Gene Variant Can Cause Nattering Nabobs of Negativity

Freshly Exhumed writes "Researchers from the University of British Columbia, Cornell University and Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health report in the journal Psychological Science [abstract; press release] that a gene variant can cause individuals to perceive the negative side of every situation. UBC Prof. Rebecca Todd said the ADRA2b deletion variant influences not only emotional memory, which was previously known, but also amplifies a person's real-time perception of events, for better or for worse. 'Some individuals are predisposed to see the world more darkly than others,' Todd said. 'What we found is that a previously known genetic variation causes some individuals to perceive the world more vividly than others and, particularly, negative aspects of the world.'"

Comments

Ignore your problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll go away.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[icebike]

They'll go away.

Exactly, realists are the coal mine canaries of society: "but also amplifies a person's real-time perception of events".
Maybe instead of calling people who point out negative aspect of grandiose plans Debbie Downers, and nabobs of negatively, it would make more sense to realize that when there are a significant number of people saying "hold on there", that just possibly society is getting ahead of itself and rushing head long down yet another repetitive boondoggle that has failed before.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[lxs]

Ah the depressive-realist school of thought. Better known as the no-fun-at-parties crowd. Once I learned to accept the repetitive boondoggles are inherent in the human condition, most of the depression went away. For a troupe of furless chimps, we're doing alright.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[ThisIsSaei2561]

Way to trivialize depression as an issue of perspective, cured with a single, simple change.

If we just accept that things are terrible, and be happy about it, we will be happy about it. Genius.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[Swave An deBwoner]

Bobby? Bobby McFerrin? Is that really you?

Re:Ignore your problems.

[Samantha Wright]

Just so we're clear—you're misusing "realist" there. There is a (somewhat disproven) psychological theory called depressive realism that argues that a certain amount of negativity compensates for wishful thinking, but to take it as a generic label is to presume correctness. You might be better off saying "cynic" or "sceptic."

The general philosophical term "realist" is just an antonym of solipsist; i.e. someone who believes the world exists (although there's also an artistic term called "realism" which is about producing authentic depictions.)

Re:Ignore your problems.

[Jeremi]

Depression is a mental disorder caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, and should not be trivialized.

A negative outlook, on the other hand, is a habit, and like any bad habit, it can be recognized as such and changed.

Mental health issues aside, there are people out there who make themselves unhappy to no good purpose, e.g. by having unrealistic expectations. For those people, an attitude adjustment is a good idea, as it will make them both happier and more successful.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[lxs]

I'm sorry if that post came over as flippant, because depression is a problem I do take seriously. At least it got your attention.

First off, the judgment of terrible is yours, not mine. I merely stated that it's a bloody miracle that a bunch of monkeys has figured out farming, poetry and mathematics and that we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves for not being perfect rational creatures living in Star Trek Utopia.

Secondly, making happiness a habit does work in practice, and has done for centuries. Buddhism and Stoicism have long traditions in this kind of thought. There is that line from Hamlet: There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.

This isn't a quick and single simple change, it takes years of practice and you'll have frequent relapses into hopelessness, but it does start with a simple change of perspective.
Act depressed and you'll feel depressed. Act happy and eventually you'll be happy.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[theshowmecanuck]

He/she is obviously a 'glass is half empty' kind of person, reading negativity into everything. On the bright said, the study said this could be a survival trait.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[Nephandus]

Circular argument and intentional selection bias. "Success" there requires constant redefinition to fit whatever the fuck happens. It's both a no true Scotsman fallacy and changing the goalposts. When the "positive" wacko misses something, he pulls a doublethink and redefines his supposed values such that his altered goals arbitrarily fit whatever he happen to hit, so he "succeeded" to hit his completely redefined target. Being unhappy because you're not mindfucked into wanting whatever garbage you're stuck with isn't "no good purpose". Just because your values are lies your constantly rewrite to fit arbitrary conditions doesn't make everyone else's values as utterly meaningless as yours are. Some of us actually value what we value. Shocking, I know...

Re:Ignore your problems.

[nospam007]

"A negative outlook, on the other hand, is a habit, and like any bad habit, it can be recognized as such and changed."

