Opt Out of Cynicism
dimitarsimeonov.com
dimitarsimeonov.com
People often call me an optimist, because I show them the enormous progress they didn't know about. That makes me angry. I'm not an optimist. That makes me sound naive. I'm a very serious “possibilist”. That's something I made up. It means someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears without reason, someone who constantly resists the overdramatic worldview. As a possibilist, I see all this progress, and it fills me with conviction and hope that further progress is possible. This is not optimistic. It is having a clear and reasonable idea about how things are. It is having a worldview that is constructive and useful.
• • •
Think of the world as a premature baby in an incubator. The baby’s health status is extremely bad and her breathing, heart rate, and other important signs are tracked constantly so that changes for better or worse can quickly be seen. After a week, she is getting a lot better. On all the main measures, she is improving, but she still has to stay in the incubator because her health is still critical.
Does it make sense to say that the infant’s situation is improving? Yes. Absolutely. Does it make sense to say it is bad? Yes, absolutely. Does saying “things are improving” imply that everything is fine, and we should all relax and not worry? No, not at all. Is it helpful to have to choose between bad and improving? Definitely not. It’s both. It’s both bad and better. Better, and bad, at the same time. That is how we must think about the current state of the world.
Thank you!
Sometimes you'll hear that a person is "complicated". Our emotional world can be layers of many tones, textures, timbres. I think that when we invite the emotional correlate of abstract visual art, it gives us an intellectual advantage. In terms of being able to mentally simulate multiple contrasting perspectives in parallel, it almost guarantees we'll land closer toward truthiness. The basic emotions are like representational art. Easier to digest, easier to understand, easier to handle... Cotton candy for your guts.
Suffice to say, we're richly rewarded when we couple intellectual understanding with emotional resonance.
I think some of it also comes from status needs. Specifically, dominance.
I don't understand the lurker mindset whatsoever. It has to be how most people interact with the internet though, otherwise there would be 10's of thousands of comments on every post here. Ever since I started using the internet as a little kid I've felt the need to toss my thoughts into the cyber stream. I think all the word games I've played with other people online have truly made me a multitude.
All that is opposed to real life interactions. In real life, people sometimes just sit next to each other and occasionally share thoughts. It's a lot more like chat rooms instead of like social media. In a chat room, the facets of an individual are more prominent, meaning, as the chat continues, you witness how a person reasons through their ideas and feelings. Maybe he's a climate skeptic but oh hey, you love my favorite band, what!
The above multi-facetedness of irl and chat interaction is in contrast to this, what we're engaging in now. This comment I'm writing is an expression of a microscopic slice of time in my life and thoughts in my brain. But it's now reified. People can come back to it 10 years from now and play with it in their heads. I might be dead by then, or I might be a fascist or I might have become a Zen monk. The new eyes sipping my words have no clue, little context, of who I was an hour or a day ago, let alone a decade since.
No wonder we stumble into toxicity on social media. Not only are we probably trying to prove or achieve something, but its asynchronous nature causes weird second-order effects. Millions of people can read a Facebook post written in a fit of rage and fear with a migraine ripping through the body of the author at 3 in the morning, but suddenly, that psychologically, philosophically, sociologically, cosmically absolutely insignificant moment could cause ripples throughout the entire world. We're built by evolution to play joyous semantic games with each other. With social media we're trying to do the same, except our innocent flourishes are all punctuated with grenades and nuclear bombs.
Anyways, those are my thoughts on that. I'm very happy to hear that you found good people to share your esteem and friendship with. That's the dopest shit.
I, for example, simply did not have any interesting thoughts to share most of the time and didn't bother commenting when I did have some. But you just changed my attitude towards that. Thanks! I even created an account here :)
If you think the convos are worth it, fuck it! Let the downvotes flow. Make it a game. But if it is causing you any sort of distress, there's other places online people will eagerly welcome you to.
I have thought about not giving a shit and "letting the downvotes flow", but then I would become the kind of poster I would not want to read either. and that Dang chap has lot more to deal with, than me getting butthurt.
Cheers though, I do appreciate it.
Rosling used to work in Mozambique, the poorest country in the world at that time. In his first year there he was the only doctor for a population of 300,000 (!) people. He writes further: in my second year, a second doctor joined me. We covered a population that in Sweden would have been served by 100 doctors, and every morning on my way to work I said to myself, "Today I must do the work of 50 doctors."
There are so many better examples to choose from that don't strike a personal nerve (at least, personal to this extent) with any of the audience. Or if your audience hasn't had this experience, it's a moot example that they can't really relate to.
First, the major one. Yes, it is an insensitive example so a better one should be one.
Secondly, regarding your comment regarding progress, human progress is also not linear. It's not even constantly and universally pointing in the right direction (there are frequent regressions, some bigger than others), let alone advancing at a constant speed.
TL;DR: I am letting you know how this example made me feel. Take it any way you want.
It's so much easier for me to process any realist take on something that may have concerned my own health or my parents' health (we've all had serious health conditions), but shouts of the crowd "hey, we are empathizing" when it comes to premature babies makes me gulp (and my kid is doing great: what about those whose isn't?). Why don't we use kids with serious, life threatening conditions as examples too? Because those examples are too emotionally taxing.
It exactly feels like coming from someone who has not had a premature baby (or had a low risk one, as >80% of them are: babies coming out at 36 or even 33 weeks of gestation have a very low risk of any developmental issues and have high chances of survival, yet are still called "premature" — their parents are unlikely to have heard phrases like "it's so-and-so, you probably understand what this means" or "may become blind in a matter of days/hours", even though they've experienced a lot of psychological stress too).
If the goal is to trigger an emotional response, I think this is the wrong one. If the goal is to trigger a rational response, then anybody with a first-hand experience is going to have a hard time.
I am simply calling it out as I see it: find a better example, please.
Whether you care about the responses of your audience is your choice. I am not disagreeing that my feelings are my own (though they are not a "problem" for me), but I am sharing them for the benefit of those who might care. If you don't, that's "your problem".
With all due respect, and not taking anything away from your painful experience, I don't think a "better example" needs to be found. Why? The incubator analogy works precisely because it is so relatable—even to those who do not have kids. We should not rob people of such powerful analogies.
People shouldn't feel like they have to carefully walk on eggshells to use such analogies, all in the fear of offending someone. I hope you don't parse me wrong.
I am sorry you had to go through that though. Also the threads above this comment are some of the best I have read on here in the last month or 2, and there has been some seriously good content (to me at least), in that time.
To be honest, I don't even understand what's the need for an analogy here? Is it not clear to everyone that something can be both "bad" and becoming less bad ("better" or simply improving) at the same time? Does the analogy really help communicate that?
I mean, when I get a regular cold, when my nose starts being heavily congested (instead of leaking), I know I am bad, but improving. When you just get a job out of college, your financial situation might be "bad" (large student debt), but you've finally started paying it off ("bad and better"). Or your house is flooded ("bad"), but you've just arranged for the insurance to send someone to fix it up ("bad and better"). It's really trivial to come up with examples. None of these has any potential to trigger an emotional response the way (non-empathically, to me) talking of premature babies does.
It was used as a superfluous tool to attempt to trigger those "think of the children" emotions in people that the next commenter mentions (though they attempt to attribute that to me: I was actually saying "think of the parents" ;-)).
To me, an unnecessary analogy that does not consider how it will be perceived is anything but "powerful", but I also think it's fine for us to agree to disagree.
> People shouldn't feel like they have to carefully walk on eggshells to use such analogies
I totally agree. I don't see how that relates to me sharing how this particular analogy has made me feel: when we get to all the overly-politically-correct talk, it's usually people jumping to protect someone else who they think might be offended — here, I am sharing my own lived experience. That's a data point, and anyone can decide on their own whether that will influence their choice of analogy or not.
Is it really not valuable sharing these "data points" (all the replies I've gotten are surely making me second guess myself)? How do people learn about how people feel if they are not willing to listen to them? Do you change anything when you learn how you made people feel?
The incubator analogy is perfectly "relatable" (i.e. understandable) to many of us. Though, of course, not in the finest resolution that someone who has experienced the unfortunate situation. But all the same, it can be appreciated without losing the critical insights. Evolution has "programmed" us to understand these kind of analogies.
Rosling was a doctor, and an extremely sensible man. There's a reason he picked that analogy; he knew what he was doing.
> [...] I don't even understand what's the need for an analogy here?
Yes, an analogy is required—that's how our minds make sense of many things in life. I strongly suggest to read the book "Metaphors We Live By"[1]. A classic from 40 years ago that shows how deep analogies and metaphors run in our bones. And no, a student debt or a leaky nose doesn't cut it; a powerful analogy like what Rosling used strikes a better chord with the topic at hand ("the state of the world").
[1] https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo363799...
