‘Hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper’. - Francis Bacon
“Hope is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions. It's a sort of spiritual clap, I should say.” Miller, Henry
‘Hope is just the desire for things to go the way you would like them to. Hope is never necessary, although 'hoping' isn't necessarily a bad thing. You could say that 'hoping' is bad as it can give illusions of fulfilling your desire, while hope itself cannot change the outcome of a situation itself’. – Random Internet user
‘I believe that I am an optimist rooted in reality. While I agree with you that realism is important, I fear that it might prevent people from visualizing a better world and discourage people from trying to influence positive changes in the world. This is why I struggle to understand why optimism, by itself, is bad.
‘Finally, I think the argument here is about unrealistic optimism and what most people can handle and in that I agree with you that rosy eyed optimism is bad but I thnk that most people do need optimism bias as they can't handle realism without slipping into depression’. - Justuju
After arguing for months with Unawoken that optimism bias is a good thing and that most everyone needs optimism to keep going in life, I am slowly changing my mind. I was pretty convinced that average people cannot handle reality in all its starkness, whether it is a boring job, a failing marriage, dysfunctional kids, not meeting one’s own expectations or any such number of things. I used to think that they need to convince themselves that the picture is rosier than it really is to keep on living, to get through each day. Just a little bit of squinting of the eye, selective hearing and careful exclusion of negative thoughts should do the trick, I thought. Well, I ‘m not so sure of it any more.
Even though there are research papers that say that positive illusions promote psychological well being, I’m wondering if they studied more young people than middle to older aged people. It’s possible that for older people, mental well being just means that it keeps them from going into depression. I can believe that younger people are more optimistic about their future and a little set back with a dose of realism will not stop them from keeping their hopes up and trying new things and thus achieving mental well being. As we get older, and as doses of reality come at a more frequent rate, we might decide that just day-to-day survival is more important than achieving something big so we might start glorifying our current lot in life more than what it really is and thus are optimistically biased because of necessity.
But, I am starting to think that in a lot of case, optimism bias or ‘hope’ (When I use the term ‘hope’ here, I mean ‘hope that is not based on reality’, to keep things simple) could actually be bad. A positive illusion might keep people tied to a given situation (thinking that the situation is better than it really is) and an unrealistic optimism that somehow things will improve by itself might prevent them from trying something new. Yes, I realize that my previous statement looks to be contradicting itself but let me explain. I think even a person with positive illusions has moments of clarity or attack of reality and they see the situation for what it really is, but then they may either pretend that situation is not so bad or convince themselves that things will improve miraculously. If one is in a mediocre boring job, they might just stick around hoping that one day things will get better instead of seeing the realistic track record and searching for a new job. They might be even telling themselves that their job is actually better than it really is. If one is in a non-working relationship, he/she might refuse to see the fact that the other person is not as committed to the relationship as they are and might keep hoping that things will somehow magically improve. When a woman puts up with an abusive husband, I’m quite sure that she is ‘hoping’ the husband will somehow see that he’s being bad and improve himself. She might be telling herself that her situation is not so bad after all. (“Oh well, even though George doesn’t help around the house and orders me around and beats me when he gets angry, look at Mrs. Adams next door, her husband beats her up every day, so my life is so much better” kind of thinking). I’m sure there are more examples of inaction due to false hopes such as keeping stocks in a bad company, hoping that someone else will take care of the environment etc. that I don’t’ need to go into.
Of course, we could be using our optimism bias to feel better about our own laziness. For example, I keep hoping that the answer to what my passion in life is will fall into my lap one day and that it will give me major satisfaction and that will make me feel better about myself. I keep this hope up, day in day out, while doing the same sort of things I do all the time only because I’m too lazy to go searching for it and put effort into that search. I don’t know if I ever will face the reality that nothing will just miraculously appear to me and that I have to work hard for it, but then, I have hope that I’ll be able to face that reality and it will free me from my optimism bias ;)
5 comments:
Recent research shows that girls develop a sense of "realism" (i.e. getting away from romantic daydreaming, to focus on the harsh realities of their current situation) at around age 10, while for boys it takes till after 11.
More recent research also shows that "forgetting the sad/depressing" events of our past (that paved the way for seemingly flawed realities in our existence today) is a prime coping mechanism. People use marijuana to rewire their brains by exercising this kind of "selective memory" tuning, to cope better with disease, pain, or trauma. In fact, it is even probably the reason why soldiers with PTSD need this kind of chemical coping as well.
I think it is only human to
a) want to forget bad stuff
b) want to imagine good stuff
If the backward looking bias is forgiven (or overlooked by Unawoken, as "uninteresting"), then so should the forward looking one, no? If you are starting to give up the battle for hope, you guys better put in some applications to the US federation of Goths.
Both will get rejected, of course, because it is universally known that all goths are either superhot (usually redhead) white women, or superfat (usually brunette) girls.
Maybe time would be better spent on identifying some projects on homelessness, social justice, or social work (for retarded children, struggling elders etc.), and get deeply into that to better understand WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN through direct experience of other people's realities and value systems, instead of just reading, and reading, and reading and more reading...
Also, maybe worth hanging with some Goths to see how they see this whole debate on realism versus optimism. I just had to offer up the advice.
Also, you should read the literature on happiness (which Unawoken has plenty of), and understand that both Hope (or optimism) and Selective Forgetting (or a rosy view of our past) are just "integrals" of our "Happiness Seeking" behavior.
Hope is the forward integral into
+infty (over a domain that starts with our own life path, but can extend to a larger swathe of related, touched, led, influenced or affected people).
