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CronoDAS comments on Why is reddit so negative? - Less Wrong
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I'm sure that part of it is because there's an awful lot of things in this world to be negative about.
Well sure, but there are also a lot of nice things in this world to be positive about, and dwelling on the bad (at least in the ways that I perceive) isn't a good way to actually fix it.
I suspect, as knb mentioned, that a lot of this sort of thing comes from the fact that it's very easy to appear cynical, sarcastic, and jaded, and this attitude wins upvotes for a certain kind of facile wit and protects oneself from trolls.
There isn't anything in this world to be negative about. What does it benefit anything if I am miserable about suffering? Can we not notice problems and support solving them while also being positive?
Suffering in poor countries doesn't go away just because you are unhappy about it. It doesn't change at all based on how you feel about it, so why not feel happy about the people who have food and optimistic that starvation is solvable, for example?
This critique only makes sense if people choose how they feel about the world, and if the cost of choosing to not feel negative is smaller than the benefits that it renders. But barring attempts at self-modification, I don't think the first bit is true; people just unconsciously start having emotions about whatever it is they have a mental model of, including how they think life is.
Unconsciously -- that is the key. Emotions happen for reasons; if they seem to just happen, that only means that one does not know the reasons. But the reasons are always there, and can be uncovered. The discipline of noticing what one is feeling, and of asking, "what am I believing that leads me to feel this?" and "why do I believe that? is it true?" will in itself change what one feels.
Self-modification isn't a big deal -- we're all doing it all the time.
Nice, but why the incapacity to tell the difference?
It's funnier that way.
Also, Calvin is chaotic.