Advantage of Negative thinking

Post Reply New Topic

In our society there is so much negative thinking. So much that I have come to the conclusion that it is not all negative and the human race would be less developed without it.

All creatures of nature are an efficient at what they do best and if they don’t cut it they die out. Look how cheaters can run very fast to catch it’s pray, nature has given them every thing they need. No animal species contains significant proportion animals that are just dead weight holding back the evolution of that species and potentially mixing their bad genes with the batter animal.

Humans are no exception. They are so complex that that sometimes some of their behaviour can appear to only have purely negative results. But this goes against the laws of nature, because no human or animal species support dead weight.

So my mission is to find out the benefits of some negative thoughts and behaviours and I want you to help.

Some that come to mind are; Self pity, cowardice, lack confidence, self hatred, laziness, ignorance, and violence, giving up too easily.

VIOLENCE
Violence is the most easiest to understand animals inherent violent behaviour as a way of surviving so in many cases females of the species are not attracted to non-violent of their species. Some goes with humans also, even though the advantage of violence in our democratic society is rather limited, but is still rooted in our behaviour.

IGNORANCE
Ignorance is power George Orwell’s 1984. The advantage of ignorance does not always benefit the individual but benefits the collective. When one society believe they are superior then their neighbours even when they are not, then they conquer them and plunder them thinking that is their god given right and think their decisions are the greater good.
War and Ignorance are closely related because no soldier would want to die in order to benefit a society that is evil. The only way he would make that kind of sacrifice is if he is ignorant. So the ignorant gene still lives on.

COWERDICE
This is an easy one, a cowed avoid unnecessary dangers and gets to live another day. Society does tend to shun cowardice because it sometime needs to expend a few people for its own benefit and uses them like porns on a chessboard.

LAZINESS
I cannot see the benefits of this. I will need to do some research on it.

RACIST
I read this one from a New-Scientist magazine a couple of years back. The benefits of this are to improve the evolution of the species or race. The best way that I can explain this is and example.
Suppose you breed greyhounds for racing, it is important that you breed them only with other greyhounds because you will end up with mongrel dog that cannot possibly run as fast as a purebred greyhound. It is the role of the breeder to control breading. But in nature there isn’t such a breeder, so they evolved racist tendencies so that they would not mix with other species or races if it were a human. Racist tendencies with humans as well as animals also make them compete with other races by any means possible and the means are usually savage. I am sure a person would not make the logical decision to be raciest to simply improve the evolution of race over another, another case of ignorance is power.

GIVING UP TOO EASLY
I am not completely sure about this one but I think it is down to not wasting time following a path that is going to lead to failure and trying something else.

SELF HATRED
Many people really hate themselves and have very low self-confidence many of them fall into depression. Some people have come to the conclusion that I must hate myself and by learning to love myself would somehow get rid of my depression. But I love
myself very much. I do understand that self-hate this is down to the fact that if they hate themselves they simply want to change. Example if a woman thinks she is fat and she hates her body, it simply means she is more likely to change it.

NAGATIVE ABLITIES
There are also many negative abilities that are not so negative when you look deeper. Some people cannot write and are dyslexic, but being dyslexia has given them great creative abilities.

I don’t have to tell you about the benefits of Aspersers Syndrome but some people think that it is a sickness and that something has gone wrong never realising their greats strengths.

The same goes with gay people, there are too many of them for it to be a sickness or an anomaly. As I said before, animals or human species do not carry dead weight in such large numbers, unless that dead weight it is not, but an advantage to the species. I don’t know what the advantages of gayness is but I deduce that there is an advantage 100%.

I tried to find websites that support my theories but I could not find them, so I had to write all of this out. I am sure I can find the benefits of being gay though, if I try.

Interesting post Chav. I see you like to think about things and try to understand the underlying reality of what is really going on. Thats what I like about Aspies.

I loved your article. I thought of some uses for things like homosexuality. This might help with population control. And I agree with what you said about laziness or giving up too easily. Some things that aspies are accused of, are being anti-social. In this case, we may be conserving input so as to not be overloaded with stimuli.