The article says exactly otherwise, it's genetic, willpower is about as effective there as if you wanted to change the size of your dick.
So nothing you do can change the demotivators at work who continue to depress everybody around them with their bleak view of the world.
Unless a DNA-test is developed so that you can hire only happy people.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[Nephandus]

It's not PC, entertaining to the soft-headed escapist majority (those are related...), and doesn't line snake-oil salesmen like Seligman's pockets.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds an awful alot like this

"Stress is the resulting syndrom coming from the surpression of the brain's natural desire to choak the living shit out of idiots"

Re:Ignore your problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually willpower, nutrition, physical activity, etc. may change gene expression to turn it on and off. DNA is not a static structure.
For instance, go search for: gene expression dna meditation

THAT is reality, not the fiction that DNA is interpreted one and only one way, and there's nothing we can do about it.
A little knowledge is dangerous.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the size of one's dick is quite variable, both in its erect and flaccid state, depending on one's mental state.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

The "chemical imbalance" thing is only one of many multiple signs of depression. It's not the "cause" of depression.
Our brain changes its chemistry all the time in different states, and in the depressed state there are certain chemical patterns, but do not mistake the chemical state of the brain with its causes.

All emotions map to some chemical consequences in the brain. For positive ones, when we rejoice, love, or laugh, you get endorphins releases. You will be able to monitor a state of increased endorphins levels in happy people, but that's a consequence of happiness, not a cause.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[Samantha Wright]

No, it's not that narrow; materialist realism, for example, can exist entirely without supporting any notions considered idealist. (And I guess the other AC is right about solipsism.) The point is that it's just believing something is real, it's not about having a tempered perspective.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[Man On Pink Corner]

After all, reality has a well-known negative bias.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[Will.Woodhull]

There is probably an evolutionary benefit to the dour outlook in some cultures.

The young Viking who looks at a longboat with eyes that see the possibility of the sail tearing loose, or cordage breaking, or a half-rotted stave giving way is much more likely to have more children than his same age cousin, who sees a pretty ship that will take him to wonderfully rich and interesting places. This negativity is reflected in the Asatrurar myths and stories, which generally have unpleasant endings.

But in other parts of the world individuals did not have to deal with the same kinds of technological risks on a daily basis. Floods and famines happen, but while devastating those did not present the same kind of daily individual risks that drive evolution. If the plow breaks, then most likely it can be fixed before anyone dies of hunger.

An interesting hypothesis is that this dark gene will be found to be more common among peoples whose ancestors' daily lives depended on keeping the technology in good repair. Such as Scandinavians, the Inuit and other Arctic Circle peoples, South Pacific groups that depended on fishing boats, the Mongolian tribes that need high tech clothing and shelters to make it from day to day, etc. A pessimistic outlook has a lot of survival value for peoples who are relying on technology to keep them alive.

It should be noted in passing that persons with this dark gene are likely to write software that has fewer bugs and does a better job at handling corner cases. However in this profession the genetics of nerd behavior are also at play so the probability of any procreative activity is very low.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[Will.Woodhull]

Depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain caused by a disorder in mentation, and should not be trivialized.

FTFY.

Drugs are not the answer. As a group, the "antidepressive" drugs cause more problems than they help, and do not cure anything, but merely hide some of the symptoms. This group also contains some of the worst truly addictive drugs available by prescription or illegally. They are over-prescribed, because it is so much easier to pop a pill than to deal with the depression itself.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[DrLang21]

There's nothing wrong with seeing the bad and the good. There is something wrong with consistently overblowing the bad and ignoring the good.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[dlingman]

Your glass is half empty? Let me top that up for you... You've already finished 1/2 your drink - why would you be sad?

Re:Ignore your problems.

[theshowmecanuck]

Me? I just think the glass is too big. Get me a smaller glass and it will be full.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[hazah]

Already you are wrong. You will NOT be right 50% of the time. You will have a 50% chance of being right on every coin toss! For instance, what if you flip the coin ONLY ONE TIME? Will you get 50% heads and 50% tails, or, more likely, will you get 100% of one or the other?

first

[Anonymous Coward]

beta.slashdot.org = vomit

Re:first

[AdamStarks]

On the bright side, at least one of your statements is true!

At first blush...

[Quinn_Inuit]

It might be tempting to say that everyone would be better off if they had this gene expressed in moderation, but I don't think it's quite so simple. Civilizations are no more than breaths in the life of our species, and we have no reason to believe living conditions in ten thousand years will be much like they are now. An appropriate expression of this gene for our current situation might be inappropriate later, so I recommend against removing this variation from our species. Like the variations preserved in the last wild wheat that still lives in forgotten corners of Ethiopia, strange copies or expressions of this gene might be vital against some threat we can't even conceive today.

