I thought this was going to be an article about optimism ("geeking out" as in getting excited about things). I acknowledge that I'm responding to the headline and not the meat of the article.
I've recently (past ~5 years) stopped viewing the world pessimistically. I don't believe it's because I'm blindly optimistic, but because I didn't have the perspective to understand our ancestor's problems and how good of a life I had. It's pretty cool that I didn't die in 6th grade when I put that knife through my hand, that my knee doesn't lock anymore after having my meniscus removed, and pretty cool my wife survived to adulthood with unbelievably poor vision and asthma. It's pretty cool that a large portion of living is automated now by the systems around us, from food to cleaning, and that those systems are affordable enough that they're common place in most households. We've freed our societies up to focus on arts and science which has created a flywheel that keeps paying us greater and greater returns that we keep investing into arts and science.
Humans have done some cool things to conquer our basic nature and environment, and we continue to do cool things. Compared to other species we are absolutely killing it. Yes we suck compared to what we are going to be in the future, but that's the point!
Whenever I get a brief feeling of "this is bad," I remind myself that humans have conquered far worse than whatever "this" is and that we are likely to triumph over this thing too. Taking a second to appreciate what our species has accomplished, and "geeking out" about it, has helped improve my quality of life, thought I'd take a moment and share that with you.
There are a few people in my circle that are overburdened by conspiracy theories to the point where they think that humans are corrupt and everyone is out to get them. It's exhausting to live like that. My goal is to be my 13 yr old self's hero. Do cool stuff, be in a good relationship, and fix things that bother me to the best of my ability.
Indeed, for many people on both sides it was (and is!) quite a shocking revelation that in their surroundings there is a huge number of people who don't just disagree on opinions or facts but have completely contradictory values, one side praising that which the other deems as clearly, obviously evil, and vice versa.
I'd argue that this comes from a change in media - where previously you had a clear consensus either in the small community you lived in earlier times, or country-wide with the advent of mass media, and even if you'd disagree with that, then you still can't avoid knowing what the surrounding reality was; but now with personalized social media, so many people get a false impression of the actual social consensus around them, because they communicate much less with people around them but rather communicate in an "information community" which is larger geographically (often global), and which is different from the actual community where they live and which makes laws for their life; so they perceive that the "community standards" go one way (in the way which their "online information community" thinks) but then reality crashes in with something totally different, and this does "break people's minds" in some way.
To be fair there are way more leftists who think trump is as bad as hitler as there are conservatives who believe in the Q stuff. Most conservatives don't even understand what Qanon even is other than a catchall for "conspiracy theories".
The right literally elected several of these people into congress, and they are actively getting their way so that McCarthy could have his speaker seat.
Remember how, just a few months ago, one could get banned from Social media for suggesting Covid-19 originated in a lab? "Fact Checkers" were hard at work silencing that content and attributing it to "conspiracy theorists".
Now the lab leak hypothesis is mainstream, with experts supporting investigating the labs in Wuhan and bringing in evidence that the disease indeed originated in a Chinese lab.
Sometimes, it seems the difference between facts and conspiracy is 6 months or another presidential administration, whichever comes first!
Viewing this sort of issue as equivalent in personal magnitude and meaning to Galileo’s heliocentrism dispute with the renaissance church is exactly the perspective I seek to avoid by framing my mindset like the earlier commenter, personally.
Isn't the difference evidence? There were people jumping to all kinds of theories without evidence at the beginning, but acting like they knew for sure whatever their theory was. Some happened to be right, but that doesn't mean that the lesson to be learned is truth can best be found by jumping to conclusions without evidence.
If that was the lesson, then we should be jumping to exciting new conclusions without evidence like "actually, it's only changing now because US propaganda wants to harm China for their failure to align against Russia, and pinning COVID on them is a super convenient way to do that." Or whatever other exciting new theories you can come up, unbound from any evidence other than it sounds like something that could be plausible. Who knows maybe I will turn out right and I can rub it in everyone's faces later.
I mean, it was an unfounded conspiracy theory before, wasn't it? When new evidence came about then it shifted into legitimacy. That's just how evidence works.
In this context I think you're pattern matching too deterministically on the term "conspiracy theory". I just read it as "random negative news headlines of the moment". Ironically this kind of poor pattern matching is what led to the situation you speak of, where anyone talking about the lab leak hypothesis got pattern matched as sinophobic / a conspiracy theorist.
"Why keep looking at the stars through these telescopes? We all know the Earth is at the center of the Universe, the Pope said so. What good does it bring to you?"
Your rights are being eroded, your purchase power is being drained, society around you is slowly collapsing.
Change that happens slowly is insidious to notice, but it surely is impossible if you choose to actively ignore it... until it becomes unbearable, and then it's even costlier to act.
In a democracy the solution to problems is to spread the word and ensure many more people know, so that it can influence future elections. So exactly what he is doing here.
Yeah, I've tried doing it but nobody listens to me, they think I'm just stupid for having opinions "not like everybody else" or say "yeah, but what can we do about this?" or "yeah, but I don't trust that new candidate". I want to do something to better everyone's lives, but after seeing their actions day after day being anti-progress, I no longer care. Of course progress is as defined by me, they just have their own opinions which they consider as more valid. If all the people around me have other opinion about what's good for them, maybe I'm in the wrong? How would you deal with such situation?
The nice thing about strength though is that the more you get, the easier it gets to get more. Friction is greatest at rest. Maintaining existing strength has inertia.
