How Anxiety Warps Your Perception | Hacker News Reader

How Anxiety Warps Your Perception

bbc.com

220 pointsnedsma121 comments

The most interesting and useful piece of information in this story is buried towards the end: there is an app which implements a gamified version of ABMT therapy.

The BBC didn't even mention its name! From searching around it appears to be Personal Zen (iOS only): http://www.personalzen.com/

Don't know what kind of twisted priorities in the newsroom would focus a story like this on using anxiety to make a political point, versus putting the focus on a way people can treat their anxiety, but hey, that's probably just my anxiety speaking.

Found this on Google Play store, looks like another one: http://www.mindhabits.com/mobileapps.php

Thanks for this!

I just tried that app, but actually felt more stress because of the time pressure to find the one "good" guy vs the one "bad" guy (they only appear for a split second).

It would be more interesting to initially see one good guy surrounded by many bad guys. As you focus on the good guy, you are rewarded by producing more good guys and bad guys disappear. Instead of gamifying the experience, show the user that focusing on the good guys creates positive momentum.

This app seems to be designed by psychologists based on several studies to treat anxiety, it is not a stress-release tool. The original article also mentions the goal is to retrain your reaction / attention to negative stimuli, which may explain the quick reaction time needed.

[meta] Your comment is solely about yourself and adds very little to the conversation.

[meta] The first part of the comment was about themselves, but the second part was a suggestion to improve an app which is absolutely a positive contribution to the conversion.

Parent commenter edited out most of the post after I made my comment.

Also, learning something new or changing a learned behavior is stressful. Following an established cognitive path feels easy, while going down new or little used pathways is straining. You're really not actually learning anything unless it feels difficult.

The first sentence on the page says it reduces stress and anxiety.

In the longer term perhaps? You could say psychotherapy reduces stress and anxiety but not necessarily during...

Most therapeutic (rather than pharmaceutical) approaches to treating anxiety that have a long-term impact, require you to focus on (or at least acknowledge) the stressful stimuli repeatedly in the short term:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy requires that you focus on stressful thoughts to "pick them apart."

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_therapy requires that you experience a stress-trigger and "pass through" the initial phobic reaction to get to the point where you can neutrally observe that the stimuli isn't dangerous.

I dont really see what this game can accomplish? Also the link to the scientific study, leads to a meanignless page. Perhaps its rather a placebo game.

For me it was the reverse: The first half of the article describing the warped perception is far more interesting to me than ABMT.

Having a mindfulness practice, I don't see ABMT as going to be anything more than a bandaid. That bandaid might have some temporary effects, but it doesn't address existential suffering at all.

Further: stuff like the Wim Hof (Iceman) breathing method has greater effect because it teaches your mind to gain awareness and control over your body's fight-or-flight response. It won't address the emotional and mental stuff (which therapy and mindfulness practice addresses), but it does teach your body not to spiral out with fight-or-flight responses, and gives you enough space to work with these emotions.

I was also thinking about it: what do I see when I see pictures of violence and threats? Maybe I am idiosyncratic, but when I look at it, I tend to feel a lot of pathos for the suffering involving both the aggressors and the victims rather than personalizing it as a threat to me. (That is, instead of thinking "OMG the world is not safe for me", it is "That's a lot of suffering we're inflicting on each other"). Having pleasant pictures is not enough. The deep mental programming also needs to be addressed.

Treatments other than mindfulness training are not simply a "bandaid." CBT is the gold standard, for example, and countless thousands of people have found it alleviates their anxiety without their ever even learning what "existential suffering" means. Mindfulness is certainly one of the major tools in the anxiety toolbox, but it is neither the only nor - arguably - even the best tool available. This is especially true given that anxiety is not a single problem with a single cause.

Existential suffering underlies all anxieties. CBT, at best, gets to certain levels of deep seated programming, but does not go to the root cause. Alleviating anxiety is not the same as a cure. Being functional is not the same as a cure.

CBT may be considered the gold standard in the mainstream, but it will not always be like that.

This is certainly an interesting idea, but is there a body of research behind it? (How does one prove that anxiety is caused by "existential suffering" anyway?) What is the amount and quality of that research? Even if CBT is flawed it has an established track record of clinical success so I still think it should be regarded as a "tool in the box."

You may be correct, but without any research to back it up, this reads very much like a statement of religious faith.

I just found this one and it's quite good... happy faces!

http://www.biasmodification.com/

Somewhat off topic, but if you are having anxiety issues, I strongly recommend the Headspace mobile app. While a lot of mindfulness apps have a lot of fluffy new-age tone to them, this one did not, and it also tends to introduce concepts at a very good pace (a little bit of things to try each day) which makes things memorable. By contrast, you may talk to someone and hear 100 things to do, and you'll explode trying to do them all.

Anyway, for me, it strikes the right balance. The trick here is more about learning to focus but also learning to completely percieve the feeling and know what it is, and then it's less strong than trying to always think about it - rather than identifying with it.

On Headspace, I did the 30 day foundation program followed by the 30 day anxiety pack.

It gives you some good methods but as the program says over and over it is not a panacea and requires a lot of work.

I think I've benefited from it but not as much as I'd hoped.

I've had a similar experience, although not entirely unexpected. From everything I've gathered, meditation and guided breathing are tools to use to fight anxiety, but are by no means sufficient on their own for many. I've found that daily meditation and guided breathing can sometimes have the opposite effect for me when I'm not struggling as much by bringing me back to an anxious state. At the same time, working through their intro programs has definitely given me some tools and coping strategies that help me when I find my anxiety rising.

Also off-topic a bit, but for me, the single most impactful thing I have found for coping with anxiety is regular strenuous exercise. I'd been told this for years, but it's only recently that I've taken it seriously, and can now feel my anxieties begin to bubble up when I get out of my exercise routine. It's been so impactful that I just always want to make sure I highlight it when discussing anxiety, since it took so much time for it to really sink in for me.

Exercise++

My take-away from exercises was more of that it builds awareness that makes it easier to stay in flow states for longer over time, which in turn allows (like he says) kind of not making thoughts go away but getting less attached to them, also over time. It's definitely not an immediate gain, but I think the "noticing you are being distracted" and being able to stop is a good part.

