Pessimism sounds smart. Optimism sounds dumb. It’s no wonder, then, that pessimistic messages hit the headlines, and optimistic ones hardly get a middle-page snippet. It’s why doomsday thinkers get respect and accolades. They’re the smart ones that can see what the rest of us can’t. They’re the ones that speak truth to power.
One reason that admitting I’m an optimist feels like unearthing a dark secret is that it seems like it goes against years of scientific training. Pessimism is often regarded as an essential feature of a scientist: the basis of science is to challenge every result, to pick theories apart to see which ones stand the test of time. I thought that cynicism was one of its founding principles.
Maybe that is partly true. But science is undeniably optimistic, too. How else would we explain the willingness to try experiments over and over, with slim odds of success?
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Scientific progress can be painfully slow: the best minds can dedicate their entire lives to a single question and end up with nothing to show for it. They do so with the hope that they might be on the cusp of a breakthrough. It’s unlikely that they will be the person to discover it, but there’s a chance. Those odds drop to zero if they give up.
