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The abstract states that it's a puzzle why people are irrationally optimistic. The puzzle is that one would expect this to be corrected through selective pressu
by aaroninsf 3y ago
The abstract states that it's a puzzle why people are irrationally optimistic. The puzzle is that one would expect this to be corrected through selective pressure, either evolutionarily, or wrt evolved cultural normative expectations.
Let me suggest a rather Neitzschean answer: it's very useful in a society to have the default assumption of the populace be that their prospects are better than they actually are. That's headroom.
If you haven't read him,
Neitzsche suggests that the promise of Christian afterlife, was in effect an extreme form of this: an irrational optimism about the future, which (very usefully) made the actuality of moment to moment, day by day, awfulness bearable, on the premise that it was a transient state.
He also noted that it was useful to associate sacrifice and penury with righteousness, and described the instrumental benefit to the 1% in allowing the masses to take pleasure in the thought that those enjoying a comfortable life in this world, would meet an (per Pascal, infinitely more expensive) bill in the next.
IMO this is "hard to un-see."
- kolinko 3y agoAccording to the study roughly the same amount of people were optimist as pessimist, if I understand correctly
- s1artibartfast 3y agono comment on the paper, but there can be a big bias towards optimism if the evolutionary profit of winning is great and/or the cost of losing is low. It isnt hard to think of situations where this would be true.
- avazhi 3y agoWhich of Nietzsche’s books is the best for reading about this?
- opportune 3y agoBeyond Good and Evil touches on this a lot with its master vs slave (Christianity) morality comparison
- monero-xmr 3y ago"God is dead." - Nietzsche "Nietzsche is dead." - God
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago“God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown.” - Nietzsche "this is a pretty nice cave y'all got here" - God "the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable (for an educated person)" - Nietzsche (supposed that to be well educated meant ability to read Greek and Latin and have familiarity with ancient texts from several cultures giving variations of Christian origin myths. "We have just got to decrease funding for Education" - somebody living in a cave that still believes in God.
- monero-xmr 3y ago"Stealing is fine, the police are evil. Having children is is too expensive and would be such a hassle - I'd rather have more money and travel. My parents? Hardly speak to them. The purpose of life is to watch Netflix - have you seen the latest Marvel movie? Business is exploitation, you should worship the government. Life is so unfair." - atheists, likely
- bryanrasmussen 3y agoMaybe you shouldn't have started off misquoting what Nietzsche actually said if you didn't want push back on it?