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The Case for Optimism

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Re: The Case for Optimism

#51

Post by NotSammyHagar »

holoduke wrote: post #36
gonehome wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All we got was the entirety of human knowledge in our pockets, functionally for free. I don’t like ad tech and I’m not dismissing that modern software has problems, but I think there’s a lot to be optimistic about. On most metrics (infant mortality, poverty, violence) - things are massively better than they were thirty years ago.

Metrics metrics. The only metric I care about is happiness. I rather die when I am 50 than living in a cage till I am 80.

Wait till you are 50, see if you feel the same - assuming you aren't 50. There are other cages in life, family, job, spouse, expectations, that prevent all of us from being "free". Maybe you have a sick spouse or kid that needs constant care. I'm willing to be there for them even if I can't be free in the last third of my life.

Re: The Case for Optimism

#52

Post by TchoBeer »

joelbluminator wrote: post #46
cortesoft wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't think happiness is a good single metric to judge your life by. If pure happiness is all that matters, should you just quit everything and do heroin all day? You would feel really happy. Life is about many things, and happiness is only one part.

> should you just quit everything and do heroin all day? You would feel really happy. No he wouldn't. He would become addicted very fast and eventually live on the streets, Heroin addicts are as miserable as can be. If there was an actual happy pill that worked I don't see why we shouldn't take it, there isn't one.

>If there was an actual happy pill that worked I don't see why we shouldn't take it

Like the Soma from Brave New World. When I reread that book last year I realized how useful and good that drug would be.

Re: The Case for Optimism

#53

Post by charbonneau »

kaycebasques wrote: post #24
baron_harkonnen wrote: post #16

Optimism is essentially the religion of Capitalism. This is because Capitalism is perpetually in debt to tomorrow. Every start up being discussed on HN, every fund people pump their 401k into, every new oil well being dug up, all of these require believing in the future. The problem is that everything we have today depends on everything being better tomorrow. Optimism isn't just a nice feeling it's a core ideology th…

I know that we're not supposed to talk about the voting on comments [1] but I request that we make an exception here and pay attention to something interesting that is happening in this discussion. baron_harkonnen (fitting name for this comment, BTW) explicitly says "People here talk about pessimism as if it's some rampant belief in society and the few optimists there are fighting against the hordes of the non-believ…

> C’est l’histoire d’un homme qui tombe d’un immeuble de 50 étages. Le mec, au fur et à mesure de sa chute, il se répète sans cesse pour se rassurer : « Jusqu’ici tout va bien... Jusqu’ici tout va bien... Jusqu’ici tout va bien. » Mais l’important, c’est pas la chute. C’est l’atterrissage.

> This is a story of a man who is falling from a 50 story building. He, gradually during his fall, continuously reassures himself “so far, so good... so far so good... so far so good.” But what’s important is not the fall. It’s the landing.

Re: The Case for Optimism

#54

Post by lazyasciiart »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #16

Optimism is essentially the religion of Capitalism. This is because Capitalism is perpetually in debt to tomorrow. Every start up being discussed on HN, every fund people pump their 401k into, every new oil well being dug up, all of these require believing in the future. The problem is that everything we have today depends on everything being better tomorrow. Optimism isn't just a nice feeling it's a core ideology th…

> outside of internet forums I have only occasionally met anyone who exhibits even the most mild form of pessimism. > As the final insult to injury, questioning that future becomes heresy and so you cannot even voice your anguish as the world around you starts to collapse.

I think these are related. It's very socially difficult to express serious pessimism about the world - I don't think the future is bright, I think it is miserable and you either shouldn't have kids or you should be preparing them for a very different life. I can't really bring myself to say that to all my friends who have or are having children.

Re: The Case for Optimism

#55

Post by tuatoru »

JackFr wrote: post #38
Fricken wrote: post #13

"you must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." -Jim Stockdale, describing the Stockdale paradox. For me to be remotely optimistic, I would need to see more people confronting those brutal facts. They are truly and properly brutal.…

With respect to climate change, there is a complete disconnect between the predictions of doom and the proposed solutions. Electric cars ain’t gonna do it. Massive disruption and reordering if the economic order and a real reduction in global well-being are the price to be paid if we’re really serious. I just don’t see intellectual honesty among people who claim that climate change is an existential threat.

