is there ever a time we should try to make ourselves believe things that we don’t necessarily have a good reason to think are true?
This is less the problem than the part where we already believe lots of things that we don’t have a good reason to think are true. Pessimists have a tendency to demand a higher burden of proof for positive thoughts than negative ones. If they were just as skeptical of their negative beliefs, more of the positive would get through!
That is, it’s not that we have to add a bunch of beliefs in order to be positive, it’s that we need to stop believing all sorts of pessimistic things, or at least believing that they’re relevant, or that they’re going to be a disaster.
If a thing you’re pessimistic about isn’t under your control, for example, then there’s probably no point worrying about it. And if it is under your control, then you could focus on the part where you can do something.
The part where we struggle is when we (in effect) spend lots of time arguing over whether we control something or we don’t, neither believing the matter is fully in hand, nor willing to dismiss it as not worth worrying about/not in one’s control.
So one’s pessimistic objections tend to be phrased as if out of one’s control. If you think about accomplishing something, the objection might be an absolute like, “you’ll never pull that off”, instead of the more accurate belief of, “you’ll never pull that off if you don’t make some changes from what you did last time”.
Bottom line: it’s not about what’s true or false, but about which thoughts are relevant to load into working memory. Many true things are not useful, and many useful things are only approximately true.
Just a couple of points on this discussion, which I’m sure I walked in at the middle of:
(1) One thing it illustrates is the important difference between what one “should” believe in the sense of it being prudential in some way, versus a very different notion: what has or has not been sufficiently well probed to regard as warranted (e.g., as a solution to a problem, broadly conceived). Of course, if the problem happens to be “to promote luckiness”, a well-tested solution could turn out to be “don’t demand well-testedness, but think on the bright side.”
(2) What I think is missing from some of this discussion is the importance of authenticity. Keeping up with contacts, and all the other behaviors, if performed as part of a contrived plan will backfire.
This is less the problem than the part where we already believe lots of things that we don’t have a good reason to think are true. Pessimists have a tendency to demand a higher burden of proof for positive thoughts than negative ones. If they were just as skeptical of their negative beliefs, more of the positive would get through!
That is, it’s not that we have to add a bunch of beliefs in order to be positive, it’s that we need to stop believing all sorts of pessimistic things, or at least believing that they’re relevant, or that they’re going to be a disaster.
If a thing you’re pessimistic about isn’t under your control, for example, then there’s probably no point worrying about it. And if it is under your control, then you could focus on the part where you can do something.
The part where we struggle is when we (in effect) spend lots of time arguing over whether we control something or we don’t, neither believing the matter is fully in hand, nor willing to dismiss it as not worth worrying about/not in one’s control.
So one’s pessimistic objections tend to be phrased as if out of one’s control. If you think about accomplishing something, the objection might be an absolute like, “you’ll never pull that off”, instead of the more accurate belief of, “you’ll never pull that off if you don’t make some changes from what you did last time”.
Bottom line: it’s not about what’s true or false, but about which thoughts are relevant to load into working memory. Many true things are not useful, and many useful things are only approximately true.
Just a couple of points on this discussion, which I’m sure I walked in at the middle of: (1) One thing it illustrates is the important difference between what one “should” believe in the sense of it being prudential in some way, versus a very different notion: what has or has not been sufficiently well probed to regard as warranted (e.g., as a solution to a problem, broadly conceived). Of course, if the problem happens to be “to promote luckiness”, a well-tested solution could turn out to be “don’t demand well-testedness, but think on the bright side.”
(2) What I think is missing from some of this discussion is the importance of authenticity. Keeping up with contacts, and all the other behaviors, if performed as part of a contrived plan will backfire.