6 ms·

I have a personal theory (I'm sure it's not a novel one and it probably has a name) that human brains are naturally predisposed to negative thought than positiv

by hliyan 1y ago

I have a personal theory (I'm sure it's not a novel one and it probably has a name) that human brains are naturally predisposed to negative thought than positive thought because our brains are essentially evolved prediction engines. And because it is often easier and faster to lose something than gain it (e.g. it is usually less urgent to act on the signs of deer you might want to hunt and eat, than the sign of a tiger who might want to hunt and eat you), our prediction engines have a bias toward negative prediction. Conscious awareness of this fact (or rather, theory) has helped me curb negative thoughts at least to some extent.

euroderf 1y ago
> it is often easier and faster to lose something than gain it And things that add to entropy are favored by nature, undoing human labor & endeavor. Related?
growingkittens 1y ago
I know that traumatized human brains tend toward negativity. I don't believe it is a natural human condition, though. With trauma, the instincts you mentioned start applying to the wrong situations - trauma rewires the brain. "Minor" trauma, sustained trauma, traumatic events, can all contribute to this.
- sindriava 1y ago
  This is likely a byproduct of us being too comfortable now. Not in the "you've got nothing real to worry about!" boomer rethoric kind of way, but in the sense that our baseline for reward has shifted a bit higher. So trauma can still present a very strong negative RL signal, while positive RL signals of similar magnitude become rarer.
  - hliyan 1y ago
    This is probably also evolutionary. Most species, once safe and sated, tend to calm down and relax, or even nap. But we humans suffer from boredom, which tend to agitate us into action even when there is no hunger or threat. Probably the evolutionary adaptation that allowed our particular lineage to overtake (and parhaps wipe out) other competing lines of homonids and develop civilization.
    - eastbound 1y ago
      and overtake all other civilizations, and overtake our less workaholic colleagues at work, etc.
  - growingkittens 1y ago
    Or a byproduct of sustained trauma being more prevalent in modern society. There was a large shift in the way children are raised in the past 100 years, from community to individuality. Entire generations of people whose childhoods prepared them for a world that did not exist by the time they were adults. There is no template for raising children in the new world, and no community to fall back on. Many react with anger and resentment, and raise their children accordingly. Abuse is way more prevalent than most people realize. Technological comfort just disguises it all.
    - doright 1y ago
      I have a personal bias but suspect this is more prevalent than it's made out to be since I've both lived through it and have not had much opportunity throughout my life to recognize how the two issues were connected until many years later. I think always-on Internet devices both exposed latent difficulties in home/working life that already existed for many and amplified those same vulnerabilities. You can observe a single person on their phone for 8 hours a day and call it "problematic usage", but this alone does not give enough information about what underlying forces drive so much usage. If it's boredom, then why are they bored all the time? If it's stress, then where does so much stress originate from? The introduction of smartphones has raised the stakes since a huge number of people are now confronted with the same problem in a highly talked-about way, some of which could have been activated by latent mental vulnerability that may not have been brought to light in a past age. And sometimes this does result in a discussion of sometimes completely unrelated personal issues, but by their nature I would imagine not many would be willing to open up about them in public, compared to complaints about social media. Problems related to tech get a lot of social advocacy, but I find it hard to imagine a national "organization for adults abused by <type of guardian>". What is there to advocate for when the issue at hand already opened and shut itself decades ago and the people involved are either dead or incapable of admitting fault? Not to mention that the causes for each trauma are wildly diverse, and sometimes there is not enough information to be able to find a concrete meaning in the events at all? Sadly, even regulation of technology seems to be a workable issue compared to that of preventing future abuse. Each upbringing is distinct, and most effort seems to be put towards recovering from abuse long in the past knowing that (when dealing with certain personality types) there will never be hope for reconciliation. Knowing how intractable a problem intergenerational trauma is is enough to make me lean antinatalist at times, even though I say I am recovering.
  - jongjong 1y ago
    What? We're more comfortable? What planet do you people live on? People have never been more stressed and uncomfortable. People are literally fighting psychological warfare and vanishing opportunities. Psychologically, we have never been so uncomfortable.
