Be A Definite Optimist, Please.
"If not you, who? If not here, where? If not now, when?"
— Hillel the elder. Or Roosevelt. Or Gorbachev.
One of the most parroted ideas I’ve heard from Peter Thiel’s Zero to One is his popularization of mimetic theory, and no, the irony hasn’t been lost on me. But I think one idea from that very book that is extremely underrated is his idea of Definite Optimism.
In one fell swoop, Thiel categorizes so many people and identifies stupid and better ways of thinking in a way that can actually change things, both on personal and grander scales.
I’m going to go through each of them, but be warned, this is an infohazard. I have not been able to unsee this idea ever since I first understood it. Be ready to feel confronted/upset/confused. Be ready to see it everywhere.
Here's how it works. I think how you do anything is often how you do everything. So where you fall in these 4 quadrants likely defines your approach to just about everything you do:
Indefinite Pessimism
You can think that things will generally get worse, and there’s not much we can do about this. These people are the least effective in the world which is why I don't think we see too many of them.
It's the people who've resigned themselves to old age who think they don't have anything left to do other than wait and die. It's the stoner who thinks their life sucks so they stay in their room and dissociate with drugs to avoid facing life.
It reminds me of luddites or people who are always complaining but also doing nothing to improve the thing they think is bad, let alone stop it. The arc of their vision of the future bends towards shittier, but they never have a plan or anything to fix it, only complaints.
It’s organizations and people and places where things are clearly getting worse but there’s no plan in place to make anything better, only reactions.
This is a sad, low agency way to live. We don’t need to talk too much about it.
Definite Pessimism
You can think that things will likely get worse, and your response to that can be- we need to be safe, we need to hedge.
These are generally preppers. People who think the economy will get worse, so they invest in safe bets and save a lot (that’s a definite plan!) but they don’t really know what to do beyond the hedging. It’s people who had enough foresight to save a lot but there’s no plan on what to do with all the savings.
It’s like protesters and activists who complain but propose no better alternatives. “What do we want? Not what’s happening right now! What do we want instead? No clue!”
I give this a bit more respect than indefinite pessimism. At least it requires having a plan and following through with it. But it feels a bit myopic, and I don’t think it’s a particularly effective way to live. Because if you’re simply preparing for a worse future, what’s the point? Who’s going to make the future something we’re excited to wake up to?
Indefinite Optimism
These are people who think that the future will generally be bright, but have no plan to get there.
Think of kids in college mass applying to like 50 jobs. They believe they'll get one, but there's no specific thing they want to do, no plan to get there.
It's like consulting. They're going to help make the world better, but with no ownership, stakes or clear personal plan of how to get it there.
It's Marvel just spraying and praying with dozens of tv shows with no clear direction.
It's the tiktok girlie culture of manifesting but assuming you'll become rich or find a hot husband without doing anything concrete to get them.
Reminds me of hookup culture, of kids lying that they started multiple clubs in high school for their college applications, of people joining research labs for the sake of having done research.
Most people I think, by default, are like this today. Arguably, this is the general malaise of our times. We somehow think things will get better, but then don’t do things to get it there. So we get confused, and neurotic, and wonder why things don’t feel like they have meaning.
Maybe it's because a lot of us have been lucky to grow up in relatively good and stable times where things have been getting better on average. Maybe we’ve forgotten that it takes a plan that we actually work on to get there. Thankfully, we have our last quadrant to save us from it.
Definite Optimism
These people think the world can be better if we work on specific plans to get us there.
Being a Definite Optimist requires clear vision, stakes, and sacrifice. It's wearing your heart on your sleeve, it's working on one thing that people think is dumb or crazy but you believe in it. It requires knowledge, and deep thinking- how else are you supposed to maintain that conviction? It happens with opinionation. It's people who really *believe* things about the world, and who are willing to be the idiots crazy enough to get us to the reality they think we should have, no matter the odds.
The world is made by Definite Optimists. Reminds me of that tweet by by John Collison —
”As you become an adult, you realize that things around you weren't just always there; people made them happen. But only recently have I started to internalize how much tenacity *everything* requires. That hotel, that park, that railway. The world is a museum of passion projects.”
The world *needs* Definite Optimists. It needs people to come up with what they think is wrong or missing and then to go fix it. By definition, there is no roadmap for this. There's nobody telling you you're right (and probably many people telling you you're wrong). You need to prove to yourself and others that you were correct by actually putting that thing successfully out there in the world, no matter what the detractors and haters and losers and non-believers say.
But it applies to many levels. Are your plans for yourself indefinitely optimistic? Do you think things will just work out without doing anything about it? That you'll eventually "figure it out?" or that "the universe will align?" That's not how this works. This is the secret. The universe magically aligns when you make it.
Do you have friends you want to have, or are you just floating along? Do you have a plan to achieve your dreams (do you even have dreams? And if you do, did you make them or are they the average dream of the 5 people around you, in which case I have bad news, buddy).
My belief is that we *can* make things better. We *can* improve our relationships, we *can* improve how things work, we *can* become better at that thing that seems intractable.
Angst, confusion, neuroticism, I think these are all Definite Optimism killers. Definite Optimism means sticking our stake in the sand and choosing what we think is the best thing to do and then full sending vs. agonizing over what to do in the first place.
I can't say I'm the biggest Definite Optimist. I think I still think a bit too much, and when I do know that I want to do something, I don't enter it with the boldness I could enter it with.
But then I look at people who *are* Definite Optimists, people like Elon Musk making the biggest rocket ever, and then already having a few more ready for the next few tests right after a successful flight, now that’s following through with a plan. That’s bold. He has full conviction that he’ll make his plans happen in the next 3 years and is working with that assumption, vs. meekly creeping forward and thinking you can only do the next step once you're absolutely sure that the current one worked.
That lights this tiny fire in me. I think the dumb thing to do next is to then get panicked that one is not doing enough and bounce around with an underlying sense of angst. But I think that’s where the definite comes in. You need to slow down and scheme and come up with your vision of the future. And the right things to do are often the ones you return to, again and again. Then you need to go make it happen.
I'll end on a quote from Peter Thiel that lives on my wall:
"If we don't take charge and usher in the future- if you don't take charge of your life- there is the sense that no one else will. So go find a frontier and go for it. Choose to do something important and different. Don't be deterred by notions of luck, impossibility or futility. Use your power to shape your own life and go and do new things"
How far ahead could we think? What plans could we actually put into place and actualise? What wonders can we materialise? Who knows man, who knows. You do know. And you can make it happen.
Great post