I would also recommend trying Calm - personally I preferred it to Headspace. Both teach a non-new agey version of Mindfulness Meditation, and there is plenty of science that shows it to have a lot of health benefits.

As a radical leftist with crippling anxiety, the political part of this article was rather unexpected

I would be curious to see a similar study oriented along a radical/moderate axis, rather than left-wing/right-wing. Of course, to be of real value, it'd need not to be n=20 psych undergrads, but I may as well wish for a pony while I'm at it.

Wouldn't that be the same as normalizing a left-to-right scale to [-1,1] and taking the absolute value? Or is it possible for there to be "radical centrism"?

Perhaps. I'm not sure the metric used in the study would support such analysis, though, and if they published their raw data alongside their methodology and conclusions, I wasn't able to find it.

Intuitively, I would bet that radicals of all stripes are more prone to anxiety than the so-called moderates. In order to push for invasive solutions that are widely frowned upon by the rest of the populace (therefore treating your social standing and credibility), it helps if one experiences anxiousness about the status quo to the point where it ceases being an acceptable option.

This might be a good thing if your analysis and conclusions are right, or a very harmful thing if one gets any significant part wrong. Unfortunately, due to bell curves and human fallibility, some radicals will leave an outsized positive impact on society while the majority is either ineffective or counter-productive, occasionally causing harm in the process.

As often happens with humanity, people always think that they are right and everyone else is wrong. Anxiety and bias increase the chance that you're wrong. Radical approaches increase the chance that you will make a bigger impact. Be very careful when combining the two.

Go far enough left and you end up on the right (and vice versa). That would explain your experience.

Easy enough to have crippling anxiety about the people on the other side of the fence.

>> "... know that you’re in good company. Actors like Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone, musicians such as The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and Taylor Swift ..."

Not quite the 'company' I had in mind when thinking about anxiety. If the article started out with 'medical residents' or other jobs that are stressful and anxiety-inducing because your ability to do your job correctly and quickly might mean someone else dies, or the success of the company rests on your performance, perhaps I'd take the article seriously. But actors and musicians? Sure, messing up means failure, and failure might mean lost contracts, disappointed fans, and having to let go of the great team of people that got you to success. But anxiety driven by success is not the 'company' that most people can relate to. It's having to perform duties that are put upon you by your job, society, and family that are hardest to deal with. If you're good at these things, you will be successful. But the long road to success is the hard part which causes most people anxiety. Not already achieving it like musicians and actors have. That's a different type of anxiety that most people can't relate to.

I find it productive. It's a reminder that anyone we know who seems to have a successful, perfect life might actually be suffering. It lets regular people know they are not alone as some loser who is the only one struggling.

One example is Elizabeth Vargas. She looks perfectly professional and in control on TV, when actually decades of anxiety have cost her dearly: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/abc-news-anchor-elizabeth-varga...

Your quote from the article about celebrities is presumably referring to anxiety disorders (i.e. pathologic anxiety - as opposed to the "normal", sometimes helpful variety), though the article doesn't really differentiate clearly between the two.

I suffer from regular anxiety issues and that line certainly helped. It reminded me that I am not the only one who has this. In fact, it is kind of "normal" because even celebrities have it.

When I am having these anxiety issues, it always makes me feel like I am the only one feeling like this. Good to know I am not.

Is the anxiety imposed upon actors and musicians by their chosen profession different in effect or feeling than the anxieties imposed by other professions?

My son feels anxiety about trying new things. Does that differ from the anxiety I feel about what happens to my family if my job goes away, or that an actor feels about performing poorly? Do the effects on related things differ?

Anxiety is a form of fear, and that's pretty much universal.

Many people look up to celebrities to some degree or another - often in the context of "if my life weny a little differently, maybe that could have been me", and can find comfort in realizing that they have the same feelings in spite of how successful they are - more comfort than knowing that their neighbor feels the same anxiousness about the same things they do.

This is also why celebrity gossip is a thing - it shows that these people are human too, with the same weaknesses as the rest of us.

i don't think anxiety is a form o fear. Fear is the lack of response for a given situation. Fear don't let you do your job, for instance. Whereas anxiety is an response (sometimes even physical) to the future, and it's don't have to be bad.

Sometimes i fell anxious the day before a good event, a trip for example.

When I feel anxiety over a good thing, I tend to find that underlying it are feelings of excitement and anticipation for the thing, and of fear that the thing will not be what I expected/it will go wrong in some way, etc.

I'm not so sure of that definition of fear v anxiety. My understanding (which is several years rusty now) is that the physiological response is the same, varying sometimes only in degree.

I'm sure you don't intend this, but this reads like you misunderstand the anxiety of many of us fundamentally: it's not rational. The fundamental hardship of anxiety for many of us is that we know that it's not rational, and can reason out why it shouldn't be causing such an extreme reaction, yet that doesn't remove the feeling where everything is closing in on you.

> not the 'company' that most people can relate to.

Putting a face to someone else who is struggling with the same issue is very helpful to a lot of us. And while I understand the point you are raising, I can't begrudge the author for not knowing someone I personally know to name here. If this were a profile of someone specific being used to highlight anxiety, then you'd have a point, but this is just a single sentence intended to offer faces familiar to the maximum number of readers.

Points very well taken, thanks for offering a different perspective.

This article seems to be about a correlation between anxiety and right wing views, which is fine, but obviously not the whole story; generally speaking the opposite is more likely if we're talking anxiety disorders, not just general anxiety[0].

The single anecdote of 'conservatives look at offensive pictures more frequently' is extrapolated to mean that they are irrationally anxious about the future. This is not to mention that this entire line of reasoning is based on the premise that conservatives are looking at 'aversive images' out of fear/anxiety.

There is nothing wrong with rational fear of future possibilities, it is an important and integral aspect of how we make decisions about the future.

[0]-http://neuropolitics.org/Anxiety-Depression-and-Goal-Seeking...

I was surprised the article didn't mention mindfulness. I've found it can provide a strong foundation for rebuffing anxiety.

Here's a better article which describes how anxiety can change your perception: [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization

Yes. I've been reading/doing a workbook [1] to help improve my anxiety symptoms. In addition to depersonalization, it teaches cognitive reappraisal [2]. They are both helping me a great deal.

