Blind Pessimism — Precautionary Principle — Rational Optimism — Blind Optimism
The Genesys
We live in a non-linear Complex world. Many inputs/agents interact in such a manner that the result is often greater than the sum of its parts. In simpler words, various events/inventions/ideas coalesce into new possibilities, new opportunities which could not be predicted by deductions, a priori. A set of new agents/events/inventions/ideas set a path for new agents/events/inventions/ideas, but the nature of such new sets cannot be predicted. Thus, it is very difficult to foresee what lies ahead and how the future plays out.
This inability to foresee the ‘adjacent possible’, leave alone the ‘distant possible’, creates several belief systems forming a spectrum, of sorts. Different people can encounter similar circumstances and yet behave differently depending on their belief systems.
Let’s have a look at such belief systems individually, evaluate them and see if we can find a sweet spot where most prosperity lies.
Blind Pessimism deals with looking at all advancement/innovation/experimentation/trial/enterprise/endeavour with scepticism. It fears the threats that new ventures can potentially bring and doubts our ability to deal with those threats fearing that such threats can ruin us. It is blind because, it refuses to see & acknowledge:
1) the opportunities that come with such endeavoures.
2) our ability to anticipate that threat and deal with it.
BP is similar to the “Never Step out of the Cave” syndrome, that I have explained in this Tweet..
… and in this article:
A quick detour…
I remember the strikes that several employee associations held when computers were introduced in India, saying that Computers would take away their jobs. I wish to accost them now and show them that most of the jobs today are built around computers!
Computers didn’t take away their jobs..they only changed their nature. A job typically involves wielding tools – a sickle for a farmer, a sword for a soldier, a car for a driver, a typewriter for a writer, a computer for a modern worker. Technology changes tools, thereby the nature of jobs. It was blindly pessimistic then to assume that:
1) Computers would take away their jobs
2) We won’t be able to do anything more creative with the new tools, computers in this case.
Blind Pessimism sounds very intelligent. For one, it warns us of potential danger, and such warnings stand up and get noticed. Two, before every calamity, there’s some pessimist who warns of the impending threat, and in hindsight sounds prophetic.
“You don’t get blamed for being too pessimistic, but you do get attention. It’s like climate science. Modelled forecasts of a future that is scary is much more likely to get you on television.”
– Matt Riddley
The Precautionary Principle is a better version of Pessimism. It prescribes caution only in the matters where downside can be ruinous or an irrecoverable situation. It doesn’t take a blind pessimistic view of all changes, but only the ones which give empirical evidence of posing existential threat.
If there is a possibility of ruin, cost benefit analyses are no longer possible.
– Nassim Taleb
A Pessimistic Caveman might never step out of his cave and die of hunger, but one who believes in Precautionary Principle, would step out to hunt or gather food, only to race back into the cave, if there is a signal of a lurking predator – a warning sound from birds or monkeys on trees, a smell or if it the Sun was setting.
A Rational Optimist is one step ahead. He believes
- that all problems are soluble if he puts his mind to it
- in proposing hypotheses based on existing knowledge and testing them out through Trial & Error.
- In growing out of impending troubles
An optimistic caveman faces the threat of lurking predators by designing weapons out of metals and using fire to scare the predators away, thereby enabling them to spend more & more time in open areas.
Here’s the thing:
Morgan Housel, in his book, “The Psychology of Money” comments on the seduction of pessimism – “Optimism sounds like a sales pitch. Pessimism sounds like someone is trying to help you.”
It’s the pessimists who sound most intelligent, since they prophesy in no uncertain terms – “THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END!” kind. But, it’s the optimist that drive the civilisation forwards..and they do so through offering imaginative possibilistic theories trying them out and critiquing them and falsifying them and staying with the ones that work…in the process looking stupid most of the time.
