[HN Gopher] Why Pessimism Sounds Smart
___________________________________________________________________
Why Pessimism Sounds Smart
Author : feross
Score : 109 points
Date : 2022-04-26 18:32 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rootsofprogress.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (rootsofprogress.org)
| paulpauper wrote:
| But there is a often a good reason to be pessimistic, mainly that
| it's not like you get infinite attempts in life or at anything.
| Life is not like practicing basketball or an instrument, in which
| the cost of failure is zero. Failure can have irreversible
| consequences professionally and personally. You have to be
| cautious in knowing what sort of things can trigger an
| irreversible failure.
| cwp wrote:
| Yeah, sounds smart.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| I doubt that it is.
| bsuvc wrote:
| Good decision makers can recognize "one way doors" and adjust
| their risk tolerance accordingly.
|
| But I think it is important to also realize that what is risky
| to one person, might not be risky to another. Either because
| they are at the end of one of the spectrums:
|
| 1. They have nothing to lose
|
| 2. They have so much, that losing doesn't hurt them very much
|
| Everyone in the middle of that spectrum has something to lose
| and will experience varying levels of painfulness if they fail.
|
| It is easy to just call them pessimists, but they might just
| have a different perspective from where they are in life.
|
| But that goes both directions. Pessimists should also realize
| that optimists see things differently from where they are, and
| not try to bring them down to their reality.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Failure to take risks can do that.
|
| I've always found pessimism about pessimism to be the strongest
| argument for optimism about optimism.
| hgomersall wrote:
| The thing is, you're forced to play the game whether you want
| to or not. Failure or not has little to do with disposition.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| In mountain biking (to use a sport where often the cost of
| failure is high) you must quickly identify the oncoming
| obstacles e.g. a rock. The thing is not to focus on the rock or
| else you will end up running into it.
|
| Pessimism is a trap because, on the surface it seems very
| logical, but having a pessimistic mindset will insidiously
| influence your behavior towards negative outcomes.
| lazide wrote:
| Kinda.
|
| You have to be _aware_ of the rock. _focusing_ on the rock is
| the problem. You start knowing where the rocks are, and then
| you move on to the planning the better outcome.
|
| Being unable to move on to the better outcome is the
| pessimism trap.
|
| I've run across people that work so hard to be optimistic,
| that they clearly are denying the possibility of a problem -
| _they are no longer aware of the rock_.
|
| Like mountain biking and ignoring (to the point of
| forgetting/not believing!) there are rocks, it causes some
| very concerning behaviors.
|
| One of them literally kept steering for the rocks because she
| kept forgetting they existed.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Am I a pessimist if I never get into mountain biking on
| account of the risks the activity would expose my body to?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Further, in mountain biking and other similar sports, you
| have to make your body move as if your action will succeed;
| nothing will undermine your effectiveness more than your
| lizard-brain's self-defense movements.
| HPsquared wrote:
| The self-fulfilling prophecy, in other words.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Exactly, as a society, we should be glad sacrificial optimists
| exist for the benefit their sacrifice randomly provides to
| society. But we also shouldn't scorn the pessimist for the
| simple fact that they understand how randomness works.
| staunch wrote:
| > _You have to be cautious in knowing what sort of things can
| trigger an irreversible failure._
|
| Sure, but that's a matter of judgement. Pessimists predict
| failure where success is possible and even likely. So one
| reasonable definition of a pessimist might be:
| A pessimist is someone that is bad at predicting the future.
|
| In my experience, what we call optimists are often just people
| with a superior ability to see what is possible, usually based
| on intelligence, experience, and knowledge. They usually are
| the first to recognize that the world has changed in some
| important way, creating an opportunity for improvement.
| McLaren_Ferrari wrote:
| > In my experience, what we call optimists are often just
| people with a superior ability to see what is possible,
| usually based on intelligence, experience, and knowledge.
| They usually are the first to recognize that the world has
| changed in some important way, creating an opportunity for
| improvement.
|
| Or maybe, just maybe. You don't see all the optimists who
| crashed and burned, and successful optimists being rare
| creatures given that they got past the great filter tend to
| get all the press and accolades as well as attention . So
| people look at them trying to dissect their life and pick
| their brain trying to find the one thing that make them go
| past the great filter whereas it's most likely just luck and
| survivorship bias.
