That may be true, but what outlook is not? If you are looking for a rational basis for any perspective, you won't find a single one that survives a deconstructive analysis. To me, it doesn't seem fair to put Optimism to a test that no other worldview can pass. We are not rational beings, and cannot be rational beings, because rationality is a construct of our own consciousness. We are a ruler measuring our own length. This may be true. However, catastrophe is uncommon and unreliable. How about the majority of time which is non-catastrophic? Does the pessimist have the advantage there? Is there a perspective that is more optimal than that of the Optimist and the Pessimist? I would suggest spending some time on Stoicism. I had a wonderful high school philosophy teacher that explained it to me as such: "mk, we cannot always change our situation, but we can always change our perspective. That is what the Stoics believed." IMO people conflate the term 'stoic' with the goals of Stoicism. Stoics do not endeavor to be unemotional, but understand that the chains that bind your emotions to circumstance are an illusion. I often say: "The things that you do are what you want to be doing." I believe this. I also believe that coming to terms with this gives a very useful understanding of yourself. To separate nature and behavior to me is an absurdity. Do we say that a dog that bites children is a good dog? Do we say that a bridge that falls down is a sturdy bridge? Can you be an optimist to the extent that it is sensible, and a pessimist as well? Can your behavior and your nature adapt to circumstance? I would never consider eating a corpse on an average day. That would make me a monster. However, if we crash in the snow-covered Andes and you die, I am going to eat your frozen flesh, and will not be a monster. I have had personal struggles with depression. At times the only tool I had was the knowledge that time would bring me out. However, through trial and error, I have discovered that action is also a tool. The actual activity seems almost irrelevant as long as there is even an intellectual modicum of desire to do it, but I do believe that nature and behavior are inseparable, and action is a modification of behavior; thus action is a modification of one's nature.Optimism, in general, is childish, unreasonable and most importantly, irrational.
Things can only go better than catastrophe. But if things go badly, its is the pessimist who is best prepared, and who comes out on top.
I had my first "wait, what?" moment of the day when I read this. I'm genuinely baffled to hear you say this. It's an odd thing for a scientist to say, in my opinion (meaning no offense, of course), and seems a bit defeatist. I guess I'd like you to expand, if you have time.That may be true, but what outlook is not? If you are looking for a rational basis for any perspective, you won't find a single one that survives a deconstructive analysis.
That's funny to hear. But, I do mean it. That's not to say that the scientific method isn't a rational approach to gathering knowledge about the universe; but what we draw from the knowledge isn't always rational. Also, I would say that science does not reveal a privileged philosophy for living. To the extent that the approach isn't flawed, scientific investigation can provide reliable knowledge. However, although scientific knowledge might be universal, it does not result in a universal perspective, or instruction. Scientific knowledge is not modern, nor is its use limited to scientists. Of course, scientists are in the business of gathering more of it, but that business doesn't make a rational actor any more than a life in the theater might. I would say that the scientific method can be an antidote to ignorance about the nature of the universe, and some irrationality stems from that type of ignorance. However, not all ignorance stems from imperfect knowledge of the universe, and as such, science is not a cure for irrationality.
Science fosters a belief in looking at the world empirically, though. It encourages you to examine your life, your actions, those of others and see what's actually happening, whatever that may be. Therein the primary tenet of rationalism, in my opinion. Honesty. Discerning reality and accepting it. By no means a perfect process, obviously. This may be true, but -- where else does ignorance stem from? It seems to me that it stems from believing yourself rather than the truth. Mistaking your map for the territory (I do love that phrase).However, not all ignorance stems from imperfect knowledge of the universe, and as such, science is not a cure for irrationality.
I think it's true of most intellectually curious people, and of course, most scientists are intellectually curious. However, in my experience, I haven't seen scientists as having a unique advantage. I agree that is where much of it does come from. Even when there isn't truth to be found. Especially when there isn't truth to be found.Science fosters a belief in looking at the world empirically, though. It encourages you to examine your life, your actions, those of others and see what's actually happening, whatever that may be.
