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This is the Dream Time - Why is our era so delusory?

This is the Dream Time

By Robin Hanson · September 28, 2009 10:30 pm

 
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/09/this-is-the-dream-time.html
 
Aboriginals believe in … [a] "dreamtime", more real than reality itself. Whatever happens in the dreamtime establishes the values, symbols, and laws of Aboriginal society. … [It] is also often used to refer to an individual's or group's set of beliefs or spirituality. … It is a complex network of knowledge, faith, and practices that derive from stories of creation. Wikipedia.

We will soon enter an era where most anyone can at any time talk directly with most anyone else who can talk. 

Cheap global talk and travel continue to tie our global economy and culture more closely together.  But in the distant future, our descendants will probably have spread out across space, and redesigned their minds and bodies to explode Cambrian-style into a vast space of possible creatures.

If they are free enough to choose where to go and what to become, our distant descendants will fragment into diverse local economies and cultures.

Given a similar freedom of fertility, most of our distant descendants will also live near a subsistence level.  Per-capita wealth has only been rising lately because income has grown faster than population.  But if income only doubled every century, in a million years that would be a factor of 103000, which seems impossible to achieve with only the 1070 atoms of our galaxy available by then.  Yes we have seen a remarkable demographic transition, wherein richer nations have fewer kids, but we already see contrarian subgroups like Hutterites, Hmongs, or Mormons that grow much faster.  So unless strong central controls prevent it, over the long run such groups will easily grow faster than the economy, making per person income drop to near subsistence levels.  Even so, they will be basically happy in such a world.

Our distant descendants will also likely have hit diminishing returns to discovery; by then most everything worth knowing will be known by many; truly new and important discoveries will be quite rare. Complete introspection will be feasible, and immortality will be available to the few who can afford it.  Wild nature will be mostly gone, and universal coordination and destruction will both be far harder than today.

So what will these distant descendants think of their ancestors?  They will find much in common with our distant hunting ancestors, who also continued for ages at near subsistence level in a vast fragmented world with slow growth amid rare slow contact with strange distant cultures.  While those ancestors were quite ignorant about their world, and immersed in a vast wild nature instead of a vast space of people, their behavior was still pretty well adapted to the world they lived in.  While they suffered many misconceptions, those illusions rarely made them much worse off; their behavior was usually adaptive.

When our distant descendants think about our era, however, differences will loom larger.  Yes they will see that we were more like them in knowing more things, and in having less contact with a wild nature. 

But our brief period of very rapid growth and discovery and our globally integrated economy and culture will be quite foreign to them. 

Yet even these differences will pale relative to one huge difference: our lives are far more dominated by consequential delusions: wildly false beliefs and non-adaptive values that matter.  While our descendants may explore delusion-dominated virtual realities, they will well understand that such things cannot be real, and don't much influence history. 

In contrast, we live in the brief but important "dreamtime" when delusions drove history. 

Our descendants will remember our era as the one where the human capacity to sincerely believe crazy non-adaptive things, and act on those beliefs, was dialed to the max.

Why is our era so delusory?

