I should add by the way, that my own experience is a positive one insofar as the initial downvote is more often than not followed by many more positive votes in compensation, i.e. the complaint didn't come from me!
Well, it's only a theory of mine, but it occurred to me that if we follow Edward de Bono's criticisms of logical thinking (see "Six Thinking Hats" ca. 1986) we see that the "devil's advocate" type of thinking cited as being the most common, is going to result in coming up with a negative conclusion more quickly, whereas (unless of course the reader is in a state of euphoria) it takes longer to analyse a post thoroughly enough to draw a positive conclusion. Taking the argument to its extreme, one can imagine a reader disliking something in the first sentence and downvoting it, whereas a meticulous analysis would involve reading the post thoroughly, checking facts, thinking back to personal experience, generating ideas yourself and looking for pros as well as cons etc. etc. - it might on occasion be necessary to do more such analysis on a post before it is possible to reach a positive conclusion about it. So if this theory is correct, the phantom persecuter is nothing more than our inclination to think negatively faster than we can think positively. In fact every year I generate a motto for myself to remind me of a change in thinking I need to apply. In 1997 my motto for the year was "Positive fast, negative slow" in an effort to remind myself to reverse this only-too-natural thinking behaviour in myself - I later learnt it was more complex than that of course but it proved to be a useful prop at the time.
Or should I have been reading Woody Allen instead? (who once wrote "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you!" (from "God and other plays")
^M Free your mind!
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Re: Forthcoming attraction - "Positive fast, negative slow"?
by naikonta (Curate) on Jul 06, 2007 at 14:32 UTC | |
by perllove (Beadle) on Jul 07, 2007 at 00:30 UTC | |
Re: Forthcoming attraction - "Positive fast, negative slow"?
by rir (Vicar) on Jul 06, 2007 at 17:26 UTC | |
Re: Forthcoming attraction - "Positive fast, negative slow"? (yep)
by tye (Sage) on Jul 06, 2007 at 17:39 UTC | |
Re: Forthcoming attraction - "Positive fast, negative slow"?
by blazar (Canon) on Jul 08, 2007 at 09:22 UTC | |
Re: Forthcoming attraction - "Positive fast, negative slow"?
by samizdat (Vicar) on Jul 09, 2007 at 14:15 UTC | |
Re: Forthcoming attraction - "Positive fast, negative slow"?
by derby (Abbot) on Jul 06, 2007 at 13:10 UTC | |
by halley (Prior) on Jul 06, 2007 at 13:54 UTC |