Is Optimism Rational?

Josh Landy
Should you always look on the bright side?

Ray Briggs
Or does it make more sense to think about how things could go wrong?

Josh Landy
Can believing in a better future helped make it happen?

Ray Briggs
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
….except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy.

Ray Briggs
And I’m Ray Briggs. We’re coming to you via the studios of KALW San Francisco Bay Area.

Josh Landy
…continuing conversations that begin at philosophers corner on the Stanford campus, where Ray teaches philosophy, and I direct the Philosophy and Literature Initiative.

Ray Briggs
Today we’re asking: Is optimism rational?

Josh Landy
Optimism? Rational? Have you been reading the news lately, Ray? I mean, what on earth could justify the belief that everything is gonna turn out fine?

Ray Briggs
Come on, even if you don’t think everything is going to turn out fine, you could still have reasons to be optimistic about some things

Josh Landy
Like climate change? Women’s rights? The future of democracy?

Ray Briggs
Oh maybe you start a little smaller. Aren’t you optimistic that next year, you’re still going to have a home and teach some interesting classes and enjoy the company of your good friends?

Josh Landy
Okay, but that’s not optimism—that’s just common sense. Like, I have good evidence that all that’s gonna happen next year, so I don’t need to be optimistic about it.

Ray Briggs
Well, just because you have evidence doesn’t mean that you’re not being optimistic. Like, okay sure, if you’re optimistic that you’re going to win the lottery next week—well, that would be irrational. But not all optimism is like that.

Josh Landy
Alright, but but sometimes the evidence you’ve got isn’t quite so clear. Let’s say you take up a whole new career—you want to go into acting, right? You’re going to be the next big star. You’ve acted in some plays at college. You’ve done all right. But you’ve never tried to be a professional actor. So does it make sense to believe you’re definitely going to succeed?

Ray Briggs
Well yeah, you’re never going to succeed if you don’t believe in yourself. So of course it makes sense to be optimistic.

Josh Landy
So you’re saying I could be the next Daniel Craig?

Ray Briggs
Well, I wouldn’t quit your day job just yet.

Josh Landy
Well, that’s exactly my point, Ray—I shouldn’t quit my day job to chase some Hollywood dream. I mean, that’s gonna come at a serious cost. And frankly, my chances of success are pretty slim. So wouldn’t it be smarter for me to be pessimistic about my prospects?

Ray Briggs
Well okay, becoming a famous Hollywood actor, that was probably a bad example, because you’re unlikely to succeed, honestly, no matter what you do. And there are some examples that are better than the other direction too—like, where your chances of success are so good that it’s hard to mess them up no matter what you do. But what is really interesting is those cases in the middle, where you stand a chance of success, but only if you believe in yourself. Like for instance, well like, okay, instead of starring in the next Bond movie, what about landing the lead role in community theater? That’s still a challenge, but you can probably do it, if you have the confidence to really try.

Josh Landy
Okay, that makes sense, Ray, but I feel like it’s still going to take a bunch of work and time. And, you know, if I do all that, and I still don’t get the role, I’m going to be pretty demoralized. I mean look, if I try to be a Hollywood star and I fail, I can accept that. But what if I can’t even get on the stage at the Christmas Pageant? I feel like there has to be a way for me to get more information so I can make a smarter choice.

Ray Briggs
Well, you can get lots of general information about theater by reading and stuff. But that’s not going to tell you whether you have acting chops. The only way to learn that is by trying, and if you’re always pessimistic, you won’t even try.

Josh Landy
That’s true. But if you don’t try, you won’t be disappointed. I mean, I’ve got a lot of sympathy with Samuel Beckett—his characters are constantly talking about how cruel hope is. They talk about being doomed to hope.

Ray Briggs
Okay, maybe you don’t want to live your life being doomed to hope. And that’s fine for you. But what about all those big problems you mentioned earlier, like climate change and women’s rights and the future of democracy? If nobody believes that it’s possible to make a difference, then nobody will try and then we’ll really be doomed.

Josh Landy
I don’t know, Ray, I feel like when it comes to climate change, optimism isn’t the solution—it’s part of the problem. If people think climate change won’t affect them, or people think that someone else will take care of it, or people will think that, you know, some scientist is just going to come up with some technological solution tomorrow… And so they don’t do bother to do anything. I think they shouldn’t be taking such a rosy view of the future.

Ray Briggs
Well that’s not optimism, Josh, that’s complacency. There’s a big difference.

Josh Landy
Is there, though? I bet our guest will have something to say about that. It’s Jennifer Morton, author of “Resisting Pessimism Traps: The Limits of Believing in Oneself.”

Ray Briggs
Well for what it’s worth, most teenagers are still optimistic about their futures, even if they don’t view the current state of the world very favorably. That’s according to a national Washington Post Ipsos poll from 2021.

