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
Did People Used To Look Older?
Hey, Vsauce! Michael here. At the age of 18, Carl Sagan looked like a teenager. But it doesn’t take long in an old high school yearbook to find teenagers who look surprisingly old. These people are all in their 20s, but so are these people. This is Elizab…
Lord of the Rings Mythology Explained
The Lord of the Rings has lots of different kinds of people: Elven people, dwarvin people, tree people, half-sized people, even people people. There’s, like, a million pages of background explaining this world that goes much deeper than the books or the m…
Curvature formula, part 1
So, in the last video, I talked about curvature and the radius of curvature. I described it purely geometrically, where I’m saying you imagine driving along a certain road. Your steering wheel locks, and you’re wondering what the radius of the circle that…
Checking Out the New Digs! | The Boonies
[Music] Is there anything back there? Say, is there anything back there, Joe? “See something promising looking up here. This could be… could lead us to something good. Maybe not, I don’t know.” Below the grid, Joe Ray’s Bridge has allowed him to venture…
15 Things You Didn't Know About SUPREME
Fifteen things you didn’t know about Supreme. Welcome to a Lux Calm, the place where future billionaires come to get inspired. Hello, Alexters, and welcome to another exciting original video presented by Anil XCOM. Today we’re talking about Supreme, an i…
How To Be A Millionaire In 10 Years (Starting With $0)
What’s up, Graham? It’s guys here. So here’s the deal: it was recently found that real wages have barely budged in decades. More than half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and the poorest 70% of U.S. households don’t even have a savings accou…