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
Isotopes | Atomic structure and properties | AP Chemistry | Khan Academy
In other videos, we have talked about that the type of element that we are dealing with is defined by the number of protons in an atom’s nucleus. So for example, any atom with exactly one proton in its nucleus is by definition hydrogen. Any atom with six …
The 5 Major Forces Coming Together to Make 2024 a Pivotal Year
I think there are five major forces that repeated through history, and those are the debt money economic force, the internal conflict force, which is the big, uh, conflict in terms of the elections and so on, the external geopolitical force, which is the …
YouTube changed my life (Started exactly one year ago today)
So you usually want to make a video. I’ll plan it out a little bit ahead of time, and I’ll make it like a format of what I’m gonna say and in what order, so don’t miss any points. Put a video like this, I figured it’s probably just best I just make a spu…
This Is What It's Like Inside North Korea's Luxury Ski Resort | Short Film Showcase
[Music] My name is Jamie Barrow and I’m Britain’s fastest snowboarder. We’re here in the beautiful Beijing on the Great Wall of China, and tomorrow, thanks to tours, we have been given special permission to film and snowboard within the most secretive co…
Dangling modifiers | Syntax | Khan Academy
Hello Garans, hello Rosie, hi Paige. So in this video, we’re going to talk about something called a dangling modifier. So before we get into what a dangling modifier is, we can sort of talk about just what a modifier is. Rosie, do you want to tell us wha…
Warren Buffett: MAJOR Updates from the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Meeting 2023
Well, we made it everyone! I’m here in Omaha with Hamish, and just a few days ago we were lucky enough to go to the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting to get all the latest news from the man himself, Mr. Warren Buffett. And of course, the real…