Josh Landy
So we sent our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Holly J. McDeded, to hear what some Bay Area teens had to say about the future. She files this report.

Summer Trainees
Mahna, mahna…

Elise Muchowski
My name is Elise Muchowski. I’m 17, and I’m an incoming senior at Lowell High School. I’m personally not optimistic for the future. Just… Climate change… You know, Capitalism… Blah, blah, blah—all those horrible things. But in a way, that means life to me is pretty… I don’t want to say meaningless—of course there’s things that bring me joy in life. But truly, I don’t really believe that there is a like destined meaning in life, which kind of makes it like, okay, I can do whatever I want now, even though… If the climate keeps on going like this, we’re going to die in 30 years. So… I think it’s just being realistic but still having fun with it.

George Reitan
My name is George Reitan. I’m 15. I go to Raoul Wallenberg Traditional High School. I think a lot of young people have hope and have optimism, but it’s kind of unwarranted seeing as the people who put us in this place where we probably will live to see some of our cities underwater. If we don’t do something really, really fast, something real quick and if you don’t get everyone on board with it, which is, you know, not really happening I don’t think that we’ll have the opportunity to be optimistic, because everything is going down the shitter.

Elizabeth Truong
My name is Elizabeth Truong. I am 18 years old, a rising first year at UCSB. I feel pretty mixed about optimism towards the future. It really depends on what kind of resources we’re given to pursue whatever future we want. Personally for me, for my future, I’m already going towards what I want to study in. But seeing how there is some discrimination in the world, there is lack of resources for people who have mental health issues. It’s making me think of what about other people who don’t have what I have. That’s why I’m kind of mixed, because I have what I need, but what about my friends? And that’s why I’m kind of mixed about it.

Cassidy Kanner Gomes
My name is Cassidy Kanner Gomes. I’m a rising senior at Oakland School for the Arts. I’m 17. I am in some ways mixed, but I have a certain level of optimism because I think that one of the worst things that we could do, especially in terms of climate change right now, is give up because that’s the only way we might be able to like—It’s like if I’m optimistic about it I have a belief that we could do something—we could learn to live with this, we can reverse climate change as much as we can. And like we’re the ones who are going to be the voters and the people who are pushing the world in the direction that we want it to go in. And I think if we, like—I just think it’s a really dangerous idea to give up because that means we’re never gonna get anything done.

Summer Trainees
Mahna, mahna…

Holly McDede
For Philosophy Talk, I’m HollyJ. McDede.

Josh Landy
Thanks for that fascinating report, Holly. I’m Josh Landy with me as my Stanford colleague Ray Briggs and today we’re asking is optimism rational.

Ray Briggs
We’re joined now by Jennifer Morton, Professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. She’s the author of a book titled “Moving Up without Losing Your Way”, as well as a paper titled “Resisting Pessimism Traps: The Limits of Believing in Oneself.” Jen, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Jennifer Morton
Hi, I’m really excited to be here. I was at Stanford when Philosophy Talk started, so it’s great to be on the show. It’s an honor.

Josh Landy
We are honored to have you Jen. And I’m curious, how did you first get interested in this subject in philosophical questions about optimism?

Jennifer Morton
So I’m both an immigrant—I grew up in Peru—and the first person in my family to go to college. And I came to the States to go to college and decided to pursue philosophy, which was almost like, Josh, you trying to be Daniel Craig. It seemed like a wild, wild thing to try to pursue. And it might seem like I was optimistic, and that’s how I ended up you know, a tenured professor. But in fact, I was very doubtful the whole time that anything would come of it. I tend to always anticipate the worst outcome and worry about that instead of focusing on the positive, but somehow I made it through. But I’ve always been fascinated by this question about whether what we believe about the future actually has an effect on how likely we are to succeed. And the question of when it’s rational to really believe that the future will be, you know, better. And when it’s rational to believe that it’s not so good.

Ray Briggs
Jen, you’re pointing out that like a lot of our endeavors are kind of really hard. And Josh was pointing out earlier that there’s a lot of bad stuff going on in the world. So is it ever rational to be optimistic? Or is it more rational to be a pessimist?

Jennifer Morton
I think it depends on the evidence. So I think that in some cases, the evidence doesn’t quite tell us clearly what to think about the future, right? So Josh had a great example about community theater. Maybe you are, you know, thinking about starting in the community theater play. Will you get the lead, maybe you have some evidence that goes in favor of that, some evidence that goes against that. And there maybe it makes sense to be optimistic. But there are some cases like climate change—if I just believe climate change has been solved, it’s not going to make it true. The evidence is pretty clear that that’s not the case. So I think the question is actually quite complicated if when it’s rational.

Ray Briggs
So it sounds like cases where the evidence isn’t really in or isn’t really decisive are the ones where I have a choice between optimism and pessimism. Is that right?

