I thought that too, but then read the second paragraph:
> That finding was independent of other factors thought to influence life's length — such as "socioeconomic status, health conditions, depression, social integration, and health behaviors," the researchers from Boston University School of Medicine and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health say.
It is possible to imagine a potential casual process that leads to earlier death. What if pessimism creates a constant presence of key stress hormones (Adrenaline, Cortisol and Norepinephrine) and these are already linked to higher likelihoods of heart disease, cancer, ...
Anecdotally, Ive been very fortunate to have a positive brain chemistry. When bad things have happened, my brain pretty much doesn't worry on them. Eventually things work out (or something good eventually happens) and I get through the bad times.
There is no way to explain or describe this positive brain chemistry in a way that anyone can believe. But since I was a kid, my parents have been worried that Im too happy as they know dissatisfaction is what drives people to achieve. They would say things like "your only problem is you are too happy".
I do annoying things to avoid bad things from happening in the future. If one is very optimistic, then one would not believe the bad things would happen and thus one would not be very motivated to do the annoying things.
For example do you wear a seat belt or brush your teeth? I know the questions may sound a bit offensive but I'm honestly interested in hearing people's motivations.
I do, because wearing a seatbelt is not that annoying. It just doesn't bother me. Being optimistic doesnt mean that I don't think bad things will happen to me, just that it will be ok, or not be ok. Either way there is always something positive to come out of every situation.
There are some paths that I would prefer, but even the bad paths have lots of positives.
During the 2010 recession we had a client that owed us 700K and I could tell from reading the 10Q was on the verge of bankruptcy. I had my team work very hard to collect our money. We got it and when they went bankrupt we survived while a lot of our peers went out of business. It isnt that I believed we would be ok, but that if we had not been able to collect the money and went out of business that would have been an incredible learning experience and something good would have come out of it.
Every outcome is not equally desired, I would rather be in business than not be in business. But not being in business, losing your home, becoming bankrupt etc. just doesnt stress me out. I have lived on 10K/year before and been incredibly happy. Even when I was digging change out of the couch to afford to buy food.
I guess one could map it very crudely so that the pessimist sees the alternatives as A = -10 and B = -8 and the optimist sees them as A = +4 and B = +6. Both estimate pairs will lead to the same action but the latter person will have a more positive outlook.
Does it ever bother you when people find that youre "too happy" which people might take it to mean that no outcome to any given event, can really displease you?
Have you read up on what such a "condition" - if it can be called that - is called medically? Do others share it as well?
Medicine and science, being subject to the limitations of a falsifiable-evidence style of thinking as well as technical limitations, are understandably way behind the curve in this sort of thing.
From the reading I've done, the underlying physiological explanation for "the enlightened state" seems to be downgraded activity in the Default Mode Network of the brain, and evidence suggests this can be achieved in a variety of ways.
Meditation, prayer, and psychedelics often seem to put the rationalist-oriented mind into a sort of defensive, hyper-skeptical mode, but that the same phenomenon can also be observed in stroke patients hopefully makes such minds more open to considering the idea.
the way people see it is that I dont react to bad situations. I have been called "stone cold". I have sometimes wondered if it is related to sociopathy. I am a giving person and would rather give than receive, so am not very selfish. However, bad things just dont bother me because there is always something positive that comes out of everything.
When my wife had an aortic dissection and had a high chance of dying, people had a hard time understanding how I could be so calm and not be stressed. It wasnt that I was sure she was going to make it, just that no matter the outcome I would still find happiness.
Sincere question here: what makes you certain that you would have found happiness?
I guess the fundamental difference between your way of thinking and most peoples' is that you seem to be absolutely convinced that happiness exists and is continuously experienced regardless of the state of reality. Therefore, regardless of what happens, there will be some form of happiness and you will experience it.
I'm in awe of this, because my personal view is that happiness is a fleeting chaotic state that mostly has no easily measurable probability of emerging, despite my attempts to grasp the shape of the distribution and its evolution in response to my actions. While I would consider myself not to be pessimistic, I definitely tend to have extremely rare encounters with what one would call happiness, which seems to be so starkly different from your life experience.
There's a book by Tony Hsieh (Zappos founder) called Delivering Happiness.
Near the end, he talks about three types of "happiness."
The first is pleasure. It's from food, fun, or other external experiences. While it can bring temporary happiness, you will always be looking for the next fix.
The second is happiness from passion, such as a hobby or working at your startup. You can go for years without success and still feel happy. However eventually you'll need some type of progress to keep going.