    - pixl97 1y ago
      Just no. There is a particular problem of 'reporting' vs 'reality'. Less fighting, more opportunity, more food, more clean water, less disease than ever. What we do have now is 24 hour news and social media screaming how bad it is so we watch ads.
      - jongjong 1y ago
        My grandmother, who lived to 90, used to tell me "The only thing which really improved in my life is medicine." She would tell me that people were so happy and society was so safe when she was a child that her family used to sleep with the windows open. I also observed things only getting worse in my life. So I really don't buy this narrative that things keep getting better. IMO, the only people who think things got better are billionaires and multi-millionaires; of course it got better for them but it didn't get better for the average-luck person. For the average ambitious person who worked hard to improve their situation, things got MUCH worse; there are all these artificial barriers preventing them from succeeding, depriving them of opportunities and then constant gaslighting to blame them for systemic issues (including their own failure to thrive). Low birth rates, high rates of depression, high rates of homelessness, high suicide rates speak for themselves. The fact that it all gets covered up by social media echo chambers to the extent that some people think life got better, makes it MUCH, MUCH worse, not better. People just don't seem to notice the tent cities, the increased immigration (due to worsening conditions in poor countries), the political division (again, driven by poverty).
        pixl97 1y ago
        I mean the places I've lived in my life I've left the windows open and the doors unlocked and not had issues. Maybe I'm lucky as your grandma. Of course maybe your grandma like my grandma ignored all the cases of people that had abjectly terrible lives back then because that wouldnt fit her world view of 'make the present the past again'. Birthrates dropped in the US long before we were born. Homelessness was very high in the US before the postwar 'irregularity'. All those poor countries are still richer than ever historically, it's just that first world nations are that much better. Just stop the billionaires from sucking up everything and it's not really too bad at all.
- moooo99 1y ago
  I don‘t think negativity necessarily has something to do with trauma. Negativity bias is very widespread, regardless of previous trauma. Basically everybody flies at negativity. Bad and shocking headlines click way better than positive ones, negative feedback is occupying our attention more than positive feedback, we perceive losses way more important than gains, we perceive losses as way more impactful than gains of the same degree, etc. I am 100% sure trauma can and does affect the negativity aspect of our thinking in a big way. But I do not think that negative thinking overtopping positive thinking is limited to trauma sufferers
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
sindriava 1y ago
I agree with this to a large extent. All prediction comes with uncertainty and a good survival strategy is to align towards the upper bound on risk and lower bound on reward.
ninetyninenine 1y ago
First of all if negative thinking is associated with cognitive decline and if what you say is also generally true then humans will also be pretty much, in general, be in cognitive decline. Humans all being generally in a state of cognitive decline doesn’t make sense from an evolutionary perspective because natural selection will weed out degraded cognitive performance. So most people won’t be in this state. Anecdotally, you likely don’t see all your friends in cognitive decline so likely most of them don’t have a negative bias. So your conclusion is likely to not be true. In fact I’m being generous here. Your conclusion is startling and obviously wrong both from a scientific perspective and an anecdotal one. In fact the logic from this experiment and additionally many many other psychological studies points to the opposite. Humans naturally have a positive bias for things. People lie to themselves to stay sane. Anecdotally what I observed is people don’t like to be told they are wrong. They don’t like to be told they are fat and overweight slobs. Additionally stupid people by all objective standards exist but practically every culture on earth has rules about directly calling someone a dumbass even if it’s the truth. Like this is not a minor thing if I violate these positive cognitive biases with hard truths it will indeed cause a visceral and possibly violent reaction from most people who want to maintain that positive cognitive bias. For example racial equality. Black people in America are in general taller and stronger than say Asians. It’s a general truth. You can’t deny this. Strength and height has an obvious genetic basis putting equality from a physical standpoint to be untrue. It is objective reality that genetics makes Asians weaker and smaller than black people in America. So genetics effects things like size between races, it even effects things like size between species… black people are bigger than mouses. But you know what else? it affects intelligence between species. So mice genetically are less intelligent than black