Three different things people mean by "I'm an optimist" 1) "I try to perceive the world accurately, and my honest assessment is that things are great" 2) "I try to perceive the world positively, regardless of whether that's accurate" 3) "I am cheerful and like solving problems"
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(Which is one of the main dividing lines I observe between people who self-identify as "optimists" and people who don't)
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Here is a clipping from Ch9 titled Optimism from
@DavidDeutschOxf's The Beginning of Infinity.https://twitter.com/DoqxaScott/status/1074438489624608768 …
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I interpret him as saying tech progress (or more broadly knowledge creation) _can_ continue (i.e. no known limits have been reached) and that new knowledge will _certainly_ produce bad outcomes (new problems) but that those are solvable with more knowledge. Recurse indefinitely
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I think what he'd call "pessimism" is a belief that people fortunate enough to have a fair amount of liberty will somehow be incapable of creating novel solutions to current problems
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Yes, he kinda assumes there will be bad outcomes, or what he might call 'new problems to solve'. This is no reason to stop trying to make things better- that is the worst of all worlds
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What counts as “great outcomes”? Outcomes could be objectively improving but subjectively seem worse, as the disparity between median and top outcomes increases.
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