Pessimism is a Cop-Out
If you want to be often wrong and always miserable, you should be pessimistic. Pessimism might be the human default. It served us well during more dangerous eras of human existence when the outcomes of poor decisions were often deadly. But in the modern world, pessimism isn’t likely to save your life. Contrarily, pessimism leads to a life of stress, anxiety, and fear.
Those who constantly don black glasses and see darkness in all directions must find it difficult to live a fulfilling life. Why work on worthy projects if everything is doomed anyway? Why improve oneself if the world is a grim place full of vile people? Thus, pessimism is an excuse not to do good, not improve, and accept anxiety and fear as part of the human condition.
Yet when we ponder the future, many people are pessimistic. This is especially true of those who consume information from sources that benefit from a fearful populace. News outlets survive on fear-mongering, as do politicians, albeit for different reasons. The media propagates pessimism because it sells. An excessive focus on the scary, the evil, the crooked, and the bloody plays into the negativity bias hardwired to the human-computer. Politicians, on the other hand, tap into our quest for a hero. Without a world in peril, they cannot be the caped crusader who saves the day just before certain doom.
Recently I listened to Naval Rhavikant, the Angel Philosopher (he’s an angel investor by trade), discuss the book “The Beginning of Infinity.” During his breakdown of the book by physicist David Deutsche, the topic of pessimism repeatedly came up. As an optimist who fails to see the allure of chronic pessimism, I was drawn to several of the points discussed.
“It’s easier to linearly extrapolate how (life) is going to get worse.” This is a simple but profound point. Thinking linearly is easy. You can identify a trend and extrapolate it endlessly to demonstrate how that trend will lead to the end of times. It’s also quite convincing, especially when a problem is already generating angst. But the world doesn’t work linearly. Consider boiling water, as Naval and Brett Hall did during their discussion. If you place a pan of water on your stove and heat the water, its temperature will increase at a relatively steady pace. You might observe a temperature rise of five degrees Celsius per minute. After several minutes, one could conclude that eventually, the water will reach many hundreds of degrees. Of course, this is not the case. Water has a boiling point of approximately 100 degrees Celsius, at which point the temperature will remain until all the water is boiled off. We now understand that heat causes water molecules to move more quickly, eventually reaching escape velocity. The optimist spends more time focused on creativity, which has non-linear effects, and less time engaged in the fool’s errand of dwelling on our demise.
“Pessimism seems like an intellectually serious position.” In many professions and social circles, it sounds smart to convince others of pessimistic views. For example, there are stock market “experts” who’ve become very wealthy not by investing but by convincing others that a market collapse is just around the corner. The thought of an unrecoverable loss is so scary that some investors pay significant sums to “learn” how to navigate this future event. These experts cherry-pick metrics and data to demonstrate this impending catastrophe. Unfortunately, those who succumb to the fear-filled prophecies lose money both to the guru and opportunity cost. While pessimism may sound intellectually serious, it’s a mental cop-out, an easy way to impress fellow pessimists.
“The attempt to predict the future growth of knowledge is impossible.” If the future of knowledge could be conceived, it wouldn’t be the future; it would be the present. This might sound trite and a bit silly, but it’s true. You don’t have to reach back too far to realize. Take the internet, for example. My parents or grandparents never imagined the access to communication and information we have today at our fingertips. So what makes us think we can predict the creative innovations of tomorrow? Coming to terms with this limitation frees the mind to realize that many of the day’s issues will be solved by imaginative, intelligent, creative people who are not yet born. Consider the hot topic of overpopulation. It’s not difficult to make that case that if the population growth continues on its trajectory, we will run out of finite resources like water, killing millions of people and creating countless wars in the process. While the issue of resource allocation is one worth exploring, simply extrapolating today’s data and making predictions is a fruitless endeavor. Doing so assumes that there will be no progress, innovation, or creative solutions, an unlikely outcome.
If not pessimistic, how should we think about the future?
Naval recommends “rational optimism” This doesn’t mean swapping the black glasses for rose-colored ones. Recognizing problems is part of the path to solving them, but remaining optimistic fuels creativity, which is the root of all worthwhile solutions. In addition to being happier and promoting happiness for others, you’ll be more productive and learn more.