Jennifer Morton
Yes—to say you have a choice maybe isn’t quite right. But I think what I would say is that being optimistic and pessimistic, or even neutral, are all rational options, because the evidence in a way doesn’t tell us either way.

Josh Landy
That’s very interesting. But I it’s makes me wonder how on earth do you decide which it is? There’s wonderful serenity prayer, right, that sort of comes from the Stoic tradition—you know, “Grant me the serenity to accept what can’t be changed, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” How do you get that wisdom? Where can I buy that?

Jennifer Morton
Well, to some extent, this is of a feature of people’s character. So it’s not that it’s totally out of our control. But psychologists have looked at optimism as a personality trait, right. And some people seem to be disposed to be optimistic, and some people not. But there are things that you think that you can do. So I, as I was saying, tend to be pessimistic and so I dwell on the bad evidence, you know, I just keep thinking about it. Whereas I’m married to an optimist. And the nice thing about being married to an optimist is that he will point out that there is all this other evidence that might seem to point to a better future. And so I think sometimes it can be just getting out of the rut of what evidence you’re focused on. Pessimists, I think, tend to be really focus on the negative evidence and dwell on it. Whereas optimists tend to focus on evidence of, you know, a brighter tomorrow and focus on that instead.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about optimism and rationality with Jennifer Morton from the University of Pennsylvania.

Ray Briggs
Are you an optimist or a pessimist? How do you motivate yourself when the future is uncertain? And what does it make sense to hope for?

Josh Landy
When to hope and how to cope, along with your comments and questions—when Philosophy Talk continues.

Monty Python
When you’re feeling in the dumps, don’t be silly chumps. Just purse your lips and whistle, that’s the thing. And always look on the bright side of life.

Josh Landy
It’s probably helpful to look for silver linings in bad situations. But is it rational to Always Look on the bright side of life? I’m Josh Landy, this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ray Briggs
…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs, and we’re asking is optimism rational with Jennifer Morton from the University of Pennsylvania.

Josh Landy
We’re pre recording this episode. And unfortunately, we can’t take your phone calls. But you can always email us at comments at Philosophy Talk o RG. Or you can comment on our website. And while you’re there, you can also become a subscriber and gain access to our library of more than 500 episodes.

Ray Briggs
So Jen, earlier you were saying that in some situations, it’s sort of rationally permissible to be optimistic or pessimistic, or neutral? Are there reasons that would favor one of those over the other? And what would those look like?

Jennifer Morton
Yes. So what’s interesting about our beliefs about the future, it’s not just that they tell us what to expect, but they can also play a role in our motivation. And if we believe we’re likely to succeed, we seem to be more motivated to try and to take the steps to pursue our goals. So I’m particularly interested in the beliefs that we have about our own agency about what we can do, right so If you believe that you can run the marathon, you’re much more likely to train and get up every day and put on your running shoes. But if you believe that you’re not going to be able to run the marathon, then you might as well not even try. And so those sorts of beliefs don’t only tell us what might be true in the future, but they seem to play a role in making a true. If I believe if I will run the marathon, it’s more likely that, in fact, I will and thus make the belief true.

Josh Landy
So that’s really interesting. And I’m this confusion I have in this space, which is, look, there’s all this great psychological literature about the benefits of, you know, positive beliefs, right? Even positive illusions about you. So Shelly Taylor’s psychologist talks about, you know, how some illusions about ourselves are actually beneficial, believing you can do it believing that people like you, things like this are good for your well, well being, you know, those that fake it till you make it slogan, right athletes that you have to believe you can run the marathon, there’s that William James thing, you gotta believe you can make the jump. And that seems convincing to me. But I don’t want to be standing at the top of a tall building, believing I can fly unaided, right. So clearly, there are cases where a certain kind of optimism, if you want to call it that, is just delusional and really dangerous to me, right? I mean, I start with start taking risks. And and I don’t know, maybe bet all my money on red or something like that. So is it always good? Is it always bad or somewhere in between?

Jennifer Morton
Good. So I think this was where we go back to this idea that there are some cases in which the evidence leaves the future open leaves the option of what to believe up to us to some extent, but there are some cases in which the evidence is pretty definitive. And if you were going to be optimistic, you would be delusional, right? So if you stand at the top of the building, and think you can fly, all the evidence points towards that not being feasible for you. So that case of optimism would be delusional. But you know, for example, when I was pursuing my graduate degree in philosophy and thinking about trying to get an academic job, I’ve got evidence that was sort of all over the place, right? So my advisor would say some nice things about my work, but then I get all these journal reductions. And the evidence was sort of mixed. So if you were kind of an observer from the outside, and someone said, Would Jen get a job in academia? He would say, I don’t know, maybe, maybe not. It seems like, you know, there’s some evidence in favor of some evidence against, I think it’s those kinds of cases in which believing that you can can really kind of get you over that and push it to the finish line.

