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"I ask myself "Do I need to believe this is how the world operates? How does this serve me? Would I want my children to embody this world view?". If the answer is no, then I try to have my world view serve me and end up much happier and actually much more effective in the long run."

It's a nice thought, but proves to be difficult to implement long term. Sure you might convince yourself for a few months that things are like X, ignoring the evidence that they are Y. That's your prerogative, you can operate in whatever reality you wish. Eventually reality catches up to you and you have to pay the piper.

It works the other way too. You can bullshit and operate politics without the skill, until one day reality catches up to you and people see your ”work” for what it really is.

I've seen this happen to people. They couldn't get another job -- ever. They happily lived in their massive homes and retired early. One sails boats. Doesn't seem like a cautionary tale, as long you can stomach being a fake.

sometimes at 70, when you're the most powerful man in the world.

And sometimes never, and you will be even eulogized post-mortem by clueless crowds

> It's a nice thought, but proves to be difficult to implement long term ...

It's actually the only long term approach -- literally. It's not ignoring reality, rather, it's choosing not to lose hope that we can create a better future.

Because, as we've seen, the world is what we make it, for better, and for worse.

Sure, you can choose to filter out certain things from your reality. Eventually you'll get railroaded because you failed to factor in certain things which someone whose able to adopt a realistic frame of mind would've captured.

If we look at WW2, you see Neville Chamberlain, the optimist, pursuing a policy of appeasement giving Hitler the benefit of the doubt and proclaiming "peace for our time" after signing of the Munich agreement. Meanwhile, Churchill, a realist, realizes that Hitler is not going to stop until he's dominated all of Europe.

So who do you prefer to be in this story, the naive optimist Chamberlain, assuming everything will be okay? Or the realist Churchill who recognizes the threat, and takes the necessary evasive action.

I didn’t say filter out.

Churchill was a combination of a realist and an optimist / idealist.

One method to distinguish between the things we think are real, but are not, is to see what you can change by pretending things are actually like X. Whatever doesn't change - that's evidence that's "real".

To paraphrase, "reality is that which, when you pretend otherwise, continues to be the way it is."

> The company I'm currently CTO at I had founded when I was 23. It's now a multi-hundred million dollar company, growing very quickly, and about to cross 100 employees. I've learned a lot along the way, but I've especially learned from managing parents. As I started managing parents and realizing how much they base their own values on how their children would think of them and their life principles, it became apparent to me that this is how I want to live my life too.

I feel like I'm now a father to my hypothetical children.

Siblings and friends work equally as well.

Do I need to believe this is how the world operates?

The way I like to say it is, I choose not to live in that world.

You bring up a fascinating subject. The tricky part about pessimal realism is that too much of it becomes a self-fulfilling and agency yielding prophecy. And so the challenge becomes this: how does one pragmatically engage with optimal realism?

I guess another way to say this is path dependence is a real problem. Finding the solution is not trivial. Perhaps the most painful place this reality becomes evident is in the interpersonal and societal sense. It's a trope that as we get older we realize "we can't save everyone" or "we can't fix everything." And so the question becomes how do we determine a) what's in our control b) what really matters and c) how we orient ourselves for the future?

I don't have a great answer, but I think part of the practice is learning to become whole with your pain, your emotions, your hopes and your intuitions in a balanced manner. And I think another part of the practice is figuring out how to build your own tribe along the way to make it practical for you to find support in a trustworthy community.

People problems are hard!

> I try to have my world view serve me and end up much happier and actually much more effective in the long run.

Easy to say when you're a millionaire that never has to work again