Optimism

Like every other destruction of optimism, whether in a whole civilisation or in a single individual, these must have been unspeakable catastrophes for those who had dared to expect progress. But we should feel more than sympathy for those people. We should take it personally. For if any of those earlier experiments in optimism had succeeded, our species would be exploring the stars by now, and you and I would be immortal. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

Optimism is, in the first instance, a way of explaining failure, not prophesying success. It says that there is no fundamental barrier, no law of nature or supernatural decree, preventing progress. Whenever — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

Although, through the vagaries of international politics, Athens became independent and democratic again soon afterwards, and continued for several generations to produce art, literature and philosophy, it was never again host to rapid, open-ended progress. It became unexceptional. Why? I guess that its optimism was gone. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

An optimistic civilization is open and not afraid to innovate, and is based on traditions of criticism. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

All evils are caused by insufficient knowledge. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform The World

Thus, although the existence of progress in the biosphere is what the theory of evolution is there to explain, not all evolution constitutes progress, and no (genetic) evolution optimizes progress. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform The World

Consider also the revolutionary utopians, who typically achieve only destruction and stagnation. Though they are blind optimists, what defines them as utopians is their pessimism that their supposed utopia, or their violent proposals for achieving and entrenching it, could ever be improved upon. Additionally, — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

One of the consequences of optimism is that one expects to learn from failure – one’s own and others’. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform The World

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. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

Optimism (in the sense that I have advocated) is the theory that all failures – all evils – are due to insufficient knowledge. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

I have argued that the laws of nature cannot possibly impose any bound on progress: by the argument of Chapters 1 and 3, denying this is tantamount to invoking the supernatural. In other words, progress is sustainable, indefinitely. But only by people who engage in a particular kind of thinking and behaviour – the problem-solving and problem-creating kind characteristic of the Enlightenment. And that requires the optimism of a dynamic society. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World