An affective death spiral (or happy death spiral) occurs when positive attributes of a theory, person, or organization combine with the Halo effect in a feedback loop, resulting in the subject of the affective death spiral being held in higher and higher regard. In effect, every positive thing said about the subject results in more than one additional nice thing to say about the subject on average. This cascades like a nuclear chain reaction. This process creates theories that are believed for their own sake and organizations that exist solely to perpetuate themselves, especially when combined with the social dynamics of groupthink. Affective death spirals are thus a primary cause of cultishness.
The same process can also occur with negative beliefs instead of positive, leading to a death spiral of hate.
“In effect, every positive thing said about the subject results in more than one additional nice thing to say about the subject on average.”—I don’t know what this means, it sounds quite suspicious, and I think should be taken down until made clear. Vladimir Nesov 15:59, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
This is pretty much the core of what “Affective death spiral” means. If you don’t understand this than we might have different definitions of “Affective death spiral” in our heads. I will try to give an example. Suppose for every nice thing said you want to say an aditional 1.2 nice things on average. So if you hear 10 nice things, you will then want to say (10 * 1.2 = 12) 12 nice things aproximately. Those 12 nice things will generate aproximatly, (12 * 1.2 = 14) 14 aditional positive thoughts about the subject. And so on… This should not be taken too literaly. You can’t really calculate the amount of nice things that will be said in this way. However nice thoughts breeding more nice thoughts breeding more nice thoughts is what “Affective death spiral” means. --KP 16:35, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
The irrationality of your emotional disposition towards a subject isn’t measured in the “number of nice things to say”. What does it even mean? A rate of statements being pronounced? A size of a set of statements of length no more than 50 words implicitly classified “nice” in your current state? This doesn’t make sense. Vladimir Nesov 16:57, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
The idea of a nuclear like reaction with k > 1 comes directly from the source. Furthermore, it is the mathy core of the “Affective death spiral” concept. --KP 21:28, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Appeal to authority, and avoiding the question. You haven’t explained what your “number of nice things” means. k>1 is a general enough metaphor, while “number of nice things” remains meaningless to me, since you are still to explain your vision. --Vladimir Nesov 23:23, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
In this case “appeal to authority” is not a fallacy since we are arguing about the definition of a term invented by a single authority and we are not creating original research here but only trying to explain what was meant int the source. I’m not sure how to define “saying a nice/positive thing”. There is no complicated hidden meaning here. It literally means any meme that creates a positive emotional resposne leading to viewing the object of discussion favourably. Is that clearer?