Quote Originally Posted by Narc View Post
As far as positivism and negativism go, they're not really optimistic vs pessimistic or naive vs cynical or anything. Positivists are oriented more around conversational breadth and negativists to conversational depth. In that way, positivists direct a topic of conversation but have less to do with developing any thesis or argument, which is more the domain of negativists. In this way, positivists create conversational anchor points for the negativist to attach to and develop further.

An example would be the positivist making an absolutist statement, "private school kids are pompous irritating asswipes", the negativist responding with "they're not all bad, what about Jimmy, Phil and Sandra?". The statement of the positivist may have taken account of that information but found the overwhelming majority of private school kids to be pompous, irritating and also asswipes. The negativist sees that statement from their perspective as lacking depth and 'fill in the gaps' left by the initial statement because of its method of delivery.

I remember Radio remarking that when a positivist isn't talking (for bad mood or whatever reason), the negativist will provoke conversation in the way of a question like "What's wrong with you? You're awfully quiet." rather than just generating a new conversational topic, which the positivist would do in that situation with another positivist that's gone quiet. Seems like it's easier for two positivists to create conversation, but it'll essentially be two people generating conversational topics over and over at each other and not really ever reaching the point of a proper dialogue, more like two parallel monologues (I have a LSI friend I do this with), especially if both types are also declarers, whereas two negativists would be less talkative amongst each other.
That's very informative, I really appreciate it.
But it is different from the wiki where it says:

Positivists

  1. More inclined to optimize already functional systems of things and processes.
  2. "This glass is half-full", "We have already collected $438,000 for that project"
  3. Usually more complimenting than reprimanding.
  4. Socially and intellectually more trusting.
  5. Explains what things are (irrationals) or should be (rationals).

Negativists

  1. More inclined to solve problems in systems of things and processes.
  2. "This glass is half-empty", "We need $62,000 for that project"
  3. Usually more reprimanding than complimenting.
  4. Socially and intellectually more mistrusting.
  5. Explains what things are not (irrationals) or should not be (rationals).
The description in the wiki seems to me as they're like optimistic vs pessimistic
so what do you think?