Of course, because your character is only tested through interactions with the people around you.

So that’s my bad actually for framing my stance inaccurately, but what I’m really trying to say is not that I prefer negativity over positivity, it’s that I prefer honesty over positivity. But because being honest is often viewed as negative, the two concepts are often conflated. And the reason why is simple, there is usually much more reason to hide negativity than there is to hide positivity.

So back to your example, I would much rather my mother just authentically treat me the way she feels like it. Especially if I can tell if she’s showing false positivity. I don’t need things sugar coated, I’m very comfortable with the truth and reality.

>People tend to overly lean on negativity. It's why you can be sure a negative opinion will reach further and persist despite any evidence to the contrary. People don't want to be hurt.

My take is that because people generally prefer to accept more positive thoughts, the neutral reality seems negative in comparison. It doesn't have to be that way though, it's always possible to change how you feel about things.

>Being optimistic is not about expectations either, it's about seeing the potential in people or things.

The very definition of expect is to believe something more likely to happen. Which in the case of optimism, is to believe that a favorable outcome is more likely to happen.

>"he has good qualities and I would like to see him cultivate them"

This is not an optimistic statement, it's neutral. It doesn't suggest any outcome, it's just commentary.

An optimistic statement would be "I believe he'll cultivate his qualities and grow". If you don't truly believe in or expect the outcome, by definition you're not actually being optimistic about it.

Just to elaborate on what I mean:

• Optimistic: things will get better

• Neutral: things could get better

• Pessimistic: things won't get better

I'm a firm believer of neutral in most cases when things are uncertain. I do like to be cautiously optimistic sometimes though.

I'd always considered the definition of optimism and pessimism to see things either more positively or more negatively. I don't think how you feel about things is part of the definition. I'd also argue that the more negative take is almost always closer to reality than the positive take.

I find that having a lower expectation approach to life has been better for my happiness. Less disappointed when things don't go ideally, more pleased when they actually do. Meanwhile most people I know who are more optimistic and expect more, ironically end up being more disappointed.

I think a healthy way of being pessimistic is just to have more tempered expectations of things. Someone more optimistic is more prone to disappointment and upset because they have a higher bar in what they expect.

Read about the Young/Double Slit experiment. The whole reason why the Schrodingers Cat thought experiment and quantum mechanics came up in the first place was because they were able to cheat the observing condition, in other words they managed to "observe" something without that something knowing it was observed. It also demonstrates the concept of superposition, or having all the possibilities exist at the same time and even interfering and interacting with each other.

Really makes you think about what it exactly means for something to be observed and for all those possibilities to resolve themselves to one outcome. Or if we're the ones that simply branch off to another timeline that represents one of the outcomes.

I would probably start from the classic Schrodinger's Cat example. Let me introduce time into the scenario, say the cat has a 50% chance of dying in the box after 10 seconds have passed. Per your common sense, you would think that after 10 seconds, there will have been an outcome, the cat is either alive or dead.

But here's the weird part, there actually won't be an outcome after 10 seconds, unless you actually open the box to observe an outcome. 20 seconds can have passed, and the cat is actually still either alive or dead. And it will continue to be in this limbo until it's actually observed. It's weird right? You would think that simply observing is a passive action on your part that shouldn't affect or influence any outcomes.

So one theory to explain this is that reality branches into two different timelines, one where the cat dies and one where it doesn't. And this may very well relate to the concept of the 4th dimension.

I think the first thing to accept is that we're 3-dimensionally bound beings, and we're still trying to figure out how to grasp the 4th dimension.

Best way to explain why 4D is tricky to grasp, is by going down a level in the comparison: pretend we're 2D beings trying to understand 3D.

If we're 2D beings, then that means we can perceive height and width, but not depth. That means you would be unable to see a sphere, but you would be able to see each 2D circle of it, if you were to slice the sphere into tiny cross sections.

