor 4y ago
  This is a problem the world over. There aren’t enough young people to pay for older people. Any country with a half decent national pension scheme faces this issue, but changes aren’t planned and executed (and accepted) the same everywhere.
- the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
  There are a lot of people that worry about retirement, maybe not so much in tech where there is a lot of wealth. Even in the US, worries about retirement is a hot topic among older folks.
j45 4y ago
Doubt-worshipping ultimately seeks to reinforce the doubts and finds ways to continue doing so, and spread. Having a healthy dose and harmony of pragmatic realism but still a willingness to dive into the unknown to try with an open mind and heart is another thing. Innovation that's accessible for the many is often only possible from a mindset of possibility exploring and developing capabilities.
haswell 4y ago
I think the message is at its core a good one, but I think there's a meaningful/important difference between pessimism and having the ability/capacity to defensively imagine all the ways in which something could go wrong. I think the author alludes to this somewhat, but I don't think this is quite as simple as "I'm being pragmatically and usefully pessimistic, but be careful with the pessimistic tendency". Pessimism seems to be pervasive, and can spill into other areas of life. The form of pragmatism described can be learned, self contained, and is not inherently a pessimistic endeavor, even if pessimism is a natural pathway to the skill. Pessimism was hammered into me from an early age. I, too, saw my pessimism as a pragmatic tool to be used as I solved problems in the world, and I applied it as such. I allowed this application of pessimism to turn into an acceptance that I was just a pessimistic person, but that's ok <because here's how it helps me>. The trouble is that this is also a path that leads to learned helplessness, a state that by definition one is unable to escape without some kind of intervention or new awareness, because to be in this state is to be unaware of the alternatives. It took quite a few years for me to truly see the dark side, and how my pessimism had actually permeated many other aspects of how I think. And how my success in channeling my pessimism had made me blind to that permeation and the negative impact it had on other parts of my life and daily experience. I don't think the people around me saw me as a pessimistic person, but the internal states left behind by this default state of mind were quite harmful. I realized that it contributed significantly to unhelpful rumination about other things in life. It contributed greatly to my depression and other forms of stuck-ness. It left me missing out on opportunities that I discarded by default. Therapy for the traumatic upbringing that birthed the pessimistic defaults was a huge first step, but the book Learned Optimism (has been mentioned in a few threads lately) is must-read if you find yourself anywhere on the pessimism spectrum. It reframed pessimism for me in a way that was very important, and helped me see that my pragmatic use of pessimism - while useful - did not require me to maintain a pessimistic outlook. Pessimism trained me to think defensively about problems, but is ultimately an artifact that is unnecessary to continue such a practice. I've got a ways to go, but rewiring the pessimistic patterns of thought has made life much better, and I haven't lost my ability to think critically (and when needed, pessimistically) about problems that require this mindset.
andrewstuart 4y ago
Armin Ronacher is a super smart guy, a leader in the Python community and a real giver in terms of his really significant open source output including Flask, itsdangerous and others. He is to be praised and thanked for his excellent work. It is true however that he was super pessimistic about Python 3 and was one of the leading voices for a long time talking down Python 3. Python 3s transition was a lesson in how not to do things, but history has shown ultimately Python 3 did not kill Python, it led to Python 3 becoming one of the worlds most successful languages, despite the pessimism and naysayers.
- the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
  Author here: > It is true however that he was super pessimistic about Python 3 and was one of the leading voices for a long time talking down Python 3. I strongly advocated against underestimating the cost of migration, which is also why I argued for bringing back the `u` prefix for strings to make supporting 2.x and 3.x work at the same time. I also built a tool to modernize Python codebases to support both at once. I think in retrospective I was not wrong about that the transition will take time. I don't think the migration to 3.x would have been any faster if I would have pretended it's easy :)
  - sitkack 4y ago
    I followed your arguments, and frankly you continue to be more right over time. We happened to get lucky that Python and Data Science and then by extension AIML aligned because that really did carry Python over the 2-3 chasm. There should be a book in the style of the Mythical Man Month about discontinuous tech stack transitions (Python 2 to 3). Or ecosystem splitting issues (Phobos/Tango), or Package Management (C++). I don't view your engineering mindset as pessimism, I view it as realist. My take is that engineering is 80% failure mitigation, but if we don't do solid failure analysis we will only get lucky 1/5 the time. I think this is why we see so many software projects fail. Backporting Python3 features to Python2 would have made the transition go faster for everyone. You are on a hike with a bunch of scouts, huge range of gear and physical and emotional ability, you don't bitch at the fast ones to go slower, you don't bitch at the slow ones to go faster, you redistribute the load, and if the fast ones are still fast, you give them enough supplies to start setting up camp ahead of the rest of the group.