|
| Optimism shouldn't be ever taken into consideration as a
| predictor of success, that would leave lots of people bitter
| and desperate when they don't make it past the great filter.
|
| Optimism and the good mood you have when you are in an
| optimist state is itself the reward, that's about it. The
| idea that everything is possible and all is up for grabs
| gives the brain lots of pleasure and that is a win to be
| enjoyed even if you fall victim of the great filter later on.
|
| An example is people watching with wide eyes Reusable rocket
| launches imagining they'd live on Mars in 20 years, or those
| visiting cryonics centers imagining how they'll beat death or
| Level 5 cars autonomy.
|
| Such goals are 100% guaranteed bullshit but the pleasure that
| people feel while imagining those things is real, it's very
| important for humans to gaslight ourselves into believing
| great things are possible, if you can do that for long enough
| then at some point death will arrive and the problem of
| finding meaning would take care of itself in a sense.
|
| The leadership of a visionary such as Elon Musk in this field
| appears crystal clear.
|
| The only doubt I have is that all the above should fall under
| the umbrella of religion/cults, not entrepreneurship.
| Unfortunately there is lot of social stigma around religion ,
| cults and tarots.
| Jensson wrote:
| Optimists are mostly people like crypto hodl crowd or sales
| people who tries to convince you that everything will get
| better if you just buy their product or people who fall for
| MLM scams or those who buys lottery tickets etc. They will
| call you a pessimist if you disagree with them, and tells you
| to be more optimistic.
|
| In my experience this kind of optimist is way more common
| than the "sees real world opportunities" kind. Most people
| are not optimists though, if you try to sell them an
| opportunity they will scrutinize it and most likely refuse
| the offer unless you are someone they trust even if they
| would benefit.
| sonabinu wrote:
| There's a great reference to this concept in The Psychology of
| Money by Morgan Housel
| csours wrote:
| I think even the peak oil people said something like "Unless
| things change, we're going to run out of oil"
|
| But more to the point, I have a colleague who regularly speaks in
| future-past tense, speaking like some goals have already been
| accomplished. I complain about it sometimes, but I also think it
| is useful. I know that sometimes I will get into a problem
| finding spiral - listing all the things that can go wrong and
| need to be taken care of before I start a task. I know this is
| not useful, but it is something my brain does.
|
| I think the wisdom here is realizing that these parts of the
| brain or people in an organization need to take turns and be very
| careful about assuming a terminal condition of a system. There
| are both very real problems to be solved and very real value
| available.
|
| I'm not sure you can do both at the same time; it may be
| something our brain rewrites in a more pleasing form after the
| fact.
| altcognito wrote:
| In the context of this text, it is a fine example, but they
| were definitely talking about "easily obtained high quality
| oil", not shale oil, which as the article suggests, was thought
| to be largely unobtainable at reasonable cost.
|
| So, people who love cheap oil seized upon this as proof that
| doomsaying such as this and Malthusian theory was just wrong.
|
| Obviously, even not withstanding shale oil or even abiotic
| production of oil, we will eventually outstrip our ability to
| pump oil if we just continue to grow our usage of it ad
| infinitum.
| tablespoon wrote:
| That whole site has a weird vibe, like it's trying evangelize a
| literal theology centered on faith in technological "progress."
|
| > Originally a Twitter thread.
|
| That explains why it seems so half-baked.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| It's half baked like its new owner.
| McLaren_Ferrari wrote:
| > "How can this optimism be justified? Not on the basis of
| specific future technologies--which, again, are unproven--but on
| the basis of philosophical premises about the nature of humans
| and of progress."
|
| The premise is "optimists make money" but if there is no clear
| understanding of where the next technological breakthrough will
| come from, then it seems like the author is suggesting just going
| long on the S&P500? The Wilshire 3000?
|
| That's hardly anything revolutionary and won't make you anymore
| money than your peers around who'd also employ the same tactic,
| not because they had a philosophical enlightment but because
| their wealth manager at whatever bank produced for them the most
| classic 60-40 equities-bonds portfolio.
|
| We all like an optimist article about optimism but can we focus
| on the making money part?
