Optimistic thinking linked with lower cognitive abilities | Hacker News Reader

Optimistic thinking linked with lower cognitive abilities

bath.ac.uk

70 pointsgeox43 comments

the title is clickbait by the press department

the advertised article has the boring title

Looking on the (B)right Side of Life: Cognitive Ability and Miscalibrated Financial Expectations

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01461672231209400

this was very specifically measuring the development of the family household finances vs actual development, quoted below.

it escapes me how this leads to the generalization that optimism is a sign of stupidity (translation from academesian to plain English by me).

as a reality check, innovation is driven by optimism. this whole site here is thriving because of optimism. smart, intelligent optimism.

the original article has a much more nuance

  Financial expectations were measured via responses to the following question asked in all 12 Waves of USoc:

  “Looking ahead, how do you think you will be financially a year from now, will you be. . .  
  1. Better off  
  2. Worse off than you are now  
  3. or about the same?”

> as a reality check, innovation is driven by optimism.

Are you claiming that based on anything more than wishful thinking? I have a vague memory of seeing a study that found almost the opposite: that the key to innovation is having the relentless skepticism to cull bad ideas quickly.

> this whole site here is thriving because of optimism. smart, intelligent optimism.

This site was notoriously negative (e.g. the famous Dropbox post) in its most successful days, and my subjective impression is that it has declined at the same time as it's grown more optimistic.

Optimistic vs. skeptic is a false dichotomy

"Trust, but verify"

yeah you can be a conditional rational optimist, who are often skeptic as well

I do find the tech optimism reflected by this site quite empty and superficial. There's a lot of tech for tech's sake optimism here, and that's a very Western-privilege way to look at things. And yes, it does come across as stupid, if you consider tone deafness a declination of stupidity.

It also comes across as deranged value wise, a investment into juicero hyping up what any street vendor can do, as a tech investment while parts of the world starve.

The again tech, as long as platform and source are unlocked, remains the greatest equalizer in chances there ever was. Your father may sell apples from a cart and the son may sell carts in an apple, passing by all the monopoly walls and hopeless hamster wheel work of traditional caste-locked employment

> (e.g. the famous Dropbox post)

This is bullshit and typical HN negativity.

All the top Dropbox comments were positive, the top top is a technical point, with a suggested solution -

https://web.archive.org/web/20081202041954/https://news.ycom...

I think this comment was flagged because of the "BS" lingo.

however yes, I agree, "the famous dropbox post" was indeed received enthusiastically.

here without archive.org:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

The top comment on there is a negative one. The archive.org link is relevant because it has a different comment ordering at that point.

the vast majority of comments are positive, outright enthusiastic, no matter how you sort them.

And the top level one, as another commenter pointed out, is constructive critique.

Constructive critique is pretty much opposite to optimism, I would say.

I see, we have different understanding of the word optimism

to me it's positive outlook on things, the confidence things usually turn for the better where we work together to make it so.

that's neither blind optimism, "lala no problems here, this is fine meme".nor is it naive optimism "oh ya negligible issues in that corner no real issues Pu bear" but hard working realistic "this ain't be simple but we'll make it work"

I feel in good company with this general understanding, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimism

and that's why I have beef with the downspin of the article, which overgeneralized a single funding in a narrow context to a broad rejection of hope, when you think about it.

That's one take. Another is that innovation is driven by money, e.g. seeing an increase in war economies (government spending) or by high income inequality (VC/PE spending.)

Overall, optimism is probably also higher in these situations than others. The question is if the people who are optimistic are also the ones being innovative, or if they're just "rallying the troops." If optimism was itself linked to ability to innovate, you'd expect to see innovation happen regardless of money flows, because those innovating would not have to be paid to do it.

But, I'm pretty sure the space programs of the 1950-1980s were innovative because a few optimistic directors got funding to pay rocket scientists to be innovative. In fact, it's quite possible no rocket would have left Earth if the scientists were optimists.