Our knowledge has been growing so fast, and bringing such radical changes, that many of us see anything as possible, so that nothing can really be labeled delusion.
  • Rich folks like us have larger buffers of wealth to cushion our mistakes; we can live happily and long even while acting on crazy beliefs.
  • We humans evolved to signal various features of ourselves to one another via delusions; we usually think that the various things we do to signal are done for other reasons.  For example, we think we pay for docs to help our loved ones get well, rather than to show that we care.  We think we do politics because we want to help our nation, rather than to signal our character and loyalty.  We are overconfident in our abilities in order to convince others to have confidence in us, and so on.  But while our ancestors' delusions were well adapted to their situations, and so didn't hurt them much, the same delusions are not nearly as adapted to our rapidly changing world; our signaling induced delusions hurt us more.
  • Humans seem to have evolved to emphasize signaling more in good times than in bad.  Since very few physical investments last very long, the main investments one can make in good times that last until bad times are allies and reputation. So we are built to, in good times, spend more time and energy on leisure, medicine, charity, morals, patriotism, and so on.  Relative to our ancestors' world, our whole era is one big very good time.
  • Our minds were built with a near mode designed more for practical concrete reasoning about things up close, and a far mode designed more for presenting a good image to others via our abstract reasoning about things far away.  But our minds must now deal with a much larger world where many relevant things are much further away, and abstract reasoning is more useful.  So we rely more than did our ancestors on that abstract far mode capability.  But since that far mode was tuned more for presenting a good image, it is much more tolerant of good-looking delusions.
  • Tech now enables more exposure to mood-altering drugs and arts, and specialists make them into especially potent "super-stimuli." Our ancestors used drugs and went into art appreciation mode rarely, e.g., around the campfire listening to stories or music, or watching dances.  Since such contexts were relatively safe places, our drug and art appreciation modes are relatively tolerant of delusions.  But today drugs are cheap, we can hear music all the time, most surfaces are covered by art, and we spend much of our day with stories from TV, video games, etc.  And all that art is made by organized groups of specialists far better than the typical ancestral artist.
  • We were built to be influenced by the rhetoric, eloquence, difficulty, drama, and repetition of arguments, not just their logic.  Perhaps this once helped us to ally us with high status folks.  And we were built to show our ideals via the stories we like, and also to like well-crafted stories.  But today we are exposed to arguments and stories by folks far more expert than found in ancestral tribes.  Since we are built to be quite awed and persuaded by such displays, our beliefs and ideals are highly influenced by our writers and story-tellers.  And these folks in turn tell us what we want to hear, or what their patrons want us to hear, neither of which need have much to do with reality.

    These factors combine to make our era the most consistently and consequentially deluded and unadaptive of any era ever. 

    When they remember us, our distant descendants will be shake their heads at the demographic transition, where we each took far less than full advantage of the reproductive opportunities our wealth offered. 

    They will note how we instead spent our wealth to buy products we saw in ads that talked mostly about the sort of folks who buy them. 

    They will lament our obsession with super-stimili that highjacked our evolved heuristics to give us taste without nutrition.   

    They will note we spent vast sums on things that didn't actually help on the margin, such as on medicine that didn't make us healthier, or education that didn't make us more productive.

    Our descendants will also remember our adolescent and extreme mating patterns, our extreme gender personalities, and our unprecedentedly fierce warriors. 

    They will be amazed at the strange religious, political, and social beliefs we acted on, and how we preferred a political system, democracy, designed to emphasize the hardly-considered fleeting delusory thoughts of the median voter rather than the considered opinions of our best experts.

    Perhaps most important, our descendants may remember how history hung by a precarious thread on a few crucial coordination choices that our highly integrated rapidly changing world did or might have allowed us to achieve, and the strange delusions that influenced such choices. 

    These choices might have been about global warming, rampaging robots, nuclear weapons, bioterror, etc.  

    Our delusions may have led us to do something quite wonderful, or quite horrible, that permanently changed the options available to our descendants. 

    This would be the most lasting legacy of this, our explosively growing dream time, when what was once adaptive behavior with mostly harmless delusions become strange and dreamy unadaptive behavior, before adaptation again reasserted a clear-headed relation between behavior and reality.

    Our dreamtime will be a time of legend, a favorite setting for grand fiction, when low-delusion heroes and the strange rich clowns around them could most plausibly have changed the course of history. 

    Perhaps most dramatic will be tragedies about dreamtime advocates who could foresee and were horrified by the coming slow stable adaptive eons, and tried passionately, but unsuccessfully, to prevent them.

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    • BILL MAHER'S LATEST

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-if-america-cant_b_299383.html
    Bill Maher

    Bill Maher

    Host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher"

    New Rule: If America can't get its act together, it must lose the bald eagle as our symbol and replace it with the YouTube video of the puppy that can't get up. As long as we're pathetic, we might as well act like it's cute. I don't care about the president's birth certificate, I do want to know what happened to "Yes we can." Can we get out of Iraq? No. Afghanistan? No. Fix health care? No. Close Gitmo? No. Cap-and-trade carbon emissions? No. The Obamas have been in Washington for ten months and it seems like the only thing they've gotten is a dog.