|
| Maybe using leverage on the S&P500 when there are signals of a
| breakthrough? But again, if you can't predict the company or even
| the industry it would come from then how do you know to be on the
| cusp?
|
| It reads like something like: BS-ing yourself into believing your
| own hype and go on a binge of irrational exhuberance based on
| philosophy and past breaktrhoughs which happened when everything
| seemed static and decaying...so they will happen again at some
| point in some sector of the economy.
| swatcoder wrote:
| > The opposite view is that progress is a matter of luck. If the
| progress of the last few centuries was a random windfall, then
| pessimism is logical: our luck is bound to run out. How could we
| get that lucky again? If the next century is an average one, it
| will see little progress. But if progress is a primarily matter
| of agency, then whether it continues is up to us.
|
| Or perhaps: progress is subjective and transient and often comes
| with unknown costs, so we don't need to make a big deal of it
| either way.
|
| The author seems really caught up in some private neurosis about
| how they relate to progress, but surely they'd have more
| resources to contribute to their vision of progress if they
| stepped back a little and stopped trying to relate themselves to
| some conflict between "optimists" and "pessimists".
| brimble wrote:
| Author's just hacking at a straw man and crowing about how much
| better they are at fencing than it is, best I can tell.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| See [1] for the site's statement of purpose. It seems entirely
| dedicated to overturning the perceived current technological
| pessimism (or even fatalism). TFA seems to be justifying the
| sites existence by arguing that technological optimism is
| responsible for much of the "progress" seen since 1800 or so.
|
| 1: https://rootsofprogress.org/a-new-philosophy-of-progress
| renewiltord wrote:
| I reject the premise: pessimism doesn't sound smart. It's just
| the middle-brow position when you have sufficient information to
| make short-term predictions but lack the vision to identify
| potential paradigm shifts that can be put into play (sometimes by
| you). i.e. most pessimists are just hill-climbers stuck in some
| local trough.
|
| In any case, I liked Peter Thiel's model in _Zero to One_ better:
| definite vs. indefinite thinking coupled with pessimist vs.
| optimist thinking.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Pessimism, in the article, is used to mean predicting a future
| state, given present trends.
|
| Optimism, in the article, is used to mean disbelieving that
| predicted future.
|
| Given the author framed them this way, of course "pessimism"
| sounds smarter. "Optimism" is counterfactual.
|
| The meanings of common terms have been mutated to be able to make
| this point. It's effectively circular reasoning via redefinition.
| lazide wrote:
| Which if someone is that definition of 'optimistic' despite
| repeated problems is the definition of delusional.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I'm not sure. We're on a hedonistic treadmill. Yesterday's
| inventions are todays problems.
|
| It's easy to look at polluting transportation, addictive social
| media or unhealthy processed foods and extrapolate that the
| future will be worse.
|
| But I believe someone in the 19th century would see a F-150;
| near real time, global news; and tasty, semi-nutritious food
| that's shelf stable for years as amazing!
| woojoo666 wrote:
| The author addresses this.
|
| > The possibility of sustained progress is a consequence of the
| view of humans as "universal explainers" (cf. David Deutsch),
| and of progress as driven fundamentally by human choice and
| effort--that is, by human agency.
|
| > The opposite view is that progress is a matter of luck. If
| the progress of the last few centuries was a random windfall,
| then pessimism is logical: our luck is bound to run out.
|
| So it's[1] not about predicting trends based on present
| conditions. In fact almost the opposite. An optimist would
| predict that hard unsolved problems will be solved in the
| future, because that has been the trend.
|
| [1] by "it" I meant to say "pessimism" here
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > The possibility of sustained progress is a consequence of
| the view of humans as "universal explainers" (cf. David
| Deutsch), and of progress as driven fundamentally by human
| choice and effort - that is, by human agency.
|
| As a humanist, I too am very optimistic about the ultimate
| triumph of human agency. What gives me cause for pessimism is
| the emergence of technologies that act against it.
|
| Biology, intelligence and evolution, on a long enough
| timeline tend toward unbridled possibility. We can overcome
| anything. I reject Malthusian doom-saying.
|
| The greatest challenge may not be energy or food, but how we
| overcome our own technologies that cultivate dependency,
| weakness, and ignorance. How do we avoid abandoning
| intelligence amplification in favour of artificial
| intelligence, reality in favour of a "virtual metaverse"?
