Every time I see that little red number in my inbox, my first thought is: Did I mess up? My brain jumps to the worst-case scenario—maybe I said something controversial, and now everyone’s correcting me and downvoting my stupid comments. Even though, most of the time, the messages are actually helpful and fun, that number still triggers some sort of insecurity and anxiety. The bigger it gets, the louder my worries grow.
Logically, I know I don’t screw up that often, and most feedback is neutral or even positive. But deep down, my insecure monkey brain panics at the thought of being wrong—or worse, publicly called out. Even when I’m right, the number still makes my stress levels spike up. What if people disagree with me? What if they don’t like what I wrote?
And yes, I see the irony in posting this. Writing about it is basically asking for it and feeding the very anxiety I’m trying to ignore. Maybe it’s my version of exposure therapy.
I do still freak out thinking i’ve been banned. Then i remember this isn’t reddit and lemmy appreciates free speech. Then i look at the notifications and most of them are just people adding on to my comment and a good bit of upvotes.
It’s nice to be in a place full of open minded people who are nerdy. Just where i want to be.
LOL. There are surprisingly many people like that. There should be a community where you can post these pictures. It could be like a competition of sorts.
I cringe actually, because sometimes you get troll comments or condescending response like “akshually, or this is not that or this, and you are,” so I end up just putting them as read all and not respond
Makes sense. If the responses are just just trash, treat them as spam. Hopefully that doesn’t happen very often.
its usually cause the communist gang or the linux gang has discovered my opinion. no need for alarm.
Yeah, business as usual. You say what you usually say, people freak out, nothing new. Rinse and repeat.
Most I’ve ever had is 1-2. Guess I’m not that interesting.
The number of comments, likes, upvotes, responses and other metrics rarely tell you about how interesting you and your comments are. Let’s say there’s a post with 100 upvotes, and the top comment has like 50 upvotes. If you drop a comment there, you can expect to get 10-30 upvotes. Not more than 50, because the the parent comment already has 50. In some rare cases, the child comment can get more upvotes than the parent, but don’t count on it.
You are still a wonderful person even if you get only a handful of comments or upvotes. Even if you got zero, that doesn’t change who you are or how good your comments are. These metrics usually tell you something about the time and place of the comment.
The content matters too, but to a lesser extent. If the comment is all middle fingers, don’t expect many upvotes. Although, there are always exceptions. Posting the classic “fuck spez” is the kind of hostility people can get behind.
I should add “fuck spez” at the end of all my posts just in case. :p
That makes me miss the old forum days where everyone had some fancy bonus text (a signature) at the bottom of each post. Why don’t we have signatures any more on any platform? Was it really such a bad idea that it died with the forums?
I think you’re somewhat interesting.
I appreciate your kind words.
Someone disagrees with me.
Someone is pointing out an error I made.
Someone is arguing an exception to prove me wrong.
I made an agreeable statement.
In that order of priority.
I will answer the first one, if it’s not condescending, but most of the time it is, so I just don’t respond to it.
Wait, so you’re primarily expecting the responses to be written by people who disagrees with you? You must enjoy politics.
Haha, yeah I do comment a bit in politics. Here it’s not too bad, I tend to have similar views as many here so the disagreements are the “genocide joe” type more often than not.
No, because I use Boost and I do not let it check notis. I revisit comments that I would like to have a conversation around and I look for meaningful responses. I really don’t care what the average person says as most of the time it’s the player piano music in their head, or some logical fallacy.
Lol sorta. For me, I run official accounts in these sorts of circles mainly because I despise modern corporate social media platforms, I’d still be on newsgroups if it weren’t so much work lol.
So, I do enjoy seeing notifs, mainly in the hope (like every other boring ass economist) that I get to have some dialog on an interesting topic.
Wait, you’re an actual real-life economist?
