Optimism is essentially the religion of Capitalism. This is because Capitalism is perpetually in debt to tomorrow. Every start up being discussed on HN, every fund people pump their 401k into, every new oil well being dug up, all of these require believing in the future.
The problem is that everything we have today depends on everything being better tomorrow. Optimism isn't just a nice feeling it's a core ideology that is necessary to keep the whole machine moving forward. If people en masse started to believe tomorrow might not be better than today, and that in the day after tomorrow might be even worse... the faith in our entire system starts to collapse.
People here talk about pessimism as if it's some rampant belief in society and the few optimists there are fighting against the hordes of the non-believer. But true pessimism remains a radical belief, outside of internet forums I have only occasionally met anyone who exhibits even the most mild form of pessimism. Even in academia the core works of most German philosophical pessimists remain untranslated!
Optimists also believe that someone questioning optimism it itself dangerous (which should be the first clue that something is not quite right with the dominant optimist world view). Whereas in practice it is optimism that allows us to perpetuate horrors on every scale without question because "tomorrow it will be better!". Ecological disaster is permitted because we will solve this tomorrow and everything will be okay. Sweatshops, child labor and modern slavery are all permitted because this is just a step in peoples inevitable rises to a better life. The murder of countless civilians around the globe are all justifiable because tomorrow we will have a better world economy, and democracy will spread through the region, making everything better.
Under optimism the shock from any horror is neutered and any atrocity can be trivially excused because the future is bright and we are heading in the right direction. We continue to burn every more fossil fuels because we are going to be fine, we'll figure it out, no reason for despair.
As the final insult to injury, questioning that future becomes heresy and so you cannot even voice your anguish as the world around you starts to collapse.
I know that we're not supposed to talk about the voting on comments [1] but I request that we make an exception here and pay attention to something interesting that is happening in this discussion. baron_harkonnen (fitting name for this comment, BTW) explicitly says "People here talk about pessimism as if it's some rampant belief in society and the few optimists there are fighting against the hordes of the non-believer" and "Optimists also believe that someone questioning optimism it itself dangerous". It's therefore interesting to me that baron_harkonnen's comment is getting downvoted literally out of the optimist majority's sight. That seems to go against HN's culture of welcoming and respecting debate so long as the viewpoint seems to be genuine, non-inflammatory, etc. baron_harkonnen is expressing some bleak ideas (as is fitting for a pessimist) but it appears to be a genuine, non-inflammatory perspective.
[1] From HN guidelines: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
> C’est l’histoire d’un homme qui tombe d’un immeuble de 50 étages. Le mec, au fur et à mesure de sa chute, il se répète sans cesse pour se rassurer : « Jusqu’ici tout va bien... Jusqu’ici tout va bien... Jusqu’ici tout va bien. » Mais l’important, c’est pas la chute. C’est l’atterrissage.
> This is a story of a man who is falling from a 50 story building. He, gradually during his fall, continuously reassures himself “so far, so good... so far so good... so far so good.” But what’s important is not the fall. It’s the landing.
I guess it depends on the audience. Pretty sure that if the parent post were a Twitter thread it would get 32,000 RTs, as everyone seems to be a doomer on that site. Glad to know that HN is mostly in the optimist camp. As argued in the article, building things requires optimism.
> outside of internet forums I have only occasionally met anyone who exhibits even the most mild form of pessimism.
> As the final insult to injury, questioning that future becomes heresy and so you cannot even voice your anguish as the world around you starts to collapse.
I think these are related. It's very socially difficult to express serious pessimism about the world - I don't think the future is bright, I think it is miserable and you either shouldn't have kids or you should be preparing them for a very different life. I can't really bring myself to say that to all my friends who have or are having children.
The problem is that everything we have today depends on everything being better tomorrow. Optimism isn't just a nice feeling it's a core ideology that is necessary to keep the whole machine moving forward. If people en masse started to believe tomorrow might not be better than today, and that in the day after tomorrow might be even worse... the faith in our entire system starts to collapse.
People here talk about pessimism as if it's some rampant belief in society and the few optimists there are fighting against the hordes of the non-believer. But true pessimism remains a radical belief, outside of internet forums I have only occasionally met anyone who exhibits even the most mild form of pessimism. Even in academia the core works of most German philosophical pessimists remain untranslated!
Optimists also believe that someone questioning optimism it itself dangerous (which should be the first clue that something is not quite right with the dominant optimist world view). Whereas in practice it is optimism that allows us to perpetuate horrors on every scale without question because "tomorrow it will be better!". Ecological disaster is permitted because we will solve this tomorrow and everything will be okay. Sweatshops, child labor and modern slavery are all permitted because this is just a step in peoples inevitable rises to a better life. The murder of countless civilians around the globe are all justifiable because tomorrow we will have a better world economy, and democracy will spread through the region, making everything better.
Under optimism the shock from any horror is neutered and any atrocity can be trivially excused because the future is bright and we are heading in the right direction. We continue to burn every more fossil fuels because we are going to be fine, we'll figure it out, no reason for despair.
As the final insult to injury, questioning that future becomes heresy and so you cannot even voice your anguish as the world around you starts to collapse.