|
| I think the subtle danger in late modernity is the creation
| of technologies that optimise for pessimism, thrive on
| discord, reward laziness, and learn from our worst vices in
| order to amplify them and offer us more.
| InexSquirrel wrote:
| Being in the tech sector (embedded electronics), I find most
| people are negative / pessimistic on wild new ideas, and
| generally positive on incremental improvements. I think that's
| because we get exposed to a lot of 'new tech' that rarely lives
| up to it's proclaimed expectations. A few decades of that and
| it's a bit hard to not be pessimistic (or even cynical) about
| every new announcement of world changing technology.
|
| I find that non-tech people, outside of a given area of
| expertise, tend to be the most positive on a _new thing_. Whether
| it's battery technologies, IoT, AI, whatever, there's a general
| hype-esque belief that the new technology is a _good thing_, but
| they can rarely articulate why or how it will be good. Then they
| ask engineers to start developing on it, with never telling
| anyone _why_ this is a good idea or what problem it's actually
| solving or how it's solving it in a good way.
|
| I had a conversation with a mechanical engineer in our lunch
| room, who upon seeing Github Co-pilot, proclaimed that it would
| replace all of the embedded engineers on his team. I suppose this
| is optimism (significant technological progress), but also reeks
| of ignorance on what engineers actually do. The embedded guys see
| it as a useful tool though to help them code better by being
| exposed to other means of achieving very specific tasks.
|
| So I'm negative on the idea of Github Co-pilot-esque services
| replacing engineers, even in the long run, but am positive on it
| (and other tools) evolving into something very helpful.
|
| So with that said, I think I agree with some of the comments in
| this thread. If you come from a financially secure position, and
| have a strong financial safety net, then it's OK and good to be
| wildly optimistic - go try that new thing that may very well
| fail, because you're not destroying your lively hood in the
| process.
|
| And beyond that, being optimistic or pessimistic about things in
| general has no real bearing on their outcomes, barring your own
| happiness - so just do what makes you feel OK at the end of the
| day.
| fullshark wrote:
| I agree with this fairly whole heartedly, but yet, whenever I get
| presented some optimistic future tech scenario involving X,
| pessimism doesn't just seem smart but is smart 99% of the time.
|
| That 1% of the time though...
| feoren wrote:
| It's like a lottery ticket. If someone comes to me and
| excitedly says "I bought a lottery ticket! This is going to
| change my life!" I'd call that naive optimism, and I'm going to
| be pretty pessimistic about their chances. Nevertheless, I
| recognize that people win the lottery every week.
|
| When I see an article about the next cancer cure, it's that
| single lottery ticket: nope, not gonna work. I'll believe it
| when I see it, etc. That does not, however, mean I am
| pessimistic that we will _ever_ cure (many /most) cancer. But I
| might not bother to read the numbers off every ticket that pops
| up in popular science feeds.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Technology is the study of _means_ , as John Stuart Mill put it.
| (Mill contrasts this with science, the study of _causes_.) A
| technology is a verb, a process to obtain a result. We often see
| the manifestations (tools, mechanisms, products), but those
| merely support and guide the process.
|
| - Any intervention has both intended and unintended effects.
|
| - Effects may be manifest or latent, similar to Robert K.
| Merton's notion of manifest and latent functions.
|
| - Effects, whether manifest or latent, may be short-term or long-
| term.
|
| - The overall process may be readily communicated (learned, sold,
| advocated, adopted), or difficult.
|
| - Implementations and interactions may be simple or complex.
|
| Optimists deal with the intended, manifest, short-term, and
| readily grasped.
|
| Pessimists deal with the unintended, latent, long-term, and that
| grasped only with difficulty.
|
| It's far more often the _pessimist_ who then is addressing the
| unknown and remote-to-comprehension rather than the optimist,
| contrary to Crawford & Patrick's (data-free) assertions.
|
| In discussing latent and manifest functions, Merton makes the
| observation that:
|
| _Discovery of latent functions represents significant increments
| in sociological knowledge .... It is precisely the latent
| functions of a practice or belief which are not common knowledge,
| for these are unintended and generally unrecognized social and
| psychological consequences._
|
| Robert K. Merton, "Manifest and Latent Functions", in Wesley
| Longhofer, Daniel Winchester (eds) _Social Theory Re-Wired,
| Routledge_ (2016).