    Well, I hate to be a nudge, but why has America become a nation that can't make anything bad end, like wars, farm subsidies, our oil addiction, the drug war, useless weapons programs - oh, and there's still 60,000 troops in Germany - and can't make anything good start, like health care reform, immigration reform, rebuilding infrastructure. Even when we address something, the plan can never start until years down the road. Congress's climate change bill mandates a 17% cut in greenhouse gas emissions... by 2020! Fellas, slow down, where's the fire? Oh yeah, it's where I live, engulfing the entire western part of the United States!

    We might pass new mileage standards, but even if we do, they wouldn't start until 2016. In that year, our cars of the future will glide along at a breathtaking 35 miles-per-gallon. My goodness, is that even humanly possible? Cars that get 35 miles-per-gallon in just six years? Get your head out of the clouds, you socialist dreamer! "What do we want!? A small improvement! When do we want it!? 2016!"

    When it's something for us personally, like a laxative, it has to start working now. My TV remote has a button on it now called "On Demand". You get your ass on my TV screen right now, Jon Cryer, and make me laugh. Now! But when it's something for the survival of the species as a whole, we phase that in slowly.

    Folks, we don't need more efficient cars. We need something to replace cars. That's what's wrong with these piddly, too-little-too-late half-measures that pass for "reform" these days. They're not reform, they're just putting off actually solving anything to a later day, when we might by some miracle have, a) leaders with balls, and b) a general populace who can think again. Barack Obama has said, "If we were starting from scratch, then a single-payer system would probably make sense." So let's start from scratch.

    Even if they pass the shitty Max Baucus health care bill, it doesn't kick in for 4 years, during which time 175,000 people will die because they're not covered, and about three million will go bankrupt from hospital bills.

    We have a pretty good idea of the Republican plan for the next three years: Don't let Obama do anything.

    What kills me is that that's the Democrats' plan, too.

    We weren't always like this. Inert. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law and 11 months later seniors were receiving benefits. During World War II, virtually overnight FDR had auto companies making tanks and planes only. In one eight year period, America went from JFK's ridiculous dream of landing a man on the moon, to actually landing a man on the moon ...

    That's the ultimate sign of our lethargy: millions thrown out of their homes, tossed out of work, lost their life savings, retirements postponed - and they just take it. 30% interest on credit cards?

    It's a good thing the Supreme Court legalized sodomy a few years ago ...

    Bill Maher is host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher"

    Follow Bill Maher on Twitter: www.twitter.com/billmaher

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    2009 Employer Healthcare Benefits Survey

     

    Analysis

    You Have No Idea What Health Costs

    If You Did, You Might Just Want Real Reform

    President Obama visits the University of Maryland on Thursday, where he discussed his proposals for health-care reform.

    The most important health-care document released this week was not Sen. Max Baucus's Healthy Future Act.

    It was the Kaiser Family Foundation's 2009 Employer Benefits Survey.

    http://ehbs.kff.org/pdf/2009/7936.pdf

    While the proposal by Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, outlines a direction for policy, the survey, which polls employers about health benefits to assemble a detailed look at the actual cost of health care, fits it squarely in our pocketbooks.

    The truth is we all pay, and much more than we recognize, for health care.

    For many, it's among the largest investments we'll make, on par, even, with the money we spend on a house or tuck away for retirement. But while it's easy to track our stock portfolios as they tank along with the market, our outlay for health care is less obvious. Employers pay some, and so do individuals, and taxpayers. And some even hides behind the deficit. As such, few of us see the full picture. But to make sense of the proposals for reform, getting a grasp of the cost is critical.

    The average health-care coverage for the average family now costs $13,375, according to Kaiser. Over the past decade, premiums have increased by 138 percent. And if the trend continues, by 2019 the average family plan will cost $30,083.

    Three years of slightly above-average health insurance will cost a solid six figures.

    Those are numbers to marvel at. Those are numbers to fear. But they are not the numbers that loom in the minds of most Americans. And therein lies the problem for health-care reform.