I volunteer my time to refurbish computers that were headed to e-waste for free distribution to struggling families.
I vote, especially focusing on local elections and measures.
I just don't think paying attention to news media is doing people any favors. It's kind of telling to me that you've compared not consuming news media to literally excusing genocide. That's how entrenched this industry is in our society...
I'm sorry you choose to spend your time sniffing farts. You could take the attention you gave news media and give it to your wife that is stressed out from you going to the bar. Maybe you'd want to sniff your own farts less then?
What's the exact difference between ignoring media when they tell you a genocide is being done, and when they tell you human rights are being taken away? That one is worse than another? Where do we draw the line, then - at death? So labor camps are okay, but gas chambers are not?
You act on it, or if you're powerless, spread it around to others until hopefully it reaches someone who's powerful and cares. Or just make a politically charged rap rock band. Anything is better than sticking your head in the sand.
I am not embarrassed about anything, sounds to me like you're projecting your own emotions onto me.
I understand that your argument is "if you don't do anything about X, it is worthless to know about X", which is a defeatist attitude. You may choose to surrender yourself to your fate, and may even come up with a bunch of reasons why it's more pleasant to live that way, but if I'm locked up in a jail, I'll be spending my days trying to escape, even if in vain. Any action has a better chance of getting me out than trying to forget that I'm in jail.
Uhh. The facts are off the map for media companies and the government media.
Society alternates between 3 functions. Hiding away facts, milking good times and taking valuable resources off the map.
We're just the weird people who remember the old-school world, where the public knowing the facts was a point of order and the science would settle it all.
Conspiracies theories appear to sound the alarm on it all, but they have no unique, private facts to share with the public, just like everyone else.
Do you also remember COVID is a hoax, the vaccine is killing people for population control, 5G causes COVID, ivermectin is the real cure etc? The sheer volume is what is exhausting.
I feel like I am and always have been a "day-to-day" optimist, but I struggle to apply that to larger, societal problems.
Our impact on the environment is measurable and the impacts look dire. Income disparity seems to be increasing locally and globally. The military industrial complex of the largest nation-states feels eternal, as if it is a fundamental part of neoliberal capitalism.
I can "half-full" almost everything day to day. Financial issues, medical issues, family problems... never easy, but doable. I can handle it, smile on my face, and tough it out. But when I'm left alone with my thoughts, its hard for me not to draw the conclusion that the world my children (or their children) grow up in will be worse-off, and they will live harder lives than we have.
More people are concerned about climate change now, and the younger generations are more concerned than ever. Hopefully that leads to people in general making better choices, and more importantly, electing people who aren't deep in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry.
We made it through a cold war. Previous generations had to live with the very real risk of a fast escalating total nuclear disaster. We still have nukes but I generally don't worry about a fast escalating "everyone launches everything they have and we are ill prepared to shoot them all out of the sky before they make contact" doomsday scenario. Not only did we make it through that, but we put humans on the moon during that window of time and humans made some pretty significant scientific advances with the backdrop of all that stress.
> Our impact on the environment is measurable and the impacts look dire.
Humans are pretty resilient and have been pretty good at mitigating large scale problems. Yeah we are impacting our environment, but we aren't the only species that does this. Many species, left unchecked, go through natural boom+bust cycles where they blast past the carrying capacity of their ecosystem and then bust the next generation.
At no point do deer look around and go "hey, we are eating all the food, maybe we shouldn't do that?" - they just eat and reproduce and nature sorts it out. They aren't morally corrupt for causing a boom/bust cycle, they're just animals like us. However, when it comes to humans, we have blasted past our ecosystem's natural carrying capacity (we've been past it for a long time now). Not only do we look around and go "hey, this is a problem" - something that puts us in a league all our own - but we have repeatedly solved that problem. And now we get to tackle the next set of problems.
Simply being aware that we are responsible for climate change and the ending of the Holocene is a huge achievement for a species, let alone putting together plans to over come it.
That is pretty cool!
What's even cooler is that all of the growing pains we are going through are putting us on a trajectory to literally save all life on Earth. Folks like to kick around the can about how humans are destroying Earth's environment. That's true, and we need to work our butts off to keep everything balanced moving forward. There are very smart humans working very hard to keep our ecosystems from collapsing.
But, no matter what we do to save our ecosystems, we are over 75% through the window of time life can survive on this planet.
A world without humans is a world where Earth slowly moves out of the habitable zone and finds itself in a complete extinction event in ~500m years - with little to no hope of any life bouncing back.
Getting life off this planet is a noble cause. Doing that requires either:
* a biological pathway to interstellar travel beyond the micro-organism scale (maybe nature will produce this in 500m years? find that _exceptionally_ unlikely)
* a species to develop the technology to get itself off this rock and survive the extremely hostile environments in space
Humans are doing that latter, and I have no reason to believe any other species would do a better job than we have getting to "building rockets and settling planets." Not only is our species going to the stars, but we are going to bring life on Earth with us when we do.
Because we are in fact so disconnected from our military today, modern people have forgotten that human civilization itself has been a military industrial complex forever. Not much to do with capitalism in particular.
I think there is a crucial semantic disconnect here, that may be partially stemmed from how much heavy lifting the relatively new term "military industrial complex" is doing. I'm likely partially to blame.
I use the term to refer to the the status quo of the relationship between interest groups, legislative bodies, and the bureaucratic system. I don't think I've forgotten anything. Some degree of defense was, and still is, necessary. I'm not refuting that. But, I believe that current manifestations of this relationship has lead to a system that is largely driven by private interests that have little to do with the defense or security of the people.