Whether someone cares for that or not is, just the same, in their court.
This entire discussion seems to have turned into whether I should be even expressing what someone saying made me feel. If that's truly useless, I am totally socially inept (I am probably not far off), so that's a useful learning too.
Reminds me of https://www.logicalfallacies.org/
He would know: Cervantes killed a rival on a duel at 17 and fled to sea. They were attacked by pirates and he fought well before getting his hand blown off and taken prisoner. He lived in captivity but befriended his captor, who taught him chess and literacy. Then he was "rescued" by monks who bought his freedom but placed him on indentured servitude through debt, which he finally escaped by writing one of the early great novels.
The point of this story is not that cynics were wrong but that one never would have survived his ordeal. In a world fit for cynics, you have to be ready for things to go right if you want to escape.
I suppose his ending wasn't the greatest, but Dante placed his betrayers into a special place in literary hell.
0: https://www.britannica.com/story/the-time-julius-caesar-was-...
His upbringing was nothing like that of what were probably children the dirt poor farmers.
He was lucky that no one snapped (I imagine some did but the thought of such a huge amount of money meant that everyone was kept in line) and the rest is just a bold and vengeful ultra rich, ultra privileged person getting their revenge.
I don't think you can retcon modern thinking on it, he was the actual thing and that was beautiful and terrible.
As another commoner you'd probably get gutted like a fish if you'd try the same thing.
Which is complete and utter nonsense. Sure, it makes for nice advertising for Frankl's Logotherapy shtick but it's not an accurate picture of what happened in the camps.
Been a while since I read it, but iirc one of his examples is of fellow captives telling themselves they'll be free before the new year, then the new year comes, still not free, and those would be the first ones to go (your "giving up").
But the alternative I never took as "resisting" - but "purpose." Frankl's own purpose being the study of people under such extreme conditions, but his point (again, iirc) being that having that indefinite, daily, purpose is what keeps people alive and brings meaning.
Now, granted, it's been a while since I read it, but can you provide some color to this notion of "resisting" ? It'd be interesting if you took something completely different away from it (or if I remember it incorrectly and should be corrected.)
I will hazard a guess and say that nothing you have seen played out time and time again compares to the horrors of the Holocaust.
Your comment is a vacuous, bald assertion that Frankl is "nonesense" and his ideas were a "schtick". Next time you comment, consider shedding light on the matter rather than merely smearing and adumbrating.
I also read and loved Frankl's book decades ago, and discovering something of the real story was highly disturbing. Also it seems that in actuality, positive mental attitude didn't keep you alive in the camps, although it sounds nice that it would. Survival was much more random. I believe people whose relatives died in the camps were/are highly offended by his suggestion that if only they'd had a better attitude they would've survived. It seems like victim blaming. The page also linked to a discussion of that, from memory. Sorry I don't have anything more concrete than that. It would be nice to restore links to those books, essays, etc to at least the talk page of Frankl's wikipedia page! Although it seemed like just Frankl's grandson deleting anything negative. (I haven't looked at Frankl's page for a year or 2, maybe it's changed)
[0] Finding out when Frankl's grandson (who has commented on the talk page I think) did his first edits, and looking just before that, might be a good way to find the old Controversy section.
Per the article, he spent years in concentration camps, but only a few days at Auschwitz.
Can you point to such an assertion in the GP?
To me, the idea that people died in concentration camps because they had bad attitudes is as nonsensical as suggesting gravity is a social construct. You might feel my dismissal needs more explanation. I respectfully disagree and this is a hill I'm willing to die on.
I distinctly remember that book saying that "THE BEST OF US DID NOT SURVIVE." Because to survive meant to make compromises.
I wasn't around for the US Civil war either but I can still tell you that the idea that it was about states' rights is nonsense.
> or did you have a superior strategy for survival?
Frankl already had a superior strategy. He made himself useful to the Nazis running the camps and was treated better than his fellow inmates.
> Your comment is a vacuous, bald assertion that Frankl is "nonesense" and his ideas were a "schtick"
Do you really want me to explain why the idea that people died in concentration camps because they had bad attitudes is nonsensical?
Cynicism isn't wisdom
It's a lazy way to say that you've been burned.
Seems, if anything, you'd be less certain
After everything you've ever learned.It's interesting you'd use that story to make your point because about 2,000 years earlier Diogenes, the founder of Cynicism, was supposedly captured by pirates on the Mediterranean and sold into slavery. Not only did he survive but the man who purchased him was so impressed that he appointed him to run his household and tutor his children.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lives_of_the_Eminent_Philosop...
A criticism that is as old as Diogenes (at least Laertius) is that they were essentially a cult of edgelords. They pretended not to care what people thought, but it was just an act, at the same time it was really important to them that people around them knew how little they cared through all the shockingly (lower case) cynical things they said and did. DL has Plato accuse Diogenes of this directly. All this is reducing a philosophy to a trope, but it's not an entirely unfair accusation either.
Speaking of which, a bizarre and entertaining piece of history is Lucian's extremely hostile biography of Peregrinus Proteus.
He famously told Alexander the Great to fuck off and stop blocking the light (which leads me to think that the ultimate "fuck you money" is to have no money at all, and not want any).
He would also walk around the market and masturbate in public, which the Athenians found disgraceful. When challenged about this he would reply: how happy would we be if we were able to suppress hunger simply by rubbing our belly.
I really love this character.
Like the exchange with Alexander, which is questionable if it ever happened or whether it's just an anecdote that went "viral". A tale of how the world's most powerful general hashing words with the world's most impudent homeless man, it's both entertaining and inspires the imagination. A bit like a superman vs batman fight.
Diogenes' barrel was in the middle of Corinth, where he could be seen & talked about. Where he could be vocally cynical of other people, etc. If Diogenes really wanted to be left alone, fill his belly and nap... he could have done this easily.
Many Greek well-to-dos in his place did just retired to a quiet country life where no one bothers you. He didn't, wanting to be seen not giving a fuck.
I wonder if like modern counter cultural figures, his fan base tended to be late teens?
Well if he had zero money he couldn't retire to a quiet country life... That's why homeless people today do not choose to live in nice places in the countryside but instead sleep on the pavement in cities. It's much less pleasant but you starve less in the city.
Also, maybe he wanted to tell other people they were fools, not just "wanting to be seen not giving a fuck".
Sure, if you want to lecture people about themselves then you give a fuck about at least that, but it's different than simply trying to be the center of attention.
I really think Diogenes was a philosopher (Diogenes the character -- this is true whether he actually existed or not): he had a point of view that he wanted to share.
Diogenes (the character) was a famous, upper class dude. Lifelong poverty wasn't a trap he couldn't escape.
Also I didn't mean to be too harsh. The "can't wait to tell you how little I care" trope is one we can't escape even in modern dissident youth culture. Hippies, punk, goth, emo... every generation reinvents it and it's artistically/culturally rich ground.
That said, the Diogenes character definitely does seem like he enjoyed being the centre of attention. It's like Marilyn Manson going on daytime talk shows in the 90s to tell normies that he doesn't care what they think. There's obviously a falsity in there, somewhere. It got my attention though, as a teen, and I still listen to th albums.
The point of the barrel is to be seen in a barrel, at the very least to demonstrate the philosophical reasoning for the barrel.
There are plenty of people who genuinely don't care what the people of Corinth think, say or do. The don't choose to spend their time in the public square debating.
This "care what you think" phrasing I think is really deceptive. Because the active issue is whether you conform to group norms or refuse to do so.
If someone refuses to conform to a group, then demonstrably they don't care enough about the benefits of group inclusion to comply with the group demands.
If someone quits their job, they may in _some_ sense "care what the boss thinks," but there is a much more important sense in which they don't (while those who do not quit, do).
I guess people may be "loud" about their refusal, in various ways, because they don't want a refusal to conform to be mistaken for an inability to perform. Much like the person who is quitting does not want to be perceived as having been fired. Again, that is a very different kind of concern than the person who is trying to keep their job.
Edge Lord is the pejorative to something with a very flattering synonym, though we might argue what that synonym is.
It's exactly the kind of professional career non-conformity that musicians are (literally) famous for.
Someone who was genuinely disinterested in group norms would disappear and do whatever they wanted to do in anonymous seclusion.
Is a murderer "interested in" the law against murder?
If they were "genuinely disinterested in the law against murder," they wouldn't kill?
It makes no sense. If there's a body, then the law didn't stop them.
Many historians think this anecdote is apocryphal, giving credence to the opinion that Diogenes' act was... an act.
I admire heroes but I don't want to be one. I rather live a happy life than be another sad story who inspires people.
That is open to challenge - it might be that cynics have an advantage because they are better at biding their time until an opportunity arises. And are less likely to be demoralised because they are used to dealing with the general difficulty of it all.