[1] - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/160623918X/ref=oh_aui_sear...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_reappraisal

It's interesting to me that fear (even paranoia) was useful for our species for a long time. But now in modern society it actually is used against us.

I know a guy who often talks about conspiracy. I would not be surprised to hear that he has acute anxiety issues.

There are mentally sane people who commit crimes because of their belief system, but anxiety could seem to explain why they would go so far with their belief.

For example I don't really like capitalism and i prefer socialism, but those are just ideas, i use them with caution.

I'd like to see more discussion about anxiety being fairly justified even in the modern world. Not necessarily useful, but also not unfounded.

The right wing lean surprises me. I guess it depends on where your anxiety is focused on. I'm much more anxious about systems, mobs, and the economy than terrorists.

Our lifestyles, particularly in major cities, seem to demand constant anxiety by their very nature. I could certainly envision building a city from the ground up that reduces anxiety.

>I could certainly envision building a city from the ground up that reduces anxiety.

Any concrete examples of what you'd do to achieve this?

The only things I can think of offhand are 1) instituting a UBI so people don't have so much financial stress and poverty is alleviated and 2) implanting a very efficient public transit system like SkyTran so that people can get around quickly and reliably.

A big driver of anxiety for me is bureaucracy. Forms on top of forms, all sorts of appointments, and lack of properly aligned 9 to 5 time to attend to them.

This article is interesting to think about alongside: http://www.vox.com/platform/amp/first-person/2016/9/27/13062...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12606829

That is the HN posting of an article about how the poverty mindset still persists.

While differentiating between "good" and "bad" images may seem like an idea that has potential to work, I think it may be pointless to device obvious ways to use placebo effects on the brain. I think training yourself to think critically reduces the chance of your brain falling for poorly-designed tricks.

The biggest takeaway from the article for me was simply the fact that anxiety drastically changes your reality. That is both motivation to find ways to curtail the anxiety even if it hasn't scientifically proven to be "curable" and reason to believe that the anxious brain is not "defective" but has simply been made to focus on the wrong set of thoughts. Here are some ways I dealt with it:

1. I changed my area of research (I am a grad student). 2. I got out of a bad relationship.

I said the above to point out the fact that the anxiety may have such blatantly obvious causes for some people. It really helps to sit down and identify each scenario that makes you anxious and try to understand what you can change about your life (no matter how overwhelmingly drastic the change is) to react more calmly in each of these situations. For example, I had terrible (and still have but more mildly) anxiety in moving vehicles and my heart races and ugly panic grips me, when the vehicle accelerates. I never stopped to think what was causing it because my hypersensitive brain refused to think deeply during travel time and even after because simulating travel was enough to trigger it.

I made myself believe that making said dramatic changes in my life would reduce the impact of the motion-stimulated anxiety. I figured that when panic struck me on the bus, I would tell myself that if I could transform my life or at least try my hardest to, I could get over this meaningless panic.

That's how I manage each situation that causes anxiety: by rationalizing as best as I can, by identifying the root causes of my panic and by attacking those root causes with logic. I think this requires strength and unfortunately, I could find no easier way to make myself feel better. For example, talking to a therapist or transferring the anxiety to/hoping for support from people I loved turned out to be much less effective.

Then again, anxiety is very common so panicking at the panic is the first such scenario that must be rationalized away. We do a lot of hard things in everyday life for the purposes of leading a fuller life. Until such a time as a reliable map of the brain is drawn and effective, scientific, non-intrusive ways to change our perception emerge (which may not happen in our lifetimes), establishing a camaraderie with the stubborn brain, through patient rationalization, may be all we have.

This is just my opinion and I really hope it helps someone like me.

Try this right now: Pick an emotion. Fear, anger, etc. Now, using logic, make yourself feel that emotion. How did it go? I picked fear. I reasoned myself into feeling a little bit worried, but I sure didn't experience actual fear. So why do we think we can reason ourselves out of emotions?

Something that has been helpful for me is the idea of the 'Wise' mind. How individuals deal with experience like anxiety (or anything else) falls on a spectrum. On one end is the 'logical' mind, much like you described. On the other is the 'emotional' mind. In the middle is the Wise mind. I spent most of my life far into the logical side of the spectrum, and the most useful thing I've ever done for my anxiety is shifting more into the center.

Most of your post focuses on training yourself to think critically and using logic to treat anxiety. I've spent many years working on my anxiety with various techniques and therapists. The common factor among all the things that did help was that you can't just use logical thinking to fix anxiety! We may use logic all day at work to fix problems, but you simply cannot reason yourself out of experiencing anxiety.

Emotions play a huge role in anxiety and really cannot be ignored or just reasoned away. They need to be experienced. They need to be felt and expressed. And once they are, logic is a useful tool, as you said, to dive into them and think more about why you are feeling that way.

This is also my opinion, and I'm glad you have the logical portion figured out. But please don't ignore the illogical, emotional aspect. It's trickier and messier, but it can be figured out.

I personally think of my emotions as actual Things that I interact with or feel logically. I feel and express whatever emotion I have, and I try to logically understand it. I believe trying to ignore or rationalize it away is the worst thing one could do, but understanding the feeling, feeling the feeling, and understanding Why i'm feeling the feeling is important. And I tend to go about this discovery/understanding in a logical/rational way

in terms of your exercise, I evoked an emotion through taking a memory, and extrapolating in a certain direction. I've done it before, brought myself to tears, but I think sadness is one of the easier things to evoke.

Right, just so we're clear, I think you relied on memories and emotional thinking to bring out other emotions, not logical thinking? You didn't come up with a proof for why you should be sad and then started crying.

I definitely agree that trying to ignore or rationalize away emotions is the worst way to handle them.

Here's where I found logic does help:

1) Acknowledging that you're not the only one battling anxiety (makes you feel not so alone)

2) Realizing that the negative feelings will pass (whether through pharmacy or death -- nothing's forever)

3) (useful for GAD/agoraphobia) Asking "what's the worst that can happen [if I have anxiety/a panic attack]?" and following that to its truthful, logical end. Unless you're a pilot or tightrope walker, the answer is usually nothing, which takes off some stress and helps.

