stoic negative visualizations vs pessimism i have been thinking about this after reading [[William Irvine - A Guide to the Good Life The Ancient Art of Stoic|A Guide to the Good Life The Ancient Art of Stoic]] one of the thing i try to work on myself is my pessimism it's said that french people are pessimistic by nature and my life experience my have increased this, flirting with death several time when i ride my bike under the rain and about to turn, my brain always simulate the future with high fidelity like 2-3 seconds before the turn and i see myself slipping and falling on the road, hurting myself gravely which in turns make me more careful and take the turn with ease i wonder if, instead, i predicted and simulated a very smooth turn, no issue, even at high speed the point of [[Philosophy/Consciousness/Consciousness|consciousness]] is to provide us way to run reality in our head before it happens for example when bob the hunter gatherer saw a lion afar and he was very hungry to catch this gazelle running around, he ran a simulation in his head and saw that he would be killed by the lion very likely which made him seek easier pray instead while john, who was a bit backward, did not have consciousness and just went for it, and sadly got killed by the lion so natural selection optimised us to develop this future-prediction simulation software i wonder what social advantage does it give us and if sexual selection had any impact on consciousness too? anyway ... bad pessimism is simulating a bad outcome instead of a good one which results in a bad/average outcome while without this pessimism you'd have achieve average/good result good pessimism (negative visualization) is simulating a bad outcome instead of a good one which results in a average/good outcome while without this pessimism you'd have achieve bad outcome ### examples of bad pessimism - thinking "i'll probably fail this pitch" before presenting to investors, which makes you nervous and actually perform worse - assuming "nobody will come to my event" which leads to less enthusiasm in promotion and a self-fulfilling prophecy - believing "this relationship won't work" which causes you to be distant and actually damage the connection ### examples of good pessimism (stoic negative visualization) - visualizing server crashes before launch, which leads to better monitoring systems and smoother deployment - imagining losing all your data, which prompts proper backup systems and redundancy - considering you might get sick, which motivates maintaining good health insurance and emergency funds - thinking through potential startup failure modes, which helps build more robust business models the key difference: - bad pessimism: paralyzes and creates the negative outcome - good pessimism: motivates preparation and prevents the negative outcome #stoicism #philosophy #mental-simulation