The third type is happiness from purpose. Think of it as working towards something bigger than yourself. This type of happiness can last a lifetime, even if all you do is sacrifice for it.
happiness cant come from external factors. Happiness comes from within. I have come to believe that it has to be fortunate brain chemistry. Events dont make me happy, Im already happy and optimistic. Some events are easier to find the good in of course.
There is a downside which is that I dont get that happy over good events, I also dont get sad over bad events. I dont need anything to be happy so when good things happen, they are nice, but simply not necessary. Overall though I feel very fortunate, satisfied, optimistic, and happy with life.
What if pessimists are less likely to engage in self-preserving or self-improving behaviour (because why bother), creating a self-sustaining negative feedback loop?
If you stress out mice even their grand children will also be stressed even if you remove any stressors from them? Essentially, this area of research is extremely complicated.
I'm sure it would seem like there is a link between the two somewhere, even if it is very threadbare or even spurious for that matter.
More principally, these things just seem very believable because being optimistic is just a positive attribute that society rewards and approves of much more than it does pessimism (some would say being pessimistic is almost an universal negative, some outlier societies notwithstanding).
This imparts a definite bias in the believability of the study, no matter what the findings of the study actually are - even if the study were to only indicate a mild association between being optimistic and longevity.
Just consider the findings of a study from some years ago:
"High social status has its privileges when it comes to
aging – even in wild animals."
...
“High-ranking members in hyena clans reproduce more, they
live longer and appear to be in better overall health,” said
Nora Lewin, MSU doctoral student of zoology and co-lead
author. “If you want to see the hierarchy of spotted hyenas,
throw down some fresh meat near them. It’s quickly apparent
who’s dominant and who’s not.”
...
Lewin and her teammates focused on telomeres, caps at the end
of each strand of DNA that protect chromosomes from
deterioration. These biomarkers are regarded as important signs
of aging and stress in many species, including humans. Shrinking
telomeres are a signal that cells are sliding into defensive
mode, stressful actions that could soon lead to cells’ – and
to the organism’s – death.
“This work shows, for the first time, the effects of social
rank on telomere length in wild mammals,” Lewin said. “This enhances
our understanding of how social and ecological variables may
contribute to age-related declines of hyenas, and in organisms
in general.”[1]
High social status humans live longer lives is the natural assumption here even if the suggestion is only mild.
Such stuff seems more believable due to a chain of assumptions about - low status mammals, stress levels, food security, likelihood of physical harm etc.
Its safe to assume those, it would seem - however light the actual evidence for it.
There are scores of studies like this with very light suggestive conclusions yet the believability is high.
I just wish these things are fleshed out with a lot more rigor and thoroughness by the science journalists or journalists at large. This isn't trivial, easily ignored stuff. These things have real world consequences if true.
Very palpable, sizable and profound consequences on people's lives.
[1]
Social Status Has Impact On Overall Health of Mammals
Thanks for the excerpt of the study, it is interesting. As persistent stress causes visible signs of aging, for example the seemingly accelerated growth of gray hair and wrinkles of U.S presidents, it is not big a leap to suspect more.
Some of the most positive people I’ve met have lived in the worst of circumstances. The mind decides what it wants about the situation. Optimism is a powerful tool, even if only the person using it can feel the difference.
But that’s not what’s being discussed. Does optimism actually make you live a longer and more successful life, or is your life equally short and shitty, you just enjoy it more?
There is a lot of data over many decades that supports the expectation that optimism (which ISTR has pretty clear
a definition) creates all sorts of positive life event outcomes. (e.g. you're more likely to succeed in whatever endeavors you choose if you're optimistic, which in turn tends to create a safe and supportive environment.)
How could you possibly measure that? By the time that children even understand the concept of “optimism” (or even “future”), they have already had years (decades?) of positive or negative signals (either from their environment, or from their genes) that likely cause both optimism and success (such as non-abusive parents, health, etc.).
If you assume that everything will turn out bad, you wont even try. If you assume all people around you are assholes, you wont even try good relationships. Plus, people like better optimistically looking people and reward them more then pessimistic people with equal merit.
Moreover, outward apparent optimism create illusion of success even when there is not actual real success backing it. (The optimism does not even have to be real, you just have to be committed to consistently pretend it.)
If you assume that everything will turn out well, you're not going to be cautious
If you assume people around you are all good you're in for some surprise, not of the good kind , especially if you are a girl in a dark alley
Plus, I dislike optimism, I find it's childish, but I get a lot of rewards nonetheless from people around me for being honest.