|
| https://www.worldcat.org/title/social-theory-re-wired-new-co...
|
| In multi-bet gambles, the Optimist is wagering on a _possible_
| benefit, whilst the Pessimist is wagering to minimise losses. As
| others have noted, the Optimist occasionally wins, at least in
| the short term, but often loses. Suvivorship bias / Texas
| sharpshooter fallacy leaves us looking at the lucky Optimists. We
| rarely see manifest signs of highly-appropriate pessimism.
|
| Crawford's other arguments lean heavily on rhetoric, shibboleths,
| fallacies, and incomplete assessments. Whilst Haber-Bosch lifted
| the near-time constraint of overextracting a renewable biological
| resource (bird guano), it did so by tapping into an even _less_
| renewable resource (natural gas --- see the case of one early
| "unlimited" discovery playing out here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_gas_boom), and has only
| _further increased_ human populations running up against energy,
| fertiliser, and agricultural productivity crises. And the
| practice itself has resulted in second- and higher-order effects
| of excessive nitrogen in the form of blooms, dead zones within
| littoral regions, and more. Sinks soak only so much.
|
| Rock-oil kerosene is no more renewable than natural gas, and
| reserves which in the 1860s were reported to suffice for a
| thousand years, or a million, are proving to have a total
| lifespan measured on the order of a few centuries. Mining is an
| inherently nonsustainable resource so long as extraction rates
| exceed those of natural formation.
|
| Human agency and innovation can only _at best_ attain physical
| and technological efficiency limits. The cannot _create_ new
| pools of low entropy. They _may_ in the short term be successful
| in tapping into previously unutilised ones.
| root_axis wrote:
| This sentiment completely bulldozes over nuance. Not all
| predictions are created equally, a person that is today
| predicting a mass market for self driving cars is not the same as
| a person predicting a mass market for flying cars. It's not
| pessimism to dismiss the absurd. Of course, vision is necessary
| for progress, but only a tiny fraction of the so-called
| "optimists" actually "make money", most of them fail.
| TimPC wrote:
| You can expect very long term growth by expecting sequences of
| very short growth. It's even reasonable to reassess what those
| sequences are at every point in the sequence. We don't get long-
| term growth by believing a plan for 2010 in 1960 and committing
| to it. If we did, I'd have some nice moon land in a colony to
| sell you.
|
| (This is a critique of the idea that very long-term growth comes
| from believing science fiction expressed in the article.)
| Gravyness wrote:
| > If you very soberly, wisely, prudently stick to the known and
| the proven, you will necessarily be pessimistic.
|
| I consider myself optimist but I don't trust any unknown. If I
| have experience with something, I will soberly, wisely, prudently
| stick to the known and to the proven.
|
| I guess it's a matter of defining the known and the proven
| though: for me nothing is absolute because there are too many
| variables to most nontrivial situations, way more than a person
| can hold in their minds, save, recollect, and even verify, that
| affects an outcome in ways you don't even imagine. Life is not a
| tic-tac-toe match: way more things are connected than we can put
| in a human brain, or even multiple human brains.
|
| So even navigating unexplored territory a thousand times may not
| transform it into explored territory and you will only realize it
| when you optimistically expect things to go according to your
| plan. You are not consciously 'trusting the unknown': if you have
| experience and hope it is correct but soon reality will slap your
| face and tell you where you messed up.
|
| So I disagree: you can be optimistic and not believe in the
| unknown. Just accept you're not a smart ass, that you don't know
| what will happen in the future but whatever happens you will do
| your best to understand and deal with it. That is optimism.
| Everything's gonna be alright.
|
| Also the "economic growth" transforms the "known and the proven"
| into the "unknown and the unproven".
| a_c wrote:
| This is Sturgeon's law in disguise. Everything(most) is shit.
| Saying that is obvious and useless.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Optimism is fun and pleasant and thus people are drawn to it.
| It is therefore the tool of charlatans. Pessimists develop from
| repeatedly watching people be wooed by charlatans. It's a
| useful personality trait that balances out the wolves in sheep
| clothing.
