Hello all,
This is sort of a random topic, but I've been looking at various online communities and was struck by how pessimistic and negative many are. I perceived this most notably on reddit, but some other places are like this too-- there seems to be a general aura of discontent, an attitude that society in general is corrupt, and so on. Does anyone know why?
As I see it, redditors in general are:
There's been somewhat more pessimism about economic matters in the last year, which I'm guessing is due to a combination of the financial crisis and media coverage about the financial crisis. Also, being mostly liberal, there's been extra pessimism about politics because of disillusionment with Obama, adding to the already-existing pessimism about politics that occurs because redditors, despite being broadly liberal, tend to like hopeless fringe political movements and candidates like drug legalization [2], Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul).
Edit: As lucidfox pointed out, the term "male introverts" was poorly chosen. It's not a very accurate descriptor for the category I was trying to point to. I am a male introvert myself, and I'm as socially successful as I currently care to be. But I think the cluster I meant is fairly well-known - bitter, socially inept faux-Nice Guys with entitlement problems. Reddit has an unusual density of those guys.
Edit: I agree with NancyLebowitz's caveat: drug legalization is a viable long-term goal. But it's a dispiriting cause in the short-term.
Agreed. But if Californian baby boomers won't vote to legalize a widespread safe and therapeutically useful drug when it's also a magic wand that will disappear their impending budget crisis...
They say people overestimate what changes are possible in the short term, and underestimate in the long term. Let's hope.
and sometimes towards the perceived enemies of male introverts (including women and socially successful men).
You speak as if "introverted" and "socially successful" are mutually exclusive. The latter is a vague ill-defined concept, anyway.
You speak as if "introverted" and "socially successful" are mutually exclusive
Good point. It is shyness that is more reliably exclusive with social success.
he latter is a vague ill-defined concept, anyway.
Not vague enough that it would weaken the point. It refers to a usually well understood property of the human experience.
There's apparently enough positivity that people complain about it (not that that's necessarily much given biases).
A couple of reasons:
It's easier to be negative than to be positive.
In status games played at the level of teenagers (of whatever chronological age), by criticising something you place yourself above it, but by praising it you place yourself at or below. This is a strong motivation for the immature to be negative about everything.
Going off on a bit of a tangent from this:
This is one reason I don't read reddit. (The other is that a collection of stuff selected only by the criterion "someone thought this link worth sharing" isn't going to have a significant proportion of stuff I want to read. It will just be a useless distraction.)
For the same reason, I don't read sucks sites in general, e.g. xkcdsucks.com or lesswrongsucks.com, I mean, talk about writing down your bottom line first. I don't even read badscience or Pharyngula, sterling service though they do in the cause of rationality. There's enough bad science out there for them to be free of the bottom line fallacy, but I don't need to read them torpedoing idiocy every day, however deserving their targets. It's good that they exist, but I'm not bookmarking their RSS.
As a rule of thumb, I'm not interested in what someone is against until they've said what they're for, which makes Mencius Moldbug a great deal less interesting for me than he would be if he wrote more on what he would replace the Modern Structure with than on how vile it is.
The rule of impro, that "No" is always a bad move, and all good moves have the form "Yes, And", can be applied to every area of life.
As a rule of thumb, I'm not interested in what someone is against until they've said what they're for, which makes Mencius Moldbug a great deal less interesting for me than he would be if he wrote more on what he would replace the Modern Structure with than on how vile it is.
I'm not a Moldbug expert, nor much of an enthusiast, but I can tell you where to find the essays you're looking for. There's a tagged list of Moldbug's posts here. The essays you're looking for are tagged patchwork. You could also check out the essays tagged neocameralism if you have a lot of time to kill.
In addition to cynicism being popular right now, revealing that you care about something constitutes exposing a weakness to be attacked. Acting like you don't care about anything avoids giving your enemies the opportunity to hurt you.
Some (weak) evidence that pessimists tend to be more accurate (and hence communities that value truth highly would tend to have more pessimistic people):
Research shows that relative pessimists are more accurate at gauging success and failure rates at a simple laboratory task than optimists, who undercounted failures and overcounted successes, says Edward Chang, associate professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. Also, evidence shows that pessimism can be highly motivational, as what's called "defensive pessimism" drives people to achieve their goals.
Relatedly, I'm also struck by how unpleasant and nasty people can be in some places -- often without actually violating any forum rules or other taboos, but just by such behaviors as aggressively denying status to others and being logically rude in the extreme.
Similarly to NancyLebovitz, I'd strongly question the assumption that reddit even is negative. Can you provide any good examples of this? Are you sure you don't just confuse disagreement or unexpected levels of directness with actual rudeness and pessimism?
Personally, I think reddit is one of the most friendly places I hang out on. The only sites that are even nicer and more optimistic are (more or less) rational learning communities, but that's really selection bias. Cynical pessimists don't tend to tackle hard problems.
This is the default that happens with online communities. LW is the exception, not the rule. I can think of many possible reasons why we got lucky, but cannot test them.
Are you sure that LW is that different? How much time is spent complaining about the lack of rationality in the general public, or discussing how common cognitive biases are? While nominally that helps us improve ourselves, a fair bit could be easily classified as negative.
I guess for the topic of this forum, I should ask whether you were objectively looking for forum attitudes either way, or whether you set out to seek negativity and, with confirmation bias, found it?
I've noticed this general pattern on the internet generally. My guess is that being optimistic makes you vulnerable to mockery. Most people won't openly mock you in real life, but with anonymity on the internet, mocking is extremely common.
The most optimistic places on the Internet are also the ones with norms of niceness. Especially places where niceness is vigorously enforced by moderators. The nicest/most optimistic comments section I can think of is on this guy's high-traffic blog..
The nicest/most optimistic comments section I can think of is on this guy's high-traffic blog..
The cynic will point out that Ferriss has a direct financial incentive in having 'nice' (read gullible?) 'optimistic' (self-deluded?) comments. One of the nicest, least-critical places on Reddit is the 'circlejerk' subreddit.
I really disagree. I think there is a huge difference between the specific, nonpersonal, criticism Louie got and the deep cynicism ubiquitous personal abuse and negativity that dominate most online discussions.
For negative things here, perhaps see: Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear
Another important idea in the area is: The smoke detector principle. Natural selection and the regulation of defensive responses.
See also: Why Comments Snark
Here's a wild guess:
I'm sure that part of it is because there's an awful lot of things in this world to be negative about.
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?
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?
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.
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.
Calvin: You know what I pray for?
Hobbes: What?
Calvin: The strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can't, and the incapacity to tell the difference.
Hobbes: You should lead an interesting life.
Calvin: Oh, I already do!
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.
Relatedly, I'm also struck by how unpleasant and nasty people can be in some places -- often without actually violating any forum rules or other taboos, but just by such behaviors as aggressively denying status to others and being logically rude in the extreme.