jrvarela56 4y ago
We're all a bit more anxious/pessimist than what's objectively needed for a situation - natural selection, etc. Writing about my plans has helped me give my anxiety/pessimism a productive job: help me spot what makes me doubt/worry so I can probe further. Identifying these items where conviction is low, makes me explore my motivations, look up data to validate my claims and breakdown my plans further. The worrying becomes a task about finding what needs to be validated/double checked. If I'm assuming X isn't going to work because Y, then I can lookup evidence/data or make more specific questions. What I like about it is that it generates actionables - the worrying for it's own sake eats up my motivation but having a checklist of stuff that I need to look into gives me an outlet.
- blowski 4y ago
  > We're all a bit more anxious/pessimist than what's objectively needed for a situation You should meet my product manager and reconsider.
js2 4y ago
A pragmatic pessimist is just a realist, no? I gripe _all the time_. It's part of my being. It's just what my family does. I'm Jewish and so I also associate with it culturally. But importantly, it doesn't get us (my family) down. I consider it just observing the world. It's quite stereotypically Jewish to complain and then say "not that I'm complaining." My daughter inherited this lovely (that's sarcasm, another thing that runs in my family) trait from me. My son did not. I really have to check myself before complaining around other people. And around my wife. Because I recognize that a lot of people, most even, don't want to hear it. A friend once said about me: "Some people think the glass is half full, others that it's half empty. You just think the water sucks." :-)
- m463 4y ago
  I've also noticed that some people take complaining very personally. You have to be careful around those sensitive souls.
- Melatonic 4y ago
  Or maybe you just need to improve your sense of humour so that all those other people find you hilarious too :-D
- xyzelement 4y ago
  I am likewise Jewish and I do think there's some cultural tendency towards observation that you're describing (hence, perhaps the over-representation of our people among both comedians and scientists) But perhaps there's a big difference between observation and griping (to use your word) - in the outcome. Observation can lead to improvement: I saw something, I called it out, and then I or someone else can fix it. Complaining to me is the non-actionable form of observation - making a lot of noise but either leading to no improvement or actually discouraging yourself and others from taking action around the topic.
- hinkley 4y ago
  As a Highly Sensitive Person, life has taught me that if I smell smoke or hear scratching sounds, if I don't say something then the problem may fester for hours or days before anyone else even notices. If I shout, "What are the dogs doing?" from two rooms away, I often find out that I have family members in the same room as the dogs who have no idea they're chewing on something they shouldn't be. Like seriously? They're right in front of you. As an easily distracted person, if I don't shop ideas for others to adopt, odds are good that they will get forgotten. So sure, call me a 'complainer'. My better bosses call me a scout or a lookout.
waboremo 4y ago
The easiest distinction is being publicly optimistic and privately pessimistic. It seems "two faced" but it's not let me explain. Being privately pessimistic has huge benefits, listed in the article and on other comments. Your planning becomes more effective, you're less starry-eyed with what actions you are actually taking. You become a foundation for those around you. But being publicly pessimistic does not have the same benefits. While it's true you can gain a lot of fame/money by being pessimistic on social media, it's also internally destructive. You stop believing in yourself and those around you. It's the very reason why so many "critics" (I put this in quotations because 99.9% don't have any sort of standards) fail to be able to produce anything noteworthy in the fields they obsess over. They just become this sort of endless monotony of could've would've should've but projected onto others. Everyone knows a bunch of people like this, talented but they spend most of their time being so publicly pessimistic about whatever the subject is. Some workplaces are so toxic because the "decision maker" is nothing but a public pessimist. It's so important to recognize what you are putting out into the world through your voice/words, and what is really happening when you are being publicly pessimistic. Are you actually criticizing for improvement, or are you creating a rift in a community? Sounds dramatic but this is what happens in a lot of open source communities, public pessimism becomes the norm because it's easier than criticism you are a part of fixing.
- nkjnlknlk 4y ago
  I 100% agree. I know pessimism stops me from taking risks (and likely rewards), so I'd never subject others to that pessimism and try to be outwardly supportive/optimistic towards their goals. That being said, I find that many workplaces are overly optimistic and need some pessimism/realism to ground the processes.
- Melatonic 4y ago
  Not sure I agree with this - I like the part about being privately pessismistic (or I would probably instead describe it as being privately skeptical). But I have found it works best to try to mirror the other person (or persons). If you walk into a room and know that everyone are the kind of people that find pessismism and skeptics funny then roll with that. Etc etc. Essentially know your audience.
lifeisstillgood 4y ago