Re:At first blush...

[Samantha Wright]

You mean gene variant, not gene. if you lost ADRA2B, you would die. All healthy humans have more or less the same genes.

Re:At first blush...

[Ambassador Kosh]

I like identifying this stuff, quantifying it and maybe even finding temporary ways to control how it works. However I would not recommend actually permanently changing it.

It is strange because some of this research I don't really want reported to the general public because they don't have the scientific understanding for it but they are willing to leap to an idea and demand it be done. There are some genes that seem likely to be tied to male homosexuality however those same genes are also tied to female fertility. I have seen some people talking about how we should "cure" homosexuals by fixing that gene. What I worry about is that a group could get enough power to try and actually do that. The problem is that we could also end up sterilizing people treated which could be catastrophically bad.

I just see so many people as misusing research to further their own ideological ends. We need to do this research, we need to understand why stuff happens. We need to know why as a mother has more male children epigenetic markers get set on further male children to change gene expression. There is a LOT we can learn from that. I just don't want to see that research abused. I wish we could get rid of this idiotic idea of XX=female, XY = male. Gender and sex are NOT even close to that simple.

Re:At first blush...

[Quinn_Inuit]

Good point. Thanks for the correction.

Re:At first blush...

[muridae]

I wish we could get rid of this idiotic idea of XX=female, XY = male. Gender and sex are NOT even close to that simple.

It would be nice if people could understand that. Or at least understand that XY genotypes can be born expressing a female phenotype, and vice versa; but getting the general populace to believe anything that goes against what they were taught in school is very tough to do. "If it's that complicated, why don't they teach that?" I've actually heard that, as if a high school advance placement A&P or an on level biology course could get through all of that in less than one term. Sure, it makes Punnett squares easy to understand and relate to personal knowledge, but it's so far from right that it needs to just be tossed out of high school classes completely. "23X0, XXY, XYY, AIS, Turner's Syndrome, and lots of other combinations just make teaching simple 2 gene human expression too difficult. There are so many possible mutations of the genes involved, too many ways for multiple genes to combine like discussed about Down's Syndrome, and too many external genes that also influence human sex and gender (and expression of both and sexuality as well) for it to ever be discussed in the simplified manner needed at the high school level."

Unfortunately, even spelling it out in mostly small words like that doesn't often work. Even getting them to understand that X and Y were picked not because of the shape of the chromosome, which all look like an X during mitosis, but because they were common 'unknowns' in math. When biologists need a new set, they continued with W and Z. "Wiki doesn't say that," results in my face meeting the nearest wall repeatedly, because a facepalm just isn't a strong enough reaction.

Re:At first blush...

[Velex]

Which genes are related to female bisexuality? Can we start a selective breeding campaign?

Fine, I troll, I troll! I see the point you're making. I wish more people would think this stuff through more thoroughly. There has to be a reason why pessimism and homosexuality don't breed themselves out.

Re:At first blush...

[PattyMc]

I agree we have to be on the look out for Unintended Consequences. What if we cured bipolar disorder, alcoholism and depression and the milder forms of autism? Would the only art we made be ala Sleeper - Rod McKuen and Walter Keane? I was diagnosed as BPII over 50 years ago. I always drew and painted and my pieces were quite good, an outlet. Ever since menopause and early retirement (stressful job in advertising) I have been sane and have not done one damn thing artistically. Maybe if people could slip in an out or just keep the good parts but I fear a total cure via gene manipulation or whatever tech applies in the future will make us Eloi.

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[Anonymous Coward]

The article says that it is believed that nearly half of caucasians have the gene (and, I guess, express it), so nothing terribly new.

The experiment apparently only shows that those with the gene remember "negative" words better than those who don't, when both are showed a combination of positive, neutral and negative words. So hardly seems like worth-shattering material.

Here come the internet attention whores

[Mr. Freeman]

This is going to be the newest thing that every special little snowflake on the internet self-diagnoses with in order to get some attention. It's the next OCD.

Re:Here come the internet attention whores

[Black Parrot]

I had it first!

Re:Here come the internet attention whores

[Samantha Wright]

From TFA:

[...] it is believed more than half of Caucasians have ADRA2b [...]