It isn't like Cervantes had a fundamentally optimistic viewpoint. Don Quixote, as a great book, appeals to the views of cynics just as much as anyone else.
"We're all so sick and tired of seeing things as they are / Horses are just horses and their manes aren't full of fire / The fields are just fields, and there ain't no Lord"
and later
"Oh, oh, oh, well, this world is plain to see / It don't mean we can't believe in something, and anyway / My baby's coming back now on the next train / I can hear the whistle blowing, I can hear the mighty roar / I can hear the horses prancing in the pastures of the Lord"
p.s. I don't think Don Quixote is a great example of optimism...
"according to cynics, the world operates in a certain way, the elites are always the same, and will always be the same. The cynics think we are always playing the same game that has always been played. For example, a cynic may think that media’s only purpose is to sells your attention to advertisers - like I did here. And often they might be right."
but I too be honest don't really see the problem with that kind of worldview. I'm not chronically depressed or antagonistic because of it, but I think I'd rather have what I'd consider a realistic and true view of the world as it is rather than anything else.
"One of the strongest medicines against cynical mindset which I’ve tried is to do a “no-complain challenge”. I find its effects to be enormous and durable for years. In this challenge, you move a bracelet from one wrist to the other when you catch yourself complaining. The goal is to make it 21 days without having move the wrist. "
Before you start prescribing medicine we need to agree that cynicism is an illness first, which is not so easily done. I think the author conflates people who are sort of angry or pessimistic because of their lot in life with his definition of a cynic. I take the cynical view because of what I perceive are fundamental aspects of human nature collectively, not my mood personally. I can beat that challenge without a problem because I rarely complain, or win the lottery tomorrow and it wouldn't really have an impact of my views on the way the world operates overall.
I see cynicism as coming from alienation, lack of alignment, "alone in a crowd" type of thing. I start thinking cynically when I have a problem that I don't trust other people with, and feel like I can't solve on my own.
It’s when the group has a lot of cynics is when we have a problem. Have you ever had to work with a group of “low energy” people? They’re not only just low energy — they’re energy vampires.
For instance if you had to direct an “employees right” course in a strongly anti-union company, you’d have “low energy” people looking at you with dead eyes, and you’d be complaining they suck your energy too. But is it really a problem outside of the scope of your course ?
[1] that I've met and interacted with, of course there's a sampling bias.
Pointing out every problem, all the time, isn't.
It's a very fine line and not everyone manages to stay on the right side.
There's a sort of false trichotomy at play in this post, and on Twitter I've noticed a dichotomous version: "Should we be happy that we're improving, or sad that there's so far to go?" (That's my summary of it, anyway)
Why not both? We should appreciate how far things have come (it is truely astounding), but of course that doesn't imply that we should be content with where we are. We should be deeply discontent - at least to the extent that it motivates us to fight towards a better future. A magnitude or type of discontent that leads to depression/apathy is obviously not helpful.
It seems like a significant portion of tribal "controversy" on social media is stoked by mouthpieces on either side that are almost purposefully playing into the dichotomy perspective, because adding subtlety into the discussion would throw water on the flames, and that's just ending the "fun".
I think this comment is a good example of a type of cynicism that we're discussing, probably the type that most instinctively jumps out as "cynical."
Like pessimism and optimism, cynicism often boils down to a bias.
The key word is "just" (virtue signalling). Blogging, commenting, and communicating generally are various things as once. We're pursuing intellectual curiosity, showing off, participating in a culture, signalling virtue, signalling other things... to ourselves and to others.
Our bias and/or perspective lens dictates our focus. A lot of cynicism, certainly within my generational cohort, is also about signalling. Signaling that we're not naive, that we're cool, grunge, etc. If you hate grunge, hippies, Diogenes or whatnot, you're more likely to adopt a perspective whereby they're "just" bunch of virtue signaling posers.
You can always plausibly adopt this perspective. Grunge, hippies, Diogenes & whatnot are attention seekers. They are cultural figures, which is kind of virtue signalling by definition. They're also other things though. Reducing these to "just" virtue signalling is cynicism regarding these things.
You can also have a general cynical viewpoint, but it's pretty hard to do without also adopting arseholery. As a general cynic, you pretty much assume that base motivation for everything. OP is just virtue-signalling optimism. Drewcoo is just edgelord cool-signalling. Netcan is just cool-signaling.
I think what is true from reading reddit, HN & the internet broadly is that cynicism is very "in" right now, to the point where it's annoying. Hence, I suppose, why such posts do well.
It's cargo-culting for non-(non-?)academia. HN, the world's #1 source of smartitude, may just be its purest crystallization.
A hardcore cynic might say, there is no improvement, only change. We might have come so far with some things, but lost or destroyed so many others in exchange.
You say that but a realistic and true view of the world will show that things have indeed changed for the better for a lot of marginalized people -- and within our lifetimes, too. It's definitely not "always the same", to paraphrase the author. If you think it is, you may be the kind of person the author is referring to.
I knew some cynical folks and you do not seem to be one of them. The criteria is not how objectively you view the world, but how you act on it. E.g. someone “redirects” the train of medicine for troops in a conflict, because anybody would do that if it wasn’t them (and spent this money on things much worse than they planned). Someone figuratively spits onto a guy operating a gate, because he didn’t choose to have a good time in his life anyway.
And they are right – that train would never make it to its destination, and a gate operator made a mistake in their career. But once you accept that as how the world works naturally, it’s easy to just go and take it, cause you’re not that bad, bad is the world. That is cynical. Simply seeing things as they are is not.
One of the strongest medicines against cynical mindset which I’ve tried is to do a “no-complain challenge” (from tfa)
I don’t know, maybe it works for them, but if I would no-complain everyday, I believe I’d become cynical AF. Our local prisoners have the rule: do not seek the truth, i.e. do not complain about anything, it is what it is. Everyone experiences it and your problem is irrelevant. This teaches them to live on their own, ignore any unfairness, and get whatever they can whenever they can. Long-term convicts basically live by these rules.
Of course there are levels of cynicism, and maybe it’s all about moderate levels of it, not extreme ones.
To take the prison example. I guess a cynical person would say, yes, complaining makes no sense because if you loudly complain the guards just beat you up. Staging a prison revolt is just going to give you more years and the justice system is screwed as well. The prison is a zero sum environment and you're likely only going to get ahead by screwing over someone else, and being deceptive and clever.
And honestly to me that's a fairly accurate description of actual prisons in most places. Cynics tend to be people who are acutely aware of power and how people leverage it for their own interests, but I don't think it implies that one has to resign from life.
Seriously though, good piece - if a bit shallow. It's a good start. People need to hear this.
Cynicism is the only evil in the world. The opposite, of course, is innocence - and, since this can't exist in pure form, the closest second is gullibility. Not ONE person here will agree that gullibility is a good thing, but I say it's our saviour. It is truly the best you can do in life.
Look, it's not that cynics are wrong... No. They are right. That's the problem. The problem is that they are right. And that's the root of all evil. They are limited - enslaved - by their reality. There's no escaping it. So the only thing they feel they can do is fight back, with all their might... And you know where this leads? Straight to hell.
I'll make it more painful.
The ones who fight corruption are the most corrupt.
The ones who fight injustice are the most cruel.
The ones who fight intolerance are least tolerant.
Your only moral obligation in life is to make this decision for yourself: Do you want to be right? Or do you want to be good?
If it's more important to be right - you're already on the loosing team. If it's more important to be good - now you are ACTUALLY right.
Maybe the problem is an inappropriate amount of faith. Not in the religious sense of the word, but as in confidence in external things. The optimists have far too much, the cynics have far too little. Maybe we should look to the mean.
Having no faith at all offers up a breeding ground for corruption on both personal and institutional level. Having too much obscures it if it's already there.
> Your only moral obligation in life is to make this decision for yourself: Do you want to be right? Or do you want to be good?
Often the question that should be asked is "why aren't you doing the things you know you should do?" Most people already know what is good, yet they do other things instead out of sheer momentum of habit, or because they don't realize they had an option.
Why is there a "should"? Is there a unique and universal way to determine what someone should do? Given the same situation two different people can act in two different ways. Is there a rule implying that one is right and the other is wrong?
Moral incontinence is a problem most people will struggle a lot more with than convoluted scenarios involving trolleys.
> Why is there a "should"? Is there a unique and universal way to determine what someone should do? Given the same situation two different people can act in two different ways. Is there a rule implying that one is right and the other is wrong?
strikes me as a rather obtuse response to that.
Objective moral truths stem from that. The unending dance with entropy. To be the belle of the ball, we also harness that entropic randomness and turn it into dances that are even more powerful.