This is an interesting comparison between the "what makes an entrepreneur" post of a day or so ago. Entrepreneurs can be defined as optimists - and yet it needs a pragmatic pessimist to actually build something that works
ksd482 4y ago
Rather than becoming despondent about AI, my pessimistic side assumes that things can go wrong and acts accordingly, all while giving the technology a fair chance. This is what I was looking for. I like the idea the author is presenting here, but I was hoping that he would focus more on what to do when you have a pessimistic thought. That is, using a pessimistic thought as a cue and reacting with thinking about it as an opportunity to improve something or even accepting it as a reality without approving or disapproving and coming up with a pragmatic response.
japhyr 4y ago
> And as cheesy as it sounds, try to surround yourself with supportive individuals who can help you maintain a positive outlook and try to be that person for others. One of the things I keep coming back to over the last few days is the increasing value of face to face interactions. It's been possible, and even easy, to fake pictures for quite a while. Recently we've had to treat videos with the same degree of skepticism we've been looking at pictures with. Now we're having to shift that kind of skepticism to all non face to face interactions. Like a lot of people here, probably most, I've formed a number of really meaningful long-term friendships with people I've never met, largely mediated over text interactions. I won't be surprised if, over the next decade or two, people end up developing "friendships" with what turn out to be bots. What kinds of interactions can we let our guard down and fully trust as authentic? Face to face interactions will be there for a long time. Real-time interactions with people we know and trust over a distance will be reliable for a while, although if they're demanding something unusual we'd have to wonder if they're being faked. The suggestion to make time for meaningful, direct interactions with other people is a really important one.
- Loughla 4y ago
  >What kinds of interactions can we let our guard down and fully trust as authentic? Face to face interactions will be there for a long time. Oh man are you going to be pissed when you learn about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick
  - aliasxneo 4y ago
    AKA the metagame of Eve Online.
jjoonathan 4y ago
Pessimism about pessimism is the strongest case for optimism about optimism.
glacials 4y ago
The word that describes what the author calls destructive pessimism is defeatism—an expectation and acceptance of failure. This itself causes failure.
totemandtoken 4y ago
A pragmatist is a realist is a pessimist is a nihilist is a pragmatist is a realist...
giantg2 4y ago
I'm too pessimistic about your claims to try.
HPsquared 4y ago
"The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute." - George Bernard Shaw
- hinkley 4y ago
  I can't recall which design book I was reading, but there was an anecdote about having to make destructive changes to a building because they installed equipment that could 'never break' into the concrete superstructure with no access points. It will astonish exactly nobody here, with or without that setup, that they had to drill into a concrete wall to get access to the thing when it eventually broke. Hope for the Best, Plan for the Worst.
vjk800 4y ago
I've had very similar thoughts about pessimism. I certainly am one. The fact that I don't expect a very good outcome doesn't mean I shouldn't try, because what the hell else can I do? At worst, I get useful information out of my (likely) failures. Also, thinking and preparing for the worst doesn't need to be a gloomy thing. It can even be empowering. When I've thought of all the possible crappy outcomes that might happen, I can be confident that whatever happens, I'll survive. I wish more people were like me; I'm confident that lots of disasters in the world could be avoided if people just took their heads out from the sand and embraced all the horrible possibilities that exist.
- sohtym 4y ago
  > When I've thought of all the possible crappy outcomes that might happen, I can be confident that whatever happens, I'll survive. I've heard this before, but it never worked for me because I can imagine things going pretty bad. I do think there is a lot of undue optimism. An assumption that things will work out. They often don't. Maybe worrying about nuclear war isn't that productive, but we should all be a lot more worried about things like working environment, rising inequality and the cost of living. Ask Japan.
- EvanAnderson 4y ago
  Also, thinking and preparing for the worst doesn't need to be a gloomy thing. It can even be empowering. It absolutely is. When things go wrong I have already thought about the triage and backup plans. The situation will still by dynamic, but I won’t be scrambling to begin making plans. I’ll be be refining what I’ve already thought about to match the new reality. It feels pretty badass to be thrown a curveball and not be phased. I can only do that if I’ve considered what could go wrong and planned for contingencies.
- aliasxneo 4y ago
  Eh, I see it as a double-edged sword. My pessimism has likely contributed to my decade of success in high-stakes environments (i.e., nuclear). However, I've struggled with anxiety my entire adult life. So yeah, I wish more people could find that middle place, but the extreme end can be debilitating for those like me.
gingerlime 4y ago
I found this BBC podcast[0] quite insightful about optimism vs pessimism. One interesting thing is that there are far more optimists than pessimists in the population. If I recall it’s a 9:1 ratio. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct1prd https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct1prd