So, y'know. You might have it. The noted effects are minor, but highly certain (p < 0.001 on ANOVA).

Re:Here come the internet attention whores

[ArsonSmith]

I see what you did there.

Re:Here come the internet attention whores

[obtuse]

And your attitude demonstrates what a special snowflake you think that you are. Troll.

Re:Here come the internet attention whores

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Sounds like an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.

Re:Here come the internet attention whores

[muridae]

You must know a lot about those.

Re:Here come the internet attention whores

[Samantha Wright]

I find your level of pedantry staggering, and probably better-utilized in professional arenas where it has an actual impact of changing something. What are you trying to actually say? That you have no faith in their ability to control for confounding variables, and that I'm a bad person for believing they did?

Re:Here come the internet attention whores

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Whoosh.


On a related note, anybody else having flashbacks from the old Mrs. Agnew's Diary column?

Re:Here come the internet attention whores

[muridae]

not at all, just playing my post so you could continue further if you wanted. Sometimes a good gag just needs a straight man to continue, guess your's didn't. Would a gay one have been better?

And no, most of the Lampoon stuff was from before my time. The little I've found and read were not enough to cause flashbacks. Now, if I had only been on proper 70's medication, maybe the flashbacks would be more vivid.

Re:Here come the internet attention whores

[AmiMoJo]

When a new problem like this is discovered there are is always a large number of diagnosis that then tail off over time, simply because before it was known people could not be diagnosed with it.

I expect this will happen to me a couple of times in my life. I have Reiter's Syndrome, which is basically a name given to a bunch of symptoms that are vaguely auto-immune related but very poorly understood. One day someone will figure out the root cause and I'll get a new diagnosis, and hopefully treatment.

Similar I also suffer from Chronic Fatigue, a relatively new problem in that it didn't used to be well recognised or accepted. Again, what causes it is not well understood but there is some research being done, and eventually people with it will get a new diagnosis.

When these new diagnoses come in I expect there will be similar comments to yours - look at all the medically illiterate idiots claiming to have it. Well, before you judge them consider that many of them might have been diagnosed by a real doctor and now have some real hope of treatment.

Re:Here come the internet attention whores

[Samantha Wright]

That's simply a lack of education on your part—genes are whole programs that define a mutation, and gene variants are a polite way of referring to very common mutations found in those programs. Popular science writing is profoundly inaccurate when it conflates the two, since humans generally have very few differences in what genes they actually possess.

On the other hand, when I say a study's rejection of the null hypothesis shows strong support for the alternative hypothesis, that simply means I have confidence there are no plausible alternative hypotheses that might better explain the dataset. No abuses of terminology are made and nothing inaccurate has been said. If you would like to present evidence that their controls were inadequate, by all means do so; otherwise you're attacking the validity of their research without basis.

Re:Here come the internet attention whores

[Samantha Wright]

Forgive me, but I can't see any practical implications of your reasoning that aren't merely a question of whether or not the controls used were adequate, which I already brought up. Specific outcomes can't be predicted until a complete underlying model has been built, which is impossible until well after an initial statistical survey has been conducted even in relatively simple single-gene cases. With something as complicated as the whole human brain, which is by far the most complex scientific endeavour we have ever undertaken as a civilization, carefully-controlled studies are a valuable tool in helping us get pointed in the right direction.

The unfortunate economic consequences are somewhat mitigated through consortia of smaller institutions and the existence of merit-based grants. Keep in mind grants have been around forever, and have always functioned to make science funding more egalitarian; unequal distribution of wealth is not exactly a new problem.

Re:Here come the internet attention whores

[Samantha Wright]

Compare them how? Sorry, but I think you just made an argument for a paired Student's t-test. That doesn't get away from your p-value phobia at all.

Re:Here come the internet attention whores

[Samantha Wright]

What you're describing is a paired difference test. The paired t-test that I suggested is an example of such. It's a little fancier than just comparing averages; in fact, all t-tests also compare variance.

I can't believe I have to spell it out for you, but paired tests are not possible when studying the effects of a gene in a population. You can't just mutate targeted genes in people and expect results; we don't have the technology, and even if we did, it would be profoundly unethical to use in a double-blind trial. All that leaves you with are the statistical properties of the distribution, which is invariably mound-shaped and a little lumpy. There's not much to look at that isn't described by the variance and the mean.

