Complex Numbers

Opti-Miss

A bit from Psyche that, as if I were a superconductor, I just couldn't resist:

    Why it’s possible to be optimistic in a world of bad news  
The original optimist, Leibniz, was mocked and misunderstood. Centuries later, his worldview can help us navigate modern life

As far as I'm concerned, the only way to be optimistic in a world of bad news is to ignore the news entirely. Ignorance is bliss. No news is good news. Stay in your cave watching shadows flicker.

Not clear to me: why optimism is supposed to be a good thing.

As for Liebniz, well... he was, famously, a contemporary of Newton. They both invented calculus, mostly independently, and with different approaches. Newton, when he delved into philosophy, was into astrology and alchemy, things that have been thoroughly debunked. So just because someone discovers something about math or science doesn't mean their philosophy should be taken as established fact. See also: Pascal, Descartes, Fermi, etc.

What does it mean to be optimistic? We usually think of optimism as an expectation that things will work out for the best.

There are no happy endings. There are only stories that end prematurely. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the formulaic fairy-tale ending: "And they lived happily ever after." Because, unless you take that metaphorically to mean that now they've achieved a sort of immortality since they've been recorded in a story, that's not how any of this works.

In short, that definition of optimism is demonstrably and empirically wrong.

While we might accept that such expectations have motivational value – making it easier to deal with the ups and downs of everyday life, and the struggle and strife we see in the world – we might still feel dubious about it from an intellectual perspective.

Obviously, I do feel dubious about it from an intellectual perspective. Also, an emotional one. I do not, however, consider it to have motivational value. If I think things will somehow work out for the best, I have no motivation to work at it. If, however, I expect the worst, then I'm motivated to make things better.

Not that I actually do, mind you. My engine's always running, but the gearshift's almost never engaged.

Optimism is, after all, by its nature delusional; ‘realism’ or outright pessimism might seem more justifiable given the troubles of the present and the uncertainties of the future.

"Seem?" No. It absolutely is.

Those of us familiar with Voltaire’s celebrated novel Candide, or Optimism (1759) might be reminded of his character Dr Pangloss, and his refrain that all must be for the best ‘in this best of all possible worlds’.

You know the real difference between an optimist and a pessimist? The optimist thinks we're living in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist knows that we are.

Pangloss, a professor of ‘metaphysico-theologico-cosmolo-nigology’, is a vicious caricature of the great German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and his catchphrase is Voltaire’s snappy formulation of the German’s attempt to provide a logical argument for optimism.

Well, that settles it: now I have to read Voltaire.

Or, really, a theological argument. Leibniz didn’t set out to explain why some people are perpetually cheerful about their prospects, but why an all-powerful, all-seeing and all-loving God allows evil to exist in the world.

So much time has been wasted on that question (known to philosophers as "theodicy.") So much ink, so many electrons, so much conversion of useful energy into useless energy, that the entropy generated by the efforts surely accelerated the inevitable heat death of the universe by centuries. And it has one really blindingly obvious solution: there is no all-powerful, all-seeing, and all-loving god.

This ‘problem of evil’ has been debated for millennia, but it was Leibniz who first attempted to reason his way to an answer, rather than look to scripture for one.

I'll give him a few Philosophy Points for that.

His inspiration came from his realisation, in the early 1680s, that the path taken by light through a system of prisms or mirrors always followed the ‘easiest’, or ‘optimal’, path from source to destination.

Which, scientifically, turns out not to be the case, but he couldn't have known that.

Up until that point, it had generally been assumed that the cosmos was precisely the way it had to be... While there might be many possible ways to make a world, there’s only one optimal way. And this view of the world came to be known as optimism.

And here's where I get to kick myself: for someone with such strong opinions about optimism, and such a keen interest in etymology, I never knew that or made the connection, but it does seem to be true (though Liebniz wasn't who coined the word).

Leibniz’s view, put forward in his book Theodicy (1710), did not win instant acclaim.

And yes, that's where that word comes from. Liebniz put together the Latin roots for "god" and "justice," and turned it French; it was later Anglicized.

But was Leibniz on to something? Could his worldview help us regain a clearer sense of how to be optimistic in the present day?

Even if the answer to that is "yes," which I'm not taking a stand on either way, I'm still not clear on why this would be desirable.

In his day, the idea that the world could be arranged any differently was novel to the point of outlandishness. Over centuries, that gradually changed as it became clearer that the cosmos contains places that are nothing like Earth, and that our planet itself had been dramatically different in the past. But it shot to prominence in the middle of the 20th century, when both philosophy and physics converged on the idea that ours is only one of many possible universes – or, at least, that this is a useful way to think about certain problems in logic and quantum theory.

That's a popular idea now, embodied in more than a few works of film and literature. The problem is, lots of people seem to accept it as scientific fact—which it is not. It is, as the article notes, "a useful way to think about certain problems," but that doesn't mean it reflects reality.

This intellectual respectability has turned into cultural ubiquity: the idea that there are many possible worlds is intuitively appealing in a time when ever fewer people accept the idea of a divine plan. We are more likely to believe that the future is open, with many alternative paths we could take from today to tomorrow.

And that may well be the case. Here's the problem, though: this article frames that philosophy in terms of the aforementioned theodicy. Humans, the story goes, have free will. The same story tells us that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-merciful. But if God is all-knowing, then God already knows what we're going to do. In other words: ask yourself, "Can God be surprised?" An all-knowing entity couldn't possibly be surprised, any more than it could create a rock so heavy even that entity couldn't lift it. And if God already knows what we're going to do, then we can't have free will (my own argument against free will has nothing to do with divine powers; I'm just taking the theological tack for this discussion). Hence, the whole concept of Original Sin falls apart, and with it much of Western theology. In other words, God knew Eve and Adam would munch that apple (or whatever), so punishing them for doing so amounts to Original Entrapment.

Once, we might have assumed that our fates lay in the lap of the gods, or that implacable physical laws dictate our every move. Today, we think the responsibility lies with us.

The reality, I think, is somewhere in between. We are subject to physical laws. We are also agents of change. Arguing about which is real is reminiscent of the nature vs. nurture debate, the answer to which is "both."

The key to making Leibniz’s version of optimism relevant to a secular, 21st-century worldview, is to make ‘the best of all possible worlds’ an aspiration, not a statement of belief.

Oddly enough, I agree with that assessment. I just come at it from a different angle: as a hopeful pessimist, I think things can change for the better, but, absent well-meaning and well-thought-out human intervention, probably will not.

This might sound abstract or fanciful. But in fact, as I detail in my book The Bright Side (2025)...

Yes, yes, this whole article is a stealth ad for a book. I've repeatedly stated my philosophy on that.

I know this entry delves deeper into theology than my rants usually do. It just seemed to be the proper reaction to the ideas presented.