This may be true, but -- where else does ignorance stem from? It seems to me that it stems from believing yourself rather than the truth. Mistaking your map for the territory (I do love that phrase).
Statistical rationalism based on relevant history. Well that's terrifying. To be human is to be utterly incapable of rationality. I would argue yes. Non catastrophic failure, or even success with problems are benefited materially from pessimistic preparation. I look at it like this, I can anticipate a certain percentage of all of the bad things that will happen. I can affect positive change or prepare for a percentage of that percentage. That means that, while it is not 100% effective, there is a set of problems that can be anticipated/prevented mitigated if they are only considered/prepared for. If I know, I am responsible. I could just stop thinking about these things altogether and throw my hands up in the air with everybody else going 'WE DIDN'T KNOW!!! WE DIDN'T KNOW!!! WE SHOULD HAVE LISTENED!' But I would rather do something about it. Yes, but adaptation is easier/more effective if the circumstance can be predicted. Again, do things that take your eye off the firing squad. Fill the time until you die of a cause that's socially acceptable, after having paid all your bills of course.what outlook is not?
If you are looking for a rational basis for any perspective, you won't find a single one that survives a deconstructive analysis.
However, catastrophe is uncommon and unreliable. How about the majority of time which is non-catastrophic? Does the pessimist have the advantage there?
Can your behavior and you nature adapt to circumstance?
However, through trial and error, I have discovered that action is also a tool.
You need to stop defining "optimism" as "naïveté." It's not. Optimism does not mean "a foolhardy lack of preparation" it means "a positive outlook." Painting optimists as people that "throw their hands up in the air" and go "WE DIDN'T KNOW!!! WE DIDN'T KNOW!!! WE SHOULD HAVE LISTENED!' is fucking offensive. Just so you know - I had about 500 words typed out in response to you. Then I tried to click on the parent in chrome (which I've recently switched back to) and poof gone. And then I ran some errands and came back, got my coffee, sat down to start over but instead decided fuck it. Wanna know why? We're enabling you. Here we are, concerned and sincere, offering up a dozen thoughtful opinions and anecdotes, all so you can bat them down. Because you're a special little flower. Your depression is something new under the sun (it always is). Your struggles are somehow different from everyone else's (they always are). Your funk deserves to be indulged, fed, wallowed in because unlike everyone else on the planet that has ever dealt with depression, you've somehow earned yours. By the time you were born I'd been depressed for seven years. I'd be depressed for two more. But that's nothing. I've got a friend who has battled clinical depression for longer than you've been alive. I've been dealing with my parents' depression for almost as long as your parents have been alive. We've all earned our depression but until we're ready to piss it away all we're doing is hoarding grief. I said last night that depression is a wall - you either build it up or take it down brick by brick. Build it up, and you can say "look at this marvelous wall I have built to separate myself from the world! Look at all the effort it took!" Take it down and you can say "holy shit I can't believe I had to spend that much effort just so I can see the neighbor's yard." But you can also say "howdy, neighbor!" I'm not interested in making arguments against your straw man so that you can feel self-righteous in your dudgeon. I have better shit to do with my time. Know I'm not saying this to you - I'm saying this to your depression, which is clearly driving the bus at the moment. But hey - right there, is the point. An optimist? He'll get my counsel. He's interested in finding solutions. A pessimist? He's interested in proving there's no solutions and fuck that guy. I'm in the problem solving business and if you're not, get the fuck out of my way. We're here and we're ready to help. But I, for one, am not the least bit interested in holding up a punching bag so you can rail against enemies you don't have. And again - this is the depression, it isn't you. But I'm only human and if my choice is spending time on someone who wants to spend time with me or spending time with someone spoiling for a fight, the pugilist is shit outta luck.