I feel the urge to thrive and grow and improve. I find myself sympathetic to the expressions of that drive from all life. That is a priori, that emergent empathy that many of us are capable of. I see a neighbor crying, a homeless man sleeping rough, a fearful stranger, and I say to myself, "There but for the grace of God, go I." But I don't stop there, because I see my puppy, I see a bird in the sky, I see a crushed mollusk, a writhing worm, "There but for the grace of God, go I." We're many faces, but still, we're all dancing with the entropy.
Next is the question, "Will this action increase or decrease the entropy in the universe? To the many faces, is this the action of an ally or an enemy?"
Finally, we realize we could superheat everything into crystals and reduce entropy that way. The last vital factor is the synthesis of order and disorder: complexity. These are the fun dances. Art. Learning. Creation.
So, to find objective moral truths, our sieve consists of The Golden Rule, "Am I fucking things up more?" and "Am I making things more awesome?"
Extremely stable societies are often marked by low social mobility and oppressive social mores, yet they fulfill every check mark according to your definition of good. It would also deem the emancipation of slaves an evil deed, since it disrupts a stable pattern of social order that's extended for a long stretch of time.
I don't know if I would deem something like ancient egypt, which had a social order that persisted largely unchanged for several thousand years, one of the most stable societies known in history (also an oppressive theocracy), I don't know if that is my idea of good.
Merely persisting is not sufficient for something to be moral, but it is a necessary requirement. We need principles on how to behave in repeated interactions and situations over long periods, or bad things will eventually happen. That's part of the purpose of moral truths you were raising a question about.
I'd just point out that ancient Egypt had developed moral-sensemaking technology that were state of the art at the time. It's the best we as humans could do to live in a large ecosystem and we're standing on their shoulders. It's not surprising that we would find fault.
most of the time, yes!
We are not living in a void, we live in societies, complex societies. with lots of rules, dos and donts, should and shouldn't.
I'm stealing this.
It's a self-inflicted reality which persists much longer than is needed. The state security officers are now mostly dead or in their late 70s, those state enterprises are bankrupt from long ago, yet somehow it is still a relevant identification issue when it comes to your political beliefs.
I can understand the other points, but not this one. Can you expand on that?
Of course this mindset can only ever attract other lazy people and even then only from a distance. Even lazy people desire relationships with people putting in the effort.
you can be both
but if you don't try to not be wrong, you'll never be good.
Cynicism is the only evil in the world? I am cynically rolling my eyes on this one.
> The ones who fight injustice are the most cruel.
> The ones who fight intolerance are least tolerant.
I have not found this to be the case; and this phrasing is needlessly reductive. See also the paradox of tolerance. And “tolerance” as a bar is pretty damn low; it’s not something you should be patting yourself on the back for. It’s just showing humanity to those around you.
Part of the problem is that we live in a world where “lie, cheat, steal” legitimately does make your material conditions better most of the time. So we’re all typically equal parts “good” and “bad”, and we even have different definitions (e.g. an evangelical Christian may legitimately feel like they’re doing good by shaming gay people).
Cynicism is a recognition that not everyone shares your values, and some in fact have values that directly conflict with yours. It’s often useful, and I disagree with the original article.
"That's just, like, your opinion, man"
In all seriousness, though, no one has your moral obligations. They're yours and yours alone by definition (unless you believe in gods, fairy tales and whatnot).
Are we sure about this one? Do we have evidence that safe spaces in college universities are worse than South Africa’s apartheid regime or the systemic genocide of natives in Canada/America? Do we have evidence that the southern poverty law center is performing hate crimes worse than the kkk?
>The ones who fight injustice are the most cruel.
>The ones who fight intolerance are least tolerant.
War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. This is what this sounds like to me.
An apparently popular and easy way not to complain about problems is to simply stop yourself from perceiving them. The bigger the problems get, and the more you are confronted with them, while you forbid yourself from recognising that any conflict exists, the more it begins to look like the problem is your own lack of faith or "positivity". So the worse things get, the more you double down on your faith by putting increasing amounts of energy in to maintaining a delusional belief system designed to deal with problems or conflicts by explaining them away as an internal problem with yourself or your own emotional tate.
Does this sound like a recipe for improving your situation? Or anyone's situation?
To me, it sounds much more like a reliable method for the cultivation of increasingly bizarre thoughts and erratic behaviour.
What if you, instead, did the bracelet trick for every time you avoided a confrontation with the world that you know is necessary? What if you just console yourself with the fact the the world has problems and the vast majority of them cannot be solved by you (since you are not the omnipotent force)? You do realise that you don't have to stop caring about the problems, right? You know that it's just not worth investing energy in to worrying about things that are completely out of your control, right? That isn't cynicism, it's the picture postcard of mental health.
The reason is, you have pre-decided an emotional polarity and you're consciously expending effort to compulsively fit the reality to the emotional polarity that you desire. That is the opposite way round to what you need if you desire both accurate perception AND healthy emotional regulation.
Anyway, good luck with it.
What is wrong with that. I would rather be a cynic and have the correct framing of the world than be too optimistic and deluded. Success at investing for example requires looking at things objectively.
If you're creating, executing, advising, or actually investing, anchoring on what "is" risks losing to competition that suffers no such limitations.
If you believe you have no power to change things, then it's a self fulfilling prophecy. If you believe you can change things, you might be wrong. Which game you prefer to play is up to you.
During the Enlightenment, all this science stuff looked extremely stupid. If people didn't persevere through the cynicism, we wouldn't have advanced the way we did.
Lol. Where did you read your history of science? Totally bizarre.
I'm not super confident in my speculation, it just seems the most likely to me. What makes you so confident?
I studied history of science and philosophy of science seriously. Like reading books and papers across several classes. Old school.
I don't believe so. However I do believe that projecting a deluded self-assuring aura helps convince people to follow you, but that doesn't mean that your internals acts that way. It is really hard to know what people really think underneath that facade, I am pretty sure much more is going on that people want to show.
There are people that have remarkably positive outlooks on life and that allows them to do the daily grind that's necessary to achieve any semblance of change. A lot of people, seeing that you can actually progress in life, are moved by such personalities and find them inspiring.
That doesn't mean a person isn't sad, or can't get depressed, or not get seriously set back in life. It just means that pushing on and hoping for change can actually get you somewhere.
cynic!
Thinking this makes me a cynic? I don't think so. This is a fact that gets proven right every day on the internet. If anything I'm a hopelessly deluded optimist who thinks the web can actually go back to its pure beginnings when people said what they wanted without worrying that some advertiser will pull their funding.
What about passionate creators who use advertising as a means to finance their vocation? What about the wide informational and educational value of media?
They need to find new business models.
> What about the wide informational and educational value of media?
It's great but also a relatively tiny minority of all content. A niche really. And even those tend have ads.
Not if it works for both sides.
> It's great but also a relatively tiny minority of all content. A niche really. And even those tend have ads.
I disagree.
And even if it was true, why do you care? I mean, I watch almost only this kind of videos on YouTube - documentaries, education (learning German ATM), infotainment and there's a huge amount of it. Niche or not, there is still more than enough quality content to watch 24h/day.
The problems start when people start trying to sell my attention to the highest bidder. That's unacceptable. My attention is not theirs to sell. Not once did I consent to having information forcibly injected into my mind. I will resist it to the bitter end no matter the consequences.
That was the model for traditional media, as well.
Newspaper prices only covered a fraction of their costs, their most valuable products were the pages. Each page would have a different cost for ads (first page - super high price, second page - quite high, last page - also high, etc.).
Also, it's wrong to assume that cynicism leads to negative and passive attitudes. Cynics often bring bigger improvements faster than what people with positive attitude ever can, because, guess what, things suck. Being a cynic only means the one is negative about the current state and direction, and one can still be positive about the ideal state that the one believes in. Once that ideal is set, cynics can be the most fierce fighter for their own ideals.
Yet, for cynics to make progresses, it's important to get out of their own sweet spot and start moving. Ones who only love talking deserves all the criticism.
There are people who want to completely reject the fundamentals of how the world works. These are the people who create disasters.
The healthy survival strategy in a world of shit isn’t to give up, it’s to fight on and hope for the best. It’s to come to the conclusion, that even though the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the fact that there are good intentions mean that the people actually wanted to succeed.
So while I’m very pessimistic, I’m also experienced enough to know that everyone is working for a better world.
In all my decades of working close to the political leadership and the top level decision makers, I can’t remember once meeting someone who wasn’t working for what they believed to be a better tomorrow. Maybe that’s a uniquely Danish trait, but I doubt it. What that good is, isn’t always what you or I would consider good, but my point is that even very evil decision makers are working for what they think is right.
The moment you become a cynic is the moment you lose your connection and with it, your ability to impact things. Because a manager who has the wrong view of your corporate culture, isn’t going to change unless you inspire them to be better and that applies to everyone.