I think they are honest - they really believe that their proposals are solutions - but also that they are hopelessly innumerate, and ignorant of the time and effort involved in scaling anything up to global scale.

For myself, existential is going way too far. It will transform civilization, yes. One way or another, that's coming. Extinguish every human? No. Not unless we get weeks-long global thermonuclear war - 3700 weeks on the top 10 existential threats chart, and still number 1.

Re: The Case for Optimism

#56

Post by lazyasciiart »

Everything he says is equally applicable to belief in religion or an afterlife. The case for believing that the future will be good is that it makes you feel better. So pick whatever explanation you can swallow for this wonderful future - God, the singularity, the essential goodness of human nature, etc - and believe in it as strongly as you can.

Re: The Case for Optimism

#57

Post by aschan »

lostcolony wrote: post #15
rightbyte wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Optimists downplay problems and are annoying to work with, especially if in charge. I rather work with pessimists any day. (As long as we are not talking about like, grumpy vs happy, but more in a technical sense).

There's a mentality I've adopted that I find helpful that I call "hopeful pessimism". It's the descriptive form of "Hope for the best; prepare for the worst". You expect the worst outcome, but hope you're wrong. I think most of the devs I've enjoyed working with have similar perspectives, and often include a dark sense of humor with it. As when the hope runs out, all you're left with is something dark, and being able…

At Warp News, where the article is published, we talk about fact-based optimism. I’m explaining what it is here: https://www.warpnews.org/essays/the-case-for-fact-based-opti...

Re: The Case for Optimism

#58

Post by danans »

> Today’s widespread middle class living standard is the result of several one-time events for the planet, such as mass migration into cities, the movement of women into the formal working economy, and pervasive automation of labor.

He forgot a big one: Massive use of fossil fuels, whose long term effects are, depending on where you live, threatening to undermine that very standard of living.

The challenge of this generation will be trying to figure out how to improve and that standard of living while undoing it's fossil fuel dependency. That may in turn require redefining what a high standard of living is.

Re: The Case for Optimism

#59

Post by specialist »

I categorically approve of optimism.

Believing that we'll have a future worth fighting for is like Pascal's Wager. If we're wrong, we won't be around to care. And pessimism isn't very constructive. Or fun.

Missing from his list is improvements is governance. It's so weird that "technologists" rarely even think about collaborative decision making. When in fact it's one of our most important technologies.

To cite one recent exciting example. Project Warp Speed betting on a portfolio of potential vaccines. Applying the smarts of NPV towards policy goals. Whereas other nations pre-picked winners, like most procurement is traditionally done.

Such a high visibility success will lead to wider adoption of better risk management strategies.

Adjacent is Musk's $100m X-Prize bet for carbon capture. So great. For future, some sizeable fraction of all R&D should be done like this.

> Optimism is not utopian. It’s protopian -- a slow march toward incremental betterment.

So much cringe. The jargon spewing technophilia of Mondo 2000, Wired, Kevin Kelly, Jaron Lanier, so many others was tired in the 1990s. (Remember "Tired vs Wired"? Gag.)

Re: The Case for Optimism

#60

Post by throwaway_4253 »

Dudeman112 wrote: post #39
legrande wrote: post #11

> To be a good ancestor one must assume that good things can be forwarded. Many of the old ways are being forgotten, and `Grandma's brain` is not so readily picked anymore since people value their Internet & the hive mind of social media more than the wisdom of their elders. Also the old way of passing down teachings orally, like in the case of Buddhism and some other religions, is declining. Now it has to be perfect…

>`Grandma's brain` is not so readily picked anymore since people value their Internet & the hive mind of social media more than the wisdom of their elders. Grandma's brain is racist and when I tried to explain to her that what she sees at Facebook and WhatsApp groups might not be true her brain tilted.

Aw, come on, way to miss the point. Even African American Grandmas were glued to their televisions during the Cuban Missile Crisis. They lived through the Vietnam protests, the 70's oil shock, Nixon's resignation and stagflation, and then saw the Berlin Wall fall in the 80's. As someone born in the 80's, I can only imagine the difference between what they thought and felt during 9/11 compared to me.

They (usually) have something which younger generations will always struggle with (simply by the nature of not being there), which is _perspective_ on which things are important at what scales. That isn't to say they're always (or even usually) right about everything, but their opinion should at least be valued as part of the conversation.

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