yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Rational Optimism Is the Way Out


2m read
·Nov 3, 2024

Processing might take a few minutes. Refresh later.

In general, professions in which you get your feedback from other members of that profession tend to get corrupted. When you see a journalist writing articles to impress other journalists, or a restauranteur running a restaurant that's designed to impress other foodies and other restaurateurs, those end up not being practical and high quality. They may receive accolades and prizes within certain elite circles, but they're not reflecting reality.

Where someone is getting feedback from either Mother Nature, like a scientist or an experimentalist, or from free markets, where other people are voting with their money and their time, those are going to be much better predictors. The people who are operating in the real world and are getting paid for it tend to be optimists. The people who are operating in ivory towers are incented to be pessimists.

To be an entrepreneur, you need to be optimistic about the fact that you're creating something that other people are going to find value in. People who have a pessimistic philosophy tend to have a pessimistic psychology as well. If you're constantly thinking about all the ways in which the world is going to rack and ruin, then this has a day-to-day impact upon your outlook on the rest of society and on your family, on your friends, on everything. Because you think that this world is condemned, you're going to feel that weight upon your shoulders, and it's going to come through in the way in which you present yourself to the rest of the world.

We see a lot of this on social media right now. Entrepreneurs are typically too busy to spend a whole lot of time on social media. But you do get scientists, academic journalists who are depressed with life because they have a pessimistic view of reality, and that's got to have an impact upon their subjective experience of the world, unlike people who are creating, trying to bring something new into existence.

Unfortunately, the pessimism is self-fulfilling. Here, we take the stance that all evils are due to lack of knowledge. Rational optimism is the way out. The data supports it, history supports it, and we can always come up with good explanations through creativity to improve our lives and everybody else's lives. So stay optimistic.

More Articles

View All
Domain and range of lines, segments, and rays | Algebra 1 (TX TEKS) | Khan Academy
So what we have here is two different F of XS defined by their graphs, and what we want to do is figure out the domain and the range for each of these functions. So pause this video and try to figure that on your own before we do that together. Now let’s…
Modeling with multiple variables: Roller coaster | Modeling | Algebra II | Khan Academy
We’re told a roller coaster has c cars, each containing 20 seats, and it completes r rides a day. Assuming that no one can ride it more than once a day, the maximum number of people that can ride the roller coaster in a single day is p. Write an equation …
Kirchhoff's voltage law | Circuit analysis | Electrical engineering | Khan Academy
Now we’re ready to start hooking up our components into circuits, and one of the two things that are going to be very useful to us are Kof’s laws. In this video, we’re going to talk about Kof’s voltage law. If we look at this circuit here, this is a volt…
Porcelain in the Wreckage | Drain the Oceans
I grew up here in Portland. As a child, we all loved Indiana Jones. But it was actually really in high school when I was able to take an anthropology class, and it really piqued my interest. And then in community college, I started taking archeology class…
Limits of piecewise functions | Limits and continuity | AP Calculus AB | Khan Academy
Let’s think a little bit about limits of piecewise functions that are defined algebraically like our F of x right over here. Pause this video and see if you can figure out what these various limits would be. Some of them are one-sided and some of them are…
Under Sea Ice in Antarctica | Explorer
NARRATOR: Rod Bud is the safety supervisor and is responsible for bringing these scientists back home alive. ROD BUD: Fins on, we’re good to jump in the water. NARRATOR: He’ll be the first one in to ensure conditions are safe for the rest of the team. …