    About 160 million Americans receive health coverage through their employers. In general, the employer picks up 73 percent of the tab. This seems like a good deal. In reality, that money comes out of wages.

    As Ezekiel Emanuel, who advises Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag on health-care policy, has pointed out, health-care premiums have risen by 300 percent over the past 30 years (and that's after adjusting for inflation). Corporate profit per employee has soared by 200 percent. Hourly earnings for workers, adjusted for inflation, have fallen. The wage increases have been consumed by health-care costs.

    Another 80 million Americans are on public plans, mainly Medicare and Medicaid. Those costs are paid by taxpayers. And about 46 million Americans are uninsured. The costs for their care are shifted to the insured: This raises premiums for the average family by $1,100 each year, according to an analysis by Ben Furnas and Peter Harbage of the Center for American Progress.

    Imagine if people who touched a hot stove felt only a small fraction of the pain from the burn. That's pretty much what's happening in our health-care system. It hurts enough that we would prefer it to stop, but the urgency is lost.

    That's the dilemma for Washington wonks trying to fix this mess: They look at the numbers and see health-care costs crushing our economy, overwhelming our government, swallowing our wages. But the public isn't feeling it. Virtually no one cuts a $13,375 check for health care. Most pay 27 percent of it, or even less. The surest way to cut health-care spending would be to make people shoulder more of the burden directly, as opposed to hiding it in taxes and lost wages. But that's about as popular as a puppy pot roast.

    Thinking Long-Term

    Health-care reform concentrates on the people in acute distress: the uninsured and the underinsured and the poor few who've been left to the cruel chaos of the individual or small-group insurance markets. The public insurance option -- if it comes to pass -- would be open to only these groups, and the bill's hefty price tag is almost entirely devoted to helping them afford coverage. But what about the rest of us?

    The problem for the White House has been that the proposed health reform policies meant to help the average American aren't specific. They're not a cash transfer or a new insurance card. These are the "curve benders," policies meant to cut long-term health-care costs. The problem is they're abstract, speculative and, at times, even unpopular.

    The White House's favorite curve bender is called "comparative effectiveness review" -- a fancy way of saying "evidence." Study after study has shown that we waste an incredible amount of money on medical interventions that just don't work. If we can figure out which ones those are, we can stop using them and save money by not buying what we don't need. That may work. But the evidence will take a long time to amass, and we don't yet know what it will show. What if it finds that some brand-new and incredibly expensive treatments are wildly effective? That could raise spending. Industry stakeholders, however, had little interest in waiting around to find out: They made such a fuss that Congress quickly inserted a provision promising that the government wouldn't use any of this evidence in deciding what Medicare and Medicaid would cover. Because God forbid government programs rely on evidence.

    The favorite proposal of liberals is the public insurance option. If the public plan were open to all Americans and partnered with Medicare, it could negotiate deep discounts with health-care providers. The Lewin Group, a health industry consultancy firm, and the Commonwealth Fund, a liberal-leaning health-care advocacy organization, have both estimated that this sort of plan could save the average American 20 to 30 percent on premiums.

    Of course, providers don't much like the sound of that because they would see 20 to 30 percent less revenue. And insurers don't much like the sound of that because they could not compete with that sort of buying power. Republicans and centrist Democrats have banded together to weaken the public plan and maybe even remove it altogether. President Obama now promises that the public plan would be open only to the uninsured and wouldn't offer any advantages over private insurers. It won't, in other words, be allowed to save people money.

    Conservatives favor the idea of taxing health-care benefits and popularizing "high-deductible health plans." In short, if people have to pay more for health care, they'll use less of it. This is true, but as you might expect, quite unpopular. The Finance Committee's bill would tax insurers who offer high-cost plans, but we'll see whether that survives once people realize it would raise the price of their insurance.

    'Reform' = Wonky Tweaks

    If Americans felt the full burden of health-care costs, they'd likely be clamoring for all these policies, and maybe more. They'd want transformational change. But they don't feel those costs, and so they're resistant to change. Obama continually promises that most Americans will notice no changes in their existing coverage, and all the bills reflect that vow. So what's left? How do you reform a system you cannot change?