| a_c wrote:
| People are drawn to strong emotions, positive or negative. It
| could be anger, fear, joy, cuteness, anything that evokes our
| lizard brain. It is orthogonal to making the world a better
| place IMO
| fartcannon wrote:
| I have this feeling it's a bit of the random chance that
| our evolution grants us. Some folks get a dice roll that
| makes them just a tiny bit more afraid of the dark. Some
| less. Sometimes there's abundant food beyond the dark.
| Sometimes there's a bear.
|
| People aren't that simple though. Some people realize there
| might be a bear, and encourage other people to explore the
| dark looking for the food. Some other people might go, 'hey
| wait sometimes there are bears in the dark'. If you want to
| call the warning pessimism, well, that's your right, I
| guess. But it sure seems useful to me.
| McLaren_Ferrari wrote:
| > It is therefore the tool of charlatans
|
| Charlatans? I don't think there are any charlatans around.
|
| Maybe the bad guys you are referring to are the evil
| shortsellers working together with the Shortseller's
| Enrichment Commission? /s
| fartcannon wrote:
| I just googled that phrase hoping it was a reference to an
| interesting short story or something culturally
| interesting.
|
| I was disappointed.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| Pessimists do not discriminate between charlatan and
| innovator. They just sit on the sidelines and crap on
| everything because a) it doesn't require any work, and b)
| ideas and attempts are imperfect, so it's easy to point out
| flaws in them and be correct.
|
| It's a low-stakes way of playing intellectual.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Pessimists do not discriminate between charlatan and
| innovator. They just sit on the sidelines and crap on
| everything because a) it doesn't require any work, and b)
| ideas and attempts are imperfect, so it's easy to point out
| flaws in them and be correct.
|
| This is the complaint of a salesman (or a follower of one)
| who's upset his job isn't easy, and wishes everyone was an
| optimist who'd just buy what he's selling based on his
| pitch.
|
| The difference between a charlatan and an innovator is an
| innovator delivers and a charlatan sells.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If we identify optimists and pessimists only by the most
| extreme variant of each we will have excluded virtually
| everyone and no longer possess a scale with which to
| measure them.
| fartcannon wrote:
| So what's your threshold for when to call someone
| pessimistic when they're doing the very useful work of
| identifying flaws in something?
|
| Never?
|
| That's not going to work.
| jonas21 wrote:
| There's a difference between identifying things that you
| will need to overcome, mitigate, or work around in order
| to be successful (which is useful) and insisting that the
| existence of these things means the task is impossible or
| not worth trying (which is not useful).
| fartcannon wrote:
| Sure, but if you google the definition of the word we're
| all talking about, there's no mention of impossible. Just
| someone that, "see[s] the worst aspect of things or
| believe[s] that the worst will happen".
|
| So basically, it's the person you might want around when
| you're building a bridge, or a jet, or a shuttle.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| That doesn't explain the rampant, popular pessimism on social
| media platforms like twitter and reddit.
| blowski wrote:
| If you're pessimistic, most of the time you'll be right, for the
| short term at least. But it's not really clever to predict the
| most likely outcome will come true. Clever is figuring out how to
| change that outcome.
| lward20 wrote:
| "I would rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and
| right"
| aidenn0 wrote:
| There's an old saying that goes roughly: When an old engineer
| tells you something is possible, they are definitely right. When
| an old engineer tells you something is impossible, they are only
| _probably_ right.
| jasoncrawford wrote:
| Arthur C. Clarke's First Law: "When a distinguished but elderly
| scientist states that something is possible, they are almost
| certainly right. When they state that something is impossible,
| they are very probably wrong."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Thanks. I think Clark overstates things a bit (unless you
| take a very extreme form of what "impossible" means), so I
| prefer my version. It also seems possible that engineers are
| more likely to hedge their bets by calling things
| "unworkable" or "impractical" because what actually is and
| isn't possible in theory is more of the realm of the
| researcher than the practitioner.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| A lot of the impossibilites are relative to the current
| state of the art.
|
| "X is impossible with current metalurgy". "Y is impossible
| with current best integer factorization algorithms".
|
| Absolute impossibilities do exist too, but you basically
| need to prove that that particular thing goes against laws
| of physics/maths.