people and also black people are genetically more intelligent than fish. So what am I getting at here? Genetics affects hair color, physicality, height, skin color between races. Genetics also effects intelligence between species (you are more intelligent than a squirrel) but by some black magic this narrow area of intelligence between races say Asians and black people… it doesn’t exist. Does this make sense to you? Is this logical? Genetics changes literally everything between species and races but it just tip toes around intelligence leaving it completely equal? Is all intelligence really just from the environment when everything else isn’t? I mean at the very least the logic points to something that can be debated and discussed but this is not an open topic because it violates our cognitive biases. Some of you are thinking you’re above it. Like you see what I’m getting at and you think you can escape the positive bias. I assure you that you can’t escape it, likely you’re only able to escape it because you’re not black. If you were black there’s no way what I said is acceptable. But I’m Asian. How come I can accept the fact that I’m shorter and weaker than black people? Maybe it’s because height is too obvious of a metric that we can’t escape it and intelligence isn’t as obvious in the sense that I can’t just look at someone and know how smart he is. But let’s avoid the off topic tangent here about racial intelligence and get back to my point. I know this post will be attacked but this was not my intention. I need to trigger a visceral reaction in order for people to realize how powerful positive cognitive bias is. That’s my point. It is frighteningly powerful and it’s also frighteningly evident but mass delusion causes us to be blind to it. Seriously don’t start a debate on racial intelligence. Stick to the point: positive cognitive bias. Humans as a species that viscerally and violently bias in the cognitively positive direction. Parent poster could not be more wrong. We are delusional and we lie to ourselves to shield ourselves from the horrors of the real world. It is so powerful that we will resort to attacks and even violence to maintain our cognitively positive delusions.
theptip 1y ago
Sounds like “loss aversion”, which was studied by Kahneman and Tversky. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion
kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
Negative statements also garner more attention from the tribe. This is why a lot of special interest groups are constantly carping about what they're against rather than what they're for.
gxs 1y ago
This makes perfect sense People forget that nature only optimizes for sexual reproduction and that’s pretty much it In this case for example, it doesn’t really give a shit about your psychological well being or shaving years off your life because of some negative thought pattern If being on your toes, anxious, paranoid, and always looking over your shoulder keeps you alive and making babies - then as far as the developer that nature is, it’s a feature not a bug
- jncfhnb 1y ago
  > People forget that nature only optimizes for sexual reproduction and that’s pretty much it Common misunderstanding. Evolution optimizes for system success. Not individual gene propagation. Genomes are not agents with individual goals. Many species, but especially social animals, have numerous behaviors and traits designed to prompt communal success rather than individual survival and reproduction
  - carlosjobim 1y ago
    That's why it's best to sow plants as close to each other as possible, as they will help each other thrive. Or maybe that leads to famine and disaster, as it usually does when people try to apply their personal political beliefs to nature.
    - jncfhnb 1y ago
      I struggle to see how that at all follows what I said
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
  - gxs 1y ago
    It may be more of a common over simplification than misunderstanding Even saying it optimizes for system success is an oversimplification it just depends how far down the rabbit hole you want to go My only intention was to communicate and stress that we aren’t “designed” in the way a lot of people think But thanks for the clarification
keybored 1y ago
Evolutionary psychology just-so stories can justify anything as long as the premise that the organism will survive better in some defined local optimum is preserved.
HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago
It seems to be an established fact that humans are loss averse, and feel the pain of a loss more than the pleasure of a gain. This seems to make sense from an evolutionary point of view - taking a risk to gain something, at the expense of losing something already in hand, seems generally maladaptive (perhaps moreso when you are old and frail, and less resilient to loss). Perhaps this translates into a tendency to dwell on the negatives of a situation rather than the potential benefits? OTOH the human mind seems to fail in common ways when old age and dementia sets in, perhaps with no benefit, so this may just be one of those things. Old people tend to have bad joints. News at 11.
77pt77 1y ago
Losses can be fatal and irreversible but gains almost never are irreversible. Just another fundamental asymmetry in existence.

