Practical (long term) Optimism. First Draft Update

Okay. So, I know this is a lot of voice notes, so please bear with me. Um, also, um, this I'm going to share.

Um, I think this is basically my finished philosophy of optimism. Um, and it's I think I have all the all the main pieces, so that's why I say finished, but I don't think it's necessarily polished yet. Um, there's a few things that'll probably not say the same in a few months after I've been iterating on it for a while.

But, this is like the main the main gist. So essentially I think that there's like two um routes for success in life and um so one of them is uh I'm calling it the linear safe progression uh and the other is like an exponential progression. And so the linear safe progression is the one that most people take and it's also like heavily promoted by society and it's where you sort of make small incremental safe bets over time.

You accumulate uh wealth and resources or whatever success and um and usually you do it over a really long period of time your whole life and that's how you accumulate success is with small safe bets. Um, it's linear and um, it's I say it's safe because people think it's safe, but I actually don't think it is safe. I think it's actually uh the the idea of safety is an illusion.

Like safety implies stasis and stasis doesn't exist. Like everything's in motion all the time. And um and so the the opposite the exponential progression is one where instead of uh trading your time for success, you trade knowledge for success.

So instead of it's I I would like compare it to VC venture capital funding where um essentially they're they are taking their money in gambling on startups um and they but they basically they do their research but they're just like betting on startups and uh and they know that like they're going to make 100 bets. probably only five of those bets are really going to pay off and maybe like one or two of those bets will actually give like an exponential return. But because the exponential return is so much greater than any linear return, um it makes it makes sense.

It's like playing the long game. Like if you have the time and the money to play the long game, you're going to win way bigger if you can um do this. Uh so it's like high risk, high reward.

I don't really like that phrasing because that sort of implies that um there's like an equal amount of risk to the reward when I think uh it's that's not really what it is. What it is is like educated betting. It's like if you're professional gambler, professional gamblers are really good at what they do.

They only place bets that they have a really good chance of winning. And um the advantage is that uh because you're trading knowledge for success rather than your time for success, you have a lot more time and you can use that time in much better ways to educate yourself to explore the world and also to have fun. Where when you're trading your time for success, you have very little time.

So you don't don't have as much time to educate yourself to explore the world and have fun. Um, and the problem with the linear safe progression is that there's this illusion of safety. People think it's safe, but that illusion that that safety is an illusion.

It's like they people say offense is the best defense. I think that is definitely true. Although like that sort of phrasing implies that it's a it's a fight or it's like a struggle.

I'm not sure if that's necessarily how I want it to sound, but um but it definitely is true that uh if defense exists, it actually exists as a function of offense. Like not as like defense by itself doesn't doesn't really exist. I don't know if you've ever heard this saying um cuz I I only heard it in a video where they're talking about um military defense and offense, but they were basically saying that like in in the military in the military world um it's widely understood that attack scales faster than defense.

All you need is a bigger gun than your enemy um because uh if you have a bigger gun, it doesn't matter how big their shield is. All you have to do is shoot enough times to get through their shield and then it's like they don't have a shield at all. And so if you if you scale your weapons um it'll always have bigger returns than scaling your defense, whatever your defense looks like.

And so um the the concept of safety is an illusion. Safety as stasis doesn't exist. What the only thing that does approximate safety is constant movement, constant expansion, and constant growth.

And so this whole idea of the linear safe progression, I think, is essentially it's it's a lie. It's an illusion. It's a mirage.

it's promoted by society and also I think by people in power because it um makes people pliable and it makes people vulnerable. Um if they think they're being safe by taking the linear safe progression then uh then usually what's happening is they are trading their time for success and usually what that means is that they are extremely vulnerable to accidents. So they have to m constantly spend all of their attention a getting their success with small safe bets and then b all the rest of their attention trying to manage and maintain that success that they've gotten painstakingly with uh their entire life to uh make sure that it doesn't slip out of their fingers because um the having that success um is like it's just like it's like a it's like building your house on a castle on sand, right?

on foundation of stance. It's like it's extremely vulnerable to accidents and um and so it's just like it's not it's not real. It's not real.