Don’t mind if I do. I’ve wanted talk to economists for such a long time, because that’s one of the many areas I couldn’t include in my formal studies. Yeah, you gotta graduate eventually, and you can’t keep on adding more and more courses that have nothing to do with what you’re really trying to achieve, LOL.
Anyway, I’m really curious about the state of economics as a discipline. Do you see it as a mature science, or do you think economics still has a long way to go? Are there widely accepted solid theories that no longer change? You know, like a solid foundation you can confidently build upon? Is every new recession a hurricane that tares through the walls and buries the previous foundation under a mountain of mud?
Lol yea, think tank thing is real as well. First-gen student and all that, so thought hell I have the education might as well use it, even if I’m a one man show here. This is genuinely turning into a whole lecture here lmao so uh, good luck lol.
Funny you say that, that’s actually one of the reasons I’m trying to push my local library to host a few community education semminars and the such, in a perfect world I would spend my life going from one subject to another just soaking in everything I can.
Economics as a whole, and the economists themselves, can either end up being practically stuck in the 19th or 20th century, or standing right on the bleeding edge of theory and application. While as a field in and of itself, economics equally relies on existing mathematical principles for use, so it’s a rarity to find an economist trying to create new mathematical principle like you would with a mathematician, but you will find lots of economists working to use new mathematics to integrate into economics models. A good example of this, is how often models used in the world of physics end up being used in modeling economies, or specific sectors. Even right now, the most common model used for determining market averages is a 19th century equation developed to determine the temperature of a room. Though that’s not even looking at the priciples of the subject, which are as old as know written language, if I recall you can still find basic economic principles on old cuneiform tablets. As for actual acceptance of theory, it’s pretty much always up for grabs, given it’s a field of observations on the real world, it’s impossible by it’s nature to have a universal proof, mathematically speaking at least.
As for currently widely accepted theory, the easiest to point to in the modern world are two basic assumptions. First, is that in any given economy, growth is considered a perpetuity. In the junior economics world (aka business leaders lol) they take that as the mantra “expand or die,” though it’s quite a bit more accurate to see each part of an economy, whether that’s a single business or entire sector, as limited in it’s current full potential, but the additions to the economy as a whole tend to be stay within the whole, in one form or another, even if that firm or sector disappears. Mostly this is through research, infrastructure, even how taxes paid get redistributed. So, you can technically have “infinite” future growth, while still operating within a limited resource world.
Of course the problem is most businness leaders and politicians don’t end up taking that longer run thinking, and just jump into the take everything you can and give nothing back bandwagon.
Recessions are a bit of of a hot-bed in the policy side of things, given the underlying assumption of the post-war economic models implemented in the US after WW2, and copied world-wide, is that consistent inflation on a year to year basis would be able to both foster greater economic growth by increasing total possible credit in an economy (which it does) but, that that year to year constant inflation rates should also prevent recessions and general depressions. Of course that half hasn’t come true, most senior economists over the years have pivoted into the viewpoint that controlled inflation smoothes out larger recessions and depressions, but that’s still up in the air. Since the 2008 recession was very much a depression, with many recessions ocurring pretty much decade after decade since it was enacted in 1945, it’s very much being questioned as a central policy, but for the most part it hasn’t collapsed so it’s still probably going to be enacted.
Thanks for the wall of text. :D Really appreciate it that you took the time to explain these things.
Anyway, I have some follow-up questions about the stability/volatility of theories. Recently, I’ve been thinking about the how firm and solid the models and theories are in different sciences. For example, physics has all the basics pretty well nailed down, whereas in psychology even the basic things tend to get frequent updates as more data becomes available and old ideas get challenged.
In physics, there are models that have known blind spots. Currently, we know that our model of gravity is ok for large objects such as tennis balls, planets, stars and galaxies. In an atomic scale though, our model of gravity just doesn’t line up with our understanding of quantum mechanics. So what about Economics then? Have we identified serious flaws in our economic models, like we have with gravity, or are the models about as solid as the theory of atoms or energy?