Ray Briggs
That seems like a really inspiring idea. But I think I’m also worried about it from a more pessimistic point of view. So it’s not a certain thing, whether anybody’s going to kind of get a job in academia, and there are serious costs, if you believe that you can, and you get it wrong. So like, like Josh was saying earlier, if you’re a pessimist, you at least don’t get disappointed. Like, how do you handle and balance the risk that the optimism will just land you flat on your face, even if you like, could have done it, but like, it just doesn’t work out for whatever accidental reason?

Jennifer Morton
Yeah, let me make the problem even harder. So psychologist Gabrielle yen, I think that’s how you pronounce her name at NYU has some this research about how positive thinking can actually sap your motivation. So she’s done these studies where people are kind of focused on this positive future. And it turns out that in the long run, they don’t do as well as we would have thought though, in the short term, it feels good to imagine this positive future, in the long run, just dwelling on this kind of fantasy can actually make us so that you’re not doing the things that you need to do to make it true that you will achieve whatever goal you’re imagining. So you might think, oh, no, that really puts a bad light on optimism. But I think that there’s another aspect of this that we’re we’re not considering, which is that you can also at the same time as you’re optimistic for the future and taking steps to try to make it true that you run the marathon or get that academic job. You can also have a plan B. So I’m working on this with my collaborator, Sarah Paul at NYU Abu Dhabi, where we’re thinking about whether it’s compatible to be optimistic about the future, while also planning for failure. And we want to say it is but there are people that think that it’s not right, so that’s why some people don’t want to sign for example, Prenuptial agreements when they get married because they think that there’s something wrong with planning for failure if you really believe that things are gonna go well,

Josh Landy
that’s so interesting. So it’s yeah, it’s like Strive for peace prepare for war, right. So you got to, I mean, I guess you did it brilliantly by marrying an optimist. So now you have, you know, you’ve got both, both streams of interpretation coming in. So so let me see if I understand you correctly, the Orthology. And I really love this thought is, well, look, look at your situation, try to find all the data points that you can. So let’s say, you know, you’re trying to be an actor. Well, what are people saying about your performances? Where have you succeeded? Where have you not succeeded, and so on? And then see what reasonable people could say about that set of data? And, you know, probably you’re gonna find that it’s a little bit unclear. But if there’s room for a positive interpretation, well, don’t necessarily give up on it, you know, maybe don’t quit your day job, have a plan B. But at the same time, believe in yourself a little bit, persist, persevere, keep going try. Is that a reasonable understanding of your position?

Jennifer Morton
Yes. And I would contrast that with a position that says, you know, that you should go all in. And we often hear this in interviews of famous, you know, Hollywood actors who say, Well, nobody believed in me, all the evidence was bad. And then I succeeded, because I believed in myself, but people also win the lottery that doesn’t make it rational by the lottery. People who didn’t win, right. And so focusing on those cases on the extreme and thinking, well, that person was optimistic, despite the evidence being bad. And look, they succeeded. That’s like looking at the lottery winner and saying, Well, they won the lottery, you know, so maybe I could do Whoa, you know, yeah, don’t don’t bet the house on it.

Ray Briggs
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re thinking about optimism and rationality, with Jennifer Morton from the University of Pennsylvania. Jen, we have a question from Richard via email. Richard says, While most everyone likes a Pollyanna, you don’t want one around when the chips are down, you want to start realist able to recognize the dilemma and act accordingly. The true optimist is not likely to have seen it coming. Well, it’s not always pleasing to be in the company of a skeptic, it’s preferable to being with somebody oblivious. So what do you think Jen? Is? Richard? Right.

Jennifer Morton
I think Richard is right, insofar as you do want to see, you know, the the bad thing coming your way. And so, Sarah, Paul, and I have argued that if you’re a Rational Optimist, you are paying attention to the evidence, right. So being optimistic and not even paying attention to the evidence. So being at the top of the building, thinking I can fly, I’m not going to pay attention to the evidence of all the people that have, you know, ended their lives in this way. That’s not rational optimism, rational optimism and was making sure that you’re hitting that sweet spot where the evidence really does seem to allow for optimism. And so I would say that a delusional optimist. You don’t want them around when the chips are down. But a Rational Optimist, if the chips are down, well, that just their optimism and light of the evidence,

Ray Briggs
that makes a lot of sense. And one theme I’m kind of hearing emerging in your answers is that the evidence doesn’t give us often reason to believe that the good future will happen, even in cases where it gives us evidence that good future might happen. And so, you know, that’s, that’s why like, prenups are maybe a good idea, even if you’re optimistic about your marriage. How do I sort of form beliefs in in situations of uncertainty and like, is optimism about believing that the good thing will happen? Or is it enough to think like it might happen, and there’s a good enough chance that I should try a little bit like what even counts as optimism?

