The Evolution of Pessimism June 8, 2007
Posted by tkcollier in Business, Economy & Business, Lifestyle.trackback
blog.pmarca.com: Bubbles on the brain
The human psyche seems to have a powerful underlying need to predict doom and gloom. On Wall Street, investors who have this habit are known as “perma-bears” and generally are predicting the imminent collapse of the stock market.
I suspect this need was evolved into us way back when.
If there is a nonzero chance that a giant man-eating saber-tooth tiger is going to come over the nearest hill and chomp you, then it’s in your evolutionary best interest to predict doom and gloom more frequently than it actually happens.
The cost of hiding from a nonexistent giant man-eating saber-tooth tiger is low, but the cost of not hiding from a real giant man-eating saber-tooth tiger is quite high. As well as this article on business bubbles ,read this medical paper on other evolutionary consequences of modern lifestyles.
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