Yep, the current Russian war in Ukraine exposed the fact that the western 'military complex' isn't that industrial anymore, as (for example) the total annual production of artillery shells is less than what we'd shoot in a single average day of WW2.
There's still a lot of money spent, but it's spent less on actual industrial capacity but rather mostly on various high-tech R&D things - probably because then you can convert a larger portion of the order to profits instead of hardware.
I'd say that, colloquially at least (and maybe in a literary sense as well), the "military industrial complex" broadly covers the flow of money from a government and its military to the defense industry at large. (terms again can be a bit strange here, but the "defense-industry" describes an area of economic activity not "the refinement of raw materials into products").
> Humans have done some cool things to conquer our basic nature and environment, and we continue to do cool things. Compared to other species we are absolutely killing it. Yes we suck compared to what we are going to be in the future, but that's the point!
At the same time it's important not to forget humans have done some messed up things to the environment that are not easy to clean up or undo. And they still do, all with a paltry goal to make a short term profit. This is what drives my optimism away, though I am not a pessimistic person by nature.
1) Most humans mean well and these are side effects of solutions to other problems - we can find and hold up examples of people acting poorly but to extrapolate that out I don’t think is fair. Energy abundance has done unbelievably important things for civil rights, quality of life, and the prospect of life being able to outlive Earth.
2) It’s important to remember life on earth is ~75% behind us. We’ve only got another 500m years until there is a complete extinction event with little hope of coming back. If you take humans out of the picture, you don’t save nature, you doom it to complete extinction.
Humans are awesome, all flaws considered. We are the only golden ticket our planet has printed to get life off this rock.
From your question I assume you’re on the Timeline of the Far Future Wikipedia page, which references this. It’s the next few boxes below the gamma ray burst.
This is somewhat true but also somewhat not - we have a lower chance of childhood mortality, but only in some countries. We have a general higher standard of living, but income inequality is worse than it's ever been. We have less people dying in wars, but when we do have them more people die than ever would have in the past. I'd recommend "The better angels of our nature" as a book for more on this - it covers human history of this well and shows the tradeoffs we've been making at the same time. The average person today has more creature comforts than a king a hundred years ago, but at the same time almost no one today has as much vacation time as a medieval peasant did
> Whenever I get a brief feeling of "this is bad," I remind myself that humans have conquered far worse than whatever "this" is
It's a nice sentiment, but I see no reason to think it is true. While I'd agree that in many ways life is nicer and easier, the problems that we do have now are even more complex and difficult than ever.
Sure, there are huge challenges facing us as a civilization, but we are not alone in terms of solving those. Individually people on average I believe are better off now compared to any time previous in history.
Of course some people have terrible lives still, some people die at birth, but we are living in a truly astonishing era with endless possibilities in my view.
You're still above ground after a global, full-blown, pandemic. Which is nice.
The things that bring me the biggest anxiety all come from Twitter, and I find they don't much impact my day to day. While the internet shows me the absolute worst of mankind (in addition to the best), I find my IRL world isn't half bad.
> Whenever I get a brief feeling of "this is bad," I remind myself that humans have conquered far worse than whatever "this" is and that we are likely to triumph over this thing too.
I do something very similar, though slightly different.
Whenever I notice something bad i rejoice that I've probably lived through the best times our western society likely ever have
I at least experienced a reality which didn't have [the bad thing] as the norm.
Society is not gonna get more equal from now on, so Gen Beta (people that are currently being born) are gonna have a massively worse life then I've had.
There was a science experiment where they took pessimists and optimists and had them rate themselves from one to ten in terms of looks.
Then they had another external group of people rate them based off of the same 1 to 10 scale to get an unbiased baseline.
Turns out pessimists had a more accurate and realistic rating around how good they looked. While optimists had ratings that were wildly overblown. There are other experiments that measured other things related to these two groups of people.
It turns out optimists are, happier, have higher salaries and are much more successful in life while pessimists are more likely to be clinically depressed.
This experiment tells us a dark truth about human nature. We lie to ourselves to stay sane. We construct illusions to protect ourselves from fully experiencing the cruel reality of life.
Optimism is a special kind of blindness. It's blindness that blinds you from being aware you're blind.
So look deeply at yourself. Are you happy? Are you optimistic? If so then that is in itself a statistical statement about how delusional and intelligent you actually are. Can you handle the truth?
I wonder how this post will get voted? Down for being depressing and negative? Or up for being truthful?
> I wonder how this post will get voted? Down for being depressing and negative? Or up for being truthful?
Likely down for talking about votes.
And for assuming there is only one truth.
> We construct illusions to protect ourselves from fully experiencing the cruel reality of life.
Reality is cruel. Nature is cruel. Existence is cruel. And Humans have overcome a substantial amount of that cruelty and enjoy a quality of life our ancestors couldn't even dream of.
There are many other things to be optimistic about given where life on earth started and how it is going for humans. Our ancestors have come a long way in 4.5bn years, it would be special kind of blindness to write that progress off as a lie we tell ourselves to stay sane.
Who knows? You could be right and I could be the one that is totally blind.
I propose an experiment to find out just which one of us is actually more delusional. To start off, how would you rate yourself in terms of looks from 1 to 10?
I disagree with a lot of what you are saying. Firstly I wouldn't label myself any way, neither pessimist or optimist.
