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Comment by raganwald | Hacker News Reader

My experience as well. I apologise for the blatant blog self-promotion, but I tried to say this exact thing a few years back:

http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2009-05-0...

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I was remembering that blog post as I read the article. The researchers (as described by the NYT) seem to be testing a hypothesis about generalization vs. specialization regardless of whether the subject generalized was positive or negative, whereas you propose a strategy of generalizing the positive and specializing the negative. Do you remember what led you to that strategy? I presume it is still working for you. The researchers might benefit from the competing hypothesis.

I was led to this theory by the book Learned Optimism. I call it a theory because Dr. Seligman claims int he book to have come up with a hypotheses: (1) That you can measure a quality he labels optimism and pessimism, and that (2) optimism is a predictor for performance. He claims he then tested his theory and it was confirmed. That being said, confirmation by the theorist is much weaker than independent confirmation, so if you're a stickler for the scientific method, research this and see what current thinking has to say about it.

Seligman's second theory is even more interesting, he claims in his book to have cognitive therapy that improves optimism, and to have confirmed his second theory. Independent confirmation would be great for this one!

Do you have a link for the HN submission of it? If there isn't one, could you make one please ;-)

I seem to recall the gist of it; but I couldn't find your submission of it to HN (and faux-submitting it didn't bring up a previous submission).

I just read your essay and just wanted to thank you. I ordered the book and are looking forward to read it. Regards

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