4) Recognizing automatic thoughts and discarding them. Anxiety is often marked by runaway "snowball" thoughts (my cat is meowing funny, he must be sick, the vet will find cancer, the treatment will bankrupt me, I'll get fired, I'll be homeless, I'm going to die under a bridge). Practicing recognizing the start of those thoughts and intentionally saying, "nope, that isn't true or helpful" and guiding your mind elsewhere helps greatly. This often becomes second nature after a time.

Like you said, there is a continuum. Our thoughts influence our feelings, and our feelings influence our thoughts.

Sounds right to me. Worded differently, #4 is the basis of Cognitive behavioral therapy. Except you can't quite just 'discard' thoughts, but I get your point.

> So why do we think we can reason ourselves out of emotions?

Well I think I'm doing it all the time. Annoyed about how some clerk treated you? Rate the importance of that on a scale from 0 to 100. Take 2 minutes pondering the heat death of the universe. Rate it again. Compare.

First, I think you're using more of a 'wise' mind than you think. You've (1) recognized the emotion that you are feeling and have acknowledged it, (2) thought about how important it was to you, and (3) compared it with other thoughts. To do all those you actually do have to experience the emotion and it sounds like you've got a hand on that.

Second, not that your frustration with a clerk is not important, but when I was explaining not reasoning yourself out of emotions I was thinking more along the lines of intense anxiety. A few years ago I had an interview with a cool tech company for a position I really wanted. I was so anxious I threw up in the elevator (...sigh...) All the logical thinking in the world didn't help me.

When you were thinking about fear, were you thinking about an actual threat, or an imaginary one? Was it something realistically possible, something that has caused you fear in the past, or something theoretically possible, like getting in a car accident. I tried the exercise and it took me about 30 seconds to work myself into a minor panic attack, and a couple of minutes to walk that back. I'm in the process of buying a home and didn't leave myself enough time between the offer and when I needed to deliver the earnest money check to make the bank transfers into the checking account I needed to do so the check will clear. Thinking about that creates enormous anxiety in me. Working out of it involves logically walking myself thru the steps, the possible outcomes, and what I need to do in the event of each outcome. Basically, if I deliver the check today and they deposit it same day, it won't clear until tomorrow, giving the transfers just enough time to get completed. I"m still slightly nervous about it, but it was easy to ramp that way the hell up. It was less easy, but completely possible to ramp it back down by thinking it thru.

"Emotions play a huge role in anxiety and really cannot be ignored or just reasoned away. They need to be experienced. They need to be felt and expressed. And once they are, logic is a useful tool, as you said, to dive into them and think more about why you are feeling that way."

You are totally right there. What i learned in CBT: you experience emotions. Period. You have no control over whether or not you feel them, and if you try to repress them they will force their way out in weird and inappropriate ways. Emotions cause physical feelings in the body. Fear gives you that pit in your stomach, the FFF reflex fires up and your body prepares to flee, fight or freeze. As you experience the physical sensations, it provokes cognitive thoughts, and the combination of feelings and thoughts will produce actions. Each of these things feed back into each other either reinforcing them or diluting them. You may take actions that produce more fear, or actions that make you feel safer. Your thoughts may reinforce your emotions or calm them down.

For me the big revelation was that there was a separation between emotions and feelings. To me they were literally the same thing. Understanding this concept has allowed me to find a tiny bit of space between experiencing the emotion and the physical sensations it provoked. That allows me (sometimes) to drive a wedge of logical thought in between them and experience the emotion, without it uncontrollably driving physical sensations that then uncontrollably drive thoughts that feed back into the emotion, creating a vicious cycle. It's true that you can't just tell yourself "stop being afraid". But there are a lot of cognitive things you can do to temper and interrupt the anxiety cycle. For me, it's not easy, takes a ton of work, but it DOES work, and it has changed the way I view life and my place in it in enormous positive ways.

I was thinking about something that I didn't already fear. I should have been more clear. Your example is exactly the type of thing I also stress over, but it also sounds like it is something that it is healthy to have at least some fear over.

I can also 'reason' myself into a panic in these situations. But afterwards I usually realize I was experiencing some type of cognitive distortion, and I wasn't being quite as logical as I thought I was.

Sounds like we learned a lot of similar stuff in CBT. Really changed my life for the positive as well. But It's still a struggle.

Discrimination affects biological processes such as stress hormones and sleep, which are important for health and daily performance http://qz.com/334366/why-black-americans-cant-sleep-at-night...

Poisonous spiders? Interesting article though.

This is an article essentially about how anxiety affects political views, so here's my experience on that matter.

I'm an independent that leans conservative especially on fiscal but also somewhat on social issues, and I know that my worry plays a part in it.

I've voted for independents, Libertarians, Republicans, and Democrats in past presidential elections, and plan to vote Democrat this year, and I will do so because of my worry about the Republican candidate. This candidate is unpredictable, and is focused on the wrong side of issues that I care about. I'm a compassionate person, and the candidate is not. I'm also a Christian, and the candidate is the antithesis of the behavior and goals I would hope to have in my country's leader. And of course, I think that a woman should have a chance at leading our country, even if she's not the one that I'd chose typically. So, my anxiety will play a part in the election, but not in the way this article would suggest.

And of course, I think that a woman should have a chance at leading our country, even if she's not the one that I'd chose typically.

This I find the worst argument for her presidency imaginable. "I am so virtuous and anti-sexist that I prefer the female candidate for being female" It's pure sexism. You stop being sexist when you leave the gender out of the equation. Completely.

The trouble is that so many people use that argument while completely ignoring their own biases.

E.g. "I don't care that she's a woman, but she just doesn't look presidential."

"I just don't trust her, she's too shrill." "I just don't trust her, she's too quiet."

Look at all the media attention to her hair, her outfits, her skin, etc and you see that she's treated fundamentally differently than a male candidate.

The presidency has been held by a male exclusively for so long that voters don't know what a female president looks like. When so many (shockingly many) people vote on gut, instinct, or just their emotion, taking the time to acknowledge bias is a useful step.

Look at all the media attention to her hair

I am not gonna lie, Trump's hair got much more coverage. She is not treated fundamentally different than a male candidate, except in a positive bias as in "I want to see a woman leading the country!" It is obvious that Hillary leverages gender-based tribalism to get the female vote (and the gentleman's).