Jennifer Morton
I favor the latter view that you mentioned. Right? When you think there’s still a good enough chance for me to keep taking the steps towards this goal. I don’t think it makes sense to believe it will definitely happen. Because that’s rarely true about anything in the future. It’s a question about what you end up doing, what steps you’re taking, right? If you’re taking steps, thinking that yes, you will run that marathon and also believes that you think you will run a Commonwealth may or that there’s no chance that you don’t run it. But what optimism does is and what manifests the optimism is that you get up each morning and put on your running shoes and log those miles. And so I think it’s that kind of optimism that we should be after.

Josh Landy
Jim, we’ve got another really great question from Michael on our website. Michael says I’ve long held on Under the view that hope is different from optimism. I learned this from Cornell last, sometimes I hope for one outcome while betting on a different outcome. Can one have hope, even while expecting matters to worsen? What do you think?

Jennifer Morton
I agree, I think hope and optimism are different. One case that might help us here is suta, philosopher Adrienne Morton, and she focuses on, for example, the cancer patient who has gotten dismal diagnosis, you know, they know that they are likely to die within a year, their chances of survival are very low. Even in that situation, you can have hope. You can, you know, entertain hope, even as you know, the kind of cold reality of what awaits you. And I would distinguish that from the person that’s optimistic. And again, this has to do with what actions we take. So if you have hope, you might still, you know, plan for your estate plan for your funeral, make sure that you have all your affairs in order, you know, you would welcome it if if if you were to survive, and that would be a wonderful thing, but you’re not planning around it. Whereas when we’re optimistic, we really are kind of taking action assuming or hope, you know, thinking that that is going to happen. So if you were the kind of delusionally optimistic cancer patient, you might not even plan for your estate, or write your will or do all of those things. Because you think I’m, you know, that’s not going to be me, I’m not going to die. And in the cases in which the evidence is bad, I think that’s irrational. So I think there are different roles here for hope and optimism and hope, I think is compatible with being very clear eyed about what the evidence is given in cases someone thinks, really bad.

Josh Landy
Yeah, I mean, seems like there are two kinds of thought about the future, right? One is a thought in which I’m sort of sitting passively by as a spectator. So I’m sort of making a bet as to what’s going to happen in spite of me, so to speak, right around me. And in the other case, I’m looking at the future as my future where I’m where I’m going to be actively striving to bring something about, I’m going to be the one training for the marathon. And whether I complete the marathon depends to some extent on me, and, and that seems like a case where I can have a certain kind of optimism, I can be overconfident, I could despair, whereas on the other side, on the side of just be a prediction of the future. It sounds like it’s more like I have complacency. I, you know, or hope, or pessimism, and it’s just Well, I’m just here, I’m just sort of sitting by as a spectator, you know, putting my bet on something as to what’s going to happen in the future. Sounds like you’re talking more about the case where I have a role to play, right? I’m the one who could make it more like run the marathon? Is that about right?

Jennifer Morton
Yes, I think those are the cases that are really interesting, because what you do has an effect on how right you will be about the future. Right? So in the case in which your does a passive spectator, you probably have no role to play, you know, will they discover aliens in outer space? So unless I’m a scientist involved in the research, I probably, you know, have no role to play in making that true. So my might just look at the evidence, like an observer will. But I think that interesting cases are where you do have a role to play. And were believing that, you know, in a positive future, believing the optimistic thought is what keeps you going.

Ray Briggs
I’m curious about cases where I have a role, but I’m not the only one who has a role. So a lot of these problems, like climate change, or like keeping democracy alive are things that I cannot single handedly change. But that in cooperation with a group I can change, and in order to change, those kinds of big things I have to trust other people like is that trust optimism are related to optimism.

Jennifer Morton
I am also really fascinated with this question, and I’m not entirely sure what to think about it yet. I do think that optimism about our collective futures can be contagious in a way when you see people who are taking steps towards you know, climate change, or whatever the goal is. It makes it more rational in a way for you to believe that we can succeed in this joint project because you see that the other person believes that we can succeed and they’re taking steps. So it makes it more rational for you to take steps towards that future. But if people are pessimistic and sometimes I feel like right now we We are feeling that right people are pessimistic than you think, why should I do anything? Because I can’t do this on my own right. So I might as well turn to my individual projects and goals they are I seem to have, you know, more control over whether the future that I want comes about. But obviously, that’s no good. If we all feel that way, then we’re not going to do anything about, say climate change. So it’s an interesting kind of chicken and an egg timer. When we are talking about collective optimism,

Ray Briggs
yeah, because I feel like optimism is about what I can do, and believing that I can do things. But things like fixing climate change, or preserving democracy are things that we can do. And I’m part of the way but not all of the way. That’s sort of what makes it confusing. Right? And

Jennifer Morton
also, but if you think that we can do it, you’re more likely to do your part if you have a part to play. And if you think that we’re doomed to failure, then it doesn’t really make sense for you to do your part because other people are not doing their part and the whole thing’s fall apart. But you know, it’s it’s this kind of question of how do we get ourselves to believe in that collective future? And I think that is, in a way, the question of our day.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re asking is optimism rational with Jennifer Morton from the University of Pennsylvania?