Isn't it rather about who is optimistic and who isn't? when you scratch a personal itch with some innovation, _you_ are the optimist. when pointy haired boss has that brilliant idea _he_'s the optimist and the engineers may very well be "that pig ain't gonna fly no matter how hard you throw it..." and the middle managers may prevent the two from talking for a loooong time.

anyhow, my key point was: the study I understand (if you don't know enough, you can easily be unrealistically optimistic) and the PR department twist on it I don't, and I disagree with, violently.

.oO( else I'd have to admit how stupid I am ;-) )

>But, I'm pretty sure the space programs of the 1950-1980s were innovative because a few optimistic directors got funding to pay rocket scientists to be innovative. In fact, it's quite possible no rocket would have left Earth if the scientists were optimists.

And not that the pessimists thought that if they didn't do it the enemy would be able to lob nuclear missiles at them with impunity?

The "clickbait" headline corresponds to the paper's abstract pretty well, especially its final sentence:

"It is a puzzle why humans tend toward unrealistic optimism, as it can lead to excessively risky behavior and a failure to take precautionary action. Using data from a large nationally representative U.K. sample (N=36,312), our claim is that optimism bias is partly a consequence of low cognition—as measured by a broad range of cognitive skills, including memory, verbal fluency, fluid reasoning and numerical reasoning. We operationalize unrealistic optimism as the difference between a person’s financial expectation and the financial realization that follows, measured annually over a decade. All else being equal, those highest on cognitive ability experience a 22% (53.2%) increase in the probability of realism (pessimism) and a 34.8% reduction in optimism compared with those lowest on cognitive ability. This suggests that the negative consequences of an excessively optimistic mindset may, in part, be a side product of the true driver, low cognitive ability."

> unrealistic optimism

> optimism bias

> excessively optimistic

So not optimism, optimism qualified on bad outcomes.

and further scoped on family finances...

really anything beyond that is an overgeneralization.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

meaning what in our context here? what I said and what the study said don't connect to it yet. for me.

As always with studies like these, there's the question of applicability of the measures to the hypothesis.

Is the measure of cognitive ability relevant to the claim made in the paper? That is to say, is the measure of cognitive ability ("g" in the paper[0]) actually a good measure of abilities and relevant to long-term financial optimism?

Are both these variables conditional on a third hidden variable? This isn't thoroughly addressed in the paper, the authors choose a series of variables "which are thought to be in principle unaffected by cognitive ability" but even there show that optimism is dependent on e.g. age (Measures -> Control Variables), and additionally mention that "g" is also dependent on age (Measures -> Cognitive Ability).

A high p-value doesn't necessarily indicate that the two variables are causally related, just correlated—and there are plenty of highly correlated datasets that are definitely not causal[1].

It's important to try to disentangle the claims from the data supporting them. The claim that people with lower cognitive ability are more (recklessly) optimistic about their futures seems like it would make sense at least from a social-Darwinist perspective, but it's exactly those claims that seem reasonable that we should examine more closely. Confirmation bias is a powerful set of blinders.

[0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01461672231209400 [1] https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

It's important to note that this article is talking about excessive optimism, i.e. taking a higher proportion of risks because you have a generally higher expectation of reward.

In effect, it's saying that being reckless is a sign of lower cognitive abilities. Which makes sense, as most people with sufficient cognitive ability would try not to be as reckless.

"Excessive" optimism should be defined in the intro. Naturally, it's more click-baity if it's not.

It seems like there must be quite a lot to this, BUT. I also think that there is some reinforcement of false beliefs that tend to prop up inequality. Like the idea that anyone who can't save money must just not be able to make good decisions or is just cognitively inferior.

Some of this is Social Darwinism.

> anyone who can't save money must just not be able to make good decisions

Unless you’re lending them money it’s always better to assume the best about people and spend the energy on helping the less fortunate. However, if you’re the person unable to save it’s better to assume you lack the virtues required to do so and concentrate on developing those virtues because you’re the only one who can do that for you. If after developing those virtues you still can’t save due to circumstances truly out of your control you’ll know that definitely and you’ll still be better off.

This comment is a great example of what I am talking about about. "Virtue". You directly implied that you believe I must be morally inferior since I am poor.

Maybe one of the reasons I am poor is my because of my integrity.