    You ask the wonks. People often complain about the length of bills. But you don't need many pages to explain a public plan, or set up a death panel (kidding!). Rather, the bulk of these bills amount to hundreds of small tweaks and fixes that make this corner of the health-care system a smidge more user-friendly, or that transaction a tad faster. Rather than saving hundreds of billions of dollars with a single dramatic intervention that transforms the system, they provide for the accretion of modest savings and small efficiencies.

    For instance, despite all the fire over the co-op plan, it gets two pages in the Finance Committee's bill. Pages 75 to 110 are all devoted to delivery system changes that are meant to make the system a bit more efficient but that no one has ever heard of. "Value-based purchasing" alone gets six pages in the bill. The "National Pilot Program on Payment Bundling" gets another five.

    Melinda Beeuwkes Buntin, a researcher at the Rand Corporation, and David Cutler, a health economist at Harvard, recently estimated the savings that could be attained by "modernizing" the system over the next 10 years. The changes they examined weren't dramatic. Replacing paper records with computerized files, making it easier for people to comparison-shop across insurers, "bundling" payments for the treatment of a single illness rather than shelling out separately for each doctor visit -- that sort of thing. Added up, they equaled a startling $2 trillion over 10 years. That's a lot of money for policies that have received virtually no attention in the debate.

    And yet, this is the quiet promise of health-care reform. The grand theories might fail. They often do. But making the system a bit better, a bit quicker and a bit more agile -- we can do that. And until the stove gets hot enough, it may be all we can do.

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    The final word on the healthcare debate

        http://www.dkimages.com/discover/previews/760/397902.JPG

    Matthew 25:31-46 (New International Version)

    The Sheep and the Goats  31"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

     34"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

     37"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

     40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

     41"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

     44"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

     45"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

     46"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

     

    http://www.christianassistanceministry.org/images/home-hungry.gif
     
     
    Verses I Can't Get Out of My Head
     
    http://rememberthepoor.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/rakai-31.jpg
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    Emotional and physical benefits to friendship

    September 18, 2009 by Claire Affleck  

    http://mindbodysmile.com/2009/09/18/emotional-and-physical-benefits-to-friendship/


    It goes without saying that friends are an extremely important part of life.  From when we are very young we seek out connections and friendships with a variety of people.  Friendships provide us with laughter, shoulders to cry on, and companionship.  Our friends love us unconditionally, whether we mess up or on top of the world, they are there for us.

    We often have a wide variety of friends.  Some friends even have different functions in our lives.  Some we can share anything with, some you know can always make you laugh when you need it, some you can have a deep serious conversation with, others share your deepest interests with you and others are different from you and show you things in life you would otherwise never have been exposed to.  We need this variety of friends in our lives because we are all complex beings and have different needs at different times.  It's a good feeling to know you have someone there for you no matter what life situation you are currently in.

    However, friends not only provide with the emotional support we often need, but they also literally help us physically lead healthier lives.  Friendships help us reduce stress in our lives.  Stress is a major  cause of many illnesses and medical issues, including infertility.   Friends can help us through stressful times by listening to us vent, providing fun, positive diversions, and being able to provide an outside perspective.  Support from friends during stressful times is key in reducing stress levels, heart rate, blood pressure, and even cholesterol levels in our bodies.  It has even been shown that NOT having friends can actually be damaging to your health and that having friends can increase life longevity.

    Today be sure to let all your friends know how much you love them and appreciate them being in your life.

    Claire Affleck
    Claire Affleck Training website
    Email me

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    Listening Tips from a Hostage Negotiation Trainer

    Listening Tips from a Hostage Negotiation Trainer

    By Vince Thompson


    Sep 16, 2009

    “There’s as reason you have two ears and one mouth!” Sound familiar? Sure, a lifetime of being reminded by parents, teachers, business trainers as well as our spouses about the power and importance of listening. But are we really any better at listening? More importantly…how can we level jump our game without returning to training camp?

