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I see pessimism and optimism as default orientations. The deeply pessimistic person sees an opportunity and only sees the risks and chance of failure. They pass

I see pessimism and optimism as default orientations. The deeply pessimistic person sees an opportunity and only sees the risks and chance of failure. They pass on a lot of opportunities, but at least they don’t fail often, by some definitions of failure. The blindly optimistic person ignores the risks and only sees upside. They see an impossible situation that isn’t supposed to be solvable and they solve it anyway. This also gets them in trouble at times when the risks turn out to be real. Pessimism is no more or less rational than optimism. Optimism can be rational or irrational depending on the situation. But pessimistic thinking tends to lead to miscalculations because it’s often rooted in false beliefs about what is possible, treats failure as something to avoid, and depending on the situation, keeps the person stuck where they are. > For me, behaving "rationally" means trying to see the reality as it is, being able to weigh all the options, probabilities of outcomes, assigning (subjective) value to them and choosing from those Pessimism or optimism tend to be layered on top of this kind of calculus. If you’re a pessimistic person, you’re more likely to believe the probabilities of some outcomes are low, and make decisions based on that. If you’re an optimistic person, you’re more likely to try more things, because you’ve eliminated less things. I think a truly rational examination of a situation strikes a balance between these orientations. It takes risks seriously, but also takes chances on things that might not work. For all of the rationality that we think we have when making these evaluations, it’s often built on a base of our personal beliefs, which are deeply colored by our tendency towards pessimism or optimism, which tends to get baked into us based on life experiences. The book “Learned Optimism” explores the kinds of outcomes that tend to be associated with pessimism vs. optimism and is a really useful read. I was personally extremely pessimistic, and didn’t even realize how much this was changing my daily decisions until I became more self aware while reading that book. I was born into pessimism, and I was I was using that pessimism as a tool in my professional career where it served me pretty well. Imagining how things can go wrong leads to much better code. But it was wreaking havoc on my personal life and relationships and my mental health. Making rational, risk based decisions is possible without this pessimistic default, and doesn’t have to come with the added downside of seeing the world darkly.

mewpmewp2 3y ago
I think the best balance is somewhere like 90% / 10%. So you spend 90% of the time finding and capturing opportunities, while 10% you spend on risks for sanity checking. Is 90/10 an optimist? I was diagnosed with depression 15 years ago and at the time also subscribed to this pessimist = realist idea or in some ways intelligence. And there's a lot of validation on the internet for that idea "intelligent people are more depressed and pessimistic", so as a teenager I thought that this is the right way to be because I wanted to think that I am intelligent. I think I'm very glad that I managed to escape this sort of mindset. To provide most value I believe I should look for opportunities and the ways they play out positively, while spending a limited amount of time to make sure I'm not wasting my time.
- haswell 3y ago
  I also started digging into this as part of a depression journey. One of the things that persistent pessimism also leads to is the concept of “learned helplessness”, which could be described as a kind of pathological pessimism. A state where on top of thinking certain outcomes aren’t possible, the impulse to try moving out of our current situation never even occurs. The equivalent of drowning in 2 feet of water, because it never occurred to the person to stand up. I’m also really grateful to have started moving away from this mindset. I wouldn’t say I’ve fully escaped, but I’m on the path. That book also provides some helpful reframing exercises that when applied consistently, start to re-wire default responses to situations. This has been transformative in my life. I think that the 90/10 split is an interesting way to look at this, and I tend to agree. I think the degree of optimism applied probably needs to scale inversely to the calculable risk (e.g. building an airplane necessitates lower risk tolerance). But in most situations, it seems like a much better default. And ideally this is always contextual to the situation at hand.
The_Colonel 3y ago
> If you’re a pessimistic person, you’re more likely to believe the probabilities of some outcomes are low, and make decisions based on that. > If you’re an optimistic person, you’re more likely to try more things, because you’ve eliminated less things. Isn't that a manifestation of risk aversion? If you're risk-averse, you tend to play it safe. If you're not, you're eager to try risky things for the possibility of big rewards. Both can lead to preferred outcomes, it just depends on what is the preferred outcome. For some, a middle class family life is an utter failure, for some a dream. Pessimism might be a more successful strategy for those wanting that middle class lifestyle.

mewpmewp2 3y ago

I think the best balance is somewhere like 90% / 10%. So you spend 90% of the time finding and capturing opportunities, while 10% you spend on risks for sanity checking. Is 90/10 an optimist? I was diagnosed with depression 15 years ago and at the time also subscribed to this pessimist = realist idea or in some ways intelligence. And there's a lot of validation on the internet for that idea "intelligent people are more depressed and pessimistic", so as a teenager I thought that this is the right way to be because I wanted to think that I am intelligent. I think I'm very glad that I managed to escape this sort of mindset. To provide most value I believe I should look for opportunities and the ways they play out positively, while spending a limited amount of time to make sure I'm not wasting my time.

haswell 3y ago
I also started digging into this as part of a depression journey. One of the things that persistent pessimism also leads to is the concept of “learned helplessness”, which could be described as a kind of pathological pessimism. A state where on top of thinking certain outcomes aren’t possible, the impulse to try moving out of our current situation never even occurs. The equivalent of drowning in 2 feet of water, because it never occurred to the person to stand up. I’m also really grateful to have started moving away from this mindset. I wouldn’t say I’ve fully escaped, but I’m on the path. That book also provides some helpful reframing exercises that when applied consistently, start to re-wire default responses to situations. This has been transformative in my life. I think that the 90/10 split is an interesting way to look at this, and I tend to agree. I think the degree of optimism applied probably needs to scale inversely to the calculable risk (e.g. building an airplane necessitates lower risk tolerance). But in most situations, it seems like a much better default. And ideally this is always contextual to the situation at hand.

The_Colonel 3y ago

> If you’re a pessimistic person, you’re more likely to believe the probabilities of some outcomes are low, and make decisions based on that. > If you’re an optimistic person, you’re more likely to try more things, because you’ve eliminated less things. Isn't that a manifestation of risk aversion? If you're risk-averse, you tend to play it safe. If you're not, you're eager to try risky things for the possibility of big rewards. Both can lead to preferred outcomes, it just depends on what is the preferred outcome. For some, a middle class family life is an utter failure, for some a dream. Pessimism might be a more successful strategy for those wanting that middle class lifestyle.