doc here. Seems like this is the most common issue on Hacker News. I suspect there is a common thread, something along the lines of negative thinkers are the people who identify problems and strive to solve them, but such a personality is at perpetual risk of decompensating toward depression. I think Andy Thompson's theory makes a ton of sense for most depressives in this community
Unfortunately I think you may be right. To build a very high quality system, you need to be adept at identifying every major and minor flaw, actual and potential. Happy people often seem unable to do this rigorously. "My code is great! The sky is so blue today! I love my awesome wife! That SIGSEGV was just a hardware problem!"
People rationalize to maintain their preferred emotional state. Thus, to find problems thoroughly, it helps to think the whole system is thoroughly fucked.
http://andersonthomson.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Andrew...