Ray Briggs
Do you raise your kids to be optimists? What kind of future should you teach them to expect? And how do you balance self confidence with realism?

Josh Landy
Great expectations for little thinkers, plus commentary from Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher—when Philosophy Talk continues.

When things are going great and only getting better, is it rational to let your pessimism go? I’m Josh Landy. And this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ray Briggs
…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs. Our guest is Jennifer Morton from the University of Pennsylvania, and we’re thinking about rationality and optimism.

Josh Landy
So Jen, we’ve got a comment from Tim on our website, Tim says this, kids should be given opportunities to safely fail, they should be encouraged, and given considerable leeway to find their attitudes and their path, the less rational that path is, the better. So Jen, what should we do in you, when talking to our children? Should we encourage them to be optimistic about the future? Should they shoot for the stars?

Jennifer Morton
That’s a really difficult question, in part, because it depends on the situation that our kids are in. So we haven’t talked about this yet. But I think that, for example, poverty, you know, racism, sexism, all of these factors can really affect how optimistic you can be. I’ve been particularly interested in my work on poverty, because we see that often people in poverty do seem to be less optimistic about the future, and I’m less optimistic about their ability to to make the future they want true. And in a way, this is rational, right? If they don’t have the right supports in place, then it might be really difficult to say, you know, get out of poverty, if you’re in a situation where that’s incredibly difficult to make sense, do not really bet on that. And so I think it really depends on the circumstances. And and when we say, you know, I think in the popular media, when I say will, kids should be optimistic, we should encourage kids to be optimistic. Often we’re not thinking about what evidence we’re giving kids, right? So if a kid is growing up, for example, in a school where, say, 80% of the kids don’t graduate high school, and very few go to college, is it rational for them to believe that they will go to college? I don’t know. I think it’s rational for them to believe that they have the abilities and the skills potentially, but that still isn’t gonna determine whether they end up in college because a lot of other things have to go right that are not under their control.

Josh Landy
Yeah, that’s demoralizing, but a bit obviously, correct, right. Unfortunately, I know that in your work. You’ve you’ve you’ve cited a couple of philosophers of race and gender who have praised pessimism in this context. Can you say a little bit about that?

Jennifer Morton
Yeah, so there is a tradition and African American philosophy which embraces pessimism precisely because race has been a factor that has held people back Then, because being overly optimistic can be the kind of thing that leads to disappointment and leads people to think that they’re the ones that failed, when really, it’s the system that failed them. So I think when we kind of zoom out and think about the structural factors at play in class, race and gender, we see that the issue is way more complicated, right? So think back to women, but 100 years ago, should a woman then believe that she is able to be on the Supreme Court? Right? Like, no, not given the evidence that she had at the time? And so I think that’s that those sorts of issues make this question. Yeah, more complex?

Ray Briggs
Could you consider putting somebody in a situation where it’s not rational for them to be optimistic to be like a way of harming them? Like, is that a kind of underappreciated harm of poverty?

Jennifer Morton
I definitely think so. And I think specially when we expect optimism, and yet we put people in situations in which the rational response is for them to be pessimistic about some aspects of their future, I think we’re, we’re harming them, in particular, because a young person that that situation, might be know that if they were optimistic about their abilities, and they were in a different social context, they could achieve that goal. But it is the fact that they’re in a context of poverty, for example, that impedes them from achieving their goals. And that can be demoralizing. And when people expect you to sort of believe against the evidence, I think that only adds to the harm in play. No, and there’s been a big move in the education world on, on focusing on perseverance and optimism, in particular, when thinking about low income, black and brown students, without really paying a lot of attention to the context outside of school, and whether the weather that’s supportive of them being optimistic and motivated and perseverance,

Josh Landy
I want to come back to something you were saying before the break about climate change about how, you know, each of us needs to think of ourselves not just as an AI, but as part of a we otherwise we won’t be able to solve the problem. I wonder if there’s something similar applies here to the way in which we could be talking to our children, you know, we’re not, we’re not just saying to them, you know, here’s what you individually can achieve. But maybe we’re saying to them, you know, here’s what all of you here’s what your generation can achieve, you know, think about yourself, as a member of a group of many groups, organize right? Get together produce groups who are going to make things happen, do you think I’m appealing here? That’s something that’s that you talk about in your work this this idea that maybe we could be optimistic about us? Even if I’m not as optimistic about me?