Of course it’s hard to be optimistic as well. 98% or something like it of public IT system implementations fail to some extend, and if you expect them to succeed then I imagine it’ll be quite soul crushing. The key, to me at least, is to not let your pessimism turn into cynicism, because you don’t want to be the constant no-sayer either, you want to make your points and reservations clear, but then roll with the decision that gets made.
My inner cynic is howling at this statement.
For themselves.
That's a very cynical take.
The best survival strategy is to fight to improve your situation, not fight to change the world.
>The moment you become a cynic is the moment you lose your connection and with it, your ability to impact things. Because a manager who has the wrong view of your corporate culture, isn’t going to change unless you inspire them to be better and that applies to everyone.
Being realist or cynical would help you recognize the situation as it truly stands without looking at it through tainted glasses. It gives you more power, not less. Also, as a cynic, your goal won't be to inspire the manager to change, because that won't be a fight you are going to win. Your goal as a cynic would be to put yourself in a better position in that company.
As a cynic, I didn't try to fight the way things are laid in the company. The moment I found a position which seemed reasonably better at another company, I gave my resignation.
Individually, this is probably so. Collectively, it leads to the world becoming more and more shitty, year after year. It's a trap, and no one has figured out a way out.
I couldn’t disagree more. To me that is the lie that cynics fool themselves into believing is true.
I have no issue with the Socratic methodology, but the point of it is not to break the systems apart for the sake of finding flaws. It is to break them apart so that they can be reassembled better.
It’s that last part the modern cult of cynics forget too often in my experience. You’re not useful if all you can do is predict the doom and then say “I told you so” when you are proven right. Predicting where things will go wrong is easy, optimists do it as well, what sets them appear is that they try to move past their mistakes and learn for them.
To me no one is either an optimist or a cynic, labelling yourself as being only one is just too limiting, but in my anecdotal experience the people most likely to “make themselves” into just one category are the self-proclaimed realists.
Maybe my experience and opinions are wrong, but I have never come across such an individual who benefitted from their world view. At least no in the privileged world of Scandinavian software.
The cynic in me thinks that people who tend to rub shoulders with The Powerful tend to (for the most part) see them as well-intentioned (although perhaps flawed) people rather than to be critical of them. Because it’s better for your own self to have friends in high places than to truly look at what they do with dispassionate eyes.
I don’t even need to get into how The Powerful are viewed by most people (who are more of at a distance) who don’t have such incentives.
Arguably, the most visible ones are often very sincere - because otherwise they couldn't sustain the drive necessary to reach certain heights.
So you know them personally as well?
> Arguably, the most visible ones are often very sincere - because otherwise they couldn't sustain the drive necessary to reach certain heights.
Not in this very just world of ours, anyway.
There is a part of it about friendship, but it’s more because the world stops being black and white at those levels. Two politicians who come from the opposite sides will have more in common with each other than they will with any of the people who vote for them so it’s only natural that they remain faintly friendly with each other. They have to work together after all, as most things come down to compromises.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation
I guess the main thing here is to become aware through inspection of your current strategy and evaluate if it needs to be adjusted.
Not at all. You are confusing coping mechanisms with (healthy) survival strategies.
In many societies the absence of empathy and mutual aid is one of the biggest contributors to unhappiness.
And it's not correlated with poverty.
(I'm not using the word "cynicism" because is very poorly defined and constantly misused in this thread.)
Others express their total disdain of even the concept of trust by jumping on the cryptocurrency bandwagon, or by believing TOR can do more for them than robust civil rights legislation. It’s all just aspects of the same sentiment, which is why there’s so much overlap.
I also think complaining about something is completely counter-intuitive to a cynical disposition.
Wikipedia might not be the best place to look for a definition, but doing so reveals that a cynic lives a life "in virtue, in agreement with nature."[1]
What the OP posted is much closer to a contemporary misunderstanding of the history of cynicism[2]. Cynically, I do not agree with this classification of cynicism, and although I may not change your mind I think we should stop conflating the process of attempting to see the harmonies[3] of our current ecosystem with the pessimism of a disillusioned generation[4] (of which I am one).
If what you do is counter to optimism, pessimism, and realism, while having a "fixed mindset" (as the article reads), imo you are not a cynic, you are just the stereotype of a millennial.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism_(philosophy)
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism_(contemporary)
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic
4. https://phys.org/news/2020-10-democracy-millennials-disillus...
Plenty of new things are important developments, even when there are selfish actors behind them. But also plenty of new things are just scams.
I don't think most engineering departments & product-development-organizations give anywhere near a fair shake to doing good, to trying for better. There's so many meetings called to discuss options, to try to suss out where to go, that revolve around mistrust, that are simply a hunt for security. And there's a good chance these hunts for security are right, that mediocrity would better serve us all. But theres ongoing & persistent resistance, un-understanding of better, that pervades, and I'd like to see a little more optimism, a little more shared idea of possibility about. I think there's a lot of possibility that we consign away, a lot of true organizational excellence (& personal glory along with it) that the easier/safer paths ignore.
I also think HN is a classic, key demonstration of cynicism. I feel like a lot of new ideas presented get slammed, that the critics have a field day. I'd love a broad asssessment of positive/negative valence of posts. My gut feeling is that the novel gets extremely hostile reception here. Someone combined mutable torrents with webtorrent[1], & there felt like such vast continuing cynicism, such "what are the use cases?", such tearing it down, such disbelief & resistance. This just feels like one of endless countless examples of cyncism & disbelief, such desire to disregard, to put the new, potential, positives into a box that can be safely disregarded. This to me is the poison we swallow.
For sure. 100%. Be wary of what people are selling. Be wary of the power-grabbing. But I think we ought try to wire ourselves to be positive if we can. We should look for the tell-tale signs, & try to promote & support the potentially good, the things that may have merit, to have optimism. While calling out the specific delusions & exploitionations that may be afoot.
It's a balancing. But we should try, try try try, to find optimism. Just not without disregarding reason.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com/publiusfed... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29513547
> The internet (well, just worldwide connectivity IMO) has turned cynicism into a social signaling mechanism, it's not just HN.
We're cutting to the punch here, but: a lot of the thing you are about to list sound less like "the internet" & more like general society waking up & understanding what's less than optimal.
> make a "hot take" against US democrats,
They're pretty useless absolutely but the opposition has been stalwartly effective. Bernie wasn't that far off from being president & even though he's far outside the current party, the core consitutents desire far far more from this party. A lot of democrats-the-people loath the uselessnessness. Hot takes are deserved against any party that has gotten so little done. But also, most democrats are pretty sympathetic to how impossible the situation has been, how constitutionally rigged everything has been against them getting any chance to do anything. It's been decade after decade of democrats having zero actual chance to pass anything meaningful, other than, say, Romneycare. the demorat's are slammable but we all know there's not in many's lifetime been a single chance to determine whether they're actually useful or not.
> CRT, cryptocurrencies, management, VCs, capitalism,
Mostly deserved & out of touch higher echelon's detached from ground truth. The one exception IMO: I don't see any dunking against Critical Race Theory (CRT)s that doesn't come off as maligning & poisonous. There's no popular way to be anti-woke, yay.
> pastafarianism
Again a weird conflation of that which is slammed versus that which slams & is woke. No one makes "hot takes" against pastafarianism. We all know they are already warm saucy goodness. Pastafarians don't make hot takes against anyone else. Like CRT, like US democrats, they're just trying to do good; they only want progress, there's no possession with tearing down the bad or other.
To return to our seeming core disagreement, you said:
> Cynical "dunks" burnish your qualifications to your in-group:
This feels like turning a hunt for oppression into a reason to disregard people. Many groups deserved to be dunked on, BECAUSE THEY ARE CYNICAL. Because they are inaccessible, not open, not participating, not doing enough, doing bad, or outright acting in bad faith.
It's difficult to figure out exactly where any voice is positioned, but, critical review that says: "you are not being optimistic enough": that's (sometimes) not cynical. Just because review is negative does not make it cynical. One can have higher expectations & use those to stage critical reviews.
> it's not just HN. Cynical "dunks" burnish your qualifications... you'll get all your fellow in-group folks upvoting/retweeting/liking your "hot take". IMO this is the greatest threat of all
I've walked point by point through how I don't see your listed examples as bad or hazarous or cynical. There's due cynicism against bad, there's due well wishes for the good to be better. I'm not completely opposed- there's certainly a critical air about- but to me it's not the internet & a lot of those airs are resistive to oppressionaries, are optimistic in nature. It is a very critical time, absolutely, but I don't see much of the critiques as cynical or performative or harmful: I see them as part of a direly needed push out of the long rut society has been stuck in, & a drive towards better. And one that isn't trying to harm or damage, but to simply make aware, to share.
I don't mean to say that any of these in particular are or are not hostile, dangerous, or negative. They were examples of issues that people like to have "dunks" or "hot takes" on.
