Deep Story

EP.16- Only Fools Believe Pessimists: A Politically Incorrect Take

• MPT

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-Is pessimism blinding us to a future of endless possibilities? Uncover how rational optimism, fueled by innovation and technology, has consistently turned challenges into opportunities throughout history. By challenging gloomy narratives and exploring the evolution of resources and knowledge, we reveal why progress, creativity, and resilience hold the answers to humanity's greatest problems. Join us to rethink the way we view the future and embrace the transformative power of innovation.

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Let's be real here, say it, dig it and analyze it. That's Deep Story. Thanks for tuning into Deep Story. I'm MPT.

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You know, in life we always run into these pessimistic agitators. You know the type, always ranting with this weird three-step logic. First sentence they'll tell you the world is pitch black, a disaster is just around the corner, like they make the Grim Reaper sound like a motivational speaker. Second sentence they'll say why is this happening? Oh, let me tell you it's a handful of bad people ruining it for everyone. Then, boom, out comes the villain lineup Jews from Hitler's propaganda, the Rothschilds from conspiracy theorists, or get this, get the evil empire of capitalism, genetically modified food or even big tech. I mean, it's always them, right, it's never just you know people not recycling. And the third sentence here comes the clincher. Here comes the clincher. So what can we do? Or reorganize? Follow me, I've got the answer. They're like that friend who always knows the shortcut that ends in a two-hour detour. Yeah, these people, they're what you call agitators. But don't think agitators are just running wild in politics. Oh no, they've infiltrated the commercial world too it. Take a close look at some ads. The same pattern pops up list the problem, magnify it to apocalyptic proportions, then roll out their miracle solution. It's like is your life in shambles? Buy this vacuum cleaner, yeah, because that's what'll fix everything.

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Take Al Gore, for example, a former vice president, global warming preacher, extraordinaire. He didn't just give talks, he made a whole documentary talks. He made a whole documentary. An Inconvenient Truth. And man, what a pitch. The earth's heating up, the environment's doom. If the temperature rises another three to six degrees, humanity is toast forever. Cue the panic, carbon trading and every other. Save the world conference and every other. Save the World conference, stockholm meeting anyone.

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But here's the thing Deep Story flips this entire script on its head. First off, we say the world is already pretty darn amazing. And guess what? It's only gonna get better. Ai, automation and all these game-changing technologies are like keys, opening doors for everyone. A second we're not about hate or finger-pointing. Why waste energy fighting others when you can just hang with like-minded folks? You know birds of a feather and all that. Let's leave the pitchforks in the middle ages, where they belong. Third, yeah, we organize, but we're not about rigid control. It's all about free people freely coming together. That's where real creativity sparks.

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So calling us agitators, come on. That's like saying it snowed in June. But I'm not here to declare my name. No, I want to talk about something bigger. Have you noticed?

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The logic of deep stories starts at a totally different place than the agitators. Theirs is all about the doom looming over us, ours. It's about building a brighter future. So here's the question are we gonna be gullible pessimists or rational optimists? Now, if you've been paying attention, you probably know where this is going. Yup, today's spotlight is on this book Rational Optimist how Prosperity Evolves.

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Let's start with the pessimism, though. Close your eyes and think for a second. How many reasons are there to feel hopeless about the world? Poverty, diseases, desertification, acid rain, thinning ozone layers, species extinction, asteroids, sperm counts dropping, smog-filled cities, cancer rates climbing, moral decline everywhere the list goes on. And thanks to experts, professors, scholars and the media buzzing about it, open 24 hours a day, 7-7 days a week, all year long it's all carved into our brains.

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You know this whole pessimism thing. It's not new, it's practically a fossilized tradition in human history. Way back in ancient Greece, like 8th century BC, they had poets singing. Century BC, they had poets singing. Oh, the good old days were so glorious and now everything's gone to hell. They even categorized history into three eras the Golden Age, the Silver Age and the Iron Age. Guess what age they thought they were living in, yep? The Iron Age dark, bleak and miserable. So yeah, pessimism, it's ancient. But here's the kicker All those fancy, high-minded wise predictions. They've never been right, not even once the world has been on an upward trajectory, and none of the doom and gloom prophecies ever came true. Everything we thought was destined to deteriorate. It didn't Take the Industrial Revolution as an example. If there's one period in history that's universally celebrated for its massive contributions to humanity contributions to humanity it's that.