Even if you did have a way to force people to use a super-powerful method for comparing the exact shapes of two distributions, such as the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, which does indeed return an exact value, the most important result would still be the confidence metric that results from the test.

And as I understand it, it's generally best practice when discovering the underlying mechanism for something to cite all of the studies that either support or conflict with your conclusions, and then explain why the conflicting studies are wrong. Otherwise people will just shake their heads at you and say there's a ton of evidence that you're wrong.

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[Samantha Wright]

Not a gene—just a mutation. Perplexingly, there is a drug that blocks the receptor in question, but it's for treating sexual dysfunction. Possibly a goldmine for witty remarks.

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, so all this research is just another marketing gimmick, disguised as science, to sell more drugs.

There I go again, looking at the dark side of everything.

Maybe this gene is supposed to help us find the truth since the truth is so often negative. What we need now are a bunch of happy pills to make us all optimistic and naive little sheep.

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[Samantha Wright]

Well, no, obviously not; even at the most pessimistic extreme, you'd have to convince a lot of cynics just like yourself that thinking negatively is necessarily a bad thing and that they should shell out biggish bucks to fix it. That's not exactly going to happen, now is it? :)

Realistically, the utility of understanding this gene variant and producing pharmaceutical remedies is in helping people with clinical depression break down barriers—people so cynical and miserable that they can't function normally. Yohimbine is currently prescribed to people already on antidepressants, though, so I would tend to guess it either doesn't address the effects of the mutation, or fixing it doesn't affect much once you're already on an SSRI.

That all being said, I do agree with you that cynicism can have its advantages—I have an ongoing hypothesis that childhood isolation and depression encourage the development of independent reasoning skills and hence improve intelligence, although it's a bit untestable still. I was inclined to proposition earlier that perhaps this allele has a meaningful relationship with the development of Western civilization, but that line of inquest gets very Social-Darwinist-sounding very quickly, and isn't exactly a great conversation piece. The reason for this is that as many as 50% of Caucasians are believed to have this allele (much more than other populations), so either it's completely meaningless in the long term and just happened by chance, or it conferred some relevant advantage.

Re:Pessimism

[hoboroadie]

I get a lot of crap for my comments. I always thought it was Socratic analysis, but I've noticed it does seem instinctual.

Re:And this is a problem how?

[Hal_Porter]

Nonsense. People would dress well in Hugo Boss uniforms and ze trains would run on time.

gene causes individuals to perceive negative side

[Alsee]

Well that sucks.

-

Talking in cliches

[Kohath]

Is there a gene variant for always having to express ideas in terns of cliches, idioms, colloquialisms, metaphors, and/or pop-culture references?

Re:Talking in cliches

[PPH]

I'll bet you dollars to donuts that there is.

The gene for Software Testing

[Btrot69]

It's probably the gene that makes me really good at software testing. I have a knack for zeroing in on whatever is screwed up ;)

Re:The gene for Software Testing

[PolygamousRanchKid]

It certainly makes a better programmer. Having a negative attitude makes you assume every statement is going to throw an exception sooner than later, so you become obsessive compulsive about handling exceptions. As opposed to other programmers who just toss them and let others deal with them. Or catch and swallow them with an empty TODO comment clause.

So you end up sitting in design meetings thinking about what can go wrong in a system instead of cheering on how great the design is with the other folks. Unfortunately, I'm the only person in the world who thinks that a new design should be scrubbed with a thorough wash of toxic pessimism.

Hey, what doesn't kill a design, makes it stronger.

Re:The gene for Software Testing

[russotto]

It's probably the gene that makes me really good at software testing. I have a knack for zeroing in on whatever is screwed up ;)

No, that's a different one. Because software developers have the opposite version, even total pessimists; problems which are reproducible when we aren't around vanish when we are. It's the "works on my machine" gene.

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[sumdumass]

Ha.. I can see that working. If I concentrated in all the negative I could see in my sexual partners I likely would have problems performing too.

How much do you wanna bet that this will be the new ADHD type illness that schools rush to have children treated for. I can see it now, a school without goth.. and a lot more promiscuous kids.

Defg

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> Gene Variant Can Cause Nattering Nabobs of Negativity

What makes the opposite gene so special? Fuck those Bloviating Brownnosers of Buttkissing.

The gene pool

[dutchwhizzman]

The gene pool is half empty!