by hliyan 1y ago

euroderf 1y ago

> it is often easier and faster to lose something than gain it And things that add to entropy are favored by nature, undoing human labor & endeavor. Related?

growingkittens 1y ago

I know that traumatized human brains tend toward negativity. I don't believe it is a natural human condition, though. With trauma, the instincts you mentioned start applying to the wrong situations - trauma rewires the brain. "Minor" trauma, sustained trauma, traumatic events, can all contribute to this.

sindriava 1y ago
This is likely a byproduct of us being too comfortable now. Not in the "you've got nothing real to worry about!" boomer rethoric kind of way, but in the sense that our baseline for reward has shifted a bit higher. So trauma can still present a very strong negative RL signal, while positive RL signals of similar magnitude become rarer.
- hliyan 1y ago
  This is probably also evolutionary. Most species, once safe and sated, tend to calm down and relax, or even nap. But we humans suffer from boredom, which tend to agitate us into action even when there is no hunger or threat. Probably the evolutionary adaptation that allowed our particular lineage to overtake (and parhaps wipe out) other competing lines of homonids and develop civilization.
  - eastbound 1y ago
    and overtake all other civilizations, and overtake our less workaholic colleagues at work, etc.
- growingkittens 1y ago
  Or a byproduct of sustained trauma being more prevalent in modern society. There was a large shift in the way children are raised in the past 100 years, from community to individuality. Entire generations of people whose childhoods prepared them for a world that did not exist by the time they were adults. There is no template for raising children in the new world, and no community to fall back on. Many react with anger and resentment, and raise their children accordingly. Abuse is way more prevalent than most people realize. Technological comfort just disguises it all.
  - doright 1y ago
    I have a personal bias but suspect this is more prevalent than it's made out to be since I've both lived through it and have not had much opportunity throughout my life to recognize how the two issues were connected until many years later. I think always-on Internet devices both exposed latent difficulties in home/working life that already existed for many and amplified those same vulnerabilities. You can observe a single person on their phone for 8 hours a day and call it "problematic usage", but this alone does not give enough information about what underlying forces drive so much usage. If it's boredom, then why are they bored all the time? If it's stress, then where does so much stress originate from? The introduction of smartphones has raised the stakes since a huge number of people are now confronted with the same problem in a highly talked-about way, some of which could have been activated by latent mental vulnerability that may not have been brought to light in a past age. And sometimes this does result in a discussion of sometimes completely unrelated personal issues, but by their nature I would imagine not many would be willing to open up about them in public, compared to complaints about social media. Problems related to tech get a lot of social advocacy, but I find it hard to imagine a national "organization for adults abused by <type of guardian>". What is there to advocate for when the issue at hand already opened and shut itself decades ago and the people involved are either dead or incapable of admitting fault? Not to mention that the causes for each trauma are wildly diverse, and sometimes there is not enough information to be able to find a concrete meaning in the events at all? Sadly, even regulation of technology seems to be a workable issue compared to that of preventing future abuse. Each upbringing is distinct, and most effort seems to be put towards recovering from abuse long in the past knowing that (when dealing with certain personality types) there will never be hope for reconciliation. Knowing how intractable a problem intergenerational trauma is is enough to make me lean antinatalist at times, even though I say I am recovering.
- jongjong 1y ago
  What? We're more comfortable? What planet do you people live on? People have never been more stressed and uncomfortable. People are literally fighting psychological warfare and vanishing opportunities. Psychologically, we have never been so uncomfortable.
  - pixl97 1y ago
    Just no. There is a particular problem of 'reporting' vs 'reality'. Less fighting, more opportunity, more food, more clean water, less disease than ever. What we do have now is 24 hour news and social media screaming how bad it is so we watch ads.
    - jongjong 1y ago
      My grandmother, who lived to 90, used to tell me "The only thing which really improved in my life is medicine." She would tell me that people were so happy and society was so safe when she was a child that her family used to sleep with the windows open. I also observed things only getting worse in my life. So I really don't buy this narrative that things keep getting better. IMO, the only people who think things got better are billionaires and multi-millionaires; of course it got better for them but it didn't get better for the average-luck person. For the average ambitious person who worked hard to improve their situation, things got MUCH worse; there are all these artificial barriers preventing them from succeeding, depriving them of opportunities and then constant gaslighting to blame them for systemic issues (including their own failure to thrive). Low birth rates, high rates of depression, high rates of homelessness, high suicide rates speak for themselves. The fact that it all gets covered up by social media echo chambers to the extent that some people think life got better, makes it MUCH, MUCH worse, not better. People just don't seem to notice the tent cities, the increased immigration (due to worsening conditions in poor countries), the political division (again, driven by poverty).
      - pixl97 1y ago
        I mean the places I've lived in my life I've left the windows open and the doors unlocked and not had issues. Maybe I'm lucky as your grandma. Of course maybe your grandma like my grandma ignored all the cases of people that had abjectly terrible lives back then because that wouldnt fit her world view of 'make the present the past again'. Birthrates dropped in the US long before we were born. Homelessness was very high in the US before the postwar 'irregularity'. All those poor countries are still richer than ever historically, it's just that first world nations are that much better. Just stop the billionaires from sucking up everything and it's not really too bad at all.
moooo99 1y ago
I don‘t think negativity necessarily has something to do with trauma. Negativity bias is very widespread, regardless of previous trauma. Basically everybody flies at negativity. Bad and shocking headlines click way better than positive ones, negative feedback is occupying our attention more than positive feedback, we perceive losses way more important than gains, we perceive losses as way more impactful than gains of the same degree, etc. I am 100% sure trauma can and does affect the negativity aspect of our thinking in a big way. But I do not think that negative thinking overtopping positive thinking is limited to trauma sufferers