> Again a weird conflation of that which is slammed versus that which slams & is woke. No one makes "hot takes" against pastafarianism. We all know they are already warm saucy goodness. Pastafarians don't make hot takes against anyone else. Like CRT, like US democrats, they're just trying to do good; they only want progress, there's no possession with tearing down the bad or other.
I'm not trying to sort these into sides. That's my point.
> This feels like turning a hunt for oppression into a reason to disregard people. Many groups deserved to be dunked on, BECAUSE THEY ARE CYNICAL. Because they are inaccessible, not open, not participating, not doing enough, doing bad, or outright acting in bad faith.
> It's difficult to figure out exactly where any voice is positioned, but, critical review that says: "you are not being optimistic enough": that's (sometimes) not cynical. Just because review is negative does not make it cynical. One can have higher expectations & use those to stage critical reviews.
> There's due cynicism against bad, there's due well wishes for the good to be better. I'm not completely opposed- there's certainly a critical air about- but to me it's not the internet & a lot of those airs are resistive to oppressionaries, are optimistic in nature. It is a very critical time, absolutely, but I don't see much of the critiques as cynical or performative or harmful: I see them as part of a direly needed push out of the long rut society has been stuck in, & a drive towards better.
The long rut of what, on what time scale, when? When was it "better" and when did it become "worse"? It wasn't that long ago that McCarthyism was used to bully political sides, when the US and the Soviet Union propped up brutal puppet regimes to fight proxy wars, when Africa/India/China was divided into an arbitrary map of colonial powers, when queer folks were unacceptable in the general public while being ruthlessly bullied (and this continues to this day!) in private, when Muslims/Arabs/South Asians were regularly frisked in Western airports, when people of color had their lives ruined for the possession of token amounts of recreational drugs. It's always been this way.
My point has nothing to do with either "side". That some of these are negative things by some and positive things by other is also something that I understand and accept. My point is that, when you create group-identity, you begin to get dialogue like "because fuck capitalism" that gets many upvotes/shares/engagement, instead of nuanced arguments like "there's no recourse for labor to fall back onto when management manipulates them". What that does is it crowds out the voices of people interested in novel ideas ("what if I get dunked on for being socialist/capitalist/Georgist/whatever") and shifts the dialogue away from problems and solutions into in-group signaling ("yeah I'm gonna upvote all the anti-capitalist posts because f*** the 1%!"). It's a culture that makes people defensive and adversarial ("ugh I wanna see what IPFS is all about but they're associated with Filecoin which is crypto and all my friends hate crypto so I shouldn't") instead of supportive and uplifting. It also then incenitivizes people ("huh I get lots of upvotes when I hate on <X>, so I should keep doing it") to keep up the cycle of hot takes. When cynicism meets group-identity politics, you get IMO the worst case.
I personally found it hard to separate the two for many year, and fell in the pattern of unifying them. Cynical outlook has been a helpful protecting mechanism, though no longer as useful, as I'm trying to find and play more win-win games.
There are some things that really don't change, and I guess that can be a source of cynicism. The poor will always be among you, lying politicians, the greedy rich, etc. But I'd argue that isn't cause for inaction, quite the opposite, though I can see nihilists just retreating to their beds in despair.
Re: things that really don't change, I'd say "until they do". Plenty of examples in history where the whole system switches to a different equilibrium point (for example as in "Inadequate Equilibria" book).
When I'm referring to cynicism, I'm talking about the difference between the mindset of "these will never change", vs "these are attractor points in the current social system, which all history so far have been used, but the system may have other equilibriums and solutions for which X=`the rich are not greedy`".
Hope that's helpful!
The things that don't change I refer to, I really mean human nature, and I really think that doesn't change much. Some people just want to watch the world burn, etc, some people are greedy, narcissistic, lazy, psychotic, etc.
The cause for optimism, is that we can change society to better deal with the nature of the beast, bring out the best, and suppress the ugly. There's lots of work to do!
We live in a world on near limitless abundance. We already live in a potential post-scarcity world.
The only reason there are poor among us IS the greedy rich; but the greedy rich isn't some faceless, abstract, unkillable cosmic god. They have names and addresses; what they have can be taken from them as has happened many many times throughout history.
Things can change, sometimes slowly, sometimes incredibly quickly.
We have seen the impossible become inevitable over and over in the last few decades, and yet it still seems impossible for people to imagine the "impossible". I wonder if there is a name for that sort of fallacious thinking.
The opportunity is to make the currency of that hierarchy something far above basic needs, IMHO. Perhaps this could be a genuine use-case for cryptocurrencies, so that the ultra wealthy can 'keep score' in maths, rather than mega-yachts, private jets, dark satanic mills, etc.
Only if you ignore every society that that ever existed without a strict economic hierarchy, sure.
I consider myself an anarchist, as in, against unnecessary hierarchy, yet I still believe some hierarchy is inevitable, even necessary and desirable.
The viewpoint that says "why bother looking" is cynicism, I think. This is the viewpoint that says "all optimistic messages are power grabbing schemes." And it is a really disempowering and hopeless way of viewing the world.
I think it is better to keep looking behind the curtain. There's got to be something good back there.
IMO that's not being cynical. That's actually an universally positive trait: being able to spot power-grabbing schemes.
The problem with the negative side of cynicism described in the article is that, (to follow your example) the power-grabbing scheme is not the thing being detected, but rather the display of optimism. Every display of optimism is treated as being a power-grabbing scheme, or worse, naivety.
The things cynics end up attacking in the end isn't the power grabbing per se, but the optimism.
The answer is not to attack everything optimistic, but also neither to attack nothing. Life is hard.
Then, there are clearly two things being called cynicism here.
Arguing that the author is wrong because X is good when the author is actually talking about Y is a fruitless exercise.
> Perhaps as one studies history they find that all forms of positive change conceivable by mere humans have been co-opted and are accounted for in the extremely energetic struggle of the system to remain alive, as it has been selected for very much Darwinistically.
That still doesn't and won't ever mean that positive change is negative. If you're still throwing the baby with a bathwater, you're the bad kind of cynic.
how to avoid cynicism? the primary way is to remove cynics from your life, and add optimists. second to that, keep working on new enough areas that you maintain a beginners mindset and can offset some of the pattern matching that leads one to thinking everything worthwhile has been done before.
If I talk about the things I dislike, I am flooded with imaginary internet points.
Now, here are some other things I hate about it...
i think cynicism is a survival tactic that people adopt, when facing a reality that they can't possibly change. Change is not always an option, unfortunately. Also cynicism isn't synonymous with complaining - it's more a way of looking at things, that also comes with its own kind of humour.
Human personalities are extremely complicated, and the best you can do is correlate traits given a huge amount of data which he probably does not have. So we have him boasting a theory, that is likely based on the fundamental attribution errors in his experiences, and people, who vote his post up, who happen to have a similar sentiment with a few anecdata (who would also probably disregard any anti-anecdata in this thread).
So is the nature of most Internet posts about psychology.
All in all, cynicism sounds (to a cynic) like a pretty good adaptation strategy to the real world.
Humans are biased to outweigh the importance of losses vs gains when considering expected value. At a minimum a some optimism is required to offset this bias.
Cynicism is, as the author says, about never challenging the status quo because you believe it's an already lost battle.
Cynicism can be about complaining, but only if you don't do anything about the situation you complain about.
I've always been one to complain about a lot of things. When I was studying CS my friends and classmates were annoyed that I was always voicing my complaints to the staff / teacher / university, and I was known as a professional complainer.
Well guess what? More often than not, complaining got me what I wanted.
I complained to the university that a teacher was just showing us Youtube videos and not evaluating any of our assessments, he got investigated by the school in his next class and isn't teaching there anymore now. I complained that a project was graded based on time to completion, when the time was depending on how fast the teaching assistant was answering each group, they decided it was unfair and didn't grade this project.
Complaining is almost the contrary of cynicism.
And to be fair I don't think your example is particularly well suited here, because changing the patent system would most likely need more support than just your own actions, which can be gathered via HN. It can also lead other people to reflect on the issue and take actions themselves.
I would still classify that as complaining.
If I had to choose an example of venting, I'd say that I could go on HN to complain about the neighbor's dog that barks all day long. Nothing would come out of that, and I don't need anyone supporting any action on this problem, so it'd be venting.
The "no complaint challenge" [0] linked from the article gives a pretty good definition of the type of complaining the author talks about:
I defined “complaining” for myself as follows: describing an event or person negatively without indicating next steps to fix the problem.
[0]: https://tim.blog/2007/09/18/real-mind-control-the-21-day-no-...
That's an absurd restriction.
1) Complaining does not require people to have the expertise to provide a solution. You can complain about a painful tooth and the dentist will handle that.
