
Reg Braithwaite on Optimism - raganwald
http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2009-05-01/optimism.md#readme
======
cubedice
It's fairly amusing to me that this essay can explain away the vast majority
of my existential angst. As much as I hate to admit it, I had an 'aha' moment
while reading this.

What I really enjoyed about this post was that it talked about using research
to come to an explicit algorithm to learn optimism. I could never swallow the
advice of many optimistic people in my life since they [through no fault of
their own, mind you ;)] were not usually hackers. As such, they would explain
in broad and nebulous terms how they achieved said happiness, which makes
sense, since--according to the essay--they see positives as general and
permanent. I would always focus on their seemingly obvious contradictions,
without really noticing my own. I guess I'm just glad someone finally pointed
that out to me.

~~~
GavinB
_As much as I hate to admit it, I had an 'aha' moment while reading this._

I know that feeling, but I wonder if that might be another tendency worth
training away. "Aha" moments are one of the greatest pleasures in life and
should be actively sought out.

Trying to always know everything is a tyranny from which I would like to
escape.

~~~
raganwald
At the risk of trying for the HN-discouraged "witty reply:"

 _I'm not young enough to know everything_ \--Oscar Wilde

------
gruseom
I have mixed feelings about Seligman. Those three concepts are indeed useful.
On the other hand, the experiments that made his name, though presumably
within the standards of the time, involved treatment of dogs so cruel that
it's hard to read about them without wondering what kind of person would do
such things. Basically they showed that, when randomly tortured, most dogs
become depressed (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness>).
Bizarrely, or perhaps naturally, these experiments turn out to have been one
of the inspirations for the CIA torture program. Seligman says he had nothing
to do with it, but he did have contact with the people who designed it and has
declined to publicly disagree with their application of his work
([http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/07...](http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/07/mayer-
on-seligm.html)). This is admittedly a weak link, but a notable one.

~~~
10ren
I noted the conceptual connection between "learned optimism" and "learned
helplessness", but didn't realize it was the same guy.

I want to expand on "randomly tortured" dogs. The electric shocks given
weren't damaging (though they were painful), it was the lack of power over
them was damaging, leaving the dogs hopelessly cowering in a corner. It wasn't
the torture that harmed them, but its arbitrariness. That is, the cruelest
part was not the torture itself. Knowledge can be used to harm people; but it
can also be used to help them, as Dr. Seligman has subsequently done with
"learned optimism".

I agree that giving electric shocks to dogs is a disturbing thing to do.

~~~
gruseom
_The electric shocks given weren't damaging_

According to whom?

~~~
10ren
Electric shocks that were damaging would defeat the purpose of the experiment.
It required a comparison between dogs that had some control over the shocks
and those that didn't (though both received exactly the same shocks). If both
dogs were harmed, it would be harder to differentiate the harm due to the
randomness.

Of course you may doubt their reporting of their own experiments. We only have
their word for it that they conducted the experiments at all.

------
jamesbritt
Thanks, Reg, outstanding article.

One great satisfaction in working with a group of people is getting to the
point where they know you pretty well and have solid estimation of your
skills. It frees you up to ask stupid questions without (or with less) concern
of being labeled a stupid person.

I think it was Marvin Minsky who said that children should be encouraged to
make mistakes, because that is how you learn. The dominated culture in the
USA, though, seems to tie individual instances of failure with an essential,
long-term, character deficiency.

------
NickSmith
This is a great article.

With regard to the 'call to action', I wouldn't under estimate the difficulty
in changing the context (duration, specificity or 'me'-centricity) of our
judgments because:

a) our need to judge is not causeless. It arises for our self-concept and

b) changing our thoughts is nigh impossible if they conflict with what we
fundamentally believe is true.

So this whole things comes back really to what we believe is true about
ourselves.. Is our self-concept true or is it a figment of our imagination?.
Our judgments, and therefore how we 'see' anything, arises from that. Like the
Paul Simon said, '...we see what we want to see and disregard the rest'

So how do we see what is true?

This is tricky because the mind that asks the question is the same mind that
has created the self-concept.... and so it can never reason it's way beyond
itself. We invest a lifetime justifying, aggrandising and clinging to the
thing we call 'me' and so seeing ourselves as we really are in not going to
happen using the old familiar tools.

It seems to me that to know the simplest of truths requires an openness that
few of us are used to -- no thinking, no talking, no reasoning, no
calculation, no busyness, no effort of any kind. Simply holding in mind what
it is we needs to know and leaving an open and welcome space to be able to
hear.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh nails this for me: "The sea does not reward those who
are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient..... Patience and faith. One
should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach – waiting for a gift from the
sea."

Can you see now why approach is particularly troublesome for hackers? We have
brought up to be value knowledge, reasoning skills and discourse... and
ashamed of ignorance. Yet it is ignorance that is called for!

So what to do?

Not the place to attempt that one here (perhaps a blog post) but it seems that
our own path through life is itself this process of becoming willing to let go
of our clinging to our pre-conceptions -- of answering the fundamental
question 'Who am I without my judgements'. Life will always find some way to
pry our hands away from clinging, even if our clinging is to the need to no
longer cling.

------
_pius
A thoughtful essay as usual, but I did chuckle a bit at the self-referential
3rd person in this particular headline. :P