136 points by earthboundkid 4y ago

prpl 4y ago

I’ve been around pessimists, which can have different flavors, and while it can be draining, it can also be strangely motivating - some of my best work is frankly adversarial pessimists.

skeeter2020 4y ago
I (half-jokingly, half-serious) refer to myself as a naive pessimist: I expect the worst then I'm continually surprised when I get it. It's not about being overly (and overtly) negative, but more your perspective on risk & mitigation. If you are a pessimist like me I would caution you to not surround yourself with many other pessimists, as there's definitely a tendency to ride the junk food high of the downward spiral when we congregate.
- prpl 4y ago
  I’m personally pretty optimistic which is probably why I enjoy proving the pessimists wrong.

luhn 4y ago

If you read any Emotional Intelligence self-help books, you'll find a definition of optimism/pessimism that's similar to what OP is talking about. The lay definition of optimism is thinking things are great, Emotional Intelligence defines it as "rolling with the punches" when things get bad, and most importantly avoiding vicious emotional cycles where a small problem can spiral into an entire day ruined. A lot of so-called "optimists" are actually pessimists that are in denial about bad things because they're unable to emotional handle them. I think that's a good lens at which to look at it, because it doesn't matter whether you think a situation is "good" or "bad", what matters is how you deal with it. OP's "pragmatic pessimism" is actually optimism by this definition, and I agree with OP that it's overall a positive trait—Although it does require maintaining some social cognizance, because many people do not particularly like a tendency to proactively identify problems.

trashface 4y ago

Destructive pessimists are often formerly functional pessimistic. Once life throws enough hardballs at you, its easy to devolve into this state. Economic strife is one big reason. People who are unemployed or underemployed often realize they made some bad choices, but they also know they have been screwed by choices their society has made, which often seem quite arbitrary or even malicious. This is the case with inflation, it changes the game of living "just because", and some people feel the pain and others not so much. Those who can't renegotiate for higher income are just going to be more negative, and that will percolate one way or another up to those who are better off. Right now in the US we have the spectacle of big banks being bailed out for irresponsible management at the same time food assistance for poor people is being cut back (the expiration of pandemic-related SNAP expansion). Wealthy people are being rightsized while poor people literally starve. Threats to banks are considered a systemic risk, but hunger in the population isn't. I'd like to find an optimist to explain what is good about that to me, unfortunately I don't know any.

clumsysmurf 4y ago

July Norem described "defensive pessimism" in "The Positive Power Of Negative Thinking" (2001). I found it useful as a musician at the time. I always wondered, how my setup / gear would fail while setting up before a concert.

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago

As soon as he wrote about worries regarding retirement I knew he was European. I assume Austria is having the same issues and debates as UK and France?

ornornor 4y ago
This is a problem the world over. There aren’t enough young people to pay for older people. Any country with a half decent national pension scheme faces this issue, but changes aren’t planned and executed (and accepted) the same everywhere.
the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
There are a lot of people that worry about retirement, maybe not so much in tech where there is a lot of wealth. Even in the US, worries about retirement is a hot topic among older folks.

j45 4y ago

Doubt-worshipping ultimately seeks to reinforce the doubts and finds ways to continue doing so, and spread. Having a healthy dose and harmony of pragmatic realism but still a willingness to dive into the unknown to try with an open mind and heart is another thing. Innovation that's accessible for the many is often only possible from a mindset of possibility exploring and developing capabilities.

