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Optimism is fun and pleasant and thus people are drawn to it. It is therefore the tool of charlatans. Pessimists develop from repeatedly watching people be wooe
by fartcannon 5y ago
Optimism is fun and pleasant and thus people are drawn to it. It is therefore the tool of charlatans. Pessimists develop from repeatedly watching people be wooed by charlatans. It's a useful personality trait that balances out the wolves in sheep clothing.
- oh_sigh 5y agoThat doesn't explain the rampant, popular pessimism on social media platforms like twitter and reddit.
- a_c 5y agoPeople are drawn to strong emotions, positive or negative. It could be anger, fear, joy, cuteness, anything that evokes our lizard brain. It is orthogonal to making the world a better place IMO
- fartcannon 5y agoI have this feeling it's a bit of the random chance that our evolution grants us. Some folks get a dice roll that makes them just a tiny bit more afraid of the dark. Some less. Sometimes there's abundant food beyond the dark. Sometimes there's a bear. People aren't that simple though. Some people realize there might be a bear, and encourage other people to explore the dark looking for the food. Some other people might go, 'hey wait sometimes there are bears in the dark'. If you want to call the warning pessimism, well, that's your right, I guess. But it sure seems useful to me.
- McLaren_Ferrari 5y ago> It is therefore the tool of charlatans Charlatans? I don't think there are any charlatans around. Maybe the bad guys you are referring to are the evil shortsellers working together with the Shortseller's Enrichment Commission? /s
- fartcannon 5y agoI just googled that phrase hoping it was a reference to an interesting short story or something culturally interesting. I was disappointed.
- SantalBlush 5y agoPessimists do not discriminate between charlatan and innovator. They just sit on the sidelines and crap on everything because a) it doesn't require any work, and b) ideas and attempts are imperfect, so it's easy to point out flaws in them and be correct. It's a low-stakes way of playing intellectual.
- fartcannon 5y agoSo what's your threshold for when to call someone pessimistic when they're doing the very useful work of identifying flaws in something? Never? That's not going to work.
- jonas21 5y agoThere's a difference between identifying things that you will need to overcome, mitigate, or work around in order to be successful (which is useful) and insisting that the existence of these things means the task is impossible or not worth trying (which is not useful).
- fartcannon 5y agoSure, but if you google the definition of the word we're all talking about, there's no mention of impossible. Just someone that, "see[s] the worst aspect of things or believe[s] that the worst will happen". So basically, it's the person you might want around when you're building a bridge, or a jet, or a shuttle.
- michaelmrose 5y agoIf we identify optimists and pessimists only by the most extreme variant of each we will have excluded virtually everyone and no longer possess a scale with which to measure them.
- tablespoon 5y ago> Pessimists do not discriminate between charlatan and innovator. They just sit on the sidelines and crap on everything because a) it doesn't require any work, and b) ideas and attempts are imperfect, so it's easy to point out flaws in them and be correct. This is the complaint of a salesman (or a follower of one) who's upset his job isn't easy, and wishes everyone was an optimist who'd just buy what he's selling based on his pitch. The difference between a charlatan and an innovator is an innovator delivers and a charlatan sells.
- deltree7 5y agoPeter Schiff is charlatan and he is a grade A pessimist
- fartcannon 5y agoYeah, and every climate denying Oil Barron CEO has been optimistic about humanities role in global warming.