Gays No not population control, the only reason to implement population control is because the environments resources cannot support too many people. So it is the limited resources that keep the population in check, so it would be unnecessary to do it artificially by having gay people. A better population control would be for woman to have fewer children.

Most animals suffer from limited resources and they often do not become gay. It seem to be almost unique to the human species. So might be worth thinking about gay people abilities and strengths and how not having children is an advantage to them simply because gay people more likely never have children.

hmmm....very interesting. Although I think that the issue is too simple to be analyzed from strictly a modern point of view. I stated somewhere else that I thought that humans had removed themselves from nature and evolution. I would guess that this point came about some time during the formation of societies and civilizations, as the protection that these structured and rule-governed groups provided afforded their members to pursue different agendas (art, philosophy, etc) rather than focusing strictly on survival.

This may have effectively changed the direction that natural selection would have gone had humans never formed societies. Thus, maybe we need to look at how negative thinking helped humans to evolve before the formation of socities (if there was negative thinking when humans were in the wild), and then look at how socities have changed the values we place around negative thinking.

It is also possible that traits that have evolved to help us survive are working against us in civilizations. What is good for survival may be detrimental for happiness. Humans are definitely different from other species in nature, we are the only creatures that commit suicide. Humans have been around for over 2 million years, yet societies only came into existence within the last 20 - 30 thousand years.

Thus, our cognitive abilities that took millions of years to evolved and have helped us to survive are now working against us because they have not evolved in order for us to attain happiness in civilization, but survival in the wild. But, now the focus is no longer on survival, but happiness. This is my main gripe about psychological theories. They all work on the viewpoint that we are hardwired for happiness, but we aren't, we are hardwired for survival. What evolved to help us survive in the wild may be preventing us from being happy in societies.

We may also carry a lot of dead weight in society because of the compassion that is needed in order to rear our young. In order to care for a human baby, it takes an extraordinary amount of compassion and sacrifice. One must give up their desires so the next generation may survive. Thus, the caring for the elderly, non-functioning autistics, invalids, etc., the people who are not able to function in society, the 'dead weight' as you say, may actually be in fact, dead weight.

It is just that our compassion, which is vital to the survival of the species, cannot be applied conveniently for that purpose only, but must be a part of us. Thus, where our compassion works to ensure the survival of our species in one way, it may also ensure that we carry a lot of 'dead weight' along for the ride.

All in all, I guess what I'm trying to say is that some negative cognitive traits may have at one point helped humans to survive and evolve in the wild, but since the formation of socities, they have only been a detriment. We cannot place an evolutionary value on these negative traits by only viewing them from a viewpoint of modern society, because they have not evolved in order for us to function in a modern society.

Kind of like judging the usefulness of a ducks webbed feet in the desert. The ducks feet evolved to help it swim, not trudge across sand. Thus, we much judge the worth of the ducks feet in the water. Much in the same way our cognitive abilities developed to help us survive in the wild, we should judge them for their usefulness in the wild, not civilization. Judging our cognitive abilities from a viewpoint of modern society would be like judging a ducks feet from the viewpoint of living in the desert.

Okay, this was a lot longer that I planned and very badly written, but I hope a small portion of the point I was trying to make gets through.

I seems that you have a point there. Even though I don’t consider the youth to be dead weight because they are the future and it is natural for parent to sacrifice for the children that is what even animals do.

Elderly is a different thing even though the have served and contributed much to society, in their old age they have become dead weight and as you said severely disabled also.

We live in a democratic society, that has to be seen as caring and fare. So I guess that we see it is our duty to care for dead weight( I don’t feel comfortable about saying this word). But democratic societies are continuing to evolve as they compete with other societies. Commercialism is what is all about and socialist societies cannot compete with capitalist ones. As I know capitalist societies survive better because they follow the natural law of evolution and survival of the fittest. Because of this the societies dead-weights are going to be slowly pushed out and neglected. I know that while America is the worlds richest country where the weak and vulnerable have little support compared to socialist Sweden and to lesser extent the UK

Hitler tried to cull all the weak in order to purify German Arian race and I bet even before then older societies tried this already. I do know that witch-hunts were once used to cull the so call unhealthy. I have not read the other post in this forum about “encouragement to kill babies in the Christian Bible” but I bet that it was a form of culling unhealthy babies and purifying the race.