haswell 4y ago

I think the message is at its core a good one, but I think there's a meaningful/important difference between pessimism and having the ability/capacity to defensively imagine all the ways in which something could go wrong. I think the author alludes to this somewhat, but I don't think this is quite as simple as "I'm being pragmatically and usefully pessimistic, but be careful with the pessimistic tendency". Pessimism seems to be pervasive, and can spill into other areas of life. The form of pragmatism described can be learned, self contained, and is not inherently a pessimistic endeavor, even if pessimism is a natural pathway to the skill. Pessimism was hammered into me from an early age. I, too, saw my pessimism as a pragmatic tool to be used as I solved problems in the world, and I applied it as such. I allowed this application of pessimism to turn into an acceptance that I was just a pessimistic person, but that's ok <because here's how it helps me>. The trouble is that this is also a path that leads to learned helplessness, a state that by definition one is unable to escape without some kind of intervention or new awareness, because to be in this state is to be unaware of the alternatives. It took quite a few years for me to truly see the dark side, and how my pessimism had actually permeated many other aspects of how I think. And how my success in channeling my pessimism had made me blind to that permeation and the negative impact it had on other parts of my life and daily experience. I don't think the people around me saw me as a pessimistic person, but the internal states left behind by this default state of mind were quite harmful. I realized that it contributed significantly to unhelpful rumination about other things in life. It contributed greatly to my depression and other forms of stuck-ness. It left me missing out on opportunities that I discarded by default. Therapy for the traumatic upbringing that birthed the pessimistic defaults was a huge first step, but the book Learned Optimism (has been mentioned in a few threads lately) is must-read if you find yourself anywhere on the pessimism spectrum. It reframed pessimism for me in a way that was very important, and helped me see that my pragmatic use of pessimism - while useful - did not require me to maintain a pessimistic outlook. Pessimism trained me to think defensively about problems, but is ultimately an artifact that is unnecessary to continue such a practice. I've got a ways to go, but rewiring the pessimistic patterns of thought has made life much better, and I haven't lost my ability to think critically (and when needed, pessimistically) about problems that require this mindset.

andrewstuart 4y ago

Armin Ronacher is a super smart guy, a leader in the Python community and a real giver in terms of his really significant open source output including Flask, itsdangerous and others. He is to be praised and thanked for his excellent work. It is true however that he was super pessimistic about Python 3 and was one of the leading voices for a long time talking down Python 3. Python 3s transition was a lesson in how not to do things, but history has shown ultimately Python 3 did not kill Python, it led to Python 3 becoming one of the worlds most successful languages, despite the pessimism and naysayers.

the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
Author here: > It is true however that he was super pessimistic about Python 3 and was one of the leading voices for a long time talking down Python 3. I strongly advocated against underestimating the cost of migration, which is also why I argued for bringing back the `u` prefix for strings to make supporting 2.x and 3.x work at the same time. I also built a tool to modernize Python codebases to support both at once. I think in retrospective I was not wrong about that the transition will take time. I don't think the migration to 3.x would have been any faster if I would have pretended it's easy :)
- sitkack 4y ago
  I followed your arguments, and frankly you continue to be more right over time. We happened to get lucky that Python and Data Science and then by extension AIML aligned because that really did carry Python over the 2-3 chasm. There should be a book in the style of the Mythical Man Month about discontinuous tech stack transitions (Python 2 to 3). Or ecosystem splitting issues (Phobos/Tango), or Package Management (C++). I don't view your engineering mindset as pessimism, I view it as realist. My take is that engineering is 80% failure mitigation, but if we don't do solid failure analysis we will only get lucky 1/5 the time. I think this is why we see so many software projects fail. Backporting Python3 features to Python2 would have made the transition go faster for everyone. You are on a hike with a bunch of scouts, huge range of gear and physical and emotional ability, you don't bitch at the fast ones to go slower, you don't bitch at the slow ones to go faster, you redistribute the load, and if the fast ones are still fast, you give them enough supplies to start setting up camp ahead of the rest of the group.

jrvarela56 4y ago

We're all a bit more anxious/pessimist than what's objectively needed for a situation - natural selection, etc. Writing about my plans has helped me give my anxiety/pessimism a productive job: help me spot what makes me doubt/worry so I can probe further. Identifying these items where conviction is low, makes me explore my motivations, look up data to validate my claims and breakdown my plans further. The worrying becomes a task about finding what needs to be validated/double checked. If I'm assuming X isn't going to work because Y, then I can lookup evidence/data or make more specific questions. What I like about it is that it generates actionables - the worrying for it's own sake eats up my motivation but having a checklist of stuff that I need to look into gives me an outlet.