    Mark Goulston is is a psychiatrist, business consultant, executive coach, and a hostage-negotiation trainer for the FBI. He’s also the bestselling author of the books Get Out of Your Own Way and Get Out of Your Own Way at Work and his new book, Just Listen.

    With nine rules and twelve techniques Mark is providing a real framework for listening success.

    Mark, in general how good are we as listeners?

    Not very good. In fact none of us listen, ever. That is because we see the world through filters created by previous experiences that the present situation reminds us of that we’re not aware it’s reminding us of. That causes us to jump to the wrong conclusions and presume we understand when in most cases we don’t.

    What are the culprits? Multitasking?

    According to Wilfred Bion (1897-1979) “the purest form of listening is to listen without memory or desire.” When we listen with memory we’re trying to plug someone into an old agenda; when we listen with desire, we’re trying to plug someone into a new agenda. But in neither case are we listening to their agenda. Multitasking is one of the main culprits, because each task has its own agenda. And the need for each of those agendas to be filled makes it nearly impossible to listen to another person’s agenda.

    How can being a better listener benefit us?

    Every time we listen/conform to the needs and demands of other people, a reciprocal hunger to be listened to and understood builds. This can build until the ache is deeply painful. This also explains why many of us cry when someone else shows us caring and kindness that we don’t expect, because in that moment our hunger and pain go away.

    What are your rules for listening?

    1. Get through to yourself first and realize that you are not truly listening.

    2. Learn how to move yourself from “Oh F&%# to OK” in a matter of seconds and calm yourself instead of becoming agitated which makes you react instead of listen.

    3. Get rid of your filters. Think about what you’re thinking. The stuff you think you already know about someone—“lazy,” “loser,” “whiny,” “hostile,” “impossible”—is, in reality, blocking out what you need to know. Remove that mental block, and you’re ready to start reaching people you thought were unreachable.

    4. Open your own mind.

    5. Make other person feel felt.

    6. Be more interested than interesting.

    7. Make people feel valuable.

    8. Help people exhale mentally and emotionally.


    What do you suggest when emotions are strong and there appears to be no common ground?

    Try preemptive humility by saying: “I think I need to take a break now, because I can’t think of anything to say or do at this moment that would not make this situation worse. And worse is not a place I want to go right now. So I’m going to stop here, sleep on it and take if from the top tomorrow.”
    This is a way of your taking charge of not wanting to have the situation get more out of control.
    What did you learn from Hostage Negotiation Training?

    • When people are behaving at their worst in a way that scares the heck out of everybody else, it is because they have felt so powerless for so long and are now reacting to it.
    • That you can talk and walk someone up from their acting out lower brain up through their emotional middle brain and into their upper rational brain.
    • By mirroring what the other person is thinking and feeling they will be drawn to your understanding and empathic caring and away from their agitation which is mainly a reaction to feeling misunderstood and not cared about.

    Thanks Mark

    To learn more about the work of Dr. Goulston and his work, Click Here

    To check out his new book, Click Here

    To follow Dr. Goulston on Twitter, Click Here

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    7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You

    Jeanna Bryner, livescience Senior Writer

    Sat Sep 12, 10:56 am ET

    Our personalities do more for us than determine our social circles. Temperament can impact a person's physical health.

    "The idea that behavior or personality traits can influence health is one that's been around for a long time. We're just now getting a handle on to what extent they do," said Stephen Boyle of Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina.

    From those with a chill demeanor to the completely frazzled types, http://www.livescience.com/health/090729-what-makes-us-crazy.html">mental factors are ultimately tied to physical health. And while a highly neurotic person might deteriorate more quickly than others, not every character trait will kill you. Some might even boost lifetimes.

    No. 7: Cynicism

    Cynics who tend to be suspicious and mistrustful of others, a character trait that scientists refer to as hostility, may have an increased likelihood of developing http://www.livescience.com/health/top_10_amazing_heart_facts.html">heart disease. "These aren't necessarily hot-headed people, but people who are more likely to read into people's behavior as some hostile motive," Boyle said during a telephone interview.

    In a study of more than 300 Vietnam veterans who were healthy at the study start, Boyle found that those who scored high on measures of hostility were about 25 percent more likely to develop heart disease.