Like that entire concept that there is a linear safe progression I think is actually like a falsehood. It's like um it's a lie promoted in society to keep people alive to uh to make them docile and compliant um and also to rob them of their agency and rob them of their ability to have a good life. And because they don't have agency in a good life and they think that and they think that their agency in a good life comes from this linear safe progression, they spend all their time time trying to keep and maintain it when it's not real.

And um and you just have like a way better life if you go the opposite route and become a professional gambler. Again, not not literal gambling, but like that's like that's like the real route to success in life is to um put all your eggs in this basket where you trade knowledge for success, not time. And um and it's like sure there will be like times when you don't when you bet and you lose.

um if you're going the the you know the linear the exponential route but um but when you do win you will win exponentially and that will make up for all the time that you have uh lost and also it will almost certainly shoot you past any amount of success that the people taking the safe route have accumulated um and it will like allow you to transcend your circumstances and so um this is like I think this is like basically the only real path to success is this exponential path. Um, and so I I also think it's like um I've come to appreciate the caricature of the devil in Christianity because it's like if the devil exists then he um is like the enemy of everyone and you can sort of assume that if you have any bad life circumstances that they might be the result of the devil's work if you're a Christian and that is a useful sort of analogy because um when you start to understand this when you start realize is that basically all of your negative perceptions come from um believing in this linear safe progression. Uh like if you are if you're ever hopeless, if you're ever like um discouraged, it's almost always because you have started to believe in this linear safe progression or not started but you do believe in the linear safe progression and you become hopeless and discouraged because you think that um that this is how success works.

you build it up over time. And if you ever lose time or if you ever have a late start or if anything bad happens at all, then that means that you're just out of luck and you're going to have to eat the rest of your life. And um that's not real.

That's not true. Um the truth is that uh it's like it's like a photo negative. Like anytime you are depressed or discouraged or you perceive that your life is going badly, it's like literally the opposite.

The inverse is true. Um, your life is going well. Things are looking up.

Um, things are better than ever because um because I it's like I used to think that I was living in the darkest timeline when I was depressed. And um and what I've come to realize is that um I think that literally I from the perspective of the linear safe progression, any time that you are actually on the exponential path, it's going to look like the darkest timeline until you succeed. Um and so it's like that that's why anytime you are depressed, anytime that you are discouraged, it's the inverse.

It's um it's actually going really well. And the reason is because um you can't have access to the exponential progression if you are doing the linear safe progression. They're mutually exclusive.

And so when you go onto the exponential progression, it's going to look like you're sacrificing all of those safe gains that you have been building up over time. And what re those safe gains never existed because you could have an accident at any point and they'll all be washed away. And so it's not even it's like it's not even worth thinking about.

Anytime um all of your negative perceptions come from believing in that linear safe progression. And when you abandon that linear safe progression, what you realize is there's hope all the time. Um and there's always not just hope, there's more hope than you think there is all the time because um it's not it's not like you can have a windfall success at any moment.

I think you really do need to play your card cards right. You need to be educated. You need to be smart.

But um but you you understand that uh life is polarizing and this linear safe progression doesn't exist. And um and so you you you understand that like anytime you have a negative perception, it's it's literally like the opposite of true trying to get your attention. And I don't know, I it's not the right way to say it probably, but like I you get the idea.

This so this is something I've been working on and um I'm really excited about it because I think it's like finally starting to take shape and be explainable. This is the reason why this theory is the practical optimism is that part at the end where I talked about the analogy of the devil. I think literally it is true that when you are discouraged or you have negative perceptions about the trajectory of your life, it's literally a confirmation that things are going well.

And the reason is because there's only two possibilities. Either you have slipped back into the linear progression perspective again or you need to set your goals higher, your aims higher. Um, and those are the only two possibilities.

That's why it's practical optimism. Um, I'm really happy with how that flows logically because I think it is actually true. It's literally true.

Like those are the only two possibilities. Yeah.