Selective forgetting is the backward integral back to t=0 (over similar domains, but is usually a smaller domain, since we have already driven past it, and know it more completely).
Happiness seeking is core to the human condition. It is also a zero-sum game, in that, to be happy, one must experience and benchmark the relative unhappiness of others in the social network. That "search" for happiness comes from the Hunter-Gatherer's innate Loss Aversion asymmetry (which I believe is grounded in the optimal foraging algorithms for an omnivore).
Philosophically, I am disappointed that you are giving up on keeping the flame alive for hope/optimism. Lets see what the Unawoken has to say about this.
Ok let me break this up into two parts. First, I will respond to justuju, then I will respond to carpe diem.
Justuju: I agree with what you want to say in this post, and the main thrust of it. I epecially agree with the ending 1.5 paragraphs. I do think that "optimism", "optimism bias" and "hope" all kind of running into each other in the terminology, and they are perhaps not that easy to separate, and it will take us some effort to weed through the differentiation.
But let me just skip to the end of it, which is the important part to me, and which is why I keep pushing this debiasing.
"someone else will take care of the environment etc. that I don’t’ need to go into.
Of course, we could be using our optimism bias to feel better about our own laziness. For example, I keep hoping that the answer to what my passion in life is will fall into my lap one day and that it will give me major satisfaction and that will make me feel better about myself. I keep this hope up, day in day out, while doing the same sort of things I do all the time only because I’m too lazy to go searching for it and put effort into that search. I don’t know if I ever will face the reality that nothing will just miraculously appear to me and that I have to work hard for it, but then, I have hope that I’ll be able to face that reality and it will free me from my optimism bias"
This is the main thrust of my argument, and this is the point. Optimism bias blinds you to stuff that you can get done, and problems you can face and get over, and to give up on things that you can find that you have no control over, and so on. I am not against hope in this sense: "I want tomorrow to be as good as I can make it to be". In fact, I am so much for this hope, that I want to address all my faults in all their clarity today.
Carpe Diem,
Agree about coping mechanisms. Also agree about temporarily not seeing reality for what it is when you are going through the following and similar: depression, mourning, transitions in jobs and relationships
--- in general transitory conditions that may hamper your ability to temporarily be unable to process stuff clearly.
Also about making use of other aids for the same (optimism bias is a particular kind of coping aid)
First of all, the backward looking bias is not uninteresting. Backward-looking realistically is key to understanding your strengths, weaknesses and interests. Secondly, there is indeed an assymetry which is that you can do something about your future, and you cannot about your past.
Ok whatever about goth.
While I agree that first hand experience is powerful, I will not dismiss reading because reading is a quick way of assimilating lots of human-hours of experience at a much faster rate than 1 hour/hour (rate of 'actual' experience)
"Happiness seeking is core to the human condition. It is also a zero-sum game, in that, to be happy, one must experience and benchmark the relative unhappiness of others in the social network."
-- Whaa? Ok you are loosely using economics terminology here, and you are the economics guru at least on relative terms. Happiness can be a non-zero-sum game. Just one example, two people in love are both happy in the relationship game. Please be more precise on this so we can address it.
I disagree that you have to know the unhappiness of other humans to be happy. I mean this is trivially untrue, so I don't know if I should still try to refute it.
I am for gaining empathy by interacting with lots of diverse human beings
--- happy, unhappy, neutral, etc. This is not to increase my happiness, but to better understand and live the human condition more deeply. "Some drink deeply from the fountain of life and others just gargle", and the I want to be a deep-drinker and not a gargler. Not to make myself happier.
It is true that a lot of our cues regarding wellbeing come from others, and from relative statuses. However, while I acknowledge this, I do want to correct for it, and I know that total correction is not possible, but partial correction
is, and that is what I am going for.
Carpe Diem:
The main point of my blog was to point out the downside of optimism bias. As I mentioned there, until now, I was only looking at why people need optimism bias but I wasn't looking at how it can cripple one from facing reality and moving on. If you watch the movie "The informant", you can see where I'm getting at with that thought. Solely depending on optimism bias can be like a house of cards I think.
Having said that, I am not giving up on hope/optimism. I absolutely need it to live on and that is also reality. Every time I find myself making a mistake or failing at something, I try to see what or where I went wrong and make a resolve to do better next time. I "hope" to do better next time even though there are no guarantees that I will follow through. But, without that hope, I could not face tomorrow. I just want to limit my hopes to those that are based on reality.
About getting first hand experience in understanding what it means to be human, I think there's merit there. I also think Unawoken is right that reading can help you assimiliate that knowledge better and faster. It suits him coz he has such an analytical mind. While I don't think first-hand experience is superior to reading and assimilating, I think it has other side benefits which should be considered, one is that it will get yourself out there with people and stop focusing so much on oneself. Secondly, if you pick a project like homelessness or something like that, it might make you feel better about doing something. The only problem is, I've been too much focused on my own problems and issues lately that I haven't done anything of that nature. But, there's still time for it.
Unawoken:
"Some drink deeply from the fountain of life and others just gargle", and the I want to be a deep-drinker and not a gargler.
This is a fine ideal and I agree with you completely but I'm worried that one can focus too much on understanding from a theoretical and analysis level that one can miss out on experiencing things. To drink deeply from the fountain of life, I believe you also have to put yourself out there, interacting with people and elements. It can range from simple things like going out for a walk in the nature to being involved with extreme sports or from a saying a simple hello to a stranger to putting your heart out in love to get it trampled on. All of these acts require effort but I think are essential to life.
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