The argument that people are unconsciously biased is precisely such an emotionally manipulative argument to give Hillary a gender-based advantage. That does not work with people who are hardened against emotional manipulation though, like myself.

> Look at all the media attention to her hair, her outfits, her skin, etc

Strange comment to make considering the constant articles and social media posts about Trump's hair, Trump's orange skin, and Trump's little hands, plus the widespread coverage of the naked Trump painting and naked Trump statue that were created to mock his weight and body parts.

Trump invites that sort of coverage by being a thin-skinned, narcissistic buffoon who thinks he's above everyone else.

Case in point: The whole 'small hands' thing would've blown over if Trump had ignored it, but he couldn't help himself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuSdCXmDOus

On the other hand, if you use conscious bias to counteract unconscious bias, that might lead you to the best decision.

And it's valid to consider the externalities when you're making a political choice. The goal is a better future, after all, not maximizing fairness in the short-term.

Still, it's a relatively minor factor with the way the current race has turned out. So we don't need to worry about those arguments.

The goal is a better future, after all, not maximizing fairness in the short-term.

That's why you shouldn't judge by gender, but by performance of the candidate. That just proves my point. If your goal is a better future and you make performance-based decisions, you will minimize biases like sexism all by itself because what is less discriminating than assessing raw performance?

Before you can have an unbiased result, you need an unbiased pool of candidates. A temporary bias in the last round is an attempt to help fix the clearly-broken funnel that leads there. It might not be the best way of doing things, but the plan is not obviously wrong or anything.

Affirmative action is destructive. You are setting up people to fail by promoting them into positions they are not fit to take. Either they are qualified or they aren't. End of discussion. It's the same way with marks. Nobody is helped if a black person with bad marks gets into a college when they should not, and they end up not being able to handle the subjects and drop out later.

Not only that - affirmative action is disrespectful. Women can do as well as men. I believe in it. But that is precisely why affirmative action is obsolete. Only those who think women cannot handle the work and cannot perform on par with men favour affirmative actions based on gender. In the German language, there's already a word for women who were promoted into positions they cannot handle because there are certain quotas to fill as required by law. This is called "Quotenfrau" and is incredibly derogatory.

If someone isn't qualified, then a small bump won't be enough to put them in the job. We're not talking about picking a random person off the street to meet a quota.

There are flaws in affirmative action, but doing nothing about disparities that have self-perpetuating attributes is a pretty bad plan by itself. Top candidates don't appear out of a vacuum.

It's rational to say that "all other things being equal, I should choose the one that I'm most likely to be unconsciously biased against."

Forget racism or sexism, that's how I choose software, which movie to go see, or which pair of pants to buy.

This isn't a gift to Hillary, or a matter of fairness between her and Trump. It's an evaluation of her qualities on another (largely before-unseen) metric. If pure sexism got us better presidents the sexist decision would be the right one, but as you'll see, it isn't actually sexist.

Imagine yourself as a sport team leader. You've normally picked large bruiser types and you say "Hmmm, I should try a lighter person with better speed." You don't know it'll work out, and it's "unfair" to the big bruisers, but it's a rational thing for a team leader to do.

Considering that left-handed players often get a benefit from simply being unique, choosing a female president could pay out now even if in the long run there's no real difference.

As a non-american watching from the side-lines, I feel like this presidential election will be a loss no matter which of the candidates wins.

I too watch from the sidelines, but I think that if I were a voter I would either not vote or vote third candidate. I wish there wasn't so many troubling things about Hillary's deals and ties.

This is what I do not understand. If you are so troubled by Hilary, then make a stand against her. If you think Trump is worse (I do) then vote against him in a way that counts; vote for Hilary. This is not an election to sit on the sidelines. Make a choice that matters. This is not really directed at you per say, but to Americans who could vote and are expressing this "do not vote/ vote third party" sentiment. I can only guess that they are Trump supporters hoping a three way split helps them.

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"

> This is not an election to sit on the sidelines. Make a choice that matters.

If you tell a kid that it's having green beans for dinner, it will throw a tantrum because it doesn't like green beans. If you ask it: "what do you want for dinner, green beans or spinach?", it will happily choose the beans because it likes spinach even less. The illusion of choice is a very powerful one.

You get to choose from a grand total of 2 pre-vetted candidates. Do you really think it matters which one you pick ?

The purpose of an election is not so the people can choose their leader, it's to make the people think they chose their leader. It prevents revolution.

Trump is a lot of things, but pre-vetted isn't one of them.

There was a robust primary season this time around, perhaps the most robust in over a century. The results are hogwash, and we can discuss what happened and what we can do about it. But it's not entirely rigged.

> Trump is a lot of things, but pre-vetted isn't one of them.

No, the republicans made a mistake by actually letting the people's vote decide and they will correct it before the next elections. The Democrats have already made this kind of mistake in the past[1] which is why they now have superdelegates to correct for that.

So yeah, Trump supporters managed to game the system this one time, unfortunately they wasted their one opportunity by choosing that clown.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdelegate#Origins

Actually, the Democrats aren't the only ones that have something to protect against that: while the Democrats have superdelegates to tip the scale in favor of insiders (though, as yet, the supers have never actually, AFAIK, tipped the result in a different direction than the majority of pledged delegates), they, unlike the Republicans, actually assign pledged delegates in a basically proportionate manner (there are state by state differences, but all of them are fundamentally around a proportionate baseline.)

The Republicans also have a system to prevent a popular outsider from winning, its just a different system. Rather than assigning pledged delegates in a basically proportional manner and then establishing superdelegates as a safety valve, they have designed a system to favor candidates with establishment support by, in most primaries/caucuses, giving vastly disproportionate delegates to the plurality or majority winner (in some cases, winner-take-all), a system designed to favor candidates who start off ahead, which is assumed to be (and usually is) those with the most party pedigree and establishment advance support preparing the ground.

This backfired on the establishment in this election largely because the establishment started out backing a candidate that was so unappealing to their own key supporters that even major donors were bad mouthing him from the beginning of the primary campaign and talking about how they were only giving to him because they felt compelled out of loyalty to the Party and the candidates family, which gave plenty of opportunity for a celebrity candidate to leverage free media to a powerful lead while the establishment was scrambling to adjust, which they never managed to do.