Jennifer Morton
Yes. And I think there is a tradition of this both in African American intellectual thought and feminists thought that when we get together and think we can overcome this, then I’m not just thinking, Can I write, be, say, the first woman on the Supreme Court or be the, you know, first African American President, you’re thinking I’m part of a movement to change the structural factors. And we are doing this together. And I think there’s often power in that, in doing these things as part of a group rather than thinking that arrest on each of us as individuals, so somehow get ourselves to believe this about just us our individual chances.

Ray Briggs
I like the idea of moving optimism more toward we than toward me, I’m also kind of wondering about sort of adjusting my standards in response to bad evidence. So I’m thinking about how I like to take a personal example, like people in the generation before me, like aspire to have like a nice house in a place that they like, and people in my generation aspire to maybe someday own a house at all. And so if I think like, Oh, I could own a house someday, is that optimism? Because it’s sort of I’m holding out hope for a much less good scenario than somebody in the generation above me. And I think like, it’s sort of something similar with global issues like climate change, where instead of thinking we can prevent climate change altogether, and maybe the hope now is we can limit its ravages. Like can you adjust your expectation missions and hope for a less good outcome but still have that counters optimism?

Jennifer Morton
That’s an interesting question. Because the more ambitious, the thing that you’re optimistic about, the less likely it is that the evidence will support it. Right. So can we combat climate change? Oh, yeah, the evidence seems pretty bad on that front. Can we lower the emissions? So we’re putting out? Probably right, and the evidence seems much better. So there is this interesting question about whether we can sort of build up to the more ambitious thing by by being optimistic about what’s more within our grasp. So I think this cuts deep into theories of social change, right? So there are people that think that kind of incrementalist approach is is the wrong way to go. You don’t want to focus on achievable goals that are just slightly better than what we have, because that’ll detract from going for the more ambitious goal. But going for the more ambitious goal is tough, not just because it actually is difficult to bring it up. But it’s actually difficult to sustain our belief that we can achieve it. So I mean, I don’t have a firm view on which way to go. But I see the argument for going for the less ambitious goal that seems closer and more achievable.

Josh Landy
Agenda, I’d feel remiss if we got through a whole show on optimism without talking about some of the great pessimists. Right, so you’re gonna, this isn’t really, it’s not my point of view or the pessimism worked for you, which I’m delighted, delighted. But I’m totally fascinated people like Schopenhauer, right Schopenhauer, a philosopher who drew heavily on Buddhism, he felt that life is pointless pain, it’d be better not to exist. And, and you know, what you should really do is meditate and, and basically stop wanting things to give up. And that, you know, it’s not the view as a whole. But I think it’s a really interesting one, what would you say to to pass your really strong pessimistic views like that?

Jennifer Morton
I think there’s something really appealing about those views. And, and right now, in particular,

Josh Landy
yeah, time to come back.

Jennifer Morton
But I think it’s a question of what we really think are the values out there that we want to engage with. And there are lots of values that are really important that I think we can’t really achieve if we don’t have some dose of optimism, because many values are really, you know, can be really hard to achieve. Think about. I don’t know, writing the great American novel, doing philosophy, having a family right to be more mundane. And a lot of that requires that we project ourselves into a future, then we invest that we take on risks. And it’s really hard for me to see that. It’s rational to give those up, even though I see the appeal of the pessimists who, you know, decides to focus on the now or eliminate wants and sort of contend with suffering by trying to avoid it. I think meeting those challenges and suffering is part of how we achieve those values that I think we would be impoverished if we didn’t.

Josh Landy
That’s appropriately upbeat note to end on. Thank you so much, Jen, for joining us today.

Jennifer Morton
Thank you. This was fun.

Josh Landy
Our guest has been Jennifer Morton, professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of resisting pessimism traps the limits of believing in oneself. So what are you thinking now, right.

Ray Briggs
I’m not feeling terribly optimistic about the world. But I am kind of feeling tempted to adjust my expectations. Like, I think that, you know, the next generation of kids coming up is like, at least, like smart and brave. And we’ll do a lot of like good activism. And I think that there will be a steal like cool art for a while. And there will be natural beauty for a while at least, we should appreciate it as much as we can.

Josh Landy
I mean, that’s kind of 100 100 aren’t wisdom, right? natality people are being born and, you know, those of us that our generation will age out of our positions of power. And let’s pray to God that the next generation does better than us. We’re gonna put links to everything we’ve mentioned today on our website, Philosophy Talk dot o RG, where you can also become a subscriber and get access to our library of more than 500 episodes.

Ray Briggs
And if you have a question that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, we’d love to hear from you. Send it to us at comments at Philosophy Talk taught o RG and we might feature it on the blog.