blowski 4y ago
> We're all a bit more anxious/pessimist than what's objectively needed for a situation You should meet my product manager and reconsider.

js2 4y ago

A pragmatic pessimist is just a realist, no? I gripe _all the time_. It's part of my being. It's just what my family does. I'm Jewish and so I also associate with it culturally. But importantly, it doesn't get us (my family) down. I consider it just observing the world. It's quite stereotypically Jewish to complain and then say "not that I'm complaining." My daughter inherited this lovely (that's sarcasm, another thing that runs in my family) trait from me. My son did not. I really have to check myself before complaining around other people. And around my wife. Because I recognize that a lot of people, most even, don't want to hear it. A friend once said about me: "Some people think the glass is half full, others that it's half empty. You just think the water sucks." :-)

m463 4y ago
I've also noticed that some people take complaining very personally. You have to be careful around those sensitive souls.
Melatonic 4y ago
Or maybe you just need to improve your sense of humour so that all those other people find you hilarious too :-D
xyzelement 4y ago
I am likewise Jewish and I do think there's some cultural tendency towards observation that you're describing (hence, perhaps the over-representation of our people among both comedians and scientists) But perhaps there's a big difference between observation and griping (to use your word) - in the outcome. Observation can lead to improvement: I saw something, I called it out, and then I or someone else can fix it. Complaining to me is the non-actionable form of observation - making a lot of noise but either leading to no improvement or actually discouraging yourself and others from taking action around the topic.
hinkley 4y ago
As a Highly Sensitive Person, life has taught me that if I smell smoke or hear scratching sounds, if I don't say something then the problem may fester for hours or days before anyone else even notices. If I shout, "What are the dogs doing?" from two rooms away, I often find out that I have family members in the same room as the dogs who have no idea they're chewing on something they shouldn't be. Like seriously? They're right in front of you. As an easily distracted person, if I don't shop ideas for others to adopt, odds are good that they will get forgotten. So sure, call me a 'complainer'. My better bosses call me a scout or a lookout.

waboremo 4y ago

The easiest distinction is being publicly optimistic and privately pessimistic. It seems "two faced" but it's not let me explain. Being privately pessimistic has huge benefits, listed in the article and on other comments. Your planning becomes more effective, you're less starry-eyed with what actions you are actually taking. You become a foundation for those around you. But being publicly pessimistic does not have the same benefits. While it's true you can gain a lot of fame/money by being pessimistic on social media, it's also internally destructive. You stop believing in yourself and those around you. It's the very reason why so many "critics" (I put this in quotations because 99.9% don't have any sort of standards) fail to be able to produce anything noteworthy in the fields they obsess over. They just become this sort of endless monotony of could've would've should've but projected onto others. Everyone knows a bunch of people like this, talented but they spend most of their time being so publicly pessimistic about whatever the subject is. Some workplaces are so toxic because the "decision maker" is nothing but a public pessimist. It's so important to recognize what you are putting out into the world through your voice/words, and what is really happening when you are being publicly pessimistic. Are you actually criticizing for improvement, or are you creating a rift in a community? Sounds dramatic but this is what happens in a lot of open source communities, public pessimism becomes the norm because it's easier than criticism you are a part of fixing.

nkjnlknlk 4y ago
I 100% agree. I know pessimism stops me from taking risks (and likely rewards), so I'd never subject others to that pessimism and try to be outwardly supportive/optimistic towards their goals. That being said, I find that many workplaces are overly optimistic and need some pessimism/realism to ground the processes.
Melatonic 4y ago
Not sure I agree with this - I like the part about being privately pessismistic (or I would probably instead describe it as being privately skeptical). But I have found it works best to try to mirror the other person (or persons). If you walk into a room and know that everyone are the kind of people that find pessismism and skeptics funny then roll with that. Etc etc. Essentially know your audience.