>No, the republicans made a mistake by actually letting the people's vote decide and they will correct it before the next elections. The Democrats have already made this kind of mistake in the past[1] which is why they now have superdelegates to correct for that.

What are you talking about? The superdelegates weren't even a factor in nominating Hillary; she won the popular vote in the DNC primaries even without taking into account the SDs. You can argue that media complicity and other factors like CtR had a big hand here, but in the end, it was the Democratic voters who pulled the lever for her. So just like the Republican voters managed to choose a clown, so did the Democratic voters, except it was even worse for the Dems: on the Rep side, at least they can point out that it was actually a minority of Rep voters who chose him, and he won because of vote-splitting between all the other candidates. This just isn't a case on the Dem side, where all the other candidates aside from Sanders got almost no votes at all, and Hillary won a clear majority.

> What are you talking about? The superdelegates weren't even a factor in nominating Hillary;

Who's talking about Hillary ? I'm just saying they have a mechanism in place to make sure there is no actual democracy going on. I didn't claim they had to use that mechanism in this election.

They may have a mechanism in place, but your argument falls flat at complaining about this mechanism (or any undemocratic mechanism) when it hasn't even been used to change the final results of any election.

I guess you could say that Democratic voters are a lot better at nominating the person their party leadership wants them to than the Republican voters.

Why not vote against both and send a _very_ clear message that both parties, frankly, suck?

The solution that forces you to choose between two not acceptable outcomes is a very bad solution. If both choices are not acceptable then there should be a way to reject both of them.

"Let's flip a coin, heads I win, tails you lose. You don't like those rules? Too bad, you must play."

Likely third-party voter here:

(1) I suspect every voter has a threshold of evil-ness beyond which they simply can't in good conscience vote for Candidate X, even if Candidate Y is evil-er. For me, we've passed that threshold.

(2) I don't live in a swing state, so my vote already has only symbolic significance. As such I'd rather go on record voting no confidence in either Clinton or Trump, and vote for someone that I think would actually do a reasonable job if by some miracle they became president.

(3) I know Gary Johnson and the other third-party candidates have no chance of winning - _this_ time. I accept that (in my opinion) we're screwed for at least the next four years no matter whether it's Clinton or Trump, but if as many votes as possible go third-party this election, maybe - just maybe - third-parties will gain enough credibility to have a reasonable chance next election, or else the two major parties will finally get the message and pick better candidates.

>or else the two major parties will finally get the message and pick better candidates.

You'd think that after Bill's success in 1992, Gore's failure in 2000, Kerry's failure in 2004, and Obama's success in 2008, the DNC would finally have gotten a clue about how important it is to have a candidate who's well-liked and popular with the younger voters. But apparently not.

>(1) I suspect every voter has a threshold of evil-ness beyond which they simply can't in good conscience vote for Candidate X, even if Candidate Y is evil-er. For me, we've passed that threshold.

This is another really huge factor.

Sadly IMO, most people think that way, therefore we get to make this exact same choice every 4 years, where we vote for the overtly racist party to defeat the blacks, or the other party to think of ourselves as a friend to the blacks (or because we are the blacks) and ignore the terrible effects of bipartisanship. The only reason this election is interesting is because a critical mass of people are irritated by the two parties in general; normally, this would be a Jeb Bush v. Hillary Clinton election, and Sanders would have dropped out after the first Democratic primary debate.

Of course, if things had been going normally, Hillary Clinton would be serving the end of her second term. The potential energy for change has been building for a while, 9/11, the Iraq debacle, the housing bubble, the rise of the social Internet, the death of the Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers turning 70 have had a huge effect on how political thought amongst the American masses is distributed.

I'm troubled by both Hillary and Trump. I'm excited by the inevitable outcome that we are going to elect a weak President after a couple of decades of Executive branch expansion. I'm excited to vote for someone other than the two parties to promote ideas that are usually excluded from the public discourse for reasons other than their merits.

What's so troubling about Hillary's deals and ties? I can see that many people are upset about them, but when I look into details, I don't see anything particularly serious. I don't think her ties are any more troubling than, say, Romney or Trump, and no one really talked about those.

It's an article that tries, not very subtly, to associate conservative political views with anxiety disorders. Pathologizing opinions is a tactic with a long and unlovely history (cf. "sluggish schizophrenia" under the Soviet regime) and one which I find considerably more concerning than the current electoral cycle. The republic is stronger than a corrupt apparatchik and a real estate swindler. But treating dissent as disease can get ugly fast.

What's more concerning is that this comes from the state run broadcaster. If you don't toe the party line there's something wrong with you.

The BBC is not a state run broadcaster, and the current UK government is run by the Conservative Party.

As I gather the matter, the BBC is subject to prior restraint under law, any time the Home Secretary chooses to invoke the relevant provision, as has been done for explicitly political reasons in the recent past with the Sinn Fein ban. That's close enough to "state broadcaster" for an ignorant colonial like me.

The ban on broadcasting the voices of Sinn Fein representatives (but not the content of what they said) applied to all UK media, not just the BBC. I'm in no way arguing that it was a sound decision, but it says nothing about the BBC being state run or otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadc...

I'll admit this was a provocative and hyperbolic post, I was interrupted before I could polish my though. I'm British and I can recall plenty of times the BBC has bent over to accommodate the ruling party. The only one that springs to mind now is after the invasion of Iraq BBC radio stations refused to play Edwin Starrs 'war (what is it good for)'.

In Europe I've heard a lot of comments after the Brexit that the voters of the Leave camp were "aging", "countryside" or "racist". Very few people view them as possibly having a rational reasoning. "We" try to assign them a reason for being irrational.

Whether we associate Soviet dissidents with "schizophrenia", people we don't agree with with "senility", or associate undeserved moral standards with "leftists", I reckon treating someone's vote as a consequence of their weakness and not as a consequence of their decision is ugly.

I'm with you, with the exception, of, 'I think a women should have a chance a leading our country-'

I used to think that way. Give them a chance. After Margret Thatcher, I changed my mind. Women are just as ruthless, egotistical, quick to war, as men. That lady ruined the "A women wouldn't act like a man." argument.