2) Complaining has social value, especially in democracies. It created social movements that pushed for political change.
Can you explain how that doesn't apply to everything else? I see every interaction as power dynamics.
I agree with your points and your ideas, are you saying that not being naive, you are cynical because its an accurate model of reality, like the slippery slope "fallacy"
The article seems to say that we should change our models when its useful to, instead of rationalizing it, the challenge seems like something worth trying though. We need to be delusional sometimes, its useful too.
Yes, I see it as a spectrum with naïveté and cynicism as the extremes as far as a descriptive framework of how the world works and I think I'm near the latter extreme in my definition of it.
Yes, that's why I said defaulting to distrust and skepticism. One should always allow the possibility to be convinced otherwise. There's no way to build relationships or really get anything done otherwise.
I think its best summed up as I regret not doing things rather than trying and not succeeding, as long as (like you said) it was a pragmatic risk.
So many times things in life do not live up to expectations. Often you think you’re interacting with someone but really you’re just interacting with their ego, there is no genuine connection. They build up a rapport with you so they could later cash in on their influence and make you hand over what they really want.
The general incompetence of society, the proud ignorance of people who have dug themselves into holes, it makes you look like an asshole for not fitting in, just for minding your own business and doing what’s best for you. How can one not be a cynic in this kind of world? Everything new you come across is likely to disappoint.
I think this might be the key.
Have you heard this expression before:
Disappointment = expectations - reality
Unfortunately I'm not sure offhand where that saying originated, but I think it is true, at least for me.
I'll spare you a lecture on it because, believe me, I'm no expert. But it is an expression I try to remind myself of from time to time to cope with people and things that might anger me.
Obviously reality falls short of expectations no matter what we do. Enough disappointment will demoralize anyone. It will shatter their understanding of the world, their sense of right and wrong, of cause and effect. Cynicism is born when the disturbing realities become the new expectations. Cynicists expect the world to keep disappointing them.
I should have elaborated I guess, but tried to keep it short.
I have high expectations for people and things that are important and close to me, and low expectations for things not as important to me or out of my control.
It doesn't mean I don't care about some of those other things at all. It's just that I only have a limited amount of mental and emotional energy to spend, and I try to spend it wisely.
Edit: hmm, maybe I'm sort of a cynic if I have low expectations. But I don't really think of myself that way. I try to be optimistic and focus on things I can do and not dwell on what I can't.
But on the other hand, I would feel pretty sad if it is the case that you (or anyone) are so consumed by this that you cannot find joy or purpose in your own life.
Sometimes it is the more profitable strategy to realise and accept that it is very difficult or impossible for one person to fix the major and obvious failings with reality. But it is actually quite achievable, through introspection and rational thinking, to identify and modify our own reactions to those things when our reactions are negatively impacting our ability to experience a quota of joy and happiness that is sufficient to keep negative ruminations about the world to a manageable level.
At the end of the day, we are just animals. And for whatever reason, nature has seen to it that we are quite capable of experiencing a reasonable amount of joy and happiness just by going through the activities required of us to sustain our lives. Breathing, drinking, eating, moving around, fighting, cooperating, resting, attempting to reproduce, and so on.
If it were not so, then what would be the likelihood of our continuing to be here? Given that we must go through many years of this stuff, without giving up, in order to pass on our genetic material before we either kill ourselves or die.
Have a nice day, friend.
A cynic doesn't manifest unwarranted faith in people and doesn't automatically assume people have good faith.
Cynics recognize that people can be motivated by ambition, desire, greed, gratification, materialism, goals, anger.
Cynics also have an attitude of distrust toward claimed ethical and social values.
It's probable most of us exists today because their ancestors were cynics.
It’s kind of obvious that a nihilist doesn’t want to effect change in society. It’s not true at all of cynics.
In fact, most people who influence large scale change display some degree of cynicism.
Now the article also equals cynicism with “people who complain”, which is also incorrect.
Really what the OP means is “if you want to change society you shouldn’t be a nihilistic asshole.”
That is difficult to disagree with…
However after a decade where I've lost a parent, failed a few relationships, going through multiple burnouts at work and last but most severe supporting my partner through two cancer treatments (which is thoroughly a hard stop for us trying to start a family) I have been fully transformed from that initial outlook and into a cynic.
And it feels uncomfortable, as it is not the skin I feel used to wearing.
So if nothing else, this article at least directed me towards this no-complain challenge, which I think I'll give a go. For that I'm grateful.
Yes, optimism has its benefits but beware of those weaponizing it.
For the Cynics, the purpose of life is to live in virtue, in agreement with nature. As reasoning creatures, people can gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which is natural for themselves, rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, and fame, and even flouting conventions openly and derisively in public. Instead, they were to lead a simple life free from all possessions.
Scenario 2: Posit that the above conditioning is unattainable, we have reached "peak humanity" and its all now terminally downhill
Call me naive but I think our main problem is that people have never really been forced to make up their minds "en masse", not just on "local" problems where cynicism, free-riders, aggression, exploitation, abuse (+ name your favorite pathology here) may be "rational", but in our "global" problem.
Universal principles and rights (as those put together by the UN) start becoming the mental and emotional guides to come to grips with the important global constraints. Cynics dismiss those as ludicrous, bureaucratic, vacuities. Think again.
In other words, we can be local cynics (and that might even be a breath of fresh air) but we cannot be global cynics.
I realize as I grow older that cynicism has crept in. To be fair at least in the business I operate in I have observed that the more cynical the analysis the more clarity is brought to the table when making decisions and laying strategy.
Unfortunately I have observed the same in my private social life, and to be honest it sucks. This is mainly regarding people's real intentions and motivations. I would like for this to be not true, and would not mind for another path and another reality.
I also feel like it wasn't like that before in the past, but it may have been because I found myself under the umbrella of educational institutions and people's motivations were probably biased (positively) as people's goals were mostly somewhat influenced by the institution.
"a no-complain challenge [...] The goal is to make it 21 days without having move the wrist."
As in 21 days without complaining.
The world isn't always changing for the better. And to be dead honest, seeing how covid unfolded and how it was handled, I'm more skeptical than ever. We have control over a lot of things in our lives and to be honest at no point in time in my life would I have imagined I'd be where I am now. It certainly turned out a lot better than my expectations during the first years of my adulthood. But sure enough there are a number of things in my life which are far worse than I would have anticipated and quite frankly I don't see anything I can do about them, yet plenty of them keep me up awake at night. And in those instances being cynical isn't necessarily a bad thing. And here we have the semantics and namely Diogenes who is widely known for his cynicism: he was anything but fond of ancient Greeks and his attitude towards them was exactly that: cynical. However, he was equally eager to change their living conditions. And I admit - I'm extremely cynical very often and in some instances this pushes me to change the things I dislike about me or my surroundings to the best of my abilities. Of course there are the instances which I mentioned earlier which are outside my control in which case... You know... Whatever, might as well shoot a few blanks for the sake of it.
However, let's say Santa Claus is a vast conspiracy by parents to decieve children, and while nobody could seriously believe any group that large could keep that secret, generation after generation does it. Christmas happens every year one way or another. We go along with it because we are emasculated liars, with our ugly sweaters and insufferable canned music, bending to the objectively absurd narrative that defies basic rationality and physics, one as implausible as the origin story of some deranged peninsular dictator, all so as not to be isolated and exiled. We justify our participation in the lie, one that teaches children to normalize disappointment, that their parents construct elaborate webs of nested deceptions to get their attention, and that the gifts aren't for you, they are to make themselves happy. Your parents are joy-vampires.
That was meant to sound unhinged, but it's to illustrate the point that cynicism can be convincingly simulated without a lot of effort, which means it is a pattern of thought that is necessarily one of many you can actively choose from. It's funny, but it also can become a vice, where it can become a substitute for humor (ask how I know). The other adage I use a lot is that if you smell shit everywhere you go, check your shoes.
The test I would use is, if you can figure out how to make money or even find joy from a hypothesis predicated on the contrarian - but still fact - that Santa isn't real, you may have healthy cynicism, and I'd be very interested in hearing it. Chances are you can't, and the best we can do is become a Santa truther, where we tell people Christmas was an inside job, and we only invented the Easter bunny to convince us that the rest is real.
Cynicism can be very valuable, but I don't think we can understand the value of it as a tool without being able to also laugh about it, because (imo) the humor is the only way to be really sure the cynicism isn't the only tool we have.
Edit: Think there is an element of fatalism to it (nothing changes) that the article doesn’t touch in though
It doesn't seem to me that cynicism and optimism are opposites. You can be both cynical and optimistic.
If you are going to trust all people and their claimed motivations without thinking, you are going to set yourself as a victim.
For example, thinking that politicians and big corporations desire nothing but your own good won't do yourself much good.
