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Pessimism is a barrier to progress
91–100 of 189 posts
Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress
#92> There's an "optimism stigma" that's pervasive throughout society. Funny, I'd say it's quite the opposite, you aren't allowed to say anything negative or you'd be labeled as a "downer". Everything nowadays is "amazing" and "transformative".
My experience (possibly biased by my model) has been that it's a generational difference. Based on the fourth turning model Boomers are 'Prophets' while Millennials are 'Heroes'. No one cares if a prophet correctly predicts seven weeks of great weather if they miss the one hurricane that wipes everything out. And no one wants to hear a hero (which, let's face it, is a polite synonym for 'cannon fodder') give a realistic assessment of the odds. So this model would predict Boomers are culturally pessimistic while Millennials are culturally optimistic (both to an irrational degree at times).
Which has been my actual observation - has anyone here had corroborating or counterfactual experiences?
Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similarly the vocal and rich advocates for climate change policy buying beachfront property on Martha's Vinyard. To say that these people are merely hypocrites is being too generous. They don't believe what they're saying at all.
Which advocates in particular? Why do you think buying a beach homes implies they don't believe what they are saying? Are you arriving at the most convenient conclusion for yourself, rather than the most likely one?
Former president Obama stands out. Why would you spend a considerable amount of your wealth on a home that is about to be swallowed up by the ocean on account of us barreling headlong into imminent climate catastrophe? You wouldn't.
Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://twitter.com/GatesJets Hard to take Gates seriously on climate change. Imagine everyone was living like this.
This is the dumbest take on Climate Change and I can't believe the HN crowd falls for it. Thought Experiment: Say, Bill Gates (and other VIPs) is respected enough that he can convert 5 Skeptics out a 100 Climate Deniers. So, In order for the successful climate actions Bill Gates has to change the minds of say 10,000 leaders in various positions across the world. That means he effectively has to meet 200,000 people ac…
Thought experiments are supposed to involve a little bit of thinking.
He can jet around the world in economy class without much difference, just a bit of sacrifice.
I'll start believing Bill Gates believes in climate change when he starts behaving as if he does.
Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress
#95Progress towards what?
If it's progress towards having constant news pieces about a potential nuclear attack any day now then I'd say the pessimists were right and we should have sticked to less progress.
Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can I ask you how old you were when that happened. I think a lot of that happen organically for everyone, it just happened to you in 2014. I'd guess 25-30y old ?
Yeah, I was in the 30 -35 range in 2014. I think age had something to do with it. But I think 2014 was when it started to become apparent that the idealist global mixing and digital revolution it was tied to, something I had pinned my optimism on, might be going in a more evil direction. Paul Graham wrote about this, that we need to understand our current period in the context of a much longer historical timeline htt…
I'm a bit younger than you (I was in my mid 20s during this time) and I would agree that about then is when I started to be like 'wait a minute'. I'd had small crises of optimism in the 90s and 00s as a kid where things weren't adding up, but I dismissed them because surely the adults knew what they were doing.
2013 was the year I'd pinpoint where my optimism ended. I was in grad school studying filter bubbles and what we'd eventually start calling 'misinformation' and 'disinformation' and discovering Eli Pariser coined the concept and then used it to create a corporation using that to influence people into thinking certain ideas were important was a major black pill moment, as was Tristan Harris's Google memo.
A lot of the rot was in evidence before then, but that was the year when I couldn't pretend not to see it anymore.
I'd say age has a lot to do with it in that my renewed sense of optimism is very tied into being more comfortable in my own agency, and that comfort only came into being because I saw the generation behind me and that updated my brain. "Oh, I'm not the 7 year old in the room of adults anymore. I'm the adult now. Interesting."
Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress
#97For the tech industry, "progress" is mostly defined in cost cutting, automation, market concentration, and increased profit margins.
Yes I can now take a photo with my phone but my job is less secure, my environment is more polluted, housing is more expensive, and my retirement is less attainable then it was 50 years ago. What happened in between then and now? Progress.
Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://twitter.com/GatesJets Hard to take Gates seriously on climate change. Imagine everyone was living like this.
What you or I, or even Gates do in our personal lives has absolutely no effect on climate change. Solutions or failures happen in other contexts. Gates does some real work in those. The whole "I must recycle all my plastic bags or the planet will die" mentality is, to me, a weird form of delusion of grandeur. Seeing past that can be both freeing and depressing :)
It can be freeing to lie to yourself, but it remains a lie. Of course limiting personal pollution has an effect.
Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://twitter.com/GatesJets Hard to take Gates seriously on climate change. Imagine everyone was living like this.
Yup... Do as you preach, and others will follow. Flying your private jet to a conference, and tell Johnny Average that he shouldn't use his car to drive to his workplace is a shitty thing to do. And he's far from being the only one doing that.
Personal carbon budget.
But then the upper middle class twats couldn't go on vacation to Bali and we can't have that no sirree!
Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress
#100What is the matter with the pessimist? I think it can be stated by saying that he is the cosmic anti-patriot. And what is the matter with the anti-patriot? I think it can be stated, without undue bitterness, by saying that he is the candid friend. And what is the matter with the candid friend? There we strike the rock of real life and immutable human nature.
I venture to say that what is bad in the candid friend is simply that he is not candid. He is keeping something back— his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. This is certainly, I think, what makes a certain sort of anti-patriot irritating to healthy citizens. I do not speak (of course) of the anti-patriotism which only irritates feverish stockbrokers and gushing actresses; that is only patriotism speaking plainly. A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it.
But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men, and the explanation of him is, I think, what I have suggested: he is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all.
-- Chesterton