~~~
raganwald
I wanted to distinguish between _raganwald_ the blogger and _Reg Braithwaite_
the person. This essay really was a Reg Braithwaite thing. But it is a
temporary measure ;-)

~~~
_pius
Ah, fair enough. I was hoping that the general, personal, and permanent nature
of my praise along with the temporary and specific nature of my criticism
would not be lost on you. :P

------
ob
I think it goes very well with this article about how to get big projects
done: [http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/11/getting-big-projects-
done-b...](http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/11/getting-big-projects-done-
balancing.php)

------
dmoney
For twittering, it might help to note that that "personal" and "permanent" can
be thought of as different forms of "general"; and "impersonal" and
"temporary" can be thought of as different forms of "specific".

~~~
raganwald
I made that connection as well, but I wanted to present Dr. Seligman's work as
directly as I could without editorializing it and then move on to discuss my
own opinion of how it relates to hacking and programmer culture.

He may have had extremely good reasons for maintaining the subdivision between
the three axes that are too subtle for me to grasp. For example, it could be
that when writing tests to identify optimism, he found that he could only get
a strong correlation between score and behaviour if he included questions from
all three groups.

I don't know :-)

------
tyn
This point of view looks a bit like taking the "blue pill" to me. It might
make you happier (in the "ignorance is bliss" sense) but I doubt it will make
you more succesful. If you attribute all your faults to bad luck and all your
success to being smart, great etc., you are not going to improve yourself
much, after all we learn a lot from our mistakes. I have to say, though, that
I haven't read the book, i just checked in internet to see what it is about.

~~~
raganwald
Have you read the book? As the essay says, I don't recommend you judge Dr.
Seligman's _research_ from my anecdotal summary of a book he wrote summarizing
his research for laypersons. I simply recommend you read the book and, if you
are so inclined, pursue his original research.

------
10ren
I like the idea of cognitive therapy (mind hacking), and this interpretation
of optimism/pessimism, but I get tripped up on the categories. It seems to me
that "permanent/temporary" is an instance of "general/specific". Even the
illustration of _permanent_ , "gems are always a pain", seems to be a
generalization from one gem to all gems. Although it uses the word "always",
the focus seems to be on the gems, not on time. I'd prefer not to be tripped
up by issues of categorization that don't really matter, so I welcome
clarification of this confusion. :-)

Fred Brooks claimed that programmers are optimists; but I've heard many people
claim that engineers are pessimists - and need to be. What can go wrong will
go wrong, so anticipate it. It seems that Dr Seligman has data showing that
his tests really do predict the success of salespeople - but do they predict
the success of engineers? Or... predict engineering success inversely? (Even
if true, programming is not exactly engineering; and of course a startup has
_at least_ as much sales as engineering, e.g. Jobs/Woz).

~~~
raganwald
_It seems to me that "permanent/temporary" is an instance of
"general/specific"._

As explained in another reply here, that occurred to me but I resist
summarizing it so. Although it seems to be trivially true, it may turn out
that if you collapse the categories in your mind you lose the benefits of
hacking your mind when you do that.