But you can be amazed at what has happened throughout the whole history and what humans have built, and be optimistic and excited about the future, and that we can handle the problems thrown at us and be completely realistic at the same time.
And even if there was some way to accurately judge whether optimists or pessimists view the World more accurately, it doesn't mean you can't still view the world accurately and be an optimist at the same time.
It might just be that optimists on average are more likely to view things in a better light than they are, but it doesn't apply to every single optimist.
There is truth, but also even bad truth like a problem coming your way you can treat it as an exciting challenge or a nuisance.
What I'm saying is not something I made up. It's actual science.
Listen to the podcast if you have the time. It's derived from actual multitudes of scientific research done on thousands of people. It's only 12 minutes and it's really good and it will change your perception of the importance of knowing the truth.
This is real. And the experiments cited in this podcast are only a fraction of the psychological experiments used to confirm this theory. It's not about a matter of your opinion, it's science.
But even if it's real it doesn't matter does it? Because it's all about your perception and your ability to delude yourself.
I was responding to your points. Is there any other specific point you want me to respond to?
Because the arguments are that you can overestimate your capabilities or be overconfident to perform better, which I agree with, but my point is that none of it is indicative that someone having generally a positive view of the world necessarily implies that they would have less grasp on reality.
I think the experiments are not evidence that one has to "delude" themselves to be positive or happy. Because the end of your post implied that there must be at least some level of delusion going on.
>but my point is that none of it is indicative that someone having generally a positive view of the world necessarily implies that they would have less grasp on reality.
From the podcast:
Joanna: The people who were the most realistic, that actually see the world exactly as it is, tend to be slightly more depressed than others.
Robert: Time and time again, researchers have found that depressed people lie less.
Ruben: They see all the pain in the world. How horrible people are with each other and they tell you everything about themselves. What their weaknesses are, what terrible things they've done to other people and the problem is they're right....
That one research study they used as an example is one out of multitudes used to formulate the conclusion I cited above.
In short:
People who tend to be realistic tend to be depressed. People who lie to themselves tend to be happy.
I mean it's obvious that this point contradicts your claim. Ask yourself, are you lying to yourself right now? Are you currently being optimistically delusional about what was actually stated in the podcast? Hard to say.
It may be that on average "realistic" people are more depressed, but it doesn't mean an individual "realistic" person can't be generally happy.
It's only an "average". You can have a set with average of -20, but it could be a range of -60 to 20, so you can have 20s in the set while on average the set is below 0.
> They see all the pain in the world. How horrible people are with each other and they tell you everything about themselves. What their weaknesses are, what terrible things they've done to other people and the problem is they're right
There's both negatives and positives in the World. You can accept the negatives and appreciate the positives. Humans have suffered throughout the whole duration they have existed as species. You don't have to be depressed because of that. You can appreciate all what humanity has built, and where we have reached in our quest to advance and innovate. We are discovering more and more every day. You can focus on your curiosity. I have no problem discussing those topics or noticing those issues.
> What their weaknesses are
You can accept your weaknesses and either work on them or consider them not worthy to be worked on and focus on your strengths instead. Some weaknesses are worth working on, others are not and you can just accept that they exist.
> what terrible things they've done to other people and the problem is they're right
Everyone makes mistakes. No point in staying around feeling guilty about it. Move on and do your best.
> I mean it's obvious that this point contradicts your claim. Ask yourself, are you lying to yourself right now? Are you currently being optimistically delusional about what was actually stated in the podcast? Hard to say.
It's not contradicting, it's just taking one seemingly unhealthy mindset, that seems to correlate with certain type of realism, but overall you can have an healthy mindset about realism where you accept the bad and appreciate the good.
The podcast is missing this healthy type of acceptance and appreciation of truth.
>The podcast is missing this healthy type of acceptance and appreciation of truth.
The podcast is grounded in science and only speculates about the consequences via the data and the studies it cites. The people who were interviewed are psychologists who empirically study this scientifically and their conclusions are more well developed then yours given that they've spent a huge amount of time dedicated to elucidating these findings.
Your conclusion on the other hand was not formulated on data. It was formulated in attempt to fulfill your bias. You took the data and tried to mold it so it would fit your current world view instead of adjusting your world view according to what the data straight forwardly implies. I mean you are trying to push the conclusions of the study toward a positive outcome when reality in essence doesn't care about positive or negative outcomes. It can all be negative and that is a completely valid outcome.
I mean where is the data about people who healthily accept the truth? You would need that data to formulate a scientific conclusion. If no such data exists then where did your conclusion come from?
Perhaps the subject of podcast was talking about something you're doing right now.
I ask myself in attempting to get at the absolute dark truth... is what I'm doing good for either of us in terms of mental health? Probably not. I take it back.
> The podcast is grounded in science and only speculates about the consequences via the data and the studies it cites.
Is science saying anything other than "average"? Because based on "average" result you can't make conclusions for each individual from the group. Also obligatory correlation doesn't imply causation.
People in Country A on average have weight of 70kg, Country B 80kg. Does it mean there are no people in country B that weigh below 50kg? No.
> The people who were interviewed are psychologists who empirically study this scientifically and their conclusions are more well developed then yours given that they've spent a huge amount of time dedicated to elucidating these findings.
Their conclusions are on averages. There's no conclusion that can be made that would say that if you are optimistic, that this would mean that you are not being realistic.
> People who tend to be realistic tend to be depressed. People who lie to themselves tend to be happy
Even this statement doesn't say that. It talks only about averages.
