They're just examples. "Not having all the facts that time" is also a hopeful and optimistic one, because it is non-permanent (you can get more facts) and speci

They're just examples. "Not having all the facts that time" is also a hopeful and optimistic one, because it is non-permanent (you can get more facts) and specific to the situation (implicitly, it only comments on facts for that specific task, on that specific occasion). Note that restating "I wasn't trying hard" as "I'm a slacker" makes it permanent (being a slacker isn't a one-off thing) and universal (being a slacker is an abiding trait, someone who doesn't try at anything; it's not specific to a particular task). One could claim this is just arguing semantics; but these different words do express different causal explanations. People tend to see patterns (perhaps especially programmers); so that if a person claimed they "weren't trying" a few times, we would tend to generalize that into an abiding trait, or even an identity, such as being "a slacker". I think this is interesting, because it illustrates a switching point between optimism and pessimism: you could interpret those few times as isolated incidents due to circumstances ("confining them to their facts"); or you could infer a regularity. Of course, the problem of pessimism is clearer when more extreme, e.g. generalizing a single instance into a universal rule. BTW: according to the book it's not as simple as optimists being cognitively deficient at seeing patterns: for good events, an optimistic and hopeful approach is to see the pattern. While this is certainly convenient and self-serving, it's worth noting that doing it the other way (i.e. minimizing good event as one-offs and seeing a pattern in bad events) is also self-serving - just in a self-defeating way. The book makes a compelling and nuanced argument that it's better to err on the side of optimism (unless there are serious risks involved in failure).