The smartest people I know also always seem to be the most depressed and most knowledgeable about the world
TLDR just look at this chart: https://journals.sagepub.com/cms/10.1177/01461672231209400/asset/images/large/10.1177_01461672231209400-fig2.jpeg
The choice of paratheses make this paper so hard to read:
“We also find a negative (positive) correlation between cognitive ability and pessimistic (realistic) beliefs”
That’s a common convention in academic papers to demonstrate pairs of correlations, it’s the same as writing
“We also find a positive correlation between cognitive ability and realistic beliefs AND a negative correlation between cognitive ability and pessimistic beliefs.”
Thank you for explaining that. I hate it.
Sounds like you improved your cognitive ability
Cognitive ability and memory are two very different things.
I aslo cn tip lik dis an u no Wat I mnt. Itz lot shrtr 2. y dnt acadmiks do dis? its highr cognitv lod 2 thy lik dat rite?
There’s a reason (no good reason) normal (academics) human beings don’t (do) use that kind of positive (negative) writing.
My field has different but equally terrible high cognitive load writing conventions, and I call them out as bad every time.
I end up reading a lot of academic journals, and the way that they’re written I swear are intentionally obtuse. Sometimes people say “they only seem that way because they are communicating complex ideas”, but when I read papers in my own field I know that that’s not really the case. I once made it three quarters of the way through an article before I realized that all they were doing was slapping a PID on the problem they were defining. You could have written the same article and made it understandable to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the subject but instead they had to make it so obtuse that practitioners in the field would really struggle.
I hate these “I’m so smart for being a depressive pieve of shit” posts. Pessimism is just a function of an unhealthy lifestyle and mindset.
Well, we found our example of low cognition.
I mean plenty of reasons to be depressed, we have destroyed our planet, we are in the middle of the biggest mass extinction in 140 million years, and we can’t afford anything anymore. But yeah it’s a mindset or something.
We haven’t destroyed our planet by a large margin. Maybe you mean the global ecosystem. You know what doesn’t care what humans do on the 5km-thick surface? The thousands of kilometers of dirt, rock and magma below.
Edit: downvoted by hippies. Look, I care about our ecosystem. But I hate phrases like “we’re destroying the planet!”
Topsoil and the stuff that it supports is pretty fucking significant, especially if human caretakers fuck off and die.
Think of the all the biomass of agriculture, no longer getting cultivated, allowed to run amok: beef, chickens, pigs, corn, almonds, wheat, alfalfa, rice, etc. All of that now just there, growing uncontrollably, unattended. Ecosystems are gonna be fucked.
Animal feces that toxify the land, nutrient imbalance for local flora, local water sources drying up.
You might think that “the planet” doesn’t give a shit about the top few miles of dirt, air, and water, BUT WE FUCKING SHOULD, YOU BLACK-PILLED WASTE OF SPACE!
Edit: and technically, since the planet can’t think or feel (per human understanding), it’s a worthless point to make.
Sure, but the biomass is not the whole planet. It’s not like we’re using a death star lol.
The planet doesn’t care what some carbon molecules do in its surface, just like it doesn’t care when volcanoes erupt either.
Headline reader, you are.
Yeah, the world is going peachy, everything is just fine. Not like we’re on the verge of jackpot, religious morons on the rise, wars, antivax stuff… it’s the mindset right right
To be fair this is the best time to be alive ever.
That’s certainly true.
It’s really not. The average IQ dropped for the first time, the average lifespan dropped for the first time… All data points to the 70s-00s as being the best time to be alive. We’re past peak.
Damn, I’m too old - I still think it’s the 00 years. Weeee
Everybody knows the 90s happened 10 years ago, right?
You should read the paper. It is saying something quiet different from what you think it’s saying.
Don’t be too hard on them, it’s difficult to read with low cognition
See? They’re so optimistic that they believe they know the contents of the article through the post title alone!
Can you point out to us who’s saying that they’re smart for being depressive?
deleted by creator
Pessimism is just a function of an unhealthy lifestyle and mindset.
Can you elaborate your perspective? Do you think pessimism serves no useful purpose? Why do you think it exists?
