# Principle of Optimism ## The Beginning of Infinity Ideas > “No precautions, and no precautionary principle, can avoid problems that we do not yet foresee. We need a stance of problem-fixing, not just problem-avoidance.” ### Why can’t we conceive of changes? > In the meantime we have no option but to see the world through our best existing explanations - which include our existing misconceptions. And that biases our intuition. Among other things, it inhibits us from conceiving of significant changes. ##### Blind Optimism and Pessimism > Blind optimism is a stance towards the future. It consists of proceeding as if one knows that the bad outcomes will not happen. The opposite approach, blind pessimism, often called the precautionary principle, seeks to ward off disaster by avoiding everything not known to be safe. No one seriously advocates either of these two as a universal policy, but their assumptions and their arguments are common, and often creep into people’s planning. > > But blind pessimism is a blindly optimistic doctrine. It assumes that unforeseen disastrous consequences cannot follow from existing knowledge too (or, rather, from existing ignorance). Not all shipwrecks happen to record-breaking ships. Not all unforeseen physical disasters need be caused by physics experiments or new technology. But one thing we do know is that protecting ourselves from any disaster, foreseeable or not, or recovering from it once it has happened, requires knowledge; and knowledge has to be created. The harm that can flow from any innovation that does not destroy the growth of knowledge is always finite; the good can be unlimited. There would be no existing ship designs to stick with, nor records to stay within, if no one had ever violated the precautionary principle. > > Indeed, of all civilizations in history, the overwhelming majority have been destroyed, some intentionally, some as a result of plague or natural disaster. Virtually all of them could have avoided the catastrophes that destroyed them if only they had possessed a little additional knowledge, such as improved agricultural or military technology, better hygiene, or better political or economic institutions. Very few, if any, could have been saved by greater caution about innovation. In fact most had enthusiastically implemented the precautionary principle. > > More generally, what they lacked was a certain combination of abstract knowledge and knowledge embodied in technological artefacts, namely sufficient wealth. Let me define that in a non-parochial way as the repertoire of physical transformations that they would be capable of causing. On the surface, Blind Pessimism may come off as a “humble” theory, conveying that “we simply don’t know what new technology may bring. We must be humble in our ability to understand the world and wary of second and third order effects. Hence, we should reduce our innovations.” But that is a facade. It is actually *very similar to blind optimism* in that they both purport to know *unknowable* things about the future of knowledge. > They all thought they were making sober predictions based on the best knowledge available to them. In reality they were all allowing themselves to be misled by the ineluctable fact of the human condition that we do not yet know what we have not yet discovered. ##### Bias towards Pessimism > No good explanation can predict the outcome, or the probability of an outcome, of a phenomenon whose course is going to be significantly affected by the creation of new knowledge. This is a fundamental limitation on the reach of scientific prediction, and, when planning for the future, it is vital to come to terms with it. Following Popper, I shall use the term prediction for conclusions about future events that follow from good explanations, and prophecy for anything that purports to know what is not yet knowable. Trying to know the unknowable leads inexorably to error and self-deception. Among other things, it creates a bias towards pessimism. Now, why does that bias exist? > “But Michelson and Morley did not realize that that was what they had observed. Observations are theory-laden. Given an experimental oddity, we have no way of predicting whether it will eventually be explained merely by correcting a minor parochial assumption or by revolutionizing entire sciences. We can know that only after we have seen it in the light of a new explanation. In the meantime we have no option but to see the world through our best existing explanations – which include our existing misconceptions. And that *biases our intuition*. Among other things, it inhibits us from conceiving of significant changes.” ##### Problems are Inevitable >”Neither Malthus nor Rees intended to prophesy. They were warning that unless we solve certain problems in time, we are doomed. But that has always been true, and always will be. Problems are inevitable.” > > “We have such a chance because we are able to solve problems. Problems are inevitable. We shall always be faced with the problem of how to plan for an unknowable future. We shall never be able to afford to sit back and hope for the best.” ##### Lack of Knowledge kills > “In a parochial sense, the weather killed them; but the deeper explanation is lack of knowledge.” > > “And the next such object to strike us is already out there at this moment, speeding towards us with nothing to stop it except human knowledge.” ##### The Principle of Optimism > **The Principle of Optimism** > All evils are caused by insufficient knowledge. ##### Inconceivable Possibilities > He knows that, if progress is to be made, some of the opportunities and some of the discoveries will be inconceivable in advance. Progress cannot take place at all unless someone is open to, and prepares for, those inconceivable possibilities. ##### Almost all predictions require that you take into consideration *human knowledge*! > “So the explanations of *almost all physically possible phenomena* are about how **knowledge** would be applied to bring this phenomena about.” ##### People are the most significant entities in the cosmic scheme of things > Both the Principle of Mediocrity and the Spaceship Earth idea are, contrary to their motivations, irreparably parochial and mistaken. From the least parochial perspectives available to us, people are the most significant entities in the cosmic scheme of things. They are not ‘supported’ by their environments, but support themselves by creating knowledge. ## Brett Hall Article ##### Don’t do things that just make you “feel good” > Or we will try _non-scientific_ things that simply make us feel good without actually achieving anything. ##### We must find the areas of deepest ignorance > Again - this is why we need pure science. To uncover those problems before we fail to discover the means of averting them. The problems that lurk in our complete ignorance are the ones we need to be most urgently searching for. ##### Created problem size scales with size of problem solved > The size of the problem you create scales with the size of the problem you solve. ## Deutsch ted talk * Spaceship earth → outside of the universe things are incredibly hostile (but this is not true!) * **Untypical** * “Human beings are chemical scum on the surface of a typical planet, orbiting a typical star” * **Typical** * But they are both *completely false*! * This chemical scum has universality, it is able to embody the causal and mathematical structure of everything else * * > If we want to be the exception to the majority of species and civilizations that have gone extinct, then logically we need make use of the one feature that distinguishes our civilization from all the others; namely our special relationship with the laws of physics. Our ability to create explanations and new knowledge. - Deutsch chapter - Epstein notes (we tend to mainly hear from pessimists) - Add notes from notion! (We need to move fast to beat our opposition!) --- Date: 20220727 Links to: Tags: #review #todo References: * The Beginning of Infinity, Chapter: Optimism, David Deutsch * [Problem   denial versus  problem  solving - BRETT HALL](https://www.bretthall.org/blog/optimism-and-prophesy) * [David Deutsch: Chemical scum that dream of distant quasars | TED Talk](https://www.ted.com/talks/david_deutsch_chemical_scum_that_dream_of_distant_quasars)