Being in the tech sector (embedded electronics), I find most people are negative / pessimistic on wild new ideas, and generally positive on incremental improvem

Being in the tech sector (embedded electronics), I find most people are negative / pessimistic on wild new ideas, and generally positive on incremental improvements. I think that's because we get exposed to a lot of 'new tech' that rarely lives up to it's proclaimed expectations. A few decades of that and it's a bit hard to not be pessimistic (or even cynical) about every new announcement of world changing technology. I find that non-tech people, outside of a given area of expertise, tend to be the most positive on a _new thing_. Whether it's battery technologies, IoT, AI, whatever, there's a general hype-esque belief that the new technology is a _good thing_, but they can rarely articulate why or how it will be good. Then they ask engineers to start developing on it, with never telling anyone _why_ this is a good idea or what problem it's actually solving or how it's solving it in a good way. I had a conversation with a mechanical engineer in our lunch room, who upon seeing Github Co-pilot, proclaimed that it would replace all of the embedded engineers on his team. I suppose this is optimism (significant technological progress), but also reeks of ignorance on what engineers actually do. The embedded guys see it as a useful tool though to help them code better by being exposed to other means of achieving very specific tasks. So I'm negative on the idea of Github Co-pilot-esque services replacing engineers, even in the long run, but am positive on it (and other tools) evolving into something very helpful. So with that said, I think I agree with some of the comments in this thread. If you come from a financially secure position, and have a strong financial safety net, then it's OK and good to be wildly optimistic - go try that new thing that may very well fail, because you're not destroying your lively hood in the process. And beyond that, being optimistic or pessimistic about things in general has no real bearing on their outcomes, barring your own happiness - so just do what makes you feel OK at the end of the day.