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

sindriava 1y ago

I agree with this to a large extent. All prediction comes with uncertainty and a good survival strategy is to align towards the upper bound on risk and lower bound on reward.

ninetyninenine 1y ago

First of all if negative thinking is associated with cognitive decline and if what you say is also generally true then humans will also be pretty much, in general, be in cognitive decline. Humans all being generally in a state of cognitive decline doesn’t make sense from an evolutionary perspective because natural selection will weed out degraded cognitive performance. So most people won’t be in this state. Anecdotally, you likely don’t see all your friends in cognitive decline so likely most of them don’t have a negative bias. So your conclusion is likely to not be true. In fact I’m being generous here. Your conclusion is startling and obviously wrong both from a scientific perspective and an anecdotal one. In fact the logic from this experiment and additionally many many other psychological studies points to the opposite. Humans naturally have a positive bias for things. People lie to themselves to stay sane. Anecdotally what I observed is people don’t like to be told they are wrong. They don’t like to be told they are fat and overweight slobs. Additionally stupid people by all objective standards exist but practically every culture on earth has rules about directly calling someone a dumbass even if it’s the truth. Like this is not a minor thing if I violate these positive cognitive biases with hard truths it will indeed cause a visceral and possibly violent reaction from most people who want to maintain that positive cognitive bias. For example racial equality. Black people in America are in general taller and stronger than say Asians. It’s a general truth. You can’t deny this. Strength and height has an obvious genetic basis putting equality from a physical standpoint to be untrue. It is objective reality that genetics makes Asians weaker and smaller than black people in America. So genetics effects things like size between races, it even effects things like size between species… black people are bigger than mouses. But you know what else? it affects intelligence between species. So mice genetically are less intelligent than black people and also black people are genetically more intelligent than fish. So what am I getting at here? Genetics affects hair color, physicality, height, skin color between races. Genetics also effects intelligence between species (you are more intelligent than a squirrel) but by some black magic this narrow area of intelligence between races say Asians and black people… it doesn’t exist. Does this make sense to you? Is this logical? Genetics changes literally everything between species and races but it just tip toes around intelligence leaving it completely equal? Is all intelligence really just from the environment when everything else isn’t? I mean at the very least the logic points to something that can be debated and discussed but this is not an open topic because it violates our cognitive biases. Some of you are thinking you’re above it. Like you see what I’m getting at and you think you can escape the positive bias. I assure you that you can’t escape it, likely you’re only able to escape it because you’re not black. If you were black there’s no way what I said is acceptable. But I’m Asian. How come I can accept the fact that I’m shorter and weaker than black people? Maybe it’s because height is too obvious of a metric that we can’t escape it and intelligence isn’t as obvious in the sense that I can’t just look at someone and know how smart he is. But let’s avoid the off topic tangent here about racial intelligence and get back to my point. I know this post will be attacked but this was not my intention. I need to trigger a visceral reaction in order for people to realize how powerful positive cognitive bias is. That’s my point. It is frighteningly powerful and it’s also frighteningly evident but mass delusion causes us to be blind to it. Seriously don’t start a debate on racial intelligence. Stick to the point: positive cognitive bias. Humans as a species that viscerally and violently bias in the cognitively positive direction. Parent poster could not be more wrong. We are delusional and we lie to ourselves to shield ourselves from the horrors of the real world. It is so powerful that we will resort to attacks and even violence to maintain our cognitively positive delusions.

