“Not inventing, and not adopting new ideas, can itself be both dangerous and immoral.” Matt Ridley, book The Rational Optimist
“Pessimists sound smart. Optimists make money.” –Nat Friedman
“I’ve realized a new reason why pessimism sounds smart: optimism often requires believing in unknown, unspecified future breakthroughs—which seems fanciful and naive. If you very soberly, wisely, prudently stick to the known and the proven, you will necessarily be pessimistic…No known solutions can solve our hardest problems—that’s why they’re the hardest ones. And by the nature of problem-solving, we are aware of many problems before we are aware of their solutions. So there will always be a frontier of problems we don’t yet know how to solve.” -Jason Crawford, The Roots Of Progress blog
If you want to sound smart and fit in, be a pessimist. You don’t have to risk anything. You probably won’t be criticized. You might even get lots of compliments for your smart, pessimistic views.
If you want to inspire others and change the world (and in some cases, make a lot of money), be an optimist. Just be prepared to be endlessly criticized and told you’re wrong.
Your level of optimism can be measured by the amount of time you allow yourself to be “wrong” before you’re right.
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