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>It doesn't help to be optimistic about something that's not going to work. Thinking a priori that it’s not going to work, here we have the true definition of

• antris 4y ago
  Or you could interpret it charitably, where the person states that when looking at actions after the fact, it can be said that being optimist about an action that turned out to not work caused you to waste time.
  • hbarka 4y ago
    > after the fact Past tense is hindsight. Optimism/pessimism is a future tense attitude.
    • antris 4y ago
      Yes, I'm talking about after the fact analysis of whether optimism wasted time or not. I didn't say that optimism or pessimism is hindsight. So I'm not sure how your comment relates to anything I said, except you taking three random words out of my comment.
• pfdietz 4y ago
  The optimist keeps trying to do something even as the evidence piles up against it. He calls someone pointing this out a pessimist. In general, for any action, there is already some means of judging whether it's a good one. Not a perfect means, but you can get some idea. And after trying things a bit, the evidence gets better. It's utterly vital to use negative information obtained in this exploration. Otherwise, you can go off into an institutional failure mode where resources are poured down a black hole just because that's what's been done before.
  • Bilal_io 4y ago
    > The optimist keeps trying to do something even as the evidence piles up against it. He calls someone pointing this out a pessimist. If someone insists that something would work even when the evidence is clear that's borderline stupid. But let's look at pessimism and optimism in relation to something unknown. An optimist would continue trying even if they fail multiple times, they continue trying until they either succeed or find enough evidence that it won't work. While a pessimist won't even try once, or give up pretty early.
• antman 4y ago
  Or a realist