This is awesome! Some notes I made during reading:
Predictions are important for motivation. If you predict success, it is easy to start doing something (unless you only “predict” success verbally, but are secretly scared of failure); if you predict failure, what’s the point, right?
I know some depressed people who almost always predict that things will go wrong, if you ask them for their opinion. (An interesting exception are their jobs, where I guess that over the years they have already collected tons of evidence that they are actually very competent at it. Oh, but they stay at the same place for decades, I assume because they predict that changing the job would not end well.) It took me some time to realize that discussing my plans and dreams with them is a really bad idea; the depression is quite contagious when they explain to me how everything I am planning to do will obviously fail. On the other hand, I also know depressed people whose depression is not contagious, because their negative predictions are limited to things they do.
(Ironically, one of those contagiously depressed people is a big fan of “positive thinking”… except they completely fail at the use/mention distinction, so they mostly use “positive thinking” to generate predictions such as “yet another reason why your plans will fail is your lack of positive thinking”. It is fascinating to see how a knowledge of a concept like this can be used as a weapon against yourself and anyone who listens to you.)
Yes, it is important to distinguish between emotional support (people willing to listen to your dreams, who let you elaborate the details and make the entire thing more visible) and social pressure (people who turn your dreams into obligations, and in worst case keep reminding you of all your previous dreams you failed to accomplish). The former is helpful, the latter not so much. Suppose that discussing a plan with your friends increases the probability of success from 10% to 30%. That is a great thing… unless those friends start to remind you later that your plans actually have a 70% failure rate, which can easily make your brain go “okay, so the most likely outcome is failure, right? why am I even trying...”.
This is awesome! Some notes I made during reading:
Predictions are important for motivation. If you predict success, it is easy to start doing something (unless you only “predict” success verbally, but are secretly scared of failure); if you predict failure, what’s the point, right?
I know some depressed people who almost always predict that things will go wrong, if you ask them for their opinion. (An interesting exception are their jobs, where I guess that over the years they have already collected tons of evidence that they are actually very competent at it. Oh, but they stay at the same place for decades, I assume because they predict that changing the job would not end well.) It took me some time to realize that discussing my plans and dreams with them is a really bad idea; the depression is quite contagious when they explain to me how everything I am planning to do will obviously fail. On the other hand, I also know depressed people whose depression is not contagious, because their negative predictions are limited to things they do.
(Ironically, one of those contagiously depressed people is a big fan of “positive thinking”… except they completely fail at the use/mention distinction, so they mostly use “positive thinking” to generate predictions such as “yet another reason why your plans will fail is your lack of positive thinking”. It is fascinating to see how a knowledge of a concept like this can be used as a weapon against yourself and anyone who listens to you.)
Yes, it is important to distinguish between emotional support (people willing to listen to your dreams, who let you elaborate the details and make the entire thing more visible) and social pressure (people who turn your dreams into obligations, and in worst case keep reminding you of all your previous dreams you failed to accomplish). The former is helpful, the latter not so much. Suppose that discussing a plan with your friends increases the probability of success from 10% to 30%. That is a great thing… unless those friends start to remind you later that your plans actually have a 70% failure rate, which can easily make your brain go “okay, so the most likely outcome is failure, right? why am I even trying...”.