> Your conclusion on the other hand was not formulated on data.
All I'm saying is that the data is talking about averages, rather than any given individual. I'm saying only what can be concluded based on that data. What do you think my conclusion is?
> I mean you are trying to push the conclusions of the study toward a positive outcome when reality in essence doesn't care about positive or negative outcomes.
How am I pushing the conclusions?
> I mean where is the data about people who healthily accept the truth? You would need that data to formulate a scientific conclusion. If no such data exists then where did your conclusion come from?
That's a reasonable alternative to your conclusion - the conclusion that you must be depressed when you are realistic. Or that you have to lie to yourself to be happy.
Ironically I think it's one of those things that there's appeal for because people want some sort of justification or reward for being depressed. "I am depressed, but I am realistic", so that it wouldn't be just all bad. So there's likely inherent bias to hope that this would be the case.
Here's an article that is counter to that by the way.
> It’s an idea that exerts enough appeal that lots of people seem to believe it, but the evidence just isn’t there to sustain it, says Professor Don Moore, the Lorraine Tyson Mitchell Chair in Leadership and Communication at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and co-author of the study in the journal Collabra:Psychology. The good news is you don’t have to be depressed to understand how much control you have.
> Perhaps the subject of podcast was talking about something you're doing right now.
If there was a good argument against my arguments that I'm not seeing, it could be. But again, it's about averages.
> I ask myself in attempting to get at the absolute dark truth... is what I'm doing good for either of us in terms of mental health? Probably not. I take it back.
For my mental health it's all good, I would rather pride myself in my ability to handle difficult topics, than to avoid them.
Since I believe that the healthiest I can be is by training mental toughness to handle hardships, I don't mind it at all.
For your mental health, if what I'm saying is true, and if you believe it then it could allow you to find a way or others to be realistic and have a healthy, positive and optimistic mindset at the same time as well.
I think in this case it's a harmful misunderstanding rather than a "harmful" truth based on wishful, but appealing thinking that there must be something good about being depressed.
I have had low periods in my life, and I had been diagnosed with depression, and I enjoyed the thought that this might make me more "realistic" or "intelligent" in a sense, but I think my eyes are far more open now that I enjoy life. I think my thinking back then was very binary, and limiting.
You don't have to ignore the negative or pretend that negative doesn't happen or affect you, you just have to accept that it is, especially if it's out of your control.
There are so many different ways to interpret the World and so many different people, you can't make any such conclusions based on averages. A psychopath might be completely realistic and not care at all about the negatives in the World. Some people take enjoyment from the suffering, some people just mind their own business and focus on their life.
Okay, listening to the podcast. I understand your point much better now, that seems like a very interesting episode, thank you for that. Like if there are some unpleasant truths that if you don't believe to be true would make your life much easier.
But the questionnaire on the streets - to be fair, if I were to answer "no" there, it doesn't mean I would be lying to myself, I might only be lying to the interviewer, for obvious reasons.
I mean it's very interesting topic, but there's many things to take a part or consider here. Visualising success is a recommended activity for instance, but it doesn't necessarily mean lying to oneself, it's just preparing yourself, going through what is upcoming.
Let's see if there is anything of value in between those two extreme viewpoints...
Reality is cruel and often sad, and for our own sake our brain tricks us into believing it's all pink, making us optimistic, delusional and stupid.
On the other hand, contemplating all the time just how cruel and vain everything is left us depressed and unmotivated and eventually makes life useless and worthless.
Well, then maybe we could aim for the middle, aknowledge that our brain has a tendency to paint everything either pink or black, but that with some little effort it's not so hard to recognize these trends when they happen and navigate in between, and be realistically satisfied that we can actually achieve to do that and be happy without delusion?
but it isn't a lie. everything you said here is biased by your perspective on reality. everything you read here is biased by your perspective. everything i understand you said is biased by my perspective. it is a wonder any of us at all are able to communicate with each other ideas using words and body language. it is quite possible that we are all non-overlapping cognitive bubbles traveling around interpreting input never actually connecting or understanding each other in any real way.
Would it be different if I told you that what I wrote here is based on and confirmed by science?
When subject to the rigor of statistical confirmation then what I said is no longer a "perspective". It is a fundamental fact about reality as we know it.
Its nearly perfect if the sample size is big enough.
Barring that it's also the best we can do. There's no better alternative to science so you either believe in the science or you believe something significantly less accurate then science.
If you're not on board with science that has been thoroughly researched then it's akin to saying you're not on board with reality.
I feel like I'm on board with science. I have a PhD in physics and a position at a researcher both in an industrial research lab and part-time at a university. I spend most days thinking about something related to science.
But I also think about how we as individuals perceive reality and is there an objective perception of that reality? Often times our perceptions bias even what we choose to observe scientifically. This can blind us or make us stick to things even when they are no longer useful. For example, Sabine Hossenfelders criticism of inventing new particles with the only evidence being various unexplained statistical uncertainties [1]. Science is quite useful because it's a way to try and average our perceptions of reality such that we get an explanation that we all more or less agree with. But, most of these explanations are wrong in some way depending on what initial and boundary conditions you pick. That is, it's all about the perspective you choose when approaching a problem as to whether you ever arrive at a meaningful solution or not.
Different take on the headline: when I was little and scared at the doctor, my mom would distract me from shots etc. by telling me about how they work and all the science behind them.