I too suffer form anxiety. It really affected the quality of my life.

I don't want to put words in your mouth, so I'd like to ask for clarification:

It sounds as though you are saying that women should not have a chance to lead the country because they are as X as men. But I'm not sure how it follows that, all things equal, men with X should be given favor over women with the same X.

From what I understand it, parent hoped women would be better than men in government (e.g. alluding to matriarchy vs patriarchy in societies), but the women that do make it in politics in our era are the same (or even more) cutthroat and ruthless politicians as the men are.

So, what you read as

"all things equal, men with X should be given favor over women with the same X"

is not really saying "favor men over women" but more like "don't bother voting a woman candidate if you think it will be better just because she's a woman, it will be just the same shit".

Or, maybe "those women that get to play at the top of politics, are even more ruthless than men, because they have to be so to match and surpass their male competitors in a male dominating field" -- so instead of a matriarchical viewpoint, you'd get patriarchy x 2.

Forgive me, but I don't see where "let's give a woman a go, maybe, see if it works out" is equivalent to implying women will be better Leanders than men. It seemed to be merely recognizing that there has never been a woman president and maybe, a woman can be president and not be a garbage fire.

>Forgive me, but I don't see where "let's give a woman a go, maybe, see if it works out" is equivalent to implying women will be better Leanders than men.

Well, that they could be as bad as men is probably a given, and no reason to give a woman a go just because she is one ("see if it works out").

Only if one had some stronger expectations from women in power compared to men would it make sense to just say "let's give a woman a go" just because of her sex.

>It seemed to be merely recognizing that there has never been a woman president and maybe, a woman can be president and not be a garbage fire.

"It won't be a garbage fire" or even stronger, "it will totally be business as usual", is hardly something to excite one to vote though, is it?

> no reason to give a woman a go just because she is one

It's a bit like going to a different restaurant just to mix things up. It's not because you have some belief it will be better, it's because you think the possible unseen benefit is worth something.

To be fair, and that's not something I'm inclined to often with Thatcher, the two wars were much clearer cut cases than adventures since.

Falklands - British Territory had been invaded at gunpoint. Several histories have commented that in making the Task Force decision the day after invasion, British lives were a key factor. They also commented that she made a point of listening to all views, and continued to do so in the War Cabinet.

Gulf - Kuwait had been invaded at gunpoint, Saddam was setting fire to every oil field he could find, and a large coalition being assembled. she'd resigned before action started, so the war itself was under Major. As was Bosnia.

There's been several commentaries that the successful military operations, and the associated public popularity of a clean, won, war, heavily influenced Blair's adventures. He wanted to be a popular, and successful, war leader and saw the poll advantages. So she was perhaps some influence on Blair buggering up the next 15 years. The Iraq War was plain stupid.

She stayed as PM far too long, and had dozens of other issues mind you. Not least, the poll tax.

I suspect that sex and much personality is irrelevant to running a country, it's the nature of the position that shapes the personality. You can have policy and ideology differences, but if events need a fast or firm response that's what you get. At ministeries there's more room for individual differences.

> Falklands - British Territory had been invaded at gunpoint

I think what you meant to say was that England felt like invading random weaker nations.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands_sovereignty...

Hillary is more war eager than Donald. Look at her mails regarding Syria. Also, she hates Russia (meaning that the proxy war there would continue) while Donald do not (meaning he may work to find a solution).

Interesting, for me, gender, like race, plays no part in my decisions or thoughts.

I always find it intriguing that so many people actually care what gender or race someone is. Very jarring that people can't get over such basic things.

Before someone says that I am making small of a large issue, perhaps that is the entire goal, to eradicate those notions that we are different simply because of our race or gender. I choose to believe we are the same, we all get the same chances, modifiers might be different from situation to situation just as in any situation, but very much the same, regardless of what you say, and I always will.

So, gender of the president? I don't care. Can be anything you want, as long as they are worthy of the position in their ideals and plans.

This is complete bullshit.

As a moderately anxious person I have a completely different internal experience on an American subway vs. one in Tokyo. I have almost no anxiety in Tokyo. Why? it is one of the safest big cities in the world. Theft, terrorism, assault, and general creepiness are almost non-existent and everyone knows it and behaves accordingly.

In contrast, you have to be much more aware on American mass transit to avoid problems. American mass transit is far more dangerous than in Tokyo and it is almost instantly apparent to anyone paying attention. You'd be a fool not have situational awareness on an American subway because there is a higher probability of personal harm.

> general creepiness almost non-existent

If you're a guy, maybe.

I've been in subway systems all over the world, including tokyo and new york, and I never felt particularly anxious on a NYC subway, at least during the day.

The only time I feel anxious in NYC is when it's rush hour and I can barely get enough space in the train to breathe, but that happens everywhere :-)

> In contrast, you have to be much more aware on American mass transit to avoid problems.

Okay, but does that have to translate into anxiousness? Paying attention to things, even looking out for potential risks, doesn't have to feel negative IMHO.

Consider the difference between "hmm, that guy seems to be on drugs and could be armed, I wonder if I'll only get wounded, or if he'll actually kill me" and thinking, as you slightly shift position to something more useful while pretending to not notice the person you're bracing yourself for: "okay, so when this guy thinks he's attacking me from behind, as I watch his reflection in the window, and just before I ram my heel into his nutsack with the force of a thousand subway trains: which one of these people, who will all no doubt fawn over my heroic move and rush over to see if I'm okay, will I grin at, look deeply in the eye and ask out for dinner?".

It's the same situation, just day dreaming near an unarmed guy who won't do anything; but one actually gives you energy, the other drains it, for no purpose. Of course the example is exaggerated, but still, being scared doesn't help you at all, some might even say that's exactly what would attract an evildoer, like blood in the water attracts piranhas. They want victims, not challenges.

IMHO anxiety isn't a defense mechanism, it's a leak, an inefficiency. I don't know if the word comes from "angst", but fear and angst are two very different things. That is, one is a thing, the other is just a black hole which can swallow up all sorts of things. I don't mean this in a finger waggling kind of way, but more in a "you deserve even better" sort of way. I have sympathy for anxious people, but not for anxiety, I think it's a poison.

