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Comment by FriedrichN | Hacker News Reader

I find the dichotomy of pessimism/optimism and positive/negative not very useful in daily life, I prefer to think of defeatism and naivety. To me realism or (practical) optimism lies between those two.

You can't go through life either distrusting everyone and everything, nor can you do the opposite and live a good life. People don't like negativity because it ruins their mood, but you sometimes have to be critical. People also don't like positivity because they feel it sets too high of a standard, but to do anything you need a little hubris.

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Pragmatic optimism is the best. You don't delude yourself that everything is okay when it's clearly not, but you know that you can handle most challenges thrown at you and you use the best methods suitable for handling any problems. You are only negative if it's worth being negative about. And this is about the things that are changeable and you are negative so you would know what you have to change or improve. You give benefit of the doubt to people as much as is reasonable.

I really love this response; thanks for the perspective!

> “to do anything you need a little hubris”

This is a great little line, thanks.

On the subject matter, all of the thinking around this stuff is very all-or-nothing. I know it’s popular to say that you need to be balanced in your considerations too but I find the idea of balance to suggest a stillness and inaction, set and forget.

I think you need to hold the different conflicting ideas in your head, at the same time and push them into conflict with each other to find a pragmatic mix of them.

> People also don't like positivity because ...

There's a third (and possibly many more) variation(s). People don't like positivity because it often triggers a prejudgement of naivety, which in turn leads to defeatism (since you can't connect with someone; you feel disconnected from them due to their positivity and your inability to empathise with their perspective).

That's a trickier one to overcome with pure hubris, and imo a much more common one than some may think.

It really depends on how the negativity is expressed, and about what. Being negative about something that you can change is defeatism. being negative about something that will happen and can do nothing about is at best unhelpful for anyone.

Being negative about how you reacted to something, how you did something, or how something was done (without pointing fingers) is extremely helpful for me, it push me to improve or change where needed.

I hate that you've state this so well.

I disagree strongly with the first paragraph and agree vehemently with the second.

"Trust in God, but keep your powder dry" - Oliver Cromwell (attributed) [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_in_God_and_keep_your_pow...

"trust but verify" -every construction job ever

“Tie your camel and trust in God.” - Prophet Muhammad

Exactly. I often say pessimism/optimism are astrology. Realism is astronomy.

Pessimism/optimism are mostly to signal social support for things. If you act with irrational optimism towards someone's ideas you are showing that you support the person. Similarly if you don't act with irrational optimism many will take it as evidence that you don't support them, which can cause them to become hostile against you.

This means that acting with irrational optimism is often the rational choice when you consider social factors, and that is what managers are looking for when the job ad says it wants an optimistic person.

However that kind of irrational social based optimism isn't what entrepreneurs means when they talk about optimism. Their kind of optimism is that you need to see yourself as better than others so you wont conclude that since most others fail you too will fail, which is kind of the opposite kind of optimism managers are looking for in their reports.

The social aspect is huge in some organizations and I am glad you described it so well. I continue to see terrible ideas supported by rational people because of social position or social signaling. If they stand to gain from expressing support, yet would suffer no material penalty if the idea fails then why not support the person/idea? On the other hand it makes me feel like I am the crazy one - as in “am I the only one who sees how dumb this is?” “Should I speak up?” In many cases the rational answer is no. Better to support it in the slim chance it succeeds, and ignore or distance yourself if/when it fails. The organization specifically rejects/weeds out what it calls “Eeyores” - Winnie the Pooh reference.

I think "conscious" is a good word.

I've found that it's possible to very cleanly separate pessimism and optimism while still experiencing both. When I'm with my family or ideating on a new project, optimism is a much better mindset as it allows the mind to wander, create and relax.

When I am in the depths of a project where I have a lot of things that I need to fail at to understand, a negative mindset is more useful.

Maintaining a positive mindset in the face of a multitude of assured failures is possible, but draining. However, a negative mindset, is more engine-like and muddles along, unsurprised by the failures.

Again, this is a purely personal anecdote and I would not recommend adopting a negative mindset to other people.

A variation: (my) self-awareness is defined more by (my) failures than by successes (with the exception of having children). Failure is painful and, in general, rational people seek to avoid pain. But fear/pain - and the absolute certainty that we will experience both - shapes our attitude and behavior. Is it pessimism to expect fear/pain? Is it optimism to seek sex/wealth (greed)? Methinks both are the human condition, and both make life worth living.

"You can't go through life either distrusting everyone and everything, nor can you do the opposite and live a good life."

I distrust everything and can make a convincing case for it.

Where is the trust to be found? In societal structures? In people who have been indoctrinated into a society and think its perfectly normal to spend time in an office looking at screens and in their downtime look at screens too?

And what is a good life? Is it having the money and the goodies, or is it having the truth? This is a decision for everyone to make, whether they realise it or not!

