Future not too optimistic for optimists

Post Reply New Topic

http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2011/03/ ... 299973911/

After seeing a decade of irrational optimism result in the worse financial crisis since the Great Depression, I can see how optimism leads to disaster on the aggregate level. It looks like it has a similar effect on the individual level, so the vices of optimism truly are fractal!

This post is probably confusing. I'm too lazy to write it more clearly.

Optimists are doomed to disappointment.

ruveyn

Oh, you want a long life? Listen to your granny, who tells you to quit hitting the booze so hard, complains that you "smell like an ashtray" if you happen to have been less than a half-mile downwind of a smoker within the past three months, still thinks that it's normal for women under 35 to have hems below the knee when there isn't a full-blown Call of the Wild snow storm, and doesn't seem to have gotten the memo that the Great Depression was over before she was even born. The old nag is right about everything except religion, and there are times that I wonder about that one.

The study doesn't prove that optimism will kill you. What it suggests is that blind optimism...that is, not thinking about the consequences of your decisions...is a little dangerous, and the perils of "taking your life too seriously" are wayyyy overblown.

I love how they relate it to optimism, rather than just being foolish and not assuming there will be any consequences.

Optimism has nothing to do with this study.

Good point, White Widow. I was trying to get at something like that, but you did it better and got closer to the mark. The study was talking about people who are prudent and studied in their decision-making versus people who tend to be "happy-go-lucky." An optimist can be serious and responsible, and the pessimist can be self-indulgent to the point of being fairly out-of-touch with reality in his own right.

Pessimistic optimism works best for me.
pure pessimism can cause depression,stress and anxiety which is terrible for your health.
The article should say that blind optimism is bad for your health. Otherwise the entire study is inaccurate.

I prefer cynical optimism; expect the best but carry hollowpoints...

Sorry, but I think I will stick to garden variety cynicism and live longer. Its most unfortunate that most optimists go through life and never see things for what they really are.

Anyone of you happen to be Cthulhu or any of the Elder Gods...?

(For non-Lovecraft fans: Lovecraftian literature has a dystopian theme where mankind is irrelevant in the great scheme of the universe anyway, so in a way only the clinically depressed have the most accurate, uncoloured view of reality, vis-a-vis "what's the point?")