Re:The gene pool

[Okian Warrior]

The gene pool is half empty!

No, the gene pool is twice as big as it needs to be.

Re:Researchers now searching for

[muridae]

If you are going to troll in a biology thread, at least go back to the roots of the phrase for the abbreviation? Latin "Panem et circenses" PAeCR1 would at least look like a real gene or protein pathway. Maybe a neuron condition that causes blind following of those one agrees with? But...oh gods, that would mean you would be expressing that gene too!

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[Samantha Wright]

Actually, sexual dysfunction is usually about seeing negatives in oneself, not one's partners.

Personally, I'd like to believe that parents would be too cynical to prescribe anti-cynicism drugs to their kids, but that logic might be a little too convenient to be reality.

No good can come of this

[Doh!]

I probably have this gene. I doubt they'll be able to find a cure for it. Even if they did, I'm sure I wouldn't be able to afford it. There'll probably be some horrible side effects, too—there always are. Bummer...

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[FireFury03]

Not a gene—just a mutation. Perplexingly, there is a drug that blocks the receptor in question, but it's for treating sexual dysfunction. Possibly a goldmine for witty remarks.

Interestingly, selective serotinin reuptake inhibitors (antidepressants) are already used to treat premature ejaculation. As you can imagine, that particular side effect is annoying to people who just want it to fix their depression.

What does this gibberish mean?

[mark_reh]

'Some individuals are predisposed to see the world more darkly than others,' Todd said. 'What we found is that a previously known genetic variation causes some individuals to perceive the world more vividly than others and, particularly, negative aspects of the world.'"

Re: What does this gibberish mean?

[Imaman]

It means that depressed/cynical/apathetic people may have a gene that enables them to see the world more clearly.
It makes some of us think.
I just realized why I've been unable to ignore our path straight towards Idiocracy (the planet won't survive, but our path is clear).

Re: What does this gibberish mean?

[Baldorcete]

Don't worry, the planet will survive just OK for a few thousands of millions years more. The human racem otherwise...

Why does positive thinking work?

[Cryacin]

You walk up to a giant impassable wall, and from a distance, it cannot be done. It cannot be scaled, it cannot be undermined. Realists and pessimists turn around and try to find another way. Those who worry less get closer, and notice the small gap that can't be seen from a distance, and can walk right through.

Re:Why does positive thinking work?

[malkavian]

A realist will examine it properly, and notice that there's a small gap (and thus take that, as it's more efficient). If the gap isn't there, they'll look for a way round..
In your analogy, the people who are the "positive" adjusted ones will quite possibly spend the time until they starve to death or die of thirst looking for that small gap "that must be there, just near here", while the realist acknowledges that there's something insurmountable, so routes round it.

Re:Why does positive thinking work?

[FatdogHaiku]

I always liked this quote of George Bernard Shaw:
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Re:Why does positive thinking work?

[Mikkeles]

... for some perverse definition of progress :(

Re:Why does positive thinking work?

[hairyfish]

Through the process of evolution, progress comes through in the end. It doesn't matter how many Bush's or Obama's we have leading us down the garden path, every now and again you get a Jefferson or a Lincoln which gives a net gain.

Happiness Hypothesis - The American Perfect Strom

[transporter_ii]

Anyone interested in this should get a copy of the Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt. If a good thing happens and a similar bad thing happens, most people remember the bad thing. In fact, it takes something way better to happen to cancel out a run-of-the-mill bad thing.

I think this is why people are preppers and are stockpiling guns and ammo. And, it's why zombie movies are all the rage. America is in a perfect storm for all of it to happen. Why? Because our crazy American worldview mixed with our religious beliefs. It's a dangerous combination when the future doesn't look real bright anyway, but now you think it is inevitable that we are in the End Times.

Throw in a federal government that can't stop printing money, a large number of blockbuster movies about The End, the guy standing at the front of the church telling you it was foreordained, and mix it with America, which isn't hinged real well to begin with, and what do you get? The crazies that we are.

I don't think we are going to find the answer to our problems in a pill. It's consumed us. We take 3/4ths of the world's pills here in America. How well has it worked for us?

ALL HOPE IS LOST. :)

I see the world totally different after reading this book, though: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt

Life is what *you* make it.