Picture a sphere resting on a piece of paper. The flat circle it imprints on the paper would just be a dot. As you lower the sphere through the paper, the circle it leaves on the paper keeps getting bigger until you reach the middle of the sphere. At which point it will go back to being smaller again as you continue to lower it, eventually ending up back at the dot.

So while you can never actually see the entire sphere all at once for yourself, you would theoretically be able to infer the true nature of the sphere by stacking all these circles on top of each other. However the problem here is that you wouldn't even understand the concept of stacking the circles. The only thing you can perceive for yourself, is the 2D circle increasing and decreasing. It's difficult to try to imagine the sphere, when you've never seen a 3D object.

And it's even worse if a 1D being tries to grasp the sphere. They would only see a dot that grows into a line, which then shrinks back into the dot. To infer that you're looking at a sphere, you would have to take note of the fact that the line expands at a higher rate initially, only to eventually slow down in its growth until it stops. And actually, you don't have enough information available to you to actually conclude that it's a sphere. It could be a cylinder or cone lying on its side with the circle facing you, you'll never know.

So yeah, sorry if this seemed off-topic, but I just think the first thing to wrap your head around when trying to understand quantum physics is that our natural senses are limited. Things aren't supposed to make sense or feel intuitive, when you're punching a dimension above you.

You can accept that it's a leap of faith and still not drive yourself crazy over it. We rarely have perfect information on anything in this world, yet we still need to ultimately make conclusions. It's nothing new.

Why would you disagree? It's not a matter of trying hard enough or being educated enough, what we know and can know of our world is limited by our ability to investigate it.

Imagine you're in a room with various objects, and let's say that you don't have your senses of sight or smell. You'll fumble around the room, eventually stumbling into every object. All you can do to learn more about each object is to feel them, lick them, and hear them by tapping or patting them.

But no matter what, you will never be able to know these objects' color or how they smell. You cannot use the senses available to you to ever determine this information for sure, at best you can make assumptions. You'll never know what colors these objects have, but perhaps in the case of smell you can make an inference based on their taste.

So that's the idea with us trying to understand how the world works. We can only go as far as the tools available to us allow us to.

Could you explain why they’re different. It’s worthless to just aggressively insist they are without any reasoning

I think I'm understanding the theory. The more you're at odds with yourself on things, the more... weakened you are in general when it comes to making executive decisions. Even though it sounds counterintuitive to think that getting rid of self-imposed rules and restrictions will actually help you to better follow them.

An analogy that might fit here is trying to grab a pile of sand. The more you want to hold onto it and the tighter you clench, the more sand that ends up falling out ironically.

But how does this lead to being able to better resist temptation? Like say I have a problem with getting cravings late at night and ordering a ton of food that I shouldn't be eating. Am I supposed to start thinking "ordering a lot of food late at night isn't so bad, there's no reason I shouldn't do it." And that will ultimately lead me to doing this less?

That's just not true at all. Let's say there are two theories for a truth, A and B. I don't necessarily have to commit to believing theory A or theory B, but I can lean more towards believing and being more convinced by either of them. If I happen to believe theory A more, who's not to say that developments in theory B could cause me to shift towards theory B later down the road?

But what happens to the close-minded is that they're either more sold on theory A or B, and henceforth stick to it and cease to keep up with the other theory. Because they've already written it off as "wrong" or "bad" in this case.

Thinking that you have to commit to beliefs is just intellectual laziness. It's more comfortable to assume that you have all the right and correct takes and therefore there is no need to challenge yourself anymore.

Both problems can simultaneously exist. Yes when it comes to societal problems, it would be too chaotic to entertain nuance, a binary system is practical and achieves more order than the alternative.

However, that way of thinking does not necessarily need to extend to the way we think on an individual level. "Good" and "bad" should and is helpful to constantly requestion and reevaluate.

Not being able to reach a truth is better than reaching a false truth

I think you're fixating way too hard on the terminology he decided to coin for the idea. Do you disagree about the content of the idea, its name aside? I also disagree with the naming choice but it seems relatively unimportant to discuss.