If you want to be productive in life and cooperate with people you need at least some level of trust. For example if you are meeting up with someone, do you distrust that they will not show up and not go at all or do you demand they send their GPS location every minute of their way to know that you are not wasting an hour of your time going to the meeting?

This is just one minor example. There's several other things that you have to trust that work. In any exchange or trade you are providing some level of trust. If you didn't trust at all you wouldn't do the trade. You trust that whoever you are meeting up with won't kill you.

So you can't really say that you "distrust everything". That's a meaningless statement. Even you who says that they distrust everything has some level of trust in some items.

If you are in a relationship do you go there with complete distrust, once again demanding to see their messages and location at all times because otherwise you distrust them not to cheat on you?

If you are living in a house you trust that whoever built the house built it well enough for it to not collapse on you randomly.

I'm happy to co-operate. I don't have to trust them for that. I extend my hand to others first. I can trade. I go in with the possibility that I can be ripped off - I'm happy to do so.

I don't think most people are nefarious. Most are incredibly ignorant though. Despite apparent intellectual abilities, most people are unable to think for themselves - they have been programmed. They have received their values and behaviours, etc and believe them to be their own, even though they have never considered them deeply for themselves. They believe its perfectly normal to spend their whole lives working at screens for money. Unbelievable! This is 'normal'. Wearing masks is now normal too, and no travel, ever greater government management of one's life is also normal. Etc.

So yes, there is the day-to-day trust - but what I'm thinking is that trust requires that 2 agents have freewill and a similar reasoned understanding. But we don't. I live in different universes to most, I think.

When I'm talking about trust, there is a relation to truth. Most people accept the truth they are provided without question. There is no debate - the TV doesn't lie, the government has your best interests, corporations aim to make profit but in a 'ethical' way, the law is independent, etc, etc. In dealing with people who accept all that uncritically, we cannot have trust. We do not have individuals interacting according to a common understanding. We have a herd that acts in a predetermined way. It looks like its made up of individuals, but its not. In fact the only thinking that's occurring is small, and relates to personal preferences (I prefer the taste of chocolate, I like watching sport, I will work hard for money to get the house, etc). The behaviour is hardwired, there is no element of free will there. No more trust to be had there, that you could have with a door or wall.

Your cynicism is so dysfunctional that it prevents you from acknowledging basic scientific facts. Why should any person adopt a worldview which demonstrably allows its adherents to renounce something as basic as 1800s germ theory? Because they think they’re smarter and more independent than everyone else? No, your cynicism borders on mental illness.

Mental illness - absolutely.

This is exactly what independent thinkers will be diagnosed with. If you don't go along with what consensus calls true, you are mentally ill - its obvious! That person doesn't believe x or y - despite being taught it at school. He or she wants to know and understand for themselves! My, my - that's definitely a crime.

Mental illness is when one ignores basic facts which have been independently validated by scientists around the world, all for the sake of his own narcissism. I have no time or respect for people too intellectually lazy to do basic reading while praising themselves for their own ignorance. The very people who rationalize their ignorance with self-indulgence inevitably end up revealing themselves to be the greatest slaves to their own cognitive dissonance. Their minds are simply too weak and their egos too frail to admit flaws in their worldview.

The thing is, you believe your basic facts. Believe, not know. But you call it 'knowing'.

Knowing is when you verify facts for yourself. By not checking information, but just accepting whatever is handed to you, you are applying no filter to your reality. You filter only what has been deemed acceptable for you to filter - did Trump say that, did google do that, etc. The basic 'facts' are accepted without contention. Or any verified evidence. All that's needed is for someone to make a claim or show it on TV and that's basically right, right?

Have you ever looked at the replication crisis - where 70% of science studies cannot be reproduced? Or the nature of science funding - its corporations, the government and the military. If we are living in a fascist dictatorship, as I believe is evident, then that is a closed loop. Only what is deemed valuable to those stakeholders is investigated and presented as true.

>By not checking information but just accepting whatever is handed to you...

>The basic 'facts' are accepted without contention. Or any verified evidence.

>All that's needed is for someone to make a claim or show it on TV and that's basically right, right?

Who exactly are you speaking about here? What gives you the right to presume -- without any evidence -- that others don't verify and critically examine what they read and hear? Do you actually believe that you're the only person who does this?

Your attitude is blatantly condescending and supercilious.

Where exactly do you get the conclusion that it alloes for renouncing germ theory? What are the facts not acknowledged?

Exact proof of something simple as 2+2 is laborious and hilariously disproportionate but one can work with approximations well enough and handle the vast majority of cases in the same way friction and time dillation are often omitted from equations.

feralimal implies that people wearing masks aren't thinking for themselves, when the reality is that masks are in everyone's collective self-interest and the vast majority of people understand this. Widespread mask-wearing is highly correlated with reduced spread of airborne contagion, coronavirus included.

Ah I missed that bit in the paragraphs. Of all of the dumb herd behaviors brought out by the pandemic mask wearing the opposite.

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