It's like a lottery ticket. If someone comes to me and excitedly says "I bought a lottery ticket! This is going to change my life!" I'd call that naive optimism

It's like a lottery ticket. If someone comes to me and excitedly says "I bought a lottery ticket! This is going to change my life!" I'd call that naive optimism, and I'm going to be pretty pessimistic about their chances. Nevertheless, I recognize that people win the lottery every week. When I see an article about the next cancer cure, it's that single lottery ticket: nope, not gonna work. I'll believe it when I see it, etc. That does not, however, mean I am pessimistic that we will ever cure (many/most) cancer. But I might not bother to read the numbers off every ticket that pops up in popular science feeds.