So the dictionary keeps telling me. Emphasis on 'at the moment.' This week is the low corresponding to the huge high I was riding last week, the feeling of 'Holy shit I might have just secured a meaningful and profitable career path.' Up until last week I'd kept a lid on the worse stuff pretty well for over 6-7 months. I expect the next 'streak' to be longer, once I figure out how to stop getting overjoyed about things that haven't happened yet, which is what kicked this funk off. Hyperbole for the purposes of illustration, though I'm sincerely sorry for any personal offense taken, not just to you, to anybody who read that and is upset with me. I worry too much about definitions. I like neat boxes and flowcharts and clearly outlined expectations. Real life doesn't seem to give two shits. My grades used to be shitty because I'd get overwhelmed trying to plan out each little aspect months in advance, which contributed to just not going to class. Now I plot out important due dates/exam dates and accept a little chaos in the rest. And my grades have literally never been better in my entire life. I take philosophy very seriously, and I'd like to have my personal philosophy mostly figured out before my brain finishes forming, because I understand that deep change is much more difficult past a certain point. Know this, I'm very sincere in wishing I didn't think this way. The brain is an organ that produces thoughts like the pancreas produce insulin, like the gallbladder makes bile. Mine happens to have a malfunction somewhere, so I should be mindful of what I put into it. But if I only consume information that's good for my mental health, I'm not a well rounded person. To use an example that leaves a bitter taste in everyone's mouths, I sure as hell wish I didn't have to think about the shitshow that is going to be the 2016 presidential election, all of it's godawful candidates, the prospect of either Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton as president, and the fact I can't really affect the outcome anyway. But a well rounded and informed citizen has to learn about these things. How does a reasonable person who knows they have an imbalance determine how much of that kind of poison to let into their life?Optimism does not mean "a foolhardy lack of preparation" it means "a positive outlook."
I'm saying this to your depression, which is clearly driving the bus at the moment
Painting optimists as people that "throw their hands up in the air" and go "WE DIDN'T KNOW!!! WE DIDN'T KNOW!!! WE SHOULD HAVE LISTENED!' is fucking offensive.
Yeah, I'm sorry, too. It's just tough. My family commits suicide a lot. They also spend a remarkable amount of time in mental institutions. It teaches you that past a certain point, all you're doing is watching the show. A word of caution: mental health is very much organic... but the body is a system. It will adapt to the environment. When the environment rewards depression, the body will acclimatize to depression. Beyond a certain point there's fuckall you can do about biochemistry but up to a point, you're as depressed as you wanna be. I don't know where that point is but I know that you derive no benefit from indulging it and the potential benefit of denying it is killing the fucking problem. I got depressed in fifth grade. I stayed that way until I left New Mexico. Talking wake up, go to school, talk to no one, eat nothing, sleep three hours, gorge, sleep two hours, run nine miles, work out for an hour, sleep. Yay exercise bulimia - I rode that train from Iran-Contra clear to the Serbian conflict. But then I got out, and then I wasn't somewhere shitty, and I was surrounded by people who kind of cared about me, and for about three years I'd get choked up sometimes and start bawling on the fucking highway 'cuz I couldn't believe I'd actually MADE IT OUT. Sometimes it isn't organic. Sometimes it's environmental. Usually it's a blend of everything and that's why you need the will to change the things you can change and the strength to suffer the things you can't. Fuck optimism. Fuck pessimism. Learn pragmatism and apply it every fuckin' day to every fuckin' thing you do. Experience. I haven't had a drink in a week because I'm coughing up a lung over here. If I felt better I'd have some bourbon. When you've got emphysema, go for the brownies, not the pipe.How does a reasonable person who knows they have an imbalance determine how much of that kind of poison to let into their life?