Also, collapsing things to the most "general" observation may be a
psychological turing tar pit, a place where "everything is possible but
nothing of interest is easy." If you only think of the most general aphorism,
it may require a lot of work to apply it to various situations. The "specific"
rules (personal/impersonal, permanent/temporary, general/specific) may require
three times the storage but be very easy and fast to apply.

I don't know, which is why I resist trying to editorialize. If I were a
psychologist, I would take a conjecture like that and test it. Which is often
the difference between pundits and scientists. A pundit wonders if such-and-
such is the case and writes an essay. A scientist wonders if such-and-such is
the case and then sets about trying to devise a means of testing the
conjecture.

I don't know if being pessimistic abut my code would make it better. I do know
that tending towards pessimism of the sort described by Dr. Seligman has made
me unhappy.

~~~
10ren
Thanks for your reply. I agree with you that speaking abstracting
_"permanent/temporary" is an instance of "general/specific"_. To be precise:
_temporary_ is an instance of _specific_ , over time. Categorizing an
explanation as _temporary_ means that it is contained within a _specific_ (and
short) period of time. (I also agree that concrete categories can often be
helpful in practice even if they aren't strictly necessary in theory.) That's
what I think you meant in your comment above.

But that isn't what I meant. My confusion is how to apply it - how to actually
categorize concrete explanations in practice? The example again "gems are
always a pain" seems to be generalizing over gems, and not over time.
Therefore, it would be a better example of _general_ rather than _permanent_.
A better example might be "this gem/Windows/linux/PC never works! It _always_
messes up, every single time I use it." My difficulty is that (it seems to me)
that every example can be recast in either form, because different events in a
person's life occur at different times - to generalize over events is to
generalize over time; and to generalize over time is to generalize over
different events.

It occurs to me that an explanation might be neutral along some of these
dimensions - an explanation might not be explicitly permanent, nor explicitly
temporary. Or one might have a default, and say "if it isn't explicitly
temporary, then it's permanent". eg, "they're just jealous because I'm smart"
doesn't mention time, so by default it is permanent. Or, there could be a
continuum along a dimension, corresponding to the size of the set generalized
over: only this one instance---similar events---absolutely everything (and
similar for the permanence/temporary dimension).

It might seem that I'm picking on your example, as not an ideal one to
illustrate permanent/temporary (which was its purpose). I am. But I make the
same kind of error (assuming it is one). And it seems to me that categorizing
something as more strongly along the general/specific dimension, or more
strongly along the permanent/temporary dimension seems arbitrary, and one can
do it just as one feels - there's no principle behind it. Perhaps it is still
useful, even without a principle behind it, but I'm uncomfortable with this.

 _Summary_ : I don't know how to classify an explanation as
"permanent/temporary" or "general/specific" in practice. [answered in replies]

Or maybe I just too much :-). But it was important to me to lay this out
clearly. [I haven't yet read your other reply that you mention - now read]

~~~
raganwald
_gems are always a pain_

"Gems" is general about gems, it suggests that all gems have this problem. And
"always" is permanent about time. The statement also implies impersonal: It
suggests this is true for everyone, as opposed to "I'm always flocking gems up
on my projects."

I chose that to illustrate just one of the three axes, but to my ear it sounds
like it is saying impersonal, general, permanent.

So I agree with what appears to be the general thrust of your argument which
is that an explanation might be neutral on one axes, or imply something about
one axis, or make statements about two or more axes.

