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
Additive and multiplicative relationships
We are told that Miguel and a group of friends play soccer during recess each day. More students join them to play. The table below shows the relationship between the number of students joining Miguel and his friends and the total number of students playi…
Guy Spier: How to Invest in 2024 (During Inflation and High Interest Rates)
In 2024, we’re going to be dealing with some of the toughest economic conditions we’ve seen in a very long time, and that begs the question: how do we approach our own investing for the year ahead? Well, recently, I got to sit down with legendary investor…
Defiant | Vocabulary | Khan Academy
To Arms wordsmiths! This video is about the word defiant. Defiant—it’s an adjective. This word means openly disobeying rules, pushing back against authority. This word comes to us from French and ultimately Latin—a late Latin verb disfidare, which means …
How To Make the Best To-Do List For School
There’s something just so satisfying about getting things done, you know? Checking the boxes off in your to-do list, walking the dog, sending emails, doing your laundry. You know, it makes you feel good inside. It makes you feel like you’re not as lazy as…
Helicopter Physics Series - #5 Autorotation = NO PARACHUTE! - Smarter Every Day 50
Hey, it’s me, Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. We’re right in the middle of a series on helicopters, and we’re gonna talk to you about… What is this called? (son) Parachute. A parachute. So, in airplanes, the pilot can have a parachute so if an…
Mad Brad | Wicked Tuna
All right, we’re going to haul up now and come in. Weird fishing, there’s fish around. There’s a couple bites; you don’t mark that many. It’s just very strange. There’s a ton of boats out here; everybody’s trying to get their last licks in before the end …