| [deleted]
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| An example of this:
|
| Andy Grove in 1992: "The idea of a wireless personal
| communicator in every pocket is "a pipe dream driven by
| greed."
| michaelmrose wrote:
| This is a truly weird claim to have made at least 85 years
| after the idea entered the public sphere and at least 19
| years after a phone that was intended to be carried by a
| person not a car was demoed by Motorola.
|
| Did he also poopoo the idea of a public internet and wait
| until the 80s to do so?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Pessimists sound smart. Optimists make money.
|
| The entire piece is reiterating stereotypical VC twitter content
| but the most obvious point is that very few optimists make money.
| Most optimists will lose money. The reason that this doesn't
| matter in technology circles is because the overwhelming majority
| of tech folks hail from upper middle class households so the
| people who risk a lot can afford it and it's not that big of a
| deal if they crash.
|
| Even if you believe the premise of the article about the future
| of technology, which is itself kind of a bad Whig history but
| that aside for a second, most people in general have no good
| reason to think that they're the ones to be able to capitalize on
| it.
|
| Pessimism really isn't the right word here, Conservatism is more
| apt. And many people are conservative in particular at the
| individual level for very good reasons, because they cannot
| afford to play high risk games.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| I do think their point reflects well in social media though.
| You'll see somebody propose an idea in a comment or post, and
| seemingly everybody will try to take it down with some
| counterargument. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, all ideas
| need temperment, but I also think to a certain degree people
| are just doing it to sound smart. In fact often the better the
| idea, the more people try to take it down. Though this perhaps
| falls more under contrarianism than pessimism
| bsuvc wrote:
| > but the most obvious point is that very few optimists make
| money. Most optimists will lose money.
|
| That sounds like something a pessimist would say ;)
| tablespoon wrote:
| > The entire piece is reiterating stereotypical VC twitter
| content but the most obvious point is that very few optimists
| make money. Most optimists will lose money.
|
| That raises interesting question: how many of these
| condemnations of "pessimism" are by salesmen (like VCs) who
| want their jobs to be easier (or their lackeys)? It's easier to
| sell to an optimist than a pessimist, because an optimist
| literally buys your pitch. For instance, the VCs don't want
| "pessimists" criticizing "web3" and undermining their pitch,
| they want optimists to pour their money and effort into it (and
| their pockets).
| gumby wrote:
| > very few optimists make money
|
| I think the point is:
|
| 1. only optimists make money 2. though most optimists lose it
| 3. pessimists manage loss, but in exchange forego gain
|
| I am dubious about broad statements (like the one I just made
| above) but perhaps it is broadly true.
| brimble wrote:
| Because it's usually right? See also: cynicism.
|
| _Reads article_
|
| Oh, this is about a very specific kind of pessimism in which a
| statement like "new economically-valuable technologies will
| emerge" is purely the domain of optimism.
| friedman23 wrote:
| How is it usually right? Pessimism and cynicism are cheap ways
| to appear smart to dumb people.
| brimble wrote:
| "You're not going to win the lotto jackpot".
|
| [EDIT]
|
| OK, one example was a bit flippant and easy to dismiss, but:
|
| "No, this isn't going to bring us meaningfully closer to
| economically-viable fusion power"
|
| "No, this _isn 't_ the War to End All Wars"
|
| "No, you're not going to keep your New Years fitness
| resolution"
|
| "No, your company's not going to succeed"
|
| "This miracle chemical's probably gonna turn out to be bad
| for our health. I look forward to finding out how fucked I am
| because of it in 40 years when someone gets around to doing
| anything about the alarming study someone will likely do in
| 10 years only to be ignored. If I make it that long. But at
| least we can make things fire-resistant 6% cheaper than
| before!"
|
| Et c.
| kevinh wrote:
| You're going to wake up tomorrow.
|
| You're going to be able to breathe a minute from now.
|
| Your whole life isn't going to fall apart.
|
| etc.
|
| There are unlimited hypotheticals you can make where an
| optimistic or pessimistic take is far more likely.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| That seems like a pessimistic, cynical take on life...
