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Comment by mkmk | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of the saying "Pessimists are often right. Optimists are often rich."

As a pessimist who's often right, and not rich, this resonates.

But how can this be true? Surely you get rich by being right?

Pessimists think nothing is worth doing, and are frequently right. But they will never catch the occasional thing that is worth doing. Some of the optimists will.

But optimism favors action, while pessimism favors inaction. And action vastly (and compoundingly) increases the amount of opportunities for being right.

Pessimists are just as often wrong too! Clearly the person you're replying to is an "optimist". :)

To be clear, I don't think there's a strong correlation between being rich and being a pessimist/optimist.

And to your original point, being right cannot possibly be biased towards optimism or pessimism. Any apparent correlation is more of a reflection on what everyone else thinks... and they are wrong! Cheers to being right!

Agreed, optimism/pessimism is just about our disposition to the world as we perceive it (ie. glass half full or half empty). It is orthogonal to understanding and prediction. A perfect Buddhist is neither an optimist or pessimist but can still be better or worse at predicting the future.

I do think pessimists, especially of the depressive variety generally do not get rich. The reason is that getting rich is hard, everyone nominally wants it, so it’s highly competitive and there are no easy paths. To find a path generally you have to take an action that almost by definition is low probability of success. You don’t have to be a beaming cheerleader to make this happen, but being an eyore is most likely disqualifying.

I remember reading that slightly depressed people tend to have a more accurate world view.

Perhaps there is something to the saying ignorance is bliss.

I might be misunderstanding, but I wouldn't call "un-depressed" people ignorant.

I also think depressed people would regress to the average if they weren't depressed. It's not a sustainable way to think harder and open your eyes to the world around you.

Yes I remember reading that too and it resonated. As a slightly depressed person I can't believe the delusionally positive spin people seem to put on everything and nonetheless this seems to be a winning strategy for them. I never could explain that.

Starting with an accurate world model, no matter how dispiriting, seems to be a prerequisite for knowing the most effective action to take.

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