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Let's focus on England, where it all began. Between 1750 and 1850, england saw this insane population boom. In 1750, england had just 6 million people. By 1800, that number jumped to 9 million and by 1820, 12 million. What does a population explosion tell you? More food, better nutrition, higher living standards. It's basic math. People thrive, they multiply. A true golden age. Life was getting better for everyone, but if you read the literature of that time, you'd think it was a horror movie.

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Poets like Robert Southey, novelists like Charles Dickens and even 20th century philosophers like Bertrand Russell painted this era as an unmitigated disaster. Russell, brilliant guy, nobel Prize winner, mind you famously said. Anyone with a basic knowledge of economic history knows the industrial revolution was a calamity for Britain. Happiness in those hundred years couldn't compare to the century before. And all this misery blame it on science and technology. Science and technology Bold words, right. Here's the irony A lot of those folks who criticized the workers' living conditions had never even been to an industrial area.

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Picture these aristocrats strolling into a working-class neighborhood, looking around and gasping what is this filth? How can people live like this? Especially when they saw laundry hanging outside to dry Scandalous. But guess what? Those drying clothes were a sign of progress. Workers could afford multiple outfits now, one to wear and one to wash. Compare that to the French at the time, where a person might only own a single threadbare outfit passed down from their grandparents. From their grandparents. That one outfit doubled as a daytime coat and a nighttime blanket. Sure, it looked clean, because it never saw soup, but really it screamed poverty.

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Now, looking back, a hundred plus years later, the industrial revolution is seen as an undeniable era of progress Economy up, living standards, up everything on the rise. Yet somehow, both then and now, people insisted on painting it as a nightmare. Speaking of nightmares, let's not forget the Club of Rome di Beco. In 1968, a bunch of intellectuals an Italian businessman, a Soviet scholar and other big-shot scientists held a fancy meeting in a villa in Rome to predict humanity's future. Their conclusion A party's over folks.

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Back in 1972, the Club of Rome dropped their infamous report titled the Limits to Growth. What was the big takeaway? E Earth's resources are running out. Oh well, 30 years max. The good times are over, folks. Save the planet, conserve energy. It sounded so dramatic, like the world was on a countdown timer. But here we are, over 40 years later.

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And what happened to those doomsday predictions? They've aged like milk. Not only haven't we run out of resources, but proven reserves have actually increased. That's right. Resources grew, not shrank. Turns out, the limits weren't so limiting after all.

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Meanwhile, we didn't stop, we didn't slow down, we didn't take their brilliant advice about pressing pause. No, humanity kept sprinting ahead at full throttle. And surprise, the world didn't collapse, in fact. Surprise, the world didn't collapse in fact. It's us, those silly, rational optimists, who turned out to be right. But why are people so eager to feed us bad news? Sure, some of them are chasing fame and fortune, but the bigger question is why are we so willing to eat it up. What's with our obsession with gloom and doom?

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Physiologists have a fascinating answer. It's all thanks to the amygdala. Yeah, that tiny almond-shaped part of your brain. It's in charge of your early warning system. The amygdala filters the flood of information we encounter and flags anything critical for survival, like danger, threats or food shortages. Oh, and it also handles emotions like fear, anger and hatred Real cheerful stuff. Think about our ancestors roaming the wilderness. How did they survive? By paying attention to the amygdala. It told them watch out for tiger tracks over there or that howling, definitely wolves. It even handled critical stuff like hey, who's messing with my partner, or are we running low on food? Quick reactions from the amygdala were a literal lifesaver.

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Fast forward to today and human brains have evolved this fancy upgrader, the prefrontal cortex. This is the brain's HQ for high-level stuff friendship, love, teamwork, kindness and even language. It balances out the amygdala's primitive panic mode. The problem Bad news hits the amygdala first and it reacts like a fire alarm Fear, anger, hatred, boom, All triggered before the rational prefrontal cortex has a chance to chime in. Prefrontal cortex has a chance to chime in. By the time logic kicks in, the amygdalas already flipped every emotional switch. That's why we're so naturally drawn to bad news. It's biology, baby.

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Psychologists have their own take on this. Daniel Kahneman yes, the Nobel Prize winning author of thinking fast and slow calls it the anchoring effect. What's that? It's our tendency to make decisions based on past experiences and limited information. Our brains can't process everything, so we lean on shortcuts, what we've seen before or what feels familiar. This is where cognitive biases creep in.