I still do this at the doctor if I'm nervous about the procedure. Try distracting yourself by attempting to work through the details of what's going on. Even if you're wrong, it's a distraction and a good exercise, and maybe you can ask the doctor to clarify later.
Never works at the dentist, though. I can never tell what the heck is going on in my mouth.
I have a dentist who loves to use the little remote camera to show me everything about my teeth and let me tell you: it doesn't make it any better!
Totally agree on the "understand to remove fear" side of things though.
When I was learning stick shift I had a terrible time until, frustrated after I had stalled the car for the umpteenth time, my dad stopped the lesson on "what to do" and instead spent a few minutes explaining what was actually happening inside the clutch system.
Suddenly it all made sense and I understood what I was actuating and why the feedback was the way it was. I became proficient quickly after that.
My father in law was a tennis coach. When a kid kept screwing something up, he'd stop them and ask in quick succession: "What's the capital of Illinois? Texas? Vermont?"
The kid would then, invariably, be able to hit the ball again. Sometimes all you need is a focused distraction to be able to perform.
>Flying and survival stats if there's actually a serious incident.
This is such a bad contextualization of the risks if you actually know the stats on the matter, since there are ~600 million passengers per year and <600 (as in, fewer than a thousand) fatalities; you have less that one in a million chance to experience a "serious" incident - in fact, I'm pretty sure the definition of a "serious" incident in this context is "an incident that normally results in a large number of fatalities". Which makes your stat above very nearly a tautology.
My point is that this is very much an example of where internalizing the stats should make you feel safer, unless you're letting a cognitive bias (like anxiety) prevent you from actually internalizing the real risks.
I fly because I know the stats. I worry because the stats for survival are low (or worse, you actually survive the impact).
It also doesn't help that I live near a major airport and almost on a fortnightly basis we get reports of planes declaring minor emergencies and having to turn around or be diverted. Occasionally it may be bird strike/engine fire.
> General anaesthesia and the idea you are actually awake but forget
Do you mean that this happens for some people? For me, GA felt like a very deep dream where I didn't notice falling asleep but I definitely remember what I dreamed.
I think the parent poster if confusing general anesthesia from sedation [1]. If you got a colonoscopy or your wisdom teeth out, it was probably sedation. If you got major surgery where they cut a big hole in you, that's more likely to be general anesthesia.
"Twilight sedation" is pretty spooky from a philosophical perspective. You are somewhat aware of what's happening to you and are experiencing it in the moment. But you are unable to form long term memories of it, so after the procedure, it's like it didn't happen. But there was a point in time where they you that you were was at least somewhat conscious of the procedure.
Quite possibly, I don't know the difference - as a kid I had to have serious orthodontic changes to my teeth as none of my baby teeth fell out and grew to the size of adult teeth.
One of the last surgeries I had, which was breaking off 4 molars, I felt like I was going to explode breathing the gas - like really painful pins and needles everywhere, my eyes actually opened and I felt like they were rolling back into my head (think pain of a really bad migraine but in your eyes).
Fortunately they closed my eyes, and it stopped but I couldn't speak, next thing I know my mouth is being held open with a vice, very painful, but I couldn't see, couldn't talk (wouldn't have been able to anyway with the jaw vice).
Aside from remembering panicking further, and occasional fuzzy memory of pain followed by (I guess) being unconscious again, that's all I remember of being awake.
When they finished I had to be slapped hard across the face at the end multiple times (this was the 80s), probably because the anaesthesiologist had O/D'd me on realising I was still awake. I was later told they were considering taking me to hospital because I wasn't waking up - this was the last time I had dental surgery.
About 5-6 years later they banned the gas they used on me in the UK.
I may need some routine (real, hospital) surgery in a year or so, and now I can't stop thinking about last time I had the above, I even started googling chances of being awake etc etc (because it does happen) and really wish I hadn't.
The other aspect of twilight sedations is: do you feel pain and then lose the conscious memory, but retain the stress reaction's affect on your body?
And similarly for anesthesia: even if you don't feel pain, is your body having a stress reaction? Obviously yes to some extent, for the non-neural pathways that are physically insulted during the procedure, but what about for neural pathways?
I've helped a couple of family members who have gone under the sedation that you're talking about. I don't care how much more dangerous or more expensive general anesthesia is. I'm taking that option every time. I never ever want to be under the sedation you're talking about.
That sedation takes hours and hours to wear off, where you're worse than helpless. Completely memory free for hours after the surgery is over and can barely function. It's terrifying.
Meanwhile, when I've woken up from general anesthesia the few times I've been under, I'm almost immediately perfectly conscious and able to function on my own and remember things.
When I had my wisdom teeth out, I had a "dream" that I was on a old wooden mine-cart styled roller coaster with wheels that were sparking dramatically against the rails first on the left side, then on the right. (mirroring the teeth removal)
I asked my dentist a lot of questions and had them give me a tour of the shop. I was getting a crown and they showed me their CNC machine that took a 3D scan of the original tooth and scan of the nub after eroding it down and just perfectly machined a ceramic replacement.
The best dentist I ever had was as much a geek about all things dental as I am a geek about all things computers. He would happily describe, in great technical detail, every aspect of what he was doing, why, etc.
It was pretty awesome, and I left every visit feeling very positive about the experience.
There was this one time I had a prolonged dental operation, I was fully conscious, the dentist talked himself through a delicate situation while hunting in my mouth for the right angle to do it. And I thought suddenly, hey, it's just like me when I'm debugging! Cool!