Re:Happiness Hypothesis - The American Perfect Str

[transporter_ii]

A PBS series described it like this:

For bad things, it's like your brain and bad things have Velcro on each other, and everything bad thrown at the brain sticks. And for good things, it is like our brains are coated in Teflon; everything good thrown at it slides right off.

Re:Happiness Hypothesis - The American Perfect Str

[iggymanz]

Nothing wrong with being a "prepper",that just means being prepared for disasters. Look what happens each and every time there is a power outage or big storm, people mob stores looking for bottled water, ice, flashlights and batteries, etc. Sometimes people in that situation get a little rude and rough with each other too 8D

Happened in my town a month ago, but I wasn't at the store with the mob scene, I was home relaxing because I already had stocked up for *nothing in particular*, but I grew up in an area that flooded every couple years and power was out. You'll notice even the federal govenment a couple years back started a campaign to tell people to at least be prepared for three days of no water, no grocery stores, no power, etc.

It's not foolish to be a "prepper", shit happens. Be a prepper, stock up on some bottled water, dry food / canned goods (and can opener, the preppers most important tool!), first aid kit, camping stove, kerosene heater or wood for the fireplace. The once in a while use and rotate the perishables.

Couldn't hurt and might help.....

What a pessimist?

[ebno-10db]

A pessimist is what an optimist calls a realist.

23andme?

[jo7hs2]

Anybody knows if this is a location tested by 23andme (or Ancestry)? I've got results from several providers and I'd be curious to see my results, as I'm a fairly negative person.

Re:23andme?

[koan]

Seeing the negative doesn't make you negative.

Re:23andme?

[Senescent Nerd]

http://www.genecards.org/cgi-bin/carddisp.pl?gene=ADRA2B&snp=99 lists 99 SNPs in the ADRA2B gene. The following 8 of these SNPs also appear in my 23andMe results: rs3813662 rs29000571 rs4907299 rs2229169 rs29000569 rs4426564 rs28932482 rs35053873 . The available abstract doesn't say where on the gene the deletion mutation occurs, so I can't tell which of these SNPs is closest to it. (I would expect that a deletion mutation would never be a SNP.) Since they're all pretty close together, any one of them would be very likely to track the mutation over many generations.

Re:Happiness Hypothesis - The American Perfect Str

[swb]

My sense is that the best things to have are water and food.

I figure if I can make fresh water, the food situation will solve itself as after about a month as the people who can't get fresh water will die off or become noncompetitive with illness.

Realism

[PPH]

The consequences of a missed positive opportunity are far less harmful than those of a negative one. I can afford to miss the occasional babe who smiles at me as a come-on. The crazy jealous boyfriend standing behind her carrying the Bowie knife I notice.

Re:Realism

[russotto]

The consequences of a missed positive opportunity are far less harmful than those of a negative one. I can afford to miss the occasional babe who smiles at me as a come-on.

The realist realizes she's smiling at the much better looking guy behind you.

So

[koan]

It's the reality gene.

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[russotto]

Well, no, obviously not; even at the most pessimistic extreme, you'd have to convince a lot of cynics just like yourself that thinking negatively is necessarily a bad thing and that they should shell out biggish bucks to fix it.

Of course not. Cynicism is what you get after optimism smacks into the shoals of reality for the Nth time, provided you have this gene variant. If you have the other gene variant, you remain positive no matter how often your optimism fails.

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[oji-sama]

Based on some people I know, I would say that if you have this gene variant you remain negative no matter how often your pessimism fails. But perhaps I'm just being negative. ^.^

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[russotto]

Based on some people I know, I would say that if you have this gene variant you remain negative no matter how often your pessimism fails.

Pessimism's typical failure is that the worst-case failure mode you imagined wasn't bad enough. Of course THAT makes you remain negative.

On the rare occasions when things turn out better than you expected, it's never long before the reduced pessimism engendered by that event causes you to get bit in the butt again. After THAT happens more than a few times, THEN you become insensitive to success.

"I'm allergic to bullshit."

[johnny0099]

Is there a pill for that?

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[Samantha Wright]

And yet Yohimbine is prescribed when SSRIs cause sexual dysfunction. It seems a lot of drugs cause random sex drive side effects; Ritalin can either increase or decrease libido, too.

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[FireFury03]

And yet Yohimbine is prescribed when SSRIs cause sexual dysfunction. It seems a lot of drugs cause random sex drive side effects; Ritalin can either increase or decrease libido, too.