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Let me give you a classic example. In the late 19th century Londoners had one big head-age horse, poo Yep. Back in the horse and carriage days, the streets were drowning in manure days, the streets were drowning in manure. The piles just kept growing and it got so bad that people thought London would become uninhabitable. End of the world. Vibes right, but here's the thing. Those predictions were based on what people knew at the time. They had no clue that cars were just around the corner ready to sweep in and save the day. This is a textbook example of drawing bad conclusions from limited information, and history is full of these misfires.

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Like when computers were first invented, ibm's founder, thomas J Watson, famously predicted the world will only need about five computers. Another computing expert said there's no way every household could own a computer. What kind of world would that even be? Fast forward a few decades, and not only does every household have a computer, but most of us have more than one. So how did such brilliant minds make such hilariously wrong calls? Simple, back then, computers were room-sized beasts weighing tons. Of course, the idea of a personal computer seemed ridiculous. It was a conclusion based entirely on the tech of the time.

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Every era has its own version of this. Take England, for example. The British seemed to have a knack for worrying about running out of stuff. In the 17th century, before the Industrial Revolution even kicked off, england's economy was already growing steadily, but people were panicking why? Ironworks were burning through 400 acres of forest a year and breweries were consuming thousands of cartloads of wood for distillation. Folks were convinced the forests were doomed. By 1650, firewood prices had skyrocketed, seven times higher than just 50 years earlier. Poor people couldn't afford it anymore, and some even froze to death. Naturally, the elites freaked out, imagining a future where England would be a treeless wasteland. But now, from the vantage point of history, the solution seems laughably obvious Coal. Seriously, dig a little under your bed and there's coal. Burn that instead. And not only did coal solve the fuel crisis, but it also jump-started the Industrial Revolution. Problem solved right? Well, not so fast.

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By 1865, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing. And guess what New fears arose? This time it was coal itself. An economist issued a green warning All prosperity relies on coal and coal is about to run out. This sparked the infamous Coal Panic of 1866, a crisis so intense it led to the formation of the Royal Commission on Coal. Their mission Figure out how to survive the looming coal apocalypse.

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Here's the punchline. Within a decade, massive new coal reserves were discovered worldwide and the crisis evaporated. Problem solved right? Nope, because then came the next big scare, or oil. By the 20th century, oil had become the new boogeyman.

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In 1910, the US Bureau of Mines warned that America's oil reserves would only last 10 years. In 1920, they updated their prediction 13 years left. By 1930, they doubled down still only 13 years left. It's like their calendars were stuck. Only 13 years left. It's like their calendars were stuck.

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And each time these predictions came with panic and stern warnings about the end of civilization as we knew it. People were urged to change their ways, prepare for the worst. But what actually happened? Technology advanced and surprise, oil reserves grew instead of shrinking, even in the 1970s, president Jimmy Carter warned horror prosperity will end in 10 years. Backed by the ever gloomy Club of Rome, this claim seemed inevitable. People believed it because at the time it felt like common sense. And yet history proved them wrong again.

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Over and over, humanity has outpaced these dire predictions thanks to ingenuity, technological breakthroughs and resourcefulness. It's almost like we're addicted to proving pessimists wrong. So what's the situation today? Well, just in the United States, with the new technology to extract shale oil and gas, there's enough energy to power the country for 300 years. If history has taught us anything, it's that almost every doom and gloom prediction about resource depletion has flopped spectacularly.

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Is it because humanity is just lucky? Of course not. It's because we've fundamentally misunderstood the nature of resources. Our first resources aren't objective objects, they're knowledge. Think about it too. Before the industrial revolution, if oil started bubbling up from a farm, would people have considered it a resource? Nope, back then, black, sticky, greasy oil was just a nuisance, ruining otherwise fertile land and uranium. Imagine a cave with uranium deposits. People walking in getting sick from radiation would just think the place was haunted. Oh, a mess. Uranium, a curse. These things didn't become resources until human knowledge advanced enough to make them valuable.

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Second, the total amount of resources is always changing. Take oil, for example. Sure people say it'll run out someday, and we're not denying that, but in practice, at least in the short term, that's not how it works. In 2013, russia discovered 600 million tons of oil reserves. That same year, they extracted over 500 million tons, yet their proven reserves kept growing. As technology improves, so does the total amount of resources we can access.

