Cornucopians and doomers explained. It's bred in the brain.

The first excerpt is from a BBC story on the underlying study.


And here's the abstract from Nature:


Now isn't that interesting?

:shrug:

I always enjoy your OPs GG! Especially when I disagree the most.

... and die like crazy when times are bad.

The pessimists just plod along avoiding the drama as best they are able.

My pessimistic ancestors as far back as I can trace them were always very good at walking or sailing away just before things turned to shit. They managed to sidestep all the wars, famines, and financial meltdowns of the past 300 years. Our family motto ought to be, "Fuck this, I'm outta here." My ancestors would often walk when all the optimists were still planting potatoes, or marching with patriotic or religious fervor, or borrowing money to buy bubbling stocks and bonds and property

I've always got my escape planned because I never expect prosperity to last. I'm certain this pessimism is an innate expression of my genes.

What happens when there is no "away"?

People have lived everywhere on this planet save Antarctica for a long, long time. It's always been a "small world."

There is a fire cycle of human civilization. The trick is finding a stable place in the mosaic that's not soon to burn.

You probably won't be able to fly or drive to the place once the fire starts, but that's the way it's been throughout human history.

Unfortunately it seems the fossil fuel conflagration is going to be a big one.

Every time we've gone somewhere else we've had to kill the people that were already living there to make room for ourselves...

Nt

as a basis for comparison.

But yes, I agree that there is an epistomological problem with Reality. To sidestep the issue I've given up the entire notion of belief, but that's probably not an option for your average scientist.

"Unrealistic pessimism is a pervasive human trait that influences domains ranging from personal relationships to politics and finance. How people maintain unrealistic pessimism, despite frequently encountering information that challenges those biased beliefs, is unknown. We examined this question and found a marked asymmetry in belief updating. Participants updated their beliefs more in response to information that was worse than expected than to information that was better. This selectivity was mediated by a relative failure to code for errors that should reduce pessimism. Distinct regions of the prefrontal cortex tracked estimation errors when those called for negative update, both in individuals who scored high and low on trait pessimism. However, highly pessimistic individuals exhibited reduced tracking of estimation errors that called for positive update in right inferior prefrontal gyrus. These findings indicate that pessimism is tied to a selective update failure and diminished neural coding of desirable information regarding the future."

Wonder how much that grant cost British taxpayers? :D