Thursday, April 02, 2009
alright, i told myself i need to try and remember this today when i was thinking about it, so lets see what i have.
i once got a lot of shit for saying i was an optimist, but a realistic optimist. this was coming from a hardcore bitch of a pessimist, so it was really a no win situation. i tried to explain it then, with some success (she shut up at least and begrudgingly conceded a point, which was rare). it has been kicking around from time to time, but today i think i hit on the most concise description.
pure optimism has always kind of bugged me. a dogged adherence to optimism is almost a delusional form of pessimism. by just expecting everything to be good, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. this is something that most pessimists will use to reinforce their arguments.
that is where i come in. i don't expect everything to be good. i expect realistic things to happen. so, going through realistic options, you can discern a few natural trajectories. realistic optimism is all about aligning yourself with the positive trajectories and actively putting effort towards them, to ensure a positive outcome when compared to the mean. therefore statistically speaking, you can say that positive things happen more often. once you can do this, you can expect the outcome to be positive, at least work with that as the more likely outcome, and be right more often than not. it is like pouring into a beaker in chemistry, with a line at the halfway point. you won't be exact anyways, so you pour to the top of the line. the glass is now half full, instead of half empty. alright, that last line was cheesy, but you get the idea.
anyways, this is my philosophy. the optimism part isn't really the guiding factor, it is the end goal. the real focus is more that of pattern recognition and personal alignment, which when paired initially with unbiased analysis can give you a natural advantage to exploit. optimism is really just a mindset anyways, but delusion is something i frown upon. there are serious mental advantages to optimism, but like i said in its pure form, you lose a baseline rationality that can be crippling. that is why i spent the majority of my adolescence as a cynic and a pessimist, i was ultimately adhering to a rational mindset. but, if you can find a rational explanation that works in harmony with the mental benefits of optimistic thinking, while still keeping the flexibility to recognize the sometimes cold truth in situations, you are on to something. in my belief, true hard line optimists are afraid. it is the whole ostrich with its head in the sand thing. there is a balance to be struck first, and then you can trend in whatever direction you want, i suppose. if you want to be an emo little punk, or want to be considered a stone-cold tool of science, i can see how pessimism would your thing, but i want things to turn out in my advantage. call me crazy...
i once got a lot of shit for saying i was an optimist, but a realistic optimist. this was coming from a hardcore bitch of a pessimist, so it was really a no win situation. i tried to explain it then, with some success (she shut up at least and begrudgingly conceded a point, which was rare). it has been kicking around from time to time, but today i think i hit on the most concise description.
pure optimism has always kind of bugged me. a dogged adherence to optimism is almost a delusional form of pessimism. by just expecting everything to be good, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. this is something that most pessimists will use to reinforce their arguments.
that is where i come in. i don't expect everything to be good. i expect realistic things to happen. so, going through realistic options, you can discern a few natural trajectories. realistic optimism is all about aligning yourself with the positive trajectories and actively putting effort towards them, to ensure a positive outcome when compared to the mean. therefore statistically speaking, you can say that positive things happen more often. once you can do this, you can expect the outcome to be positive, at least work with that as the more likely outcome, and be right more often than not. it is like pouring into a beaker in chemistry, with a line at the halfway point. you won't be exact anyways, so you pour to the top of the line. the glass is now half full, instead of half empty. alright, that last line was cheesy, but you get the idea.
anyways, this is my philosophy. the optimism part isn't really the guiding factor, it is the end goal. the real focus is more that of pattern recognition and personal alignment, which when paired initially with unbiased analysis can give you a natural advantage to exploit. optimism is really just a mindset anyways, but delusion is something i frown upon. there are serious mental advantages to optimism, but like i said in its pure form, you lose a baseline rationality that can be crippling. that is why i spent the majority of my adolescence as a cynic and a pessimist, i was ultimately adhering to a rational mindset. but, if you can find a rational explanation that works in harmony with the mental benefits of optimistic thinking, while still keeping the flexibility to recognize the sometimes cold truth in situations, you are on to something. in my belief, true hard line optimists are afraid. it is the whole ostrich with its head in the sand thing. there is a balance to be struck first, and then you can trend in whatever direction you want, i suppose. if you want to be an emo little punk, or want to be considered a stone-cold tool of science, i can see how pessimism would your thing, but i want things to turn out in my advantage. call me crazy...