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A third resources are replaceable. How does that work? Let's look at computing. Today we're in the AI and Internet age, where computing power is massive, almost inimaginable. If we were still relying on CPUs alone, we'd have run out of computing power ages ago. But instead of hitting a wall, humanity innovates. Enter quantum computing. By combining quantum computers with traditional systems, we've solved the problem before it even became a crisis.

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Or take paper. Remember when people worried we'd run out of trees for paper. And now? How often do you use paper? For me, almost never, aside from books. Even our office doesn't have a printer. Everyone has an iPad. We discuss, plan and share everything digitally. Paper practically irrelevant. Now. One resource replaces another.

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Here's a fun one that people always ask what if all these historical trends fail? What if every resource really does run out. Well, it's happened before. Remember 1972, the Arab Isle embargo. The organization of petroleum exporting countries decided to punish the West for supporting Israel. They restricted oil supplies, jacked up prices. From 1972 to 1974, oil prices tripled. By 1981, they had skyrocketed tenfold, from $3 a barrel to $35. Sound familiar.

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But did civilization collapse? Nope, sure. It was rough. The US and Europe took a hit. Industrial production dropped by 30%, economies stumbled. But what happened a few years later? Innovation by the late 1970s, american cars had improved dramatically. Gas guzzlers that once burned through liters of fuel now sipped it at just 17 liters per 100 kilometers. Today it's down to 10 or even less. And now we've got electric cars replacing traditional ones entirely. Humanity didn't crumble, it adapted. When resources become scarce, we innovate, we replace and we thrive.

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You know what else came out of the oil crisis? Aluminum engines. Because aluminum is lighter, it cuts down on fuel consumption. The development of aluminum engine technology replaced some of the demand for oil. Now, before the crisis, who would have guessed that oil and aluminum could be interchangeable? That's the thing about resources. They're always replaceable.

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When one runs out, another steps up. Like the saying goes, when God closes a door, he opens a window. Now you might be thinking, mpt, I'm still not convinced. Let me tell you a story. Imagine someone jumping off a skyscraper story. Imagine someone jumping off a skyscraper On the way down. They pass the second floor, pull out their phone and call their spouse. So far, so good, everything's fine. But of course, one second later, a splat. So you ask, are we humans, just mid-fall about to hit the pavement? Just mid-fall about to hit the pavement? Not exactly. It's not that the doomsayers of the past were all liars or fools, they were just premature. Maybe, just maybe, our generation is that unlucky one where humanity has reached the second floor with only a meter left before the crash.

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Let's go back to that skyscraper metaphor. Imagine human civilization is free falling and we're only a hair's breadth away from impact. What now? It's like God's looking down at humanity and saying I've had enough of your nonsense. Time for a little divine punishment. Your era of good fortune is over.

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So what do we do? If that's true, pessimists have two solutions. First, stop developing. Second, develop, but very sparingly. Let's break those down. Stopping development Forget it. The desire for a better, more comfortable, more luxurious life is hardwired into every human. You think you can squash that with moral lessons or public service announcements. Not a chance. Even Al Gore, the poster boy for reducing carbon emissions, has a carbon footprint big enough to make a polar bear weep.

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All right, let's entertain the impossible, say we do reign in humanity's relentless drive for progress. What happens then? Do we all agree to live simpler, poorer but safer and more sustainable lives? No way. Inequality doesn't disappear, it grows. The privileged, the powerful, the lucky few will still chase luxury while the rest of us scrape by. When resources run dry and fossil fuels are gone, what happens? Easy exploitation. Look at Louis XIV of France, the Sun King. The guy's dinner needed 40 dishes, served by a kitchen staff of 498 people. Didn't matter if there wasn't enough to go around. He lived like a king because he could force others to make it happen. And that brings us to one of the most famous essays in economics.

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Back in 1958, leonard Reed wrote I Pencil. It's about the humble pencil. A seemingly simple product a graphite core, a wooden body, a bit of copper and a tiny piece of rubber. Yet producing that pencil involves millions of people working together across the globe. The takeaway Human progress, isn't just about resources.

