[gruseom]

This piece is surprisingly profound. Here is the key insight:

Negative thinking feels good.

I think this is exactly right.

A compounding factor is habit. Once you've being doing the same thing over and over, it feels good to keep doing it and uncomfortable not to.

Another reason why negative thinking feels good is that it's passive, and it's easier to be passive than active.

[kareemm]

negative thinking feels good because it proves us right when things go wrong. it's easy to make things go wrong when you believe that'll happen. that dopamine hit when you're right feels damn good.

>Another reason why negative thinking feels good is that it's passive, and it's easier to be passive than active.

negative thinking absolves one of responsibility. you can think "this plan won't work, so i'm gonna sit back and watch it fail" and enjoy being a critic instead of a participant.

[ektimo]

Negative thinking feels bad. Maybe he's never actually experienced it. A better explanation is needed.

[gruseom]

The statements "negative thinking feels bad" and "negative thinking feels good" are not contradictory at all, though they may appear so. The way in which it feels bad is obvious, but the way in which it feels good is not, and takes self-observation and honesty to detect. The effort is well worth it, though, because it provides a way out of the conundrum. If I'm only aware of how they feel bad, then negative thoughts are something that happens to me; but once I become aware that they also feel good, I see them as something that I'm doing (or at least acceding to), and I can withdraw that participation.

My experience has been that one has to persist with this concept until the initial indignation ("how dare you say that I'm enjoying this pain") dies down. Then a whole new array of psychological options opens up. It's fascinating. But challenging.

[ektimo]

Still the people who never do that are, in honesty, feeling bad not good.

I hypothesize the reason humans perform worse after failing a hard question versus passing an easy question is that by keeping yourself down, you avoid getting into trouble claiming a higher status in the tribe than you can pull off if it comes to a confrontation. But you feel bad so that you keep looking for an opportunity to claim the higher status/more resources position. Perhaps explaining this (if it is true) and that this doesn't confer any benefit in our current environment would be just as effective.