Comment by pitspotter2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pitspotter2 | Hacker News Reader

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Two different philosophies of hope:

(1) Optimism. The world has been getting better and all present evils can eventually be cured by developing the specific know-how (think Apollo programme)

(2) Eucatastrophe. The world has been getting steadily worse yet looming evil may be defeated by an unexpected turn of events among a few good people (think small fellowship of hobbits)

The first says that if we apply creativity and work energetically at solving problems in a scientific manner then we can solve them. No guarantees but also nothing in the laws of physics to prevent it. It sounds reasonable but in practice the argument seems to persuade very few, least of all in Hollywood where science fiction has all but given up on spaceships and the future. As Douglas Adams pointed out the stories are mostly set in LA about 5 years from now and it's raining.

The second is almost the opposite. It says that if a few unimportant but good people get involved, things may unpredictably and dramatically improve, perhaps by the intervention of grace or Providence. It sounds supernatural. Hope was indeed one of St Paul's big three ('Faith, Hope, and Love'). Yet consider how many scientific discoveries and inventions occurred purely by accident. How evolution succeeded in making ears out of jaw bones. Etc.

Historically I've sided with (1) and I've always wanted it to be true however however many times it is pointed out by the likes of Steven Pinker with graphs and statistics that conditions have improved through most of history, the pessimists still prevail in public news and debates. They get more headlines and seem more serious than their naive opponents.

Why do pessimists carry the day and with such preternatural authority? The very fact that they do hints that they're unwittingly cashing in on the fact that (2) may be correct or at least the predominating factor.

That is, most good things happen by accident, but they do require a few good people to show up.

I think the reason pessimists carry the day for legitimate reasons is simple - those promising sunshine and rainbows tend to be the same one's picking your pocket or try to turn you into a puppet to be disposed of when no longer useful. Another of pessimism's virtues is that it breeds preparation. Unlike cynicism it can persistently endure pleasant surprises as well.

The reasons for dominance of pessimism culturally are also cynical - negative campaigning tends to work well and it is easier to find something disliked by many diverse subfactions than something unclaimed and liked by many. Plus it is easy to tear down compared to building something.

Hollywood's lack of science optimism has another obvious reason aside from anger at being disrupted by competition from newer technology. It requires far more creativity to come up with something plausible, optimistic, and having a problem that you can hang a plot and spectacle upon than making some shallow nonsensical dystopia which makes as much sense as using nuclear fusion reactor powered robots with energy weaponry are used as overseers for coal miners with pickaxes. Which leads into my next point. What has generally been a death knell for darker aesthetics and genres is inability to be taken seriously anymore; whether by overexposure with a lack of variety and/or a biting parody. It probably affects them worse because there are far more ways to make a "neutral" genre like say Western, than a darker one say a slasher film - the emotional ranges are inherently more limited by definition.

It seems clear that both are partly true? For example: while climate change has been getting worse in the last few decades and so has wealth inequality in the west, humanity as a whole has made some great strides in reducing preventable diseases and global hunger.

In any case the fact that pessimists prevail in the headlines may not have anything to do with how the world actually is, but more with what sells newspapers. It is well-known that (after sex) human misery sells much more copy than happy stories. "If it bleeds it leads" and all that.

I get that bad news sells. It grabs attention I think partly because it's useful. It's a sort of 'prediction error' which helps us to learn from the misfortunes and mistakes of others.

However this doesn't explain the preponderance of pessimism in sci-fi. People generally turn to fiction for inspiration or at least comfort. Responsible parents would consider it wrong to read stories with bad endings to their children. Yet we have been pumping demoralising and potentially self-fulfilling nonsense to wider society for a while now.

I also subscriber to (1), and I agree that conditions are generally improving for most people. I think some of the pushback against Pinker is that his message is used as a justification to do no more. There's a reason that the worst of the right love to promote him.

(1) and (2) might empirically-speaking look similar over long enough timescales.

Also if (2) is correct then fundamental progress, arising from periodic breakthroughs, depends more upon who we are than what we do. Doing stuff would then lead to incremental improvements which are still important but which depend themselves on previous breakthroughs.

In his book(s?), Pinker's conclusion is that we need to learn why things are/were improving, and make sure to do more of that. For things that are improving, that has to be something we were doing very recently. The attitude he pushes against is that everything is terrible and needs to be torn down and rebuilt.

I think for most people, especially as they age, change is not comforting. While things may be getting better, that brings about change to many who don't want to deal with it.

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