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
How Do Honeybees Get Their Jobs? | National Geographic
The honeybee is one of the most collaborative insects in the world. Each hive is comprised of thousands of bees working together in order to build and sustain a colony. Within the colony, each bee has a specific role to play, a job. These are jobs like fo…
Understanding decimal multiplication
We’re told that Sydney knows that 427 * 23 is equal to 9,821. Use this understanding to help Sydney solve 42.7 times 2.3. So pause this video and think about what you think it’s going to be. All right, now let’s do this together. You might realize that 4…
Presidential oversight of the bureaucracy
You can view this diagram as an org chart of the government of the United States. What we have highlighted in this blue-green color is the executive branch and the things that fall under the executive branch. You can’t even see everything; a lot of it fal…
Showing segment congruence equivalent to having same length
In this video, we’re going to talk a little bit about segment congruence and what we have here. Let’s call this statement one. This is the definition of line segment congruence, or at least the one that we will use. Two segments are congruent; that means …
When the time is right, God sends you this video..
I don’t believe this video “Found You” by coincidence because I don’t believe in coincidences at all. I set the intention and I prayed to God, prayed to Jesus, the Holy Spirit that this message would only find the people who this will apply to. So, I’m on…
Anti-Gravity Wheel?
I am here at the University of Sydney where the mechanical engineering shop has built this incredible piece of apparatus for me. It is a forty pound, that is nineteen kilogram flywheel on the end of a meter long shaft. Can you imagine trying to hold this …