I still don’t think that human kind has had removed themselves from nature and evolution until they, like us, have understand what is going on and do something actively about it. Many people are still religious and religion implement the cruel rule of survival of the fittest expecially the Old Testament.

A species can support a small amount of dead weight, despite how much i dislike that fact. Existence isn't so cut-throat yet that there is no room for uselessness. Although I wouldn't discount the possibility of such an existence somewhere in the whole system, through out time and space.

I think violence is a more vesitigial instinct. More subtle aspects of violence will for the foreseeable future serve a purpose in a collective organism(society) but right now it is kind of unnecessary.

I think that ignorence isn't a quality that evolution cares about exactly. Most often an organism does not need to know a lot about itself, its surroundings and other organisms to survive. I think that it is only in a very weird reality that our intelligence would develop. I think that organisms tend to develop on a need-to-know, need-to-survive basis and that currently we as a species are not actually terribly ignorent as a whole, it just appears that way in some parts of the system which it probably should.

I believe that cowardice is an instinct that causes the organism to behave so that it appears less threatening and therefore less important to attack. This only occurs in certain situations, but is beneficial. Also cowardice is a complex behavior whose essential purpose is backing off when you are unlikely to win.

Laziness is a very basic instinct designed to exert the least amount of effort for the most gain. It is a consideration for every action. However extreme laziness is a very rarely seen behavior. It is an interesting anomoly right now resulting from our accomplishments. However excluding the weird parts laziness isn't supposed to happen. And it would be hard to evolve an instinct to counteract laziness. There, in most cases, should be a reason to not be lazy in almost every case.

Racism is just a result of the concept of working alone fighting the concept of working together. As time goes on we will accept working together more and the fear that is the core of racism will melt away, but it is in a way a vesitgial instinct caused by our instinct to work for ourselves over everyone else. It is totally understandable.

Depending on the reality of the time there are different risks involved with different gambles, and i can imagine in a more hostile time how a more careful organism would evolve, and how that organism would appear to give up too easily in a less harsh time.

As far as I can imagine self hatred is a relatively new development. And designed to change whatever isn't currently working.

Hey, I've got an answer for you on this one! Did you watch any of the Survivor episodes?? The people who were lazy in camp and did'nt do much work always had a TON of explosive energy during imunity challenges. They would win imunity and could'nt be voted off.
I've worked in several CNC machine shops and noticed something interesting. The programmers will always convince management that they need to be in charge. They then get an office looking out into the shop. Thier desks face the shop so that they can see what everyone else is doing , but no one can see what they are doing. One of the places I worked, we were able to get a hidden camera behind our boss. He spent most of his day playing Texas Hold'em on the internet. Anytime someone came into the office, he pulled up his CAM software to make it look like he was working. He also keept a sharp eye on US. The slightest thing we did "wrong" was reported and documented. Whaen he WAS writing actual programs, he'd put mistakes in them so they would crash the machine you were running. He'd then blame it on you. This is how he kept his athority over us.

Laziness is a tool used to dominate others. It allows an unscrupulous person to be a total a$$hole!!

The homosexuality advantage is population control; they cannot reproduce unless they mate for the soul perpouse of having a baby rather than for the pleasure like most humans.
And the advantage for the humans is that homosexuals can adopt so there are less orphans.

i understand how you might come to this conclusion, however there is a flaw. while a lesser tendency to reproduce may be advantageous in a time of overpopulation, homosexuality has been around since probably the dawn of the human species, and it is almost certain that at some time in history the advantage would exist in increasing the population, rather than controlling numbers.

The advantage of negative thinking is quite simple:
If you expect the worst, you'll never be disappointed.

That's not really true. I'm disapointed that I'm so infrequently wrong.

And if I am wrong, I'm disapointed that I wasn't able to see it.

Violence is a form of aggression and is related to all forms of aggression. As aggression increases the tendency towards violence would tend to as well. More aggressive individuals have greater opportunity for greater success, a similarity between successful businessmen and violent criminals is their high levels of testosterone, the male aggression hormone. In the past it was harder to punish criminality so therefore aggression would have been even more beneficial as it would lead to even more success on average and therefore human beings have always been aggressive. Violence was definitely beneficial in the past as it used to be the big way to solve problems, working it out was not the major tactic of the past unless working it out included bribes or threats.