What your doctor (and dentist, etc.) are really doing with you is exactly the same as what you do when you're debugging a program. Except that health care providers don't have the luxury of having a debugger or the ability to examine the "machine" state in accurate detail.
i did this with air disasters. i'd been terrified of flying for many years so i immersed myself in every kinds of media i could find on the topic. i found it oddly comforting (though i definitely overthink things whilst in the air at times). geeking out has helped me navigate some tense moments.
The audio recordings of pilots and air traffic controllers doing their best Chuck Yeager voice during a malfunction and going through checklists and binders and clipboards is immensely reassuring to me. There's contingency plans for all the contingency plans. Everyone involved made their bed well enough to bounce a quarter off of it that morning and (where applicable) trimmed their mustaches to conform to some NIST standard. The drilling! Such drilling.
A few years ago a passenger plane had a window blow out and some other problems. In the radio recordings the pilot, a former military flying instructor, sounded completely unperturbed.
Ha, you reminded me of when I got my vasectomy. Naturally a bit nervous, I was asking about everything the doctor was doing as he was doing it. It actually did help me get through the procedure with less nerves (it’s really not a bad procedure at all, just for anyones edification).
Hm, maybe it is that for some people, but for me, another large component is that understanding the procedure makes it less scary. The doctor isn't doing these mysterious horrible things and you don't know what's coming next. You do know, or at least suspect, what's coming next, so the fear of the unknown/unexpected is mitigated.
> Try distracting yourself by attempting to work through the details of what's going on.
This helped a lot with flying anxiety, once I could put a reason to most of the sounds and movements of flying I could relax a lot better. An unexpected one will get my attention though
I've heard that one of the greatest counters to fear is curiosity, and that people who tend to be more curious tend to also be less fearful. It makes sense when you think about it.
Objectivity is a totally different headspace. That's why critical thinking is so difficult. As unfamiliar and uncomfortable as it may be, it sure does have its advantages.
I'm 32 years old and I still have to do this whenever I get an injection. I have no idea what kind of trauma triggers this but I have an extreme phobia of needles, but I am a big supporter of vaccines. Every time I get a shot, I have to look away, and kind of go through the process of telling myself what the shot is doing and how it works.
I think the issue here is one of timescale and trading off short-term versus long-term joy/fulfillment. Playing games is often fun in the moment, and can certainly have a positive social component and can be challenging and build skills and in general be a way to blow off steam and decompress after a long day of work, similar to how many people watch TV.
But I have basically stopped playing games totally for the past decade, and I am so glad to have gotten all that time back to do other things which build up over time and then ultimately provide me with a lot more happiness, like learning new skills, reading scientific papers on ML/AI, learning how to use tools like Blender, reading biographies/history, etc. There is only so much time in a day, and when I look back on how many hours I spent during my mental prime playing stuff like Starcraft and Quake, I really wish I could have that time back and instead done other things.
Obviously this is just my take on it, and I'm not trying to shame anyone about playing games or saying they are bad. But I think it's wrong to focus on the upsides without at least being aware of what you might be trading off for that short term dopamine hit and fun.
I dont play a ton anymore- I used to be a 99th percentile gaming addict in my youth. But still sometimes it’s fine to not read scientific papers for recreation. Your brain needs rest too
I think this is mostly based on different needs at different times - most people play more games when they're younger and have more uncertainty in their life. As you get older there's less uncertainty and less need for things with semi-predictable outcomes. Doesn't mean you underestimated the benefit at the time - just that it's not as useful to you in this stage of your life
There's periods where I want to learn a bunch of new technologies, and other times when I can't. It's all time well spent just in different areas
I'm nearing 40 and in the past few years I've tried to focus more on "real world" activities (I've never lacked them, I just felt like gaming had less value). I've done well with this by spending time with my interests/pastimes; however, my work lately has been less stimulating. As a result, something has been missing.
Long story short, I realized I wasn't getting into a "flow-state" often enough and guess where you can get an easy fix of that? First-person shooters.. (for me anyway). I don't have 3+ hour-long sessions or anything, maybe just a round or two and it's like that first cup of coffee in the morning.
It's funny you speak of flow state here since for me reading up on MMORPG meta or any meta changes to any game is where I mostly focus on such that even before I launch a game I've been reading up on its mechanics and trying to understand it in an abstract way (the opposite of this for me is when I just play Stardew Valley since I just wanna fish or chat with the NPCs rather than figure out how to min-max my farm). The act of figuring out how a game works mechanically is just as fun as trying to play the game itself for me.
Why are you assuming the parent comment does not exercise? Or want to consume caffeine? Certainly those are worse long term than a 15 minute video game session.
Replacing even a small amount of your gaming time with consistent exercise goes so far.
Once you realize that you can actually achieve anything you set your mind to just by making a routine you will find yourself wanting to shift the time and effort going into games into real world success.
Never expected to see a healthcare site recommending WoW raiding!
If you're not careful, a game that addictive and time-consuming is a rapid route to weight gain, back pain, maybe even an unhealthy drinking habit...
(To be fair though, for those who enjoyed the game in it's early years, WoW Classic was really good 'comfort gaming' during the Covid period, but it's certainly added to lockdown weight gain)
For many truly sick people, including some cancer patients, weight gain is not a bad thing. An old prof of mine, a man dying of pancreatic cancer, once said to me "A whole life of the doctor telling me to exercise more, and suddenly he is worried about me loosing weight too quickly."