Josh Landy
Now a man whose Speedo is provides reason for hope it’s Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales. Everybody’s pessimistic these days, which does and does not make sense. Aside from the various moral panics around gender, guns, and immigration, okay, the Ukraine nonsense, climate change, things seem to be going all right really. Okay I’m a little sad about Netflix, but they were kind of turning into Golan Globus in the making bad movies department. Remember Golan Globus? One of those things, like Princess Phones, Toys R Us, and portable cassette players that we don’t have any more. But they’ve all been replaced, by smart phones, Amazon, and streaming. We built back better. So why so moody, America? When I was a kid the country lurched into the future, shouting, thriving on gloom and doom, interspersed with John Wayne movies. We seem to want to wallow in that energy again. When I was a kid, the Cold War made us anxious. Sneaky spy stuff, brainwashing, proxy conflicts, the threat of a nuclear War. On the home front, we fretted about comic books, Elvis, hot rods, juvenile delinquents, tattoos, girly magazines, beatniks, welfare shirkers, hippies, marijuana, LSD, heroin, hitchhikers, heroin addicts, dirty books, gypsies, carnival workers, and, it seems, women, unless they were on very strong anti-depressants. At the same time we still liked smoking, beer, mixed drinks, hunting, sports, teevee, anything to do with boats. Boats were a luxury item anybody could afford. Steak dinners. Barbecue. Fireworks. Con men. We loved the con men. Always have. Always will. Still do. Oddly enough abortion wasn’t that big a deal. It was trouble, sure. In movies and books I came across, abortion led to blackmail, or the death of the woman seeking it. Usually from an abortionist, a sweaty unshaven guy in a dirty Panama suit who may have been a doctor but ended up in Juarez. We were more worried about thalidomide deformities and polio. In pop culture, it was all about punishments or rewards for unwed mothers. Anyway, the things we feared took over the nation, and we prospered. Just one example, banned comic books banned in the fifties came back. And landed on television. And in movies. Making millions! Supposedly these were still hated by those who wanted to set the cultural agenda but had to be content with poorly executed global conflicts, weird sketchy stuff like arms for hostages, and, eventually, hating the Clintons more than they should. Still mad about Beverly Hillbillies going off the air, Lyndon Johnson, Obama, man, do not get them started, George Soros, eventually, it looks like all the old bugaboos will finally be going by the wayside, for a while anyway. No abortion, no pride, no woke movies, not even from Disney, who they LOVE. They don’t worry about global warming, they worry that kids are being forced to listen to fairy tales read by drag queens. That sounds like a pleasant outing to me, but then I like to see people dress up. A kind of optimism is being shown, a peculiar stunted elation/anger typically displayed by Marjorie Taylor Green, Matt Gaetz, or Ben Shapiro. They have commandeered local politics, either taking over, in the red states, or getting control of the judges in the blue. The result being that the nation will return, ideally, to a kind of chaotic wild west situation, where men are men, and get to shout in the fields whenever they want. Women won’t have much of a place in this pinched utopia, unless they can have a lot of babies and know how to run a thrifty household. But guns will be everywhere. And you can smoke in the house again! Weirdly, evangelicals don’t seem to be spearheading this, they’re too busy paying off sex scandals I guess. It’s passionate Q Anoner types, their little heads stuffed with ideas- Stop Woke, Stop CRT, whatever that is, stop the gay, stop talking about the gay until the kids are out of school. The Anon fantasy is that JFK Junior, for some reason, Rudy Giuliani, if he gets off the sauce, and Donald Trump will corral pedophiles, abortion doctors, and trial lawyers into shipping containers and imprison them all on Jeffrey Epstein’s island, the new Guantanamo. As we all watch, just like we now watch the January 6 hearings, with popcorn and light beer. Who knows. The biggest gripe when I was coming up was that kids just want to smoke pot and listen to music. That still sounds pretty good to me. If we can keep that precious freedom, I’d say America’s doing great. I’m optimistic! I gotta go.

Josh Landy
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of KALW San Francisco Bay Area and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2022.

Ray Briggs
Our executive producer is Ben Trefny. The Senior Producer is Devon Strolovitch. Laura McGuire is our Director of Research

Josh Landy
Thanks also to Merle Kessler and Angela Johnston.

Ray Briggs
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from various groups at Stanford University, and from subscribers to our online Community of Thinkers.

Josh Landy
The views expressed or mis-expressed on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders.

Ray Briggs
…not even when they’re true and reasonable!

Josh Landy
The conversation continues on our website, Philosophy Talk dot ORG, where you can become a subscriber and gain access for a library of more than 500 episodes. I’m Josh Landy.

Ray Briggs
And I’m Ray Briggs. Thank you for listening

Josh Landy
And thank you for thinking.

Scrubs
People aren’t chocolates. Do you know what they are mostly? Bastards—bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling. But I don’t find them half as annoying as I find naive bobble headed optimists who walk around vomiting sunshine. I’m touching your creamy center!