    Boyle and his colleagues think that hostile individuals might experience more stress, which can cause spikes in an immune-system protein called C3 that has been linked with various diseases, including diabetes. In fact, the participants with higher scores on hostility showed an increase in these proteins while the non-hostile men showed no such increase.

    No. 6: Lack of meaning

    If you lack a sense of purpose, your stay on Earth could be truncated. A study involving more than 1,200 elderly participants who didn't have dementia at the study's start found that those who indicated having a high purpose in life were about half as likely to die over the study period, which lasted up to five years. The results, published in the June 15 issue of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, held regardless of a person's age, sex, education and race, along with level of depression and neuroticism.

    "Persons with high purpose readily derive meaning from and make sense of the events of their lives, and likely engage in behaviors and activities that they deem important," said study researcher Patricia Boyle of the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center in Chicago.

    Some other research has suggested that people with a higher sense of purpose may have different levels of stress hormones, better heart health or improved immune systems, though more research is needed to firm up any of these biological mechanisms, she said.

    The opposite also holds: "The findings from our study suggested that people who no longer set and work actively toward goals or enjoy their day-to-day activities (how they spend their time) are those with greater mortality risk," Boyle told LiveScience.

    No. 5: Fretting

    People who are highly neurotic - http://www.livescience.com/health/090819-insanity-kills.html">constantly worried and anxious, and prone to depression - die sooner on average than their chill counterparts. And a recently reported study of nearly 1,800 men followed over a 30-year period suggests that's partly because neurotics are also more likely to smoke. Perhaps having a cigarette eases anxiety, said study researcher Daniel Mroczek of Purdue University in Indiana, adding that such a short-term payoff might not be worth it if it kills you down the line.

    No. 4: Lack of self-control

    Late for appointments? Can't keep your desk organized? No self-control? These seeming benign qualities could take a toll on your health.

    A review of more than 20 studies and nearly 9,000 participants revealed people who are conscientious - organized, self-disciplined, as opposed to impulsive - live two to four years longer than others. Study researcher Howard S. Friedman of the University of California, Riverside suspects the boost in lifetime can be attributed partly to the fact that highly conscientious individuals are less likely to smoke or drink to excess, and live more stable and less stressful lives. The study is detailed in a 2008 issue of the journal Health Psychology.

    No. 3: Anxiety

    The jitters can put a strain on your noggin, research suggests. Compared with the highly frazzled, Individuals with a http://www.livescience.com/health/090119-stress-dementia.html">mellow demeanor who are outgoing may be less likely to develop dementia, which can be caused by Alzheimer's disease and other illnesses. The claim is based on a study that followed more than 500 elderly individuals for five years. Among the outgoing extroverts, dementia risk was 50 percent lower for participants who were calm compared with those who were prone to distress.

    No. 2: Gloom and doom

    The gloomy, inhibited person is not just at a disadvantage socially, but also physically.

    A preliminary study of more than 180 patients suffering from peripheral arterial disease (plaque buildup in the arteries) showed participants with so-called type D, or distressed, personality, had an increased odds of dying sooner than other people. Type-D people are more likely to experience negative emotions while at the same time hold in their feelings.

    The researchers, who detail their work in the August issue of the journal Archives of Surgery, suggest the personality type is linked with the body's immune system as well as stress response system.

    No. 1: Stress

    Whatever you do, don't let this list worry you!

    Research is showing that prolonged stress can be deadly, and if it doesn't do you in, workplace stress can increase your chances of heart disease, flu virus, metabolic syndrome and having high blood pressure.

    A study of nearly 700 Israeli workers found that those who experienced http://www.livescience.com/health/061122_job_stress.html">job burnout (when work stress becomes unmanageable) were nearly twice as likely to develop type 2 diabetes, in which a person's body becomes resistant to the sugar-regulating hormone called insulin.

    And while a job promotion might boost your income, it also stresses you out. British researchers recently found that when people get promoted, they suffer on average about 10 percent http://www.livescience.com/health/090409-promotions-bad.html">more mental strain and are less likely to find time to go to the doctor.

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