Would it be cynical to wonder who benefits from such credulity? b^)
Actually the most vocal seldom benefit from their "optimism". Sometimes they are hired by those who do benefit, so they get a sort of indirect benefit.
It is easy to talk about tackling problems head-on when they are solvable on the individual scale, but anybody who encourages this “no complaining” mentality and without any qualifiers should not be taken seriously. It’s likely that the author doesn’t yet know the purpose that complaints or criticism play in feedback loops and how they trigger improvement… and even then, anybody who’s lived long enough would know that there are just some things that are bigger than our own selves and which aren’t battles worth fighting, unless you already have some kind of privilege or advantage or cosmologically-written fate that could increase your chances of effecting the change that you want to happen.
I don't accept the premise.
Is this cynicism or outright pessimism?
>"There was always this feeling that attempts at improvements are futile. If anyone tried to improve the system in any way, they will face a great opposition, and any value they bring forward will be immediately vultured away."
>"...if someone created a coin operated parking meter, another one will quickly figure out how to steal the coins out of it. Thus, the attempt to bring order will fail..."
Cynical take, "People will abuse this system"
Pessimistic, uncreative take, "Don't even bother. Better to exploit what presently exists than attempt to create. That's what everyone else is doing, therefore I must follow the status quo."
Cynical innovative take, "It could work but it needs to be secure. The best would be if we can gamify their greed..."
Being cynical does not mean being pessimistic. It does not mean to always think bad about other people. It means seeing things close to what they are. Yes, there is goodwill and kindness and altruism. And you should recognize them when you come across them. Just don't assume that anyone is being kind and good. Try to find what is the goal people are following when they say or do something. Because there is always a goal. Which might fit your own goals or not.
Having healthy grasp of reality to me is in no way harmful. On the contrary, it should be desired. Perhaps it's the hopeless atmosphere in countries with high corruption and badly working government which just saps your hope, and you stop believing things could actually work if people worked for common good.
As I myself do have a snarky view of the current world politics and whatnot but still can enjoy things, don't really complain, put things in trash bins and help strangers and so forth.
Steve helped me unshackle myself; kick-started a thinking about what values were really important to me, not just professionally, but what kind of a person I wanted to be amid the environment in which I am thrown. The corporate capitalist world (& to a lesser degree the young-guns-ultra-productive engineering departments) deserves deep cynicism. I've heard so many good & great intents put off, and so many wild betterments ignored. But Steve helped me find an inner stoic that insisted on, that demanded- that believed in- progress, in other engineers, in trying for extra, in myself, in doing good, even when it probably wasn't going to be convenient or easy. Engineering is filled with cynicism & this made clear what a spectrum our opinions lay across, laid bare how cynical, how pessimistic most of the world about me was.
I endeavor to help & support others, to try for good, in ways that I would never have thought about for reading Notes from the Magic Bus. I still await such a clear & obvious life-changing post appearing ever again. This one's alright. But it doesn't deal close enough with the conflict, with how horrid it can be, suffering the un-smart gumption of the erring-do-wellers. It helped convince me to try to help see things along a lot, even if the picks & choices aren't necessarily totally what I would do. To be optimistic, not just in my own sphere, but in working with others. Please, read. Let me, let us know what you think.
I can safely say that I have never as a programmer implemented a feature that I thought made anyone's life better. My software has consistently turned the screws in on people's lives, either in their work life by making monotonous internal tools or in their personal life by removing autonomy and choice. I take magicians and turn them into mechanical Turks. I take people and turn them into consumers/users/addicts.
This isn't supposed to be a diatribe, just contributing my N=1 that Notes from the Magic Bus seems cute and superficial to me, defending the culture of office politics by elevating it to the importance of actual politics.
Shouldn't you take a systemic approach? Individuals can do lots of things, but until it turns systemic, is there a reason to adopt this negativity-first mindset? (And even then, I think OP makes a good case for why one shouldn't.) Kids were shitty to me in middle school, but I don't think I should indemnify all of humanity because of that.
These aren't mutually exclusive. It's possible for something to be bad _for you_ but not be bad _for everyone_, especially if there are particular circumstances around you that cause the experience to be bad. It's like deciding never to date again after a bad relationship (which certainly has crossed the minds of friends of mine). It's not about changing yourself, it's about keeping an open mind.
Cynicism and nihilism are emotionally easy excuses not to try that lead to a variety of impoverishments. [Edit: they are conveniently self reinforcing too.]
"By realizing that the world is always changing, and by stopping to complain, we opt out of seeing the world through cynical glasses, and become part of the change. When we realize that our life can change, we can change it."
The author actually meant this:
"By realizing that the world is always changing, when we stop complaining, we opt out of seeing the world through cynical glasses, and become part of the change. When we realize that our life can change, we can change it."
The meaning of the original text to a native English speaker is, I think, the exact opposite of what the author intended.
Otherwise, great thought-provoking article, and I think I'll try that no complain challenge. Interesting discussion here too.
You'll truly darken when you start seeing your everyday relations in the same way, and you don't have to.
I also tend to see large orgs in a cynical light, mainly because everyone I know says bad things about them.
But I find that plenty of people are still good people. You can still deal with them with your cards on the table, and they do the same with you. Plus there's plenty of things to appreciate that aren't rivalrous, eg nerd knowledge, that are interesting and create a bond when you can share them.
Dog-like Diogenes knew the true value of things, because he had lost all money.
He lived like an animal, which is what we all are destined to; since eternal growth is impossible.
Cynical to me means to live without material wealth, and while most people would call that suicide;
I think everyone that has things, specially as those require you to burn energy, are suicidal.
Everything is relative.
You cannot really own anything in life except what is in your head and by extension what you created out of that head from scratch.
Stop consuming and start producing would be the only constuctive reaction to all comments on this article.
It's very easy to be an optimist when you have never taken any responsibility.
I think it is naive to define a cynic as a character whole (which sounds a lot like nihilism instead). People can be immensely cynical and yet positive, cynical but with a view to do something about it, cynical and miserable. It is not an absolute.
A lot of the comments here seem to be attempting to find nice quotes that can then be used for labelling outlooks on life to be attributed to.
Complaining is cathartic! I'm off to listen to some Bobby McFerrin while I yell at clouds :)
Well said.
that said, non-constructive complaining can also create and spread caustic and degenerate mindsets.
like everything, it's a balance.
applying habit tracking to one's own complaining is a great idea though!
People are usually resistant to change, because 95% of ideas to change something are laughably bad, or not well thought out.
If you find yourself talking to too many "cynics", then the problem is you! Propose better ideas, that don't sound ridiculous or too far-fetched. Present them with a detailed plan to achieve win-win goals.
I think it's important to be realistic - but also to be earnest and let yourself be taken away by emotion on occasion.
Sure, there are contexts where the individual's choices that could lead to substantial improvement are so risky and the chances of success so small that it's rational not to try. But that's still a choice. All that cynicism does is dress up that choice as having no alternatives so you can feel better about it. Which is a totally human and understandable thing to do, but can easily be taken too far and applied in contexts where individual incremental improvements are absolutely possible and have a good chance of success.
I think this is probably the correct position to take, and I try to hold on to it. I often fail to have optimism of the will, but I suppose pessimism of the intelligence is better than simple cynicism.
Reality is a harsh mistress. Most have to put on their beer goggles to embrace her.
Living means feeling pain and pleasure, triumph and defeat, love and hate, grief and bliss. I would challenge anyone to prove that you can have any one of those without its opposite.
Borrible, your reality does not have to be feared. You can embrace it. Only then can you experience.
That was probably more in your mind, than in mine.
I do love her because she is the way she is. But then again, I'm not on the losing side.
So, tastes may differ.
It is a defense mechanism, that they often confuse with "realism". A defense mechanism that also can successfully protect them of ever becoming happier or being part of any improvement in their environment.
The more you can actually do about it the less sense cynicism makes.
This already betrays a cynical outlook: “the elites are always the same”.[1] Yes, the world has been run by elites since the agricultural revolution. So now it’s just a fact of life (to the author). Attempts at egalitarianism (i.e. from capitalism to socialism to communism) have failed.
That’s what I am cynical about.
[1] Although you might be perfectly OK with this and thus not a “cynic” about it if you own more wealth than a certain threshold.
In fact, I'd go as far as saying stuff like this comes almost exclusively from people who may have smelled the bullshit but never had to deal with it. You know, like how young attractive women tend to see things.
Then again, maybe I am wrong and that was my cynicism talking
I don't think you appreciate just how much bullshit young attractive women have to put up with.
Best to participate in the theatre. Once you play a role long enough but also seem "pragmatic" in action, others of the same ilk will find you and invite you behind the curtain.
Its not that complaining has no place, its just that most complaining is is the lowest common denominator and doesn’t contribute much.