All the best for you and all, if nothing else, take it in that spirit. (I'm correct though :P)

> IMHO anxiety isn't a defense mechanism, it's a leak, an inefficiency.

Given the association of anxiety with "worrier" genes and further association of those with higher cognitive capacity, as well as the possibility that worrying about a thing makes it easier to remember, I find it highly likely that it's simply the expression of a cognitive style, not even a defense mechanism. The defense mechanism is likely to be depression.

Anxiety needs to be assessed for its full benefit across the board, not merely whether or not it's obviously productive in a given, often artificial, situation. For one, it's an emotion, emotions are a method of direct informational processing and are meant to modify your behavior among other things.

The purpose of anxiety around someone that could harm you may be to generate a negative association with the area/situation/certain persons so that you stop going there/creating that situation/conversing with those persons. Whereas a non-anxious person would be much better at handling these situations but could also end up in them too often. For the most part, "warriors" are more popular in society and media, so it's not too surprising that their style of disposition is considered normal and the other is considered a disorder.

But being able to hold things in your head for a while (what leads to anxiety) is fairly useful and seems rather common among people who have a lot of responsibilities, especially mental ones, and need to keep track of and plan a lot of things. On the other hand, I met people who have very little anxiety, but are really poor at planning, remembering schedules, etc., because the information leaves their brain really quickly. Pick your poison, I guess, but I'm at least familiar with mine.

The flawed assumption here perhaps is that humans were meant to be happy.

> The flawed assumption here perhaps is that humans were meant to be happy.

For starters, it's using the word "anxiety" for completely different things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anxiety

> Anxiety is an emotion characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil, often accompanied by nervous behavior, such as pacing back and forth, somatic complaints, and rumination. It is the subjectively unpleasant feelings of dread over anticipated events, such as the feeling of imminent death. Anxiety is not the same as fear, which is a response to a real or perceived immediate threat, whereas anxiety is the expectation of future threat. Anxiety is a feeling of fear, uneasiness, and worry, usually generalized and unfocused as an overreaction to a situation that is only subjectively seen as menacing. It is often accompanied by muscular tension, restlessness, fatigue and problems in concentration. Anxiety can be appropriate, but when experienced regularly the individual may suffer from an anxiety disorder.

And if anything, I'd say humans are happier when they are productive in a way. There is a difference between pacing back and forth because you're in deep thought, and between pacing back and forth just to release stress.

> The purpose of anxiety around someone that could harm you may be to generate a negative association with the area/situation/certain persons

So does simply noticing it. What noticing it doesn't necessarily do is cloud your judgement, emit fear smell both figuratively and literally, worsen your health, and a bunch of other things.

You're not "either a warrior or a thinker", I see no basis for that dichotomy. There is being confident, and there is being intelligent, there is having empathy, and there is being responsible to your best abilities -- and they're all pretty much orthogonal.

> For the most part, "warriors" are more popular in society and media, so it's not too surprising that their style of disposition is considered normal and the other is considered a disorder.

For me it's simply whether it's goal-oriented or going in circles. If something worries you and you consider the trade-offs you're willing to make to make you less worried, that's not anxiety, that's doing something. Eating your fingernails isn't really, or sweating like crazy. Stuff like that achieves nothing, it's not helping with thinking or paying attention.

> Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.

-- Mary Schmich

> For starters, it's using the word "anxiety" for completely different things.

I don't know what you're referring to, exactly. I have a cognitive mode where thoughts pool in my head and do not leave. This means I have a lot of pooled thoughts and they are resilient, in that I'm actively aware of them for a long time and it's easy to put them back in the pool. This also tends to leave to anxiety, because often to-dos sit in the pool just as well. But it helps me remember that I have to-dos.

Forgive me if I'm not too interested in the Wikipedia definition or the current psychology consensus. You are just trying to define anxiety as a tautologically negative thing while it's very tightly coupled to keeping track of things and assessing things. I can turn off my anxiety if I stop worrying about things, but if I stop worrying about things, they stop getting done.

It's like pain. Pain sucks, but if it's informing you about something cutting into your skin you'd probably like to know. At the same time, it can be used against you, be too much, and become its own bad thing. Anxiety is information of wrongness of state. Like anything else, it can be miscalibrated, and you seem to be just claiming that anxiety only exists in miscalibrated form, which is silly.

I can go into a lot more detail as to how this may work.

> And if anything, I'd say humans are happier when they are productive in a way.

Hence why I said what I said: humans were not necessarily meant to be happy. Human happiness is actually not relevant to this discussion. If anxiety helps you survive by making you avoid bad situations and pay your bills even if you become miserable in the process, it's done its job as far as evolution is concerned.

> You're not "either a warrior or a thinker", I see no basis for that dichotomy.

https://selfhacked.com/2014/12/24/worrier-warrior-explaining...

It's not a complete dichotomy, and obviously none of this is solidly proven, but I am not referring to stereotypes here.

Either of your scenarios sound like anxiety to me. To me, not being anxious means 1. being aware that the chances of something going bad are very small, and 2. recognizing that worrying about it is usually not productive at best, harmful at worst. In short I think you should aim to go from constantly developing and updating a plan as to what to do if stranger attacks you, to trusting yourself to be able to develop and execute a plan should the need arise, and not spending time and energy worrying about it before then.

I think the non-anxious thing is to lazily initialize your defense mechanisms / responses to most would-be threats.

I didn't realize the extent of my anxiety until a bunch of months ago, when I had a small dose of lorazepam. Suddenly, the inner voice in my head that when riding in a car would usually be worrying "what if we crash or are pulled over right now" for the duration of the ride was replaced with "ah, there's a chance we might crash or be pulled over, but that chance is small, and worrying about it now isn't going to impact it, so instead I'll let my mind work on imagining what I could do with my free time tomorrow." It was quite the difference.

Benzos are super addictive drugs and I wouldn't want to develop a habit (or encourage their use lest others develop a habit), but seeing the contrast motivated me to work on mindfulness and exercise to decrease my anxiety levels.

Fair point, I got carried away a bit there :)

This sounds like a specific anxiety related to your feelings of personal safety. This is absolutely something that triggers anxiety, but there are many, many other forms. For example, if you suffered from claustrophobia-related anxiety, Tokyo would not solve your issues at all.

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