hopelessness, too. A sense of meaning and ego. If you, being infinitely wise and credentialed and educated, devote your life to _fixing this big problem_, then by definition it must be an important/worsening problem, right?

If I think the thing is more important than it objectively is, makes it easier for me to keep going/do a good job

My dad's explanation for the psychological attractiveness of doomerism is exactly that desire to feel important.

Undisciplined

There's probably something related to the ego and the need to inflate the importance of ones' own expertise

eeeeh, that's demoralizing but would explain a lot. Reality check, calm-the-fuck-down sort of. v neat.

AskSN

Anthropic Researcher Quits Over ‘Out-of-Control’ AI Fears

SimpleStacker

> There's probably something related to the ego and the need to inflate the importance of ones' own expertise

eeeeh, that's demoralizing but would explain a lot. Reality check, calm-the-fuck-down sort of. v neat.