Sir Karl Popper asserted that Optimism is much beyond being just beneficial; it is rather our duty to be optimistic. His quote:
“The possibilities that lie in the future are infinite. When I say ‘It is our duty to remain optimists,’ this includes not only the openness of the future but also that which all of us contribute to it by everything we do: we are all responsible for what the future holds in store. Thus it is our duty, not to prophesy evil but, rather, to fight for a better world.”
– Sir Karl Popper, The Myth of The Framework
Here’s another favourite quote of mine, from David Deutsch. Here, David claims that the future repercussions (be they good or bad) of human actions are not predictable. So, it is impossible to predict in advance, which action is likely to be beneficial, and which one is likely to be harmful (refer back to “The Genesys” part of this article). The human ingenuity is one step ahead of the harm-mongers and that’s what keep civilisations progressing. He made this statement while debating Optimism & Pessimism with Martin Rees:
“Some of the dangers that we currently foresee are themselves side effects of knowledge creation. But trying to slow that down won’t help, because what do you slow down? In 1900, no one could possibly have foreseen that research in pure Physics in the esoteric properties of the element Uranium would within 50 years become the centerpiece of everyone’s existential fear; or that another half a century later the centerpiece will be carbon dioxide. In our future too, the greatest danger will inevitably be unforeseen. And the only type of knowledge that is capable of dealing with those is fundamental knowledge of universal regularities in nature. Any area of fundamental research could suddenly become essential to our survival, traditions of criticism and error correction.
– David Deutsch, RSA Event: Optimism, Knowledge and the Future of Enlightenment, 2016
You can watch the full conversation between David Deutsch and Martin Rees here…
Ok, back to the belief systems!
The last belief system in the spectrum is of Blind Optimism. As you can guess, it is the exact antithesis of Blind Pessimism. It is a total disregard for potential existential risks. Such behaviour looks heroic in the short term, and in exceptions, but in the long term and as a rule, the behaviour is fatal. As a subset of Blind Optimism, exists “Hubris Syndrome”. This occurs when consistent success through skill or luck, gets into your head. You start believing that you’re invincible…that you have a golden arm and whatever you touch will convert to Gold. The cemetery in financial markets is full of people who suffered from such an extreme form of Blind Optimism.
The Polar Nature of these Belief Systems – Schismogenesis
It is a very fundamental feature of any belief system. They have a tendency to polarise towards two extremes. In this case also, the belief system does not prefer to stay in this spectrum…rather it tends to polarise. This polarisation in the belief systems is called Schismogenesis. Precautionary Principle tends to polarise towards bilnd pessimism while rational optimism tends to polarise towards blind optimism. Precautionary principles start bridging the gap between weakly understood causes of potentially either grave or irreversible damages and potentially costly policy interventions by adopting precautionary measures when scientific evidence about a hazard is uncertain and the stakes are seemingly high. These principles provide a moral justification for acting even though causation is unclear. Similarly, often optimists slip away into blind optimism when they start falling back on Bayesian thinking – we have wriggled out of our problems in the past, and we can do so in future. Thus the society tends to develop a schism between two polarised belief systems – blind pessimism & blind optimism.
The Sweet Spot
No prizes for guessing where the sweet spot lies. It’s in the region between the Precautionary Principle and Rational Optimism (primarily at Rational Optimism, with an undercurrent of Precautionary Principle). The sweet spot deals in ‘Optionality’, which is an intent to:
- explore every possibility, view all changes opportunistically, with the belief that all problems are solvable
- drive home advantage to the extent possible, with what works, while most of the the explorations fail
- Nip the harm in the bud from those failures, which can have ruinous consequences.
This forms my core philosophy, that runs across all my personal endeavours. You can explore this more in one of my first articles:
To conclude, Here’s the thing:
Life’s not about hiding in a cave for the fear of something unpleasant outside, for the unpleasant is inevitable. Life’s rather about stepping out and exploring the world of opportunities, growing mankind’s knowledge and taking it to such heights that the problems of the cave look diminutive.