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
The Warning Of Hyper Inflation | $2 Trillion Stimulus
What’s up you guys, it’s Graham here. So I’m gonna be attempting to answer one of the most difficult questions that I’ve been getting asked recently here in the channel after this new stimulus plan was recently passed, and that would be: Am I still wearin…
NEW! Khan Academy's AI Tutor, Khanmigo - In Depth Demo
Hey everyone, Sal here, and I wanted to show you an in-depth demo of the new AI that we have happening throughout Khan Academy. What you’re going to see is that it exists in two ways. One is helping students and learners and teachers with many of the thi…
Charlie Munger: The 5 Investing Tricks That Made Him a Billionaire
But what caused the financial success was not extreme ability. You know, I have a good mind, but I’m way short of prodigy. And I’ve had results in life that are prodigious, and that came from tricks I just learned a few basic tricks from people like my gr…
Quirkiest Investments that Have DOUBLED IN VALUE | Kevin O'Leary
Sharks! All right, we’re here to pick up the Maki-E MontBlanc. I’m among one of 88 in the world. This is number 13, and it’s on its way into Mr. Wonderful’s pen collection. At the prototype, I shot that with Shark Tank. Here it is for the first time. Wow…
Locating less obvious y-intercepts on graphs | Grade 8 (TX TEKS) | Khan Academy
So we have the graph of a line shown right over here, and my question to you is: what is the Y intercept of this line? Pause this video and see if you can figure it out yourself. All right, now let’s work through this together. So when we just eyeball it…
THIS IS The FUTURE Of Technology! | Kevin O'Leary & MKBHD
It’s what’s up, guys? MKBHD here, and you’re watching a special edition of Ask Mr. Wonderful, where you guys ask the questions, and we answer. I mean, we were just sitting back, you know, chopping it up, reminiscing about the good ol’ days, another track …