lifeisstillgood 4y ago

This is an interesting comparison between the "what makes an entrepreneur" post of a day or so ago. Entrepreneurs can be defined as optimists - and yet it needs a pragmatic pessimist to actually build something that works

ksd482 4y ago

Rather than becoming despondent about AI, my pessimistic side assumes that things can go wrong and acts accordingly, all while giving the technology a fair chance. This is what I was looking for. I like the idea the author is presenting here, but I was hoping that he would focus more on what to do when you have a pessimistic thought. That is, using a pessimistic thought as a cue and reacting with thinking about it as an opportunity to improve something or even accepting it as a reality without approving or disapproving and coming up with a pragmatic response.

japhyr 4y ago

> And as cheesy as it sounds, try to surround yourself with supportive individuals who can help you maintain a positive outlook and try to be that person for others. One of the things I keep coming back to over the last few days is the increasing value of face to face interactions. It's been possible, and even easy, to fake pictures for quite a while. Recently we've had to treat videos with the same degree of skepticism we've been looking at pictures with. Now we're having to shift that kind of skepticism to all non face to face interactions. Like a lot of people here, probably most, I've formed a number of really meaningful long-term friendships with people I've never met, largely mediated over text interactions. I won't be surprised if, over the next decade or two, people end up developing "friendships" with what turn out to be bots. What kinds of interactions can we let our guard down and fully trust as authentic? Face to face interactions will be there for a long time. Real-time interactions with people we know and trust over a distance will be reliable for a while, although if they're demanding something unusual we'd have to wonder if they're being faked. The suggestion to make time for meaningful, direct interactions with other people is a really important one.

Loughla 4y ago
>What kinds of interactions can we let our guard down and fully trust as authentic? Face to face interactions will be there for a long time. Oh man are you going to be pissed when you learn about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick
- aliasxneo 4y ago
  AKA the metagame of Eve Online.

jjoonathan 4y ago

Pessimism about pessimism is the strongest case for optimism about optimism.

glacials 4y ago

The word that describes what the author calls destructive pessimism is defeatism—an expectation and acceptance of failure. This itself causes failure.

totemandtoken 4y ago

A pragmatist is a realist is a pessimist is a nihilist is a pragmatist is a realist...

giantg2 4y ago

I'm too pessimistic about your claims to try.

HPsquared 4y ago

"The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute." - George Bernard Shaw

hinkley 4y ago
I can't recall which design book I was reading, but there was an anecdote about having to make destructive changes to a building because they installed equipment that could 'never break' into the concrete superstructure with no access points. It will astonish exactly nobody here, with or without that setup, that they had to drill into a concrete wall to get access to the thing when it eventually broke. Hope for the Best, Plan for the Worst.

vjk800 4y ago

I've had very similar thoughts about pessimism. I certainly am one. The fact that I don't expect a very good outcome doesn't mean I shouldn't try, because what the hell else can I do? At worst, I get useful information out of my (likely) failures. Also, thinking and preparing for the worst doesn't need to be a gloomy thing. It can even be empowering. When I've thought of all the possible crappy outcomes that might happen, I can be confident that whatever happens, I'll survive. I wish more people were like me; I'm confident that lots of disasters in the world could be avoided if people just took their heads out from the sand and embraced all the horrible possibilities that exist.

sohtym 4y ago
> When I've thought of all the possible crappy outcomes that might happen, I can be confident that whatever happens, I'll survive. I've heard this before, but it never worked for me because I can imagine things going pretty bad. I do think there is a lot of undue optimism. An assumption that things will work out. They often don't. Maybe worrying about nuclear war isn't that productive, but we should all be a lot more worried about things like working environment, rising inequality and the cost of living. Ask Japan.
EvanAnderson 4y ago
Also, thinking and preparing for the worst doesn't need to be a gloomy thing. It can even be empowering. It absolutely is. When things go wrong I have already thought about the triage and backup plans. The situation will still by dynamic, but I won’t be scrambling to begin making plans. I’ll be be refining what I’ve already thought about to match the new reality. It feels pretty badass to be thrown a curveball and not be phased. I can only do that if I’ve considered what could go wrong and planned for contingencies.
aliasxneo 4y ago
Eh, I see it as a double-edged sword. My pessimism has likely contributed to my decade of success in high-stakes environments (i.e., nuclear). However, I've struggled with anxiety my entire adult life. So yeah, I wish more people could find that middle place, but the extreme end can be debilitating for those like me.

gingerlime 4y ago

I found this BBC podcast[0] quite insightful about optimism vs pessimism. One interesting thing is that there are far more optimists than pessimists in the population. If I recall it’s a 9:1 ratio. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct1prd https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct1prd