悲观主义看似一种思想上严肃的立场Pessimism Seems Like an Intellectually Serious Position
Brett：如果你是学者，能够把世上存在的各种问题、这些问题有多危险、以及为什么你需要经费来深入研究它们一一讲清楚，这看起来才是智识上严肃的立场；而声称"我们能解决它"的人，听起来就有点过于天真烂漫了。
事实上，协作、合作与资源开发，才是推动知识经济向前发展、让我们能够解决这些问题的力量。
站在 TED 演讲的观众面前，皱着眉头说"我们将会以这些方式死去，地球将会以这些方式崩坏，我们将会以这些方式走向毁灭"，似乎总是显得更有智识上的严肃性。
Naval：我也录过一期这样的末日预言播客，讲的是"终结者"炸毁地球，这让我很惭愧。那是我最后悔的一期播客。我们聊得很尽兴，但我从根本上并不认同"世界就要灭亡，我们应该放慢脚步"这样的结论。
唯一的出路是进步。
我对那期播客的宣传远不如其他期。当我读到多伊奇的书时，我明白了其中的原因：悲观是个容易掉进去的陷阱，但它隐含的意思是——人类没有创造力。悲观主义没有看到，我们曾一次次凭借创新走出此前的困境。
企业家天生乐观，因为乐观会给他们带来回报。正如你所说，知识分子则因悲观而获得回报。所以存在着激励偏差。
如果你是个悲观主义者，你的反馈来自他人。这是一种社交行为——你在说服别人相信你的悲观。而企业家获得的反馈来自自然和自由市场，我认为这些是远比社交更现实的反馈机制。
到目前为止，大多数悲观预测都被证明是错误的。看看那些世界本该终结的时间表、环境灾难本该发生的时间点，它们都错得离谱。
Brett: If you’re an academic, being able to explain all of the problems that are out there and how dangerous these problems are and why you need funding to look at them in more depth appears to be the intellectually serious position; whereas, someone who claims that we can solve it sounds a little bit kumbaya.
In fact, collaboration, cooperation and resource exploitation are the things that will drive this knowledge economy forward so that we can solve these problems.
It always seems more intellectually serious if you can stand out there with a frown on your face in front of a TED Talk audience and say, “These are all the ways in which we’re going to die, in which the Earth is going to fail, and in which we’re going to come to ruin.”
Naval: I’m guilty of having recorded one of these doomsayer podcasts about enders blowing up the Earth. That was the one podcast I regretted the most. We had a great conversation, but I don’t fundamentally agree with conclusions that we should slow down because the world is going to end.
The only way out is through progress.
I haven’t promoted that podcast as much as others. When I read Deutsch, I realized why: Pessimism is an easy trap to fall into, but it implies that humans are not creative. Pessimism doesn’t acknowledge all the ways that we have innovated our way out of previous traps.
Entrepreneurs are inherently optimistic because they get rewarded for being optimistic. As you were saying, intellectuals get rewarded for being pessimistic. So there is incentive bias.
If you’re a pessimist, you get your feedback from other people. It’s a social act. You’re convincing other people of your pessimism. But entrepreneurs get feedback from nature and free markets, which I believe are much more realistic feedback mechanisms.
So far, most of the pessimistic predictions have turned out to be false. If you look at the timelines on which the world was supposed to end or environmental catastrophes were supposed to happen, they’ve been quite wrong.