theptip 1y ago

Sounds like “loss aversion”, which was studied by Kahneman and Tversky. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion

kevin_thibedeau 1y ago

Negative statements also garner more attention from the tribe. This is why a lot of special interest groups are constantly carping about what they're against rather than what they're for.

gxs 1y ago

This makes perfect sense People forget that nature only optimizes for sexual reproduction and that’s pretty much it In this case for example, it doesn’t really give a shit about your psychological well being or shaving years off your life because of some negative thought pattern If being on your toes, anxious, paranoid, and always looking over your shoulder keeps you alive and making babies - then as far as the developer that nature is, it’s a feature not a bug

jncfhnb 1y ago
> People forget that nature only optimizes for sexual reproduction and that’s pretty much it Common misunderstanding. Evolution optimizes for system success. Not individual gene propagation. Genomes are not agents with individual goals. Many species, but especially social animals, have numerous behaviors and traits designed to prompt communal success rather than individual survival and reproduction
- carlosjobim 1y ago
  That's why it's best to sow plants as close to each other as possible, as they will help each other thrive. Or maybe that leads to famine and disaster, as it usually does when people try to apply their personal political beliefs to nature.
  - jncfhnb 1y ago
    I struggle to see how that at all follows what I said
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- gxs 1y ago
  It may be more of a common over simplification than misunderstanding Even saying it optimizes for system success is an oversimplification it just depends how far down the rabbit hole you want to go My only intention was to communicate and stress that we aren’t “designed” in the way a lot of people think But thanks for the clarification

keybored 1y ago

Evolutionary psychology just-so stories can justify anything as long as the premise that the organism will survive better in some defined local optimum is preserved.

HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago

It seems to be an established fact that humans are loss averse, and feel the pain of a loss more than the pleasure of a gain. This seems to make sense from an evolutionary point of view - taking a risk to gain something, at the expense of losing something already in hand, seems generally maladaptive (perhaps moreso when you are old and frail, and less resilient to loss). Perhaps this translates into a tendency to dwell on the negatives of a situation rather than the potential benefits? OTOH the human mind seems to fail in common ways when old age and dementia sets in, perhaps with no benefit, so this may just be one of those things. Old people tend to have bad joints. News at 11.

77pt77 1y ago

Losses can be fatal and irreversible but gains almost never are irreversible. Just another fundamental asymmetry in existence.