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marojejian 2 hours ago
essentially negativity progresses since: >it is easier to differentiate oneself through negative comments than through positive comments
I find this interesting in two respects:
1) I agree with the finding about social media
2) In my experience this effect is broadly true beyond the internet and before it:
Journalism skews negative because it is easier to capture your attention with the bad vs. the good (in part due to human loss aversion).
This is my experience in the domain of art as well. Most high-status books and stories deal with negative themes and deeply flawed characters. There is a basic assumption that somehow the negative has more artistic value than the positive, and perhaps the positive is necessarily bland and uniform.
e.g. "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
In my experience this is wrong. It is however true that its easier to come up with specific negative art.
apparently this is captured in a principle taken from the quote above: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle
Positive states have lower entropy: there are fewer of them. There are many more ways to fail. Thus it's easier to come up with novel negative things vs. positive.
I think therefore the negative slant to our art represents a culture of laziness in our institutions. Part of this is the result of selection: unhappy artists succeed more easily, rise to levels of authority, and assume that anyone who does not share their negative view and aesthetics are bland.
It's sad though. I think they believe all happy families are alike because they have never truly understood even one happy person.
The implications are big: a society led by such sad people becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.