The illusion of success is not success, believing in the illusion of something is called faith, and it's what killed the people who prayed together for the black plague to stop, spreading the diseases.
This is the root of it, and something most on HN won't accept. Optimistic people generally see and seek opportunity (either knowingly or unknowingly) more frequently than pessimists.
Won't accept? It seems startups are the same. "Rationally" a poor way to get rich, but if enough people miscaulate their odds (or enjoy it for nonmonetary reasons) we'll get a few big successes.
Most millionaires are those who started their own businesses or are self employed. Certainly not SV unicorns, but they run businesses you've never heard of started by ordinary people.
Yeah, there is that thing when optimism becomes euphemism for naive, not allowed to talk about problems and disadvantages. But I think that is manipulative way to see optimism.
Sometimes chances are low or times are bad and optimism should not equal refusing to see that.
You beat me to this by 5 minutes. It seems pretty obvious that the path of causation tends in this direction, rather than the other. And even if there is a signal going the other direction, extracting it from the noise caused by "people who have health and financial stability" seems impossible, unless the sample group were all of people who have lived to at least 85 without having these traits.
Thank you for your fantastic insight! If you read the part of my comment that is not the first sentence, you'll see where I give logical reasoning supporting that first sentence... Sort of how a paper supports it's abstract. "Seems pretty obvious" translates to "becomes clear with simple logical reasoning", probably should have revised that for the snob crowd. I actually prefer logical reasoning in my science, what about you?
I learned about privacy.com here on HN and it has been very helpful for me. You can create virtual cards for single-use or recurring payments. Each card can only be used by one vendor. You also set a max amount.
Exactly, some implementations can even lock it to a single "message" (what you see on the credit card statement) so that it can't be used for a different purchase. Needs cooperation from the merchant not to put the subscription date in the message but otherwise, it's not exactly rocket science.
I love doing something similar with my small kids (4 and 2). I start laughing for no reason and when they see me laughing they start laughing. We laugh and have good time without any reason until we get tired. I also remember seeing some festival in India on TV. Everyone is laughing and having good time, for no reason.
Yes, with kids that works nice. Sometimes they are upset so I start to laugh for no reason until they cannot hold it anymore and start laughing as well. Well, sometimes they get even more upset, so use with caution.
We have been self-serve product for the first 12 years and a year ago we launched our Enterprise version. As the article mentions because of the existing high traffic it has been pretty easy to find leads. We have already signed 100 Enterprise customers. Our main challenge was not to find customers, in fact we struggled to catch up with leads. The main challenges were making the product Enterprise ready with necessary features such as covering most popular SSOs and building admin privileges on the Enterprise product, and trying to build a sales team from scratch.
We had to hire 3 sales people before we found someone right. It is like someone hiring developers without any development experience. You get it wrong because you don't know what makes someone good. Get help from someone who has experience. We finally found the right person from our network and suddenly sales started flying.
Can you explain a bit more? I cannot quite square the fact that you had issues with sales (people) and the fact that you had no problem finding customers... Why do you need sales people, if not to find customers? Or do you actually mean customer support / integration people?
The leads are the top of the funnel. Traditionally salespeople take leads and turn them into deals. So I presume they were seeing a big falloff between interest and conversion.
It also doesn't surprise me at all they struggled to find good salespeople. I hear that all the time. Seems like it's hard to tell the difference between a salesperson who can sell your product and one who's just selling themselves to you.
I was at a luxury Turkish resort in the Mediterranean this summer. It had an amazing open buffet. You could find anything you want. I'd just fill two plates with different boreks and nothing else. Hot, right out of the oven, they were amazing.
Here is a startup idea for grabbing: Make a better interface for AWS/Google Cloud.
Since their APIs covers everything this should be possible. Be the first UXaaS.
A killer feature: a server by server breakdown of Google Cloud expenses. It is impossible to understand what you are paying for on Google Cloud. They lump everything together in an incredibly confusing bill.
Hmm sounds like you're missing out on the Billing > Reports or Billing > Cost breakdown sections of GCP Console's Billing section. In Reports it does exactly what you want when you group by SKU in the Filters
Incidentally a UI startup for AWS/Google Cloud is an incredibly bad idea. You're just a sitting duck waiting to be killed, and also you have no full control over the API.
I'm really happy the answer ended up being "boring, old tools on a smallish (virtual) machine" since my immediate reaction to the headline was "that'd be slightly impressive I guess... with limited resources, 20 years ago".