Just to take the comment seriously, when I kick it with buddies, I seem to be naturally attuned and attentive to my bodily needs way more than when I get sucked into a very addicting videogame, where after I finally snap out of the fugue state, a lot of my bodily needs are like, "WERE YOU NOT LISTENING TO US FOR THE PAST 2-3 HOURS OR SOMETHING?"
It's legit made me try to find videogames that are not that addicting, but not that boring, and it's extremely hard to find lol.
I've noticed when I begin to feel anxious (which for me is basically "health anxiety" that spirals) I get back into RuneScape (old school version), and it really helps get me back to a good place IRL.
Oh, I see how what I said can be taken both ways. I think we're on the same page actually: When I feel bad, I begin to play osrs, and then after a while I feel good again and usually stop playing. Then eventually the cycle repeats.
I think one of the things that has kept me from games over the past 6 months is the progression systems that are tricking me into wanting to play more. I mean, everything in moderation, and I'd like to finish Elden Ring, but family time, chores and work don't exactly leave much for hobbies like this that require all of your attention. (Audio books and podcasts in comparison allow for partial attention)
I guess I'm wondering more how high up some of these games can be on my bucket list when my time is already booked out.
I think it would be useful to play a simulation of cancer treatment that includes realistic odds of survival. It's difficult to grok the idea that you have an X% chance of surviving for Y months by just looking at the numbers, or that Z treatment will affect those odds for some cost in extra misery. Simulating the meaning of those odds by gameplay, watching your avatars live and die, suffering more or less, could give you a better gut feeling for your prospects and adjust your decision making accordingly.
My mom fought cancer and died slowly and badly. My dad, having lived through that, didn't fight it and went quickly. Some people have the opposite experience. It would be good to have a less expensive way to learn these lessons.
Video games basically allowed me to get through college. I accidentally implemented spaced-repetition learning by studying for an hour or so, then playing a game of League of Legends, then trying to recall what I had just studied previously.
Come hang out with us in VR Chat and engage in fiery debates similar to what you find on hackernews except in real time VR and you could actually punch someone maybe.
Just get a dedicated gaming rig that is only for gaming. I have one machine for browsing and general productivity which is more locked down, and another purely for games. And a third for all the illegal stuff.
Studies show that patients who played the[se] games responded better to chemotherapy, and had a much better understanding of the treatment process on the whole.
I'm surprised the article didn't cover "life" or simulation games since these are often seem to be relaxing games compared to more frantic games like MMOs. For me, Stardew Valley is my comfort game when I just wanna to turn off thinking for a little bit and go fishing or chat with Linus by the lake. Or go on a gift giving run. It just seems like you can kind of turn off your head and go with the flow in the game rather than trying to min-max. I'm sure there's tons of videos for Stardew Valley that focus on min-maxing but I'm glad I just ignore them otherwise, I'd be restarting my game to do that, no thanks.
After 2 years of lockdowns, playing Elden Ring basically saved my life. I had heard heard this a lot about the Souls series of games from other people, how the hardships and overcoming them in the game taught people how to overcome IRL hardshipand build character; never thought it would have happened to me though, I thought I had a pretty solid grasp of "adulting" and "real life" but being in lockdown nearly broke me.
In my experience, it depends on which game I'm playing. Some games reduce stress but others, like League of Legends, greatly increase my stress levels.
There's a number of games that I either play very briefly or avoid entirely because I feel more anxious and stressed after playing them.
Stress response depends vastly on the game. A lot of games will actually increase stress levels. Take Elden Ring for example, that game will make you sweat at almost every encounter. But it’s possible that this kind of exposure might make you more resilient to stress in the long tun.
this. I tried playing a variety of retro console games as an adult; most gave me unbearable anxiety within a couple minutes, especially platformers, side-scrollers and racing games.
With turn-based rpgs it came more slowly from the endless boring grinding.
Only non-timed puzzles were chill enough to play as a clinically anxious person.
This should be voted higher. People really want video games (and other things like certain drugs) to be innocuous and maybe even "healthy" but its just like any other instant dopamine rush, and can - and is often designed to be - addictive to keep you hooked and engaged in their product.
Imo a far better method than this is to exercise, walk outside, or play sports. These are natural dopamine boosts with little to no real downside.
the article mentions words with friends as if those games are something to be shunned.
maybe the social aspect is what improves your mood not video games, based on this it would seem that tabletop games would have the same if not better results considering real life social interactions.
I've recently (past ~5 years) stopped viewing the world pessimistically. I don't believe it's because I'm blindly optimistic, but because I didn't have the perspective to understand our ancestor's problems and how good of a life I had. It's pretty cool that I didn't die in 6th grade when I put that knife through my hand, that my knee doesn't lock anymore after having my meniscus removed, and pretty cool my wife survived to adulthood with unbelievably poor vision and asthma. It's pretty cool that a large portion of living is automated now by the systems around us, from food to cleaning, and that those systems are affordable enough that they're common place in most households. We've freed our societies up to focus on arts and science which has created a flywheel that keeps paying us greater and greater returns that we keep investing into arts and science.
Humans have done some cool things to conquer our basic nature and environment, and we continue to do cool things. Compared to other species we are absolutely killing it. Yes we suck compared to what we are going to be in the future, but that's the point!
Whenever I get a brief feeling of "this is bad," I remind myself that humans have conquered far worse than whatever "this" is and that we are likely to triumph over this thing too. Taking a second to appreciate what our species has accomplished, and "geeking out" about it, has helped improve my quality of life, thought I'd take a moment and share that with you.