Ignorance is a result of laziness and is in existence because it is not necessarily beneficial to be a thinker. People only need to know as much as necessary to get a meal and extra thinking may even lead to death as it can be ruthlessly repressed or it could cause one to eschew worldly things for higher thought. I mean, many great thinkers have died for their thoughts where as their ignorant peers would have lived, and many artists starve while farmers live on their farms. Being a thinker has historically not been of as much benefit as being a pragmatic person.

Cowardice, don't take a risk if you can avoid doing so. Just the survival instinct.

Laziness, don't expend unnecessary effort, if you meet a challenge and you have wasted all of your energy then you are dead, also laziness is simply maintaining homeostasis, a state that all organisms aspire to. There is no reason for individuals to go beyond homeostasis and it was so rare to even reach homeostasis that there was no natural need for organisms to aspire beyond that point.

Racism relates back to group organization. The group or clan that you are likely to be a part of is going to be of your race, your family is going to be of your race. Other races are likely to be of other clans and families and are as such going to be competition for resources and things like that. A race is a simple thing for individuals to establish similarity to because it is much harder to judge beyond that.

Giving up to easily is simply a desire not to waste resources if not necessary. If it is taken to the other extreme it is being stubborn and wasting more resources on a goal not worth the reward. In many instances it is better to give up and try for something easier because there usually is something easier that will satisfy needs rather than trying for the hard to attain goal.

Self-hatred relates back to maladaptive characteristics. We use self-hatred as something that we have instead of putting in effort to change or forgetting about something. Rather than being ignorant of a problem or trying to solve it, we just acknowledge its existence and hate ourselves for it and it simply is the result of our need to keep in line our beliefs and our responses to those beliefs.

Negative abilities are simply mutations, they may or may not have advantages but they often aren't so bad that individuals cannot live and breed with them. Certainly we can make excuse or excuse for them but really they are not incredibly common and everyone having the same one is certainly not common. Common negative abilities can be the result of changing societal needs without a resulting change in our own make up, putting on weight easily was quite beneficial in the past but now individuals with that trait die sooner and have lower health.

Actually that may really be a result of human overconfidence and almost possibly your own arrogance because nobody would be disappointed to be infrequently wrong unless they had already conquered every possible task anyway. If what you say is true then try to buy lotto tickets or something, your selection will probably be wrong, or try some other difficult task. Heck, you may have been wrong in the past and not accepted it, in fact, in a psychological experiences many experts gave an opinion on a variety of matters and some were wrong and some were right but the guys who were wrong were still about just as likely to say they were right as someone who actually got it right. In fact really, experts who feel over 80% confident in their predictions are usually right less than 40% of the time.

Oh yeah, and the guy that you were commenting in response to is correct, cynicism and pessimism means that if the worst occurs you do not suffer a big let down like someone who expects a better outcome would yet if a good outcome did occur then you would still be somewhat happy about it. Considering how disappointing the world can be it would be natural to develop negative thinking to some extent.

Oh yeah, and the guy that you were commenting in response to is correct, cynicism and pessimism means that if the worst occurs you do not suffer a big let down like someone who expects a better outcome would yet if a good outcome did occur then you would still be somewhat happy about it. Considering how disappointing the world can be it would be natural to develop negative thinking to some extent.

Thank you, (I am female,btw).
If you expect bad things to happen, then they do not catch you off guard.
I think I'm picking up habits from my elder brother.

Sorry, I did not check to see your gender. Anyway, don't thank me for agreement, I mean, if we both voted Guns and Dope party then there is no reason to thank me for doing so, agreement is agreement.

Sorry, I did not check to see your gender. Anyway, don't thank me for agreement, I mean, if we both voted Guns and Dope party then there is no reason to thank me for doing so, agreement is agreement.

I guess not. Ah well, I took it as a compliment. This is due to me reading too much of the chroncicles of Narnia, I think. You know 'Queen Lucy is as a man or at any rate as good as a boy'. I took it in that sense.