One must choose a balance between focus and perspective. News is never perspective. When one is constantly attuned to what is going on NOW one cannot evaluate "now" in terms of "always." GK Chesterton Read Robert Kaplan's The Revenge of Geography and ask again.The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living. Without some such contrast or comparison, without some such shifting of the point of view, we should see nothing whatever of our own social surroundings. We should take them for granted, as the only possible social surroundings. We should be as unconscious of them as we are, for the most part, of the hair growing on our heads or the air passing through our lungs. It is the variety of the human story that brings out sharply the last turn that the road has taken, and it is the view under the arch of the gateway which tells us that we are entering a town.
No, it's that rationality often doesn't fit the needs of the situation. You have the relationship backward. Speaking from experience, the best way to combat depression is to let go of your egocentric view of the universe.Well that's terrifying. To be human is to be utterly incapable of rationality.
On the topic of point one, what I can say is that rationality is a tool. Simplifying a bit, it follows the structure of premise, premise, conclusion. That is, we either know things to be true, or assume them to be true, then we search for what is necessarily though perhaps not obviously true based on our assumptions. This strategy works marvelously for, say, increasing the fuel efficiency of a V8 engine, or calculating the stress on a bridge truss. For matters of math and language, there's no substitute for rationality. But there are a lot of things in the world which occupy other spaces. There are things that are suprarational, those that can't be understood via rationality because they are too complex to understand. And there are things that are extrarational, things for which it would be nonsense to attempt to apply rationality. Parts of the human experience fall into each category, and perhaps some into both, even if this sounds paradoxical. I'm of the disposition that matters of emotion and mind fall into at least one of these categories. So, when I say that you have the relationship backward, what I mean is that to be rational is to be inhuman, because our core humanity isn't accessible to the rules that govern math and language. Certainly rationality is something that is part of the human experience, but it is just one part among many. On the second point, there's not a lot I can say. What I'll share is that sometimes, you're insignificant to the world, and sometimes, you're very significant. It's up to you to figure out which applies at a given time. The world is an integrated whole that you happen to be a piece of right now. We all like to atomize into me/everything else. But from the universe's perspective, you're part of everything else. I'd dig myself into a deep hole if I tried to elaborate any further, due to point one.
That assumes that the statistics are sufficiently knowable and predictive, and the courses actionable, and that gathering of the information isn't counterproductive, and of course, 'relevant history' is subjective. Pursuing statistically rational behavior might not actually bear out to be a statistically rational approach. :) And equally as incapable of irrationality as well. :) We can only feign the absence of our own logic. I haven't met a pessimist that seems to be better off for it. Even so, mitigation requires time and energy as much as anything else, and can take many forms. For example, you could mitigate against loss of a valuable item of jewelry by never wearing it, by earning enough money to replace it, or a number of other ways. To say that you are preparing isn't enough, as there are endless ways in which you can prepare, and those determine how you will be spending your time. Mitigation also requires prioritization of which problems you are going to mitigate for, and those kinds of judgement calls are fraught with subjectivity. You only have so much time, and every thing you do requires that you do not do many others. For these reasons, a pessimist doesn't have much advantage to an optimist when it comes to rationality. To the extent that they can be, and to the extent that the costs of preparation and anticipation don't make life more difficult in other ways. A firing squad? I'm a flash of consciousness on a mote of dust on an island in a sea of time. Social acceptability and bills don't define my situation very well. This all might be lamentable, but water is wet; it could just as well be wondrous.Statistical rationalism based on relevant history.
Well that's terrifying. To be human is to be utterly incapable of rationality.
Yes, but adaptation is easier/more effective if the circumstance can be predicted.
Again, do things that take your eye off the firing squad. Fill the time until you die of a cause that's socially acceptable, after having paid all your bills of course.
Yes. I live by this both in regards to my behavior and when assessing others and their priorities. If you really wanted a job in graphic design, then why haven't you worked on your portfolio all week? That rule is a rule to live by. And if you ever want to be a different person - well then - start spending your time the way a different person would. I often say: "The things that you do are what you want to be doing." I believe this. I also believe that coming to terms with this gives a very useful understanding of yourself.
My phrase for this is "be the hero of your own life".