Notably if you read the side effects list of a lot of drugs, the listed side effects often include the thing they are supposed to treat (my favorite is antidepressants listing "depression, anxiety and suicide" as a side effect).

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[Samantha Wright]

The modern anthropological view is that it doesn't matter. The success of one population does not invalidate the history of another, just like with environmental conservationism. The fundamental problem with scientific racism is that being the pinnacle of evolution is impossible; leading civilization today is no guarantee you'll be leading it tomorrow—and not the only way to live a happy life anyway. It is perhaps no surprise that a lot of Americans in particular, poisoned by centuries of pressure to conform to the stereotype of the omnipotent entrepreneur, have trouble grasping this.

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[Samantha Wright]

Welcome to the wild world of pharmacogenomics. Brain drugs depend on such subtle and variable parts of our genomes that they have a very high chance of backfiring. Antidepressants are particularly awful at this, which is extra-horrific because they take months of side-effects before they actually do the job. Thus there's a lot of money in personalized medicine—a quick test can potentially prevent a toxic reaction or putting a depressive person through years of agony as the therapist tries increasingly expensive antidepressants.

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[Samantha Wright]

ADRA2b is probably much more subtle in its effect than that, although we don't have hard numbers for everyday discouragements.

The Software Tester Gene Found

[nixkuroi]

The downside is... Hmmm, I guess I don't have it.

Re:Ubuntu?

[Swave An deBwoner]

Actually, a reference to a former US vice president:

Agnew was known for his scathing criticisms of political opponents, especially journalists and anti-war activists. Emulating the "blistering blue barnacles" verbal style of Tintin's Captain Haddock with striking similarity, Agnew attacked his adversaries with relish, hurling unusual, often alliterative epithets, some of which were coined by White House speechwriters William Safire and Pat Buchanan, including "pusillanimous pussyfooters," "nattering nabobs of negativism" (written by Safire) and "hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiro_Agnew

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[TapeCutter]

Zoloft + alcohol = a fucked up, suicidal personality. I've seen 5 families wrecked over the last 10yrs, 2 ended up in jail. I've also seen Zoloft help people but none of those were drinkers. Alcohol lowers inhibition, Zoloft lowers anxiety. You need some anxiety to tell yourself that what your doing is potentially wrong/dangerous, you need some inhibitions to stop you from compulsively acting out every thought. A good doctor knows all this and will train his patients to self-monitor their anxiety levels while on the drug, sadly far too many try to make it "go away" with a script.

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[TapeCutter]

This is why responsibility is ASSIGNED and not assumed.

Personal responsibility: The act of ASSIGNING responsibility to one's self. Now it is time for you to inject a thesaurus into your bookshelf.

BTW: The "deterministic" universe at our scale is built on a foundation of perfect randomness, "reality" is a probability curve that in practice can only be calculated by watching it happen. The subtle paradox about perfect randomness is that perfect randomness has a predictable behaviour. Mind predictably emerges from matter like cyclones predictably emerge from tropical seas, they are both specific patterns in matter that survive for fleeting moments and then dissipate. There is no point to it, you are free to impose your own meaning, if you have one.

Re:Not Science

[marcosdumay]

but the old saw about causation and correlation applies

Are you saying that negative (or realistic, whatever) world view may cause a gene to appear?

Re:Happiness Hypothesis - The American Perfect Str

[volmtech]

I'm sure you do things "just in case". As the EBT glitch shows our access to food can be interrupted. Or it could be a windstorm or flood. A months stockpile of food is prudent. I hope I never need any of the 2000 rounds of 9mm and .30 cal I have. I m 61 years old. I have found out if you are ready for trouble, it rarely happens.

What's in a name?

[BigTalker]

I suppose this won't be known as Eeyore's Syndrome. Never mind, it doesn't matter anyway. Nobody cares.

obvious post

[gzuckier]

And how many /. commenters did they have to test before concluding this?

Chemical imbalance myth

[UpnAtom]

"Depression is a mental disorder caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain"

No, that's an explanation made up by pharmaceutical companies to sell £tens of billions of ineffective drugs to the most vulnerable people in society.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8138893.stm

Re:Happiness Hypothesis - The American Perfect Str

[UpnAtom]

Not quite. Negative things can stick around whether we want them to or not. There's no such rule for positive things.

I will be explaining why in a book.