| dudeman13 wrote:
| Depending on the subject, people's natural state is optimism
| even if they think they are being realistic. [1] and [2] have
| a bunch of interesting references on this matter
|
| Appearing smart to dumb people isn't hard, so it doesn't
| count as a negative about pessimism :)
|
| I won't make a judgement about it being _usually_ right, but
| being pessimistic can be a tool to counteract the standard
| optimistic stance if you know people are usually optimistic
| (aka their expectations overshoot reality) on the subject
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_fallacy
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimism_bias
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I can right now look at every single applicant to YC, predict
| they will fail, and be right the overwhelming majority of the
| time.
|
| I can look at every amateur scientist who has found "a
| problem" with mainstream science, predict that they are a
| crank, and be right the overwhelming majority of the time.
|
| I can look at every "breakthrough in battery technology,"
| predict that it won't be on the market in 20 years, and be
| right the overwhelming majority of the time.
|
| Nevertheless, there are YC applicants that found successful
| companies. Amateur scientists have contributed to scientific
| breakthroughs. Battery breakthroughs have made it from lab-
| to-market in much less than 20 years.
| jessaustin wrote:
| A lot of pessimism is of the "this shitty thing that no one
| capable of fixing has any incentive to fix will continue to
| be shitty" variety. That is usually right, even if it is more
| pessimistic than "I'm going to fix this shitty thing even if
| it kills me". This basic pessimism is still _less_
| pessimistic than "nothing is shitty anywhere I can't hear
| you nananana!"
| bena wrote:
| It's easy to be pessimistic because doomsayers are always right
| on a long enough timeline.
|
| Let's take twitter as a hot button example.
|
| Twitter will eventually fail. As does everything. When it does,
| everyone is going to revisit their hot takes and point to them as
| them being uniquely prescient.
|
| The focus Ashton Kutcher had on being the first user with a
| million followers, all the GamerGate stuff, Donald Trump, wilw,
| SJWs, fail whales, Elon Musk, NFTs, etc.
|
| Whatever their point that they decided was the beginning of the
| end, they'll crow about. They'll crow about how they were right.
| Twitter _did_ fail. And they 'll think that made them right. That
| their decisions are smart and good because, by golly, they called
| it.
|
| They'll neglect to see _why_ twitter hypothetically failed. And
| it 's likely that the reason they believe twitter failed is not
| the reason it did fail. Sure, we could trace a thread from the
| end to their nexus, but we can do that with anything. Everything
| contributes to everything else, but it's a matter of degrees. If
| twitter replaces all of its infrastructure with warm, buttered
| toast, it will fail. And we can trace the mindset behind that
| decision to any other decision we want. "Well of course twitter
| did that, they also did X"
|
| But that's not to say we shouldn't listen to the cynic. It is the
| cynic who will warn us of the pitfalls. It is the cynic who tells
| us that warm, buttered toast cannot host services. The problem is
| learning which cynic to listen to and when. You don't want to
| beat the cynic, just his timeline.
| rhacker wrote:
| This is describing conservative and radical, not pessimism and
| optimism.
| indymike wrote:
| Pessimism's intelligence is not durable. Applied to a short time
| frame, it sounds intelligent. Over a longer period of time,
| pessimism loses it's IQ. It may be that constraints are much more
| concrete in the short term, but when you add the dimension of
| time, it is very difficult to identify concrete constraints, and
| many factors that were constraints, are removed over time. That
| said, being an optimist does not guarantee correctness or
| success.
| jrimbault wrote:
| You can be optimist about your goals but pessimist about your
| means. There's probably any number of quotes from military
| strategists about that kind of thing.
| brimble wrote:
| TFA gets where it going by defining "pessimism" in a way that
| makes TFA's conclusions correct. It doesn't seem to be
| concerned with nuance.
|
| You can do the same thing in reverse with "optimism" by pinning
| that term to an extreme version of it, which is obviously going
| to be wrong most of the time, while making "pessimism" the
| milder outlook that happens to align better to reality. Straw-
| manning, basically.
| jrimbault wrote:
| I think it's a rhetoric device close the antimetabole.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimetabole
| l33t2328 wrote:
| This seems to be a convoluted way of saying "hope for the best
| plan for the worst."
| jrimbault wrote:
| That's probably one of the quotes I was thinking of but
| couldn't think of.
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