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It's about collaboration, ingenuity and a relentless drive to innovate. That's why stopping development isn't just improbable, it's unthinkable. You know, when you think about it, we're all living like Louis XIV. These days, every one of us enjoys a life powered by the labor of countless others workers, engineers, designers, farmers, you name it. But what if this vast extended system of cooperation suddenly stopped? Extended system of cooperation suddenly stopped? We'd be right back to Lewis's world One person dining while four and ninety-eight people are sweating it out in the kitchen. Back to square one, back to the days of human exploitation. Fossil fuels changed all that. They liberated us from the need to enslave one another. But if fossil fuels are ever taken off the table, what happens? Will we slide back into a system where people exploit people? Think about it. The return of slavery wouldn't just be a possibility, it'd almost be inevitable.

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Now let's look at the second solution from the pessimist's conservation. Let's stop talking about growth, let's just save what we have. Sounds reasonable, right? Except no, it's not a solution either. And there's a famous concept in economics called Jevons' Paradox. It's a bit technical, but here's the gist Every time we make something more efficient, the total consumption of that resource actually increases.

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Crazy huh A. William Stanley Jevons, a 19th century economist noticed this while studying the history of machines. Before James Watt improved the steam engine, its energy efficiency was just 1%, meaning only one ton of useful power came out of 100 tons of coal. Watt improved that efficiency to 10%, and later the internal combustion engine took it to 20%. Today's advanced power plants can hit a whopping 60%. So with all that efficiency, you'd think we'd use less energy, right? Nope, our total energy consumption keeps going up. Why? It's simple. When cars become more fuel efficient, driving gets cheaper. More people drive, and they drive farther, burning more gas overall. That's Javan's paradox. In action, conservation doesn't lead to less consumption, it often leads to more.

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And then there are those feel-good campaigns like Earth Hour, where everyone turns off their lights for an hour every March 29. Sure, it's symbolic. Even the organizers admit it's more about raising awareness than making an actual impact. But here's the kicker it can sometimes make things worse. But why? Because people still need light at night. So instead of flipping on energy-efficient bulbs, some folks light candles. Sounds romantic, right, but here's the problem Candles are far less efficient than electric lights. They burn more energy, produce more carbon dioxide and release pollutants that are worse for your health than a power plant's emissions. That's just one downside. Here's another.

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While everyone's enjoying their moment of eco-consciousness, and there's one group suffering in silence the power plants. A sea. Electricity demand usually peaks at night when everyone suddenly cuts their usage for an hour. It can wreak havoc on the power grid. Boilers might shut down because of the sudden drop in load, and restarting them isn't easy. Generators, which rely on a precise balance of rotational resistance, can start spinning too fast when the load decreases, risking irreversible damage For power plants. Earth hour isn't a love letter to Mother Earth. It's a logistical nightmare. So while these gestures might look good on the surface, they're not solutions. They're oversimplifications that fail to address the complexity of the challenges we face.

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Rational optimists believe that solving these problems isn't about cutting back or standing still. It's about charging forward, even if we're just a meter from hitting the ground. We've got to dig a hole and keep going. Not enough energy, running out of resources? Fine, let's invent new energy sources, discover new resources and ensure our development continues sustainably. The solution isn't to stop or to shrink. It's to innovate and expand. So how do we move forward?

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The past few centuries of human progress have taught us there are two main past market signals and knowledge. First let's talk about market signals, specifically price. Humanity has never discovered new resources or energy because environmentalists yelled about it. No, it's because some capitalists, with a gleam of greed in their eye, spotted a market opportunity. Take solar energy, for example. When will it go mainstream? Not because people are chanting for its adoption, but because, as oil becomes scarcer and prices skyrocket, solar will become profitable. As more people use solar, its unit cost will drop and eventually it'll replace some of oil's functions. In the end, it's the much maligned greedy market, not the pessimists or environmentalists, that solves the problem.

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The second solution is knowledge. As we discussed earlier, resources are essentially knowledge. So the key to solving resource problems is growing our knowledge base. But here's the catch how do we generate knowledge? It takes energy and resources to do so. The more we use, the more we learn. Critics often point fingers at the United States, saying you consume way too much energy. America fires back, but we create knowledge and share it with the world.

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Let's break this down. Imagine the world has just one last ton of oil. You're now Mother Earth, deciding who gets it. You have two options. Option 1A give it to a remote tribe in the African jungle. They'll use it sparingly, maybe to light a small kerosene lamp, and it'll last them a hundred years. Option two give it to the Americans. They'll burn through that ton in a month, but might create new knowledge, new solutions and new technologies. What would you choose? Obviously the Americans. Why? Because that hundred years adds up to nothing no progress, