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Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

> as a reality check, innovation is driven by optimism.

Are you claiming that based on anything more than wishful thinking? I have a vague memory of seeing a study that found almost the opposite: that the key to innovation is having the relentless skepticism to cull bad ideas quickly.

> this whole site here is thriving because of optimism. smart, intelligent optimism.

This site was notoriously negative (e.g. the famous Dropbox post) in its most successful days, and my subjective impression is that it has declined at the same time as it's grown more optimistic.

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Optimistic vs. skeptic is a false dichotomy

yeah you can be a conditional rational optimist, who are often skeptic as well

"Trust, but verify"

I do find the tech optimism reflected by this site quite empty and superficial. There's a lot of tech for tech's sake optimism here, and that's a very Western-privilege way to look at things. And yes, it does come across as stupid, if you consider tone deafness a declination of stupidity.

It also comes across as deranged value wise, a investment into juicero hyping up what any street vendor can do, as a tech investment while parts of the world starve.

The again tech, as long as platform and source are unlocked, remains the greatest equalizer in chances there ever was. Your father may sell apples from a cart and the son may sell carts in an apple, passing by all the monopoly walls and hopeless hamster wheel work of traditional caste-locked employment

> (e.g. the famous Dropbox post)

This is bullshit and typical HN negativity.

All the top Dropbox comments were positive, the top top is a technical point, with a suggested solution -

https://web.archive.org/web/20081202041954/https://news.ycom...

I think this comment was flagged because of the "BS" lingo.

however yes, I agree, "the famous dropbox post" was indeed received enthusiastically.

here without archive.org:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

The top comment on there is a negative one. The archive.org link is relevant because it has a different comment ordering at that point.

the vast majority of comments are positive, outright enthusiastic, no matter how you sort them.

And the top level one, as another commenter pointed out, is constructive critique.

Constructive critique is pretty much opposite to optimism, I would say.

I see, we have different understanding of the word optimism

to me it's positive outlook on things, the confidence things usually turn for the better where we work together to make it so.

that's neither blind optimism, "lala no problems here, this is fine meme".nor is it naive optimism "oh ya negligible issues in that corner no real issues Pu bear" but hard working realistic "this ain't be simple but we'll make it work"

I feel in good company with this general understanding, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimism

and that's why I have beef with the downspin of the article, which overgeneralized a single funding in a narrow context to a broad rejection of hope, when you think about it.

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