Why Pessimism Sounds Smart
rootsofprogress.org
rootsofprogress.org
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.
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.
I became wealthy (I don't consider myself rich, but just doin' okay) when I realized that I was so poor that I had nothing to lose, and everything to gain. I don't think the attitude of pessimism or optimism has anything to do with success... You have to be somewhat good at being optimistic about the right things and pessimistic about the right things... all at the right time. You have to see opportunity, navigate risk and most importantly... actually go for it. The go for it part is super hard because there is great uncertainty on the journey.
The other main usage would be that "rich" describes how you can spend your money on possessions. "Wealthy" describes the degree to which your assets are generating income. So someone who makes a large sum of money a year might be rich (they own a Lamborghini and a house, and take fancy vacations) or wealthy (they have all that money in stocks and can retire tomorrow.) With this usage, wealthy people are often also rich.
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).
It applies to fine artists, but startups often have some sort of funding.
If you have funding, your personal risk is mitigated quite a bit. I don’t see why you would have to be independently wealthy to do a startup.
If you do a side project or consulting work, you can generally get started in your free time and migrate to it full time when it is already profitable. Still don’t see how this is an unacceptable level of risk.
If you don’t have the ability to code or raise money, then you wouldn’t be even in the discussion about Silicon Valley optimism. So …
Where does this idea come from?
That sounds like something a pessimist would say ;)
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.
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!
> 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
If you go with someone else's definition, pessimism could be belief in ubiquitous, sustained human failure, while optimism is recognizing that failure may come, but won't indefinitely or all the time (reality is a mixed bag)
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.
It's a fuzzy term that mostly works out to some sort of often collaborative social environment. Not much different than HN or IRC in many ways, just with a different way of interacting.
The fundamental nature of someone having delusions is they believe things which are not true, and when faced when evidence of what is actually true, they refuse to believe it.
Like a rock not physically being where that rock is, or that 2+2=5, or their favorite politician loves them.
Fundamentally, any evaluation of a prediction has to be projecting the current world views onto something fundamentally unpredictable, the future.
Any high variance future prediction will sound delusional. Since high variance also means high spread among possible futures, of which only one is actually possible, that also means high odds of a bad prediction.
But someone making, evaluating, or the predictions themselves aren’t delusional yet, because there is no fact yet to compare them against.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I've always found pessimism about pessimism to be the strongest argument for optimism about optimism.
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".
> Originally a Twitter thread.
That explains why it seems so half-baked.
That's because it is.
That's profoundly untrue.
The opposite of bias is not a countering bias, but accuracy and realism. In reality, both optimism and pessimism as persistant biases will lead you astray. The one discounts risks, the other discounts opportunities.
Realism, an accurate and appropriate view of reality, acknowledging both opportunities and risks, and taking a measured path through both, is what wins in the long term.
The view expressed is appealing, simple, and false.
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.
"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.
Andy Grove in 1992: "The idea of a wireless personal communicator in every pocket is "a pipe dream driven by greed."
Did he also poopoo the idea of a public internet and wait until the 80s to do so?
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.
That 1% of the time though...
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.
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.
(This is a critique of the idea that very long-term growth comes from believing science fiction expressed in the article.)
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.
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.
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.
It's a low-stakes way of playing intellectual.
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.
No it doesn't. Skepticism (or "pessimism") does not mean you "assume... it's everyone else's job to provide you with solutions."
> ...because providing solutions is the part that requires actual work.
And what if the solution isn't a solution, or isn't actually good enough to elicit universal enthusiasm and praise? No one's entitled to criticism-free cheerleading.
Never?
That's not going to work.
So basically, it's the person you might want around when you're building a bridge, or a jet, or a shuttle.
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
I was disappointed.
So by this reasoning, it's really unfortunate that peak oil didn't occur when predicted because we probably would have been saved by something even cleaner and better if it had.
In any case, I liked Peter Thiel's model in Zero to One better: definite vs. indefinite thinking coupled with pessimist vs. optimist thinking.
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.
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.
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
[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.
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.
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”.
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.
- 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.