That's not what they said. They're saying that, even if it really isn't your fault, acting as if it is your fault can help you to materially improve your situation. If you act as if there's nothing you can do, you will do nothing.

Previous discussion about the study: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38537933

Doomers thinking they smart after reading this

DONT RUIN IT FOR MEEEE nah jk that title is kind of bullshit.

I must be a genius.

There are people in my life, and I expect yours, who simply cannot see the long, slow avalanche of the consequences of their decisions until they arrive en mass, at which point they attribute them to bad luck.

But think of all of the nights they got to sleep like a baby in the meantime, rather than worrying about what the costs would be for their actions.

There are two meanings of "optimist" (same for "pessimist") that are often confused and mixed up. The first meaning is a person who is biased to expect overly positive (negative) outcomes compared to what is suggested by available evidence and history. This is supposed to be a personality trait and irrespective of any concrete question or issue. As such, both biases are stupid. A self-described "proud optimist" in this sense is proud to be knowingly delusional. I'm not sure anyone calls themselves a "proud pessimist", but replacing the word by "sceptic" or "realist" changes nothing if by it one still means being proud of cognitive bias.

The second meaning of optimism (pessimism) is to expect positive (negative) results for a given question or issue compared to other people with access to (roughly) the same evidence. In this case, it's normal that there would be a spread of opinions, these differing opinions need not be biases (while crucial to explore further and eventually reconcile) and the words optimistic/pessimistic describe something meaningful and useful.

I wish people stopped saying "I'm an optimist" and instead listed explicitly the things they're optimistic about (in the second sense). If you're optimistic about everything, you're most likely just biased and could improve your decision making by working towards correcting this bias.

In my experience it's a third option - that optimistic and pessimistic people have different experiences and evidence.

So when people say they are an optimist, they mean "in general the evidence that I have leads me to a more positive conclusion than most people"

I would say that's a special case of my second option. Maybe I didn't phrase it broadly enough. It concerns a single question or issue. (Unless somebody thinks they have some magical evidence or experience that concerns literally every issue, which I would find highly suspect).

If people in such situations care about their conclusions (which may not always be the case, not all issues are equally important), they would proceed to share the evidence and experiences.

As conceptualized by Seligman, there is also a component of optimism called "explanatory style". Basically, if you experience some kind of adverse event, how do you explain to yourself what has happened? Let's say you are rejected for a job. Do you take it personally? Does reason you were rejected concern all aspects of your life or is it specific to this situation? Is the problem permanent or temporary? If you explain adverse events in a way that's personal, pervasive, and permanent, you have a more pessimistic explanatory style and are less likely to try again in the future.

I mean, ignorance is bliss, right?

I mean, kind of follows from the premises, no? Pessimistic thinking is logically linked with lower cognitive abilities too. Balanced thinking is that which makes the best predictions.

The article says that pessimism is not linked to lower cognitive abilities; only optimism.

This article is very well written but makes me very sad.

A) Talking about “of low cognitive ability” in such a tone is valid jargon, I’m sure, but I think it’s othering and arrogant considering how little we know about the various faculties of the brain[1] and how IQ tests correlate very strongly with childhood stability and opportunity. This article’s language strongly implies that your intelligence is somewhat set and universal, which seems beyond unfair to those who think they have “low IQ” and take this as a reason to give up.

B) The science seems strong, at least from the two studies cited! I’m guessing this has to do with the necessity of Tangible Hope for the (self-identified) poor, but I don’t know… A very interesting finding.

C) I certainly think the leap to financial markets is some fun flair for a very non-HN audience, so in that lense it’s very enjoyable. Unless I’m missing something though that’s all pretty meaningless - “what do ‘dumb’ people think their future will be like” isn’t a very helpful question for investment planning.

> unfair to those who think they have “low IQ” and take this as a reason to give up.

The problem isn’t having low cognitive ability, the problem is giving up. Ideally, everyone should know and accept their true limitations, intelligence being only one of them and not the only one used to justify giving up. Since none of us know what our true limitations are we should push ourselves until we find them and we’d all be surprised if we did.

Ideally, none of us would lack in virtue :)

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