I suppose this is why Dr. Seligman makes tests with many, many questions. You
need to aggregate a lot of explanations from one person to get a picture of
their underlying attitude toward positive and negative events.

~~~
10ren
I have been troubled by cognitive therapy techniques, because they are
implicitly intended to be used in the way that Seligman does. But they purport
to be truthful, when they are intended to be used in a biased way. If you use
them in a non-biased way (for example, to undermine good feelings, not just
undermine bad feeling), they'll make you feel bad.

That's what I like about the two levels of this definition of optimism: it
comes right out and says that it is biased, as a way of containing bad things,
and expanding good things. The categories at the second level (personal,
specific, temporary etc) appear to be just the same as cognitive therapy
techniques.

So... thanks for that. :-)

------
chris11
I really like his suggestion on differentiating praise and criticism.

I have already been depersonalizing criticism though. I basically started to
believe that I am much more than the sum of my problems or difficulties. But
while criticism isn't personal, nobody owes me help and I'm the only one who
has the responsibility of dealing with it. Of course I can still take
criticism personally, but I'm at least forcing myself to focus on finding
things that I can do to solve the problem.

------
cyunker
"plural of anecdote is not data"

Yes it is. It's just not (or probably not) statistically significant.

~~~
jibiki
That's what the saying means. "The plural of anecdote is (probably) not
statistically significant data" is not very catchy. Imagine if you had to say
"a rolling stone (most of the time) gathers no (or at least very little)
moss."

~~~
cyunker
Yeah, I understand the intent of the phrase, I just think it's a bad way of
putting it.

By the way, I did enjoy the Optimism presentation. I didn't mean to take away
from it with my nitpick.

------
visitor4rmindia
"Learned Optimism," by Dr. Martin Seligman is going on my to-read list!

------
octane
Why is everything written by a Ruby programmer so damn long-winded?

~~~
alexfarran
Funny. So what's the optimistic version of that comment?

How about:

I'm always interested in the thoughts of other programmers. This article is a
bit longer than I have time for at the moment. Would anyone care to summarise?

~~~
gruseom
Maybe you're not serious, but the thought of people communicating that
smarmily makes my skin crawl.

~~~
alexfarran
Well its a serious question. There's definitely value in the ideas of
Seligman. But it requires skill to apply them in conversation the way Reg
suggests without sounding overly deferential and false. Depersonalising
criticism where appropriate seems a reasonable approach. Often the
personalisation is just a habit that doesn't actually express your intention.
Prefacing every criticism with praise could get very old very quickly.

~~~
10ren
As with a lot of mind hacking (aka self-help), the key is to apply it to
oneself, not to others. Turns out people don't like being hacked (get out of
my mind!) And to apply it to ones operational thinking, not to how one
expresses oneself.

But a discussion of _how_ to apply it to ones own thinking can be a helpful
preparatory exercise. In that spirit, and with apologies to the parties
involved (the OP is obviously having a joke anyway):

Definition of "optimism": good things are explained as personal, general and
permanent; and bad things are explained as impersonal, specific and temporary.

(1) _Why is everything written by a Ruby programmer so damn long-winded?_

This is describing a bad thing (long-windedness). "Everything" is _general_.
"Ruby programmer" is _impersonal_ wrt to the speaker (it's personal wrt those
programmers as a class, but impersonal wrt Reg - but I don't think these are
relevant)."Everything" is also _permanent_ , as it includes every time an
essay is written, and there is no explicit limit to when such essays will
cease being written (not the interminableness of any individual essay). An
_optimistic_ explanation for a bad would be impersonal, specific and temporary
- this one is impersonal, but it's general and permanent. So it's mostly, but
not completely pessimistic. A more pessimistic version is:

\- _Why am I always so slow at reading everything?"_

(2) _I'm always interested in the thoughts of other programmers. This article
is a bit longer than I have time for at the moment. Would anyone care to
summarise?_

This is also about something bad ("longer than I have time for"). "I" is
_personal_ wrt to the speaker ("I don't have time"; in contrast, the article
is only "a bit longer" - the problem is mine, not the articles). "At the
moment" is _temporary_. "This article" is _specific_. An _optimistic_
explanation for a bad would be impersonal, specific and temporary - this one
is personal, specific and temporary, so it is mostly, but not completely
optimistic. This definition of optimistic isn't the same as "nice", "kind" or
"positive". A more optimistic version is:

\- _This article is too long to read right now_

( The other sentences aren't part of the explanation (and maybe aren't
explanations at all?), but anyway, the preface is about a good thing and is
personal, general, permanent; the epilogue is an action step about a good
thing, and is impersonal, permanent, specific. )

