Thus spake Douglas Roberts circa 10-02-17 09:28 AM: > Can you point to a study which validates this contention, Owen? Or is it > more of an opinion? > > Mine (opinion) is that pessimism is largely born out of experience.
I caution you from going down the false dichotomy rabbit hole. Optimism and pessimism are not disjoint, nor are they simple. One can take a pessimistic view when criticizing, say, a publication or theory, but be an optimist in general. Likewise, one can be a generally depressed person (typically associated with pessimism) but consistently put forth optimistic rhetoric. I suspect it's relatively common for one to be pessimistic in some domains and optimistic in other domains, as well. I also suspect that people oscillate between degrees of optimism and pessimism over time. And don't forget the research that claims competent people tend to be optimists regarding the competence of their fellows and pessimists regarding their own competence. So, there is clinical psych evidence that _validates_ (i.e. fails to falsify) both extremes of the false dichotomy; but validation is much less useful than one might think, because validation is a form of induction from the actual results of the experiments, generalizing up to the hoity-toity "conclusions" of the end user. My guess is that effective and efficient realists are born of an adaptive mixture of pessimism and optimism. Anyone who is dominated by either mode, especially if the mode doesn't change in correlation with changes in the environment, probably has a very inaccurate view of reality. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