Or maybe the models are more like suggestions that kinda work occasionally, but mostly you have to take the predictions with a grain of salt. You mentioned that the idea of controlled inflation smoothing out larger recessions and depressions is still debated, so maybe that concept could be contrasted with the theory of gravity. It works for the most part, but there are known issues with it.
When atoms and electrons were discovered, a whole lot got rewritten, but now that we’ve been working with these fancy new particles for about a hundred years, this part is looking pretty well established. Finer details like string theory is anything but solid, but the big picture is nice and firm. It doesn’t look likely that any new data would lead to us throwing away our idea of atoms. Quite the contrary, now that we’ve even got pictures of individual atoms, and we have the means to manipulate them individually. Obviously, the finer details are absolutely going to change as better data becomes available, but those topics are quite exotic, like dark matter and dark energy.
The whole concept of atoms is about as solid as it gets, but are there comparable theories in economics? Something fundamental that has been tested countless times and nobody has been able to prove that the idea is wrong. Something that is accepted as a foundational cornerstone and is unlikely to get thrown out the window. Maybe something like supply and demand, but is that actually solid enough? Does that stuff get tested, debated and challenged? Have economists found some holes in these kinds of theories?
I feel I need a few weeks to respond when I notice people dog piling me. It’s not common, but I don’t want to deal with all that negativity out there gate with people when I’m just looking to have a conversation.
Some people are looking to jump on you the second you even broach some topics which can be a bit frustrating.
Thankfully most of Lemmy has been so friendly, it’s other places that actually have gotten to me more.
I sometimes will respond to some comments if they aren’t being obnoxious, and will block the trolls
Judging by some of the other comments here, there are surprisingly many people who try to have a civilized conversation in a places where things escalate very easily into a flame war. I prefer to avoid conversations that lead to that much negativity, which highlights yet another interesting usage difference. Because of that, I don’t face anywhere near as much hostility as some other people. If I used Lemmy that way, dogpiling might occur more frequently, and I might approach it exactly the way you do—by neglecting those messages for a while.
Speaking of the friendly vibe, I think that’s just one of the many benefits of being a small platform. If Lemmy got like 100x the number of users, that vibe would probably shift in a more negative direction.
I like that you’ve shared this so we can all bond over the same anxiety.
Mission accomplished! Now I know that I’m not alone with these confusing feelings. It’s a journey of self-discovery we can all embark on together. Well, maybe not all, since some people use Lemmy in a very different way.
I dunno about you, but I had that as a left over from reddit, damn they’re unnecessarily harsh over there.
It takes time to heal from that kind of trauma. Stay strong!
I didn’t read anything but the title. When I see a lot in the inbox I mark all as read and never look back.
This is the way. Basically, the rule 1 of internet.
Always react based on the title, ignore any news articles or long explanations the post may have. Never click the news article, since we all know journalists are very good at conveying the core message in the title without implying anything even a little bit distorted. On top of that, the average Joes posting their random ideas are also professionals when it comes to crafting descriptive post titles.
Not necessarily anxiety, but yeah usually my first thought is, “Oh shit, what ignorant thing did I say now?”
Yeah, anxiety is a pretty strong word, but feeling worried is what I’m really talking about. You know, that uncomfortable feeling that you may have said something wrong and you’re worried about what people might say. It’s in the the same general direction as anxiety, but nowhere near as extreme as actual clinical anxiety. Maybe “worrying for nothing” is a more fitting expression for this thing.
I would have to post something that people interact with… I’m not that kind of person. I usually get none to one reply to stuff I post, I think the highest mine has ever gone is three. I also couldn’t keep up with it.
It’s mostly about time and place. What the post actually contains matters far less. Post in a big community or at a time when most people are awake, and you’re guaranteed to get lots of upvotes and comments. Post in a niche community, and you’ll be lucky to get a handful of upvotes, and maybe even a single comment.
The community
Must
Grow
