Don't Be Such A Downer.
I've been told that I am a negative person. And of course, I don't think I am. My motivated reasoning kicks in and immediately tells me that I can't be that negative. But then I stop to think about it and realize that I might be, after all. Always looking at the phone for the news-break --which are generally negative. Sharing the latest story about a potential pandemic, or about locust swarms blanketing africa, or about the potential WWIII-triggering assassination of an Iranian Commander. Or about the Puerto Rico earth-quake.
Reflecting upon that, I've settled upon a couple of ideas. Yes, I pay more attention to the negative stuff. And I share it as soon as I can (at least the significant parts). But I don't think that makes me negative. I think that makes me human. I am, just like everyone else, equipped with a bunch of mental quirks that make me (and you) gravitate towards anything threatening around you.
When we are reminded of all the progress that humanity has achieved (falling homicide rates, less wars, less deaths from terrorist attacks, lower poverty rates, higher life expectancy rates) we more or less ignore the bright side and fall back to focusing on the threat of the day. Why? Because we were bred this way by nature. 6,500 generations of humans since we became anatomically modern selected certain traits that make us care more about dangers than about positive stuff. That's what's made us loss averse. We assess downsides more importantly than the equivalent upside. In the words of Arthur Schopenhauer: "we feel pain, but not painlessness." Why? Because in the environment of our wild ancestors, the cost of underreacting to a threat equaled death. The cost of overreacting? Negligible. No wonder why we all err on the side of caution on these kinds of matters. Nobel prizes have been given to people who developed these ideas.
We are also an ungrateful bunch. Or at best, forgetful. Due to this other quirk (called recency bias), we only keep in our memories the fairly recent events. In a world in which we are constantly progressing, we very soon stop to be thankful that women don't (save for extreme cases) die in childbirth anymore, or that children don't die of a common cold anymore. Or that polio is no longer with us. All this progress is in the bank. And after a while we don't even think about it. Because those gains are ours: part of our status quo. We adapt to increases in standards of living quite fast. It's called hedonic adaptation, and it's what's behind that dreadful void in the soul that keeps you from experiencing the euphoria you thought you'd get once you got that one thing you had longed for so long, but the moment you get it you're surprised to discover you feel nothing.
Oh, but don't you dare threaten my standard of living. My status quo is sacred, you see. Any threat to it, and we guard it with tooth and nail. My loss aversion might have served to guard my life in the hunter-gatherer days from a sneaky saber-tooth cat. Nowadays it serves me to protest Google's monstrous decision to cap their storage limit for Gmail (the gall!).
So, when the media industry came up with its dictum "if it bleed, it leads" they were simply cashing in on our quirks. Social media pretty much exists because of them. Politicians weaponize them against ourselves for political gain. One for them excels at it. They all know that bad news travel faster than good ones, and there's money to be made with that flow. What an unfortunate manifestation of maladaptation.
The burden, of course, is placed on us, the consumer of information. The famous "noise versus signal" dilemma forces us to be diligent and triage what's really threatening from what's really sensationalist. The key is in being aware of the true nature of the threat presented, and not succumbing to despair at the first sign of an unwanted event. Not paying attention to the negative news is hard (unless you go off the grid), and dissecting all that's thrown at you is tiring.
Easier said than done, of course. I should know.
Reflecting upon that, I've settled upon a couple of ideas. Yes, I pay more attention to the negative stuff. And I share it as soon as I can (at least the significant parts). But I don't think that makes me negative. I think that makes me human. I am, just like everyone else, equipped with a bunch of mental quirks that make me (and you) gravitate towards anything threatening around you.
When we are reminded of all the progress that humanity has achieved (falling homicide rates, less wars, less deaths from terrorist attacks, lower poverty rates, higher life expectancy rates) we more or less ignore the bright side and fall back to focusing on the threat of the day. Why? Because we were bred this way by nature. 6,500 generations of humans since we became anatomically modern selected certain traits that make us care more about dangers than about positive stuff. That's what's made us loss averse. We assess downsides more importantly than the equivalent upside. In the words of Arthur Schopenhauer: "we feel pain, but not painlessness." Why? Because in the environment of our wild ancestors, the cost of underreacting to a threat equaled death. The cost of overreacting? Negligible. No wonder why we all err on the side of caution on these kinds of matters. Nobel prizes have been given to people who developed these ideas.
We are also an ungrateful bunch. Or at best, forgetful. Due to this other quirk (called recency bias), we only keep in our memories the fairly recent events. In a world in which we are constantly progressing, we very soon stop to be thankful that women don't (save for extreme cases) die in childbirth anymore, or that children don't die of a common cold anymore. Or that polio is no longer with us. All this progress is in the bank. And after a while we don't even think about it. Because those gains are ours: part of our status quo. We adapt to increases in standards of living quite fast. It's called hedonic adaptation, and it's what's behind that dreadful void in the soul that keeps you from experiencing the euphoria you thought you'd get once you got that one thing you had longed for so long, but the moment you get it you're surprised to discover you feel nothing.
Oh, but don't you dare threaten my standard of living. My status quo is sacred, you see. Any threat to it, and we guard it with tooth and nail. My loss aversion might have served to guard my life in the hunter-gatherer days from a sneaky saber-tooth cat. Nowadays it serves me to protest Google's monstrous decision to cap their storage limit for Gmail (the gall!).
So, when the media industry came up with its dictum "if it bleed, it leads" they were simply cashing in on our quirks. Social media pretty much exists because of them. Politicians weaponize them against ourselves for political gain. One for them excels at it. They all know that bad news travel faster than good ones, and there's money to be made with that flow. What an unfortunate manifestation of maladaptation.
The burden, of course, is placed on us, the consumer of information. The famous "noise versus signal" dilemma forces us to be diligent and triage what's really threatening from what's really sensationalist. The key is in being aware of the true nature of the threat presented, and not succumbing to despair at the first sign of an unwanted event. Not paying attention to the negative news is hard (unless you go off the grid), and dissecting all that's thrown at you is tiring.
Easier said than done, of course. I should know.
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