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Low cognition predicts unrealistic optimism. High cognition predicts realism and pessimism.
(journals.sagepub.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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Well, we found our example of low cognition.
I mean plenty of reasons to be depressed, we have destroyed our planet, we are in the middle of the biggest mass extinction in 140 million years, and we can't afford anything anymore. But yeah it's a mindset or something.
We haven't destroyed our planet by a large margin. Maybe you mean the global ecosystem. You know what doesn't care what humans do on the 5km-thick surface? The thousands of kilometers of dirt, rock and magma below.
Edit: downvoted by hippies. Look, I care about our ecosystem. But I hate phrases like "we're destroying the planet!"
Topsoil and the stuff that it supports is pretty fucking significant, especially if human caretakers fuck off and die.
Think of the all the biomass of agriculture, no longer getting cultivated, allowed to run amok: beef, chickens, pigs, corn, almonds, wheat, alfalfa, rice, etc. All of that now just there, growing uncontrollably, unattended. Ecosystems are gonna be fucked.
Animal feces that toxify the land, nutrient imbalance for local flora, local water sources drying up.
You might think that "the planet" doesn't give a shit about the top few miles of dirt, air, and water, BUT WE FUCKING SHOULD, YOU BLACK-PILLED WASTE OF SPACE!
Edit: and technically, since the planet can't think or feel (per human understanding), it's a worthless point to make.
Sure, but the biomass is not the whole planet. It's not like we're using a death star lol.
The planet doesn't care what some carbon molecules do in its surface, just like it doesn't care when volcanoes erupt either.