> If you very soberly, wisely, prudently stick to the known and the proven, you will necessarily be pessimistic. I consider myself optimist but I don't trust a

> If you very soberly, wisely, prudently stick to the known and the proven, you will necessarily be pessimistic. I consider myself optimist but I don't trust any unknown. If I have experience with something, I will soberly, wisely, prudently stick to the known and to the proven. I guess it's a matter of defining the known and the proven though: for me nothing is absolute because there are too many variables to most nontrivial situations, way more than a person can hold in their minds, save, recollect, and even verify, that affects an outcome in ways you don't even imagine. Life is not a tic-tac-toe match: way more things are connected than we can put in a human brain, or even multiple human brains. So even navigating unexplored territory a thousand times may not transform it into explored territory and you will only realize it when you optimistically expect things to go according to your plan. You are not consciously 'trusting the unknown': if you have experience and hope it is correct but soon reality will slap your face and tell you where you messed up. So I disagree: you can be optimistic and not believe in the unknown. Just accept you're not a smart ass, that you don't know what will happen in the future but whatever happens you will do your best to understand and deal with it. That is optimism. Everything's gonna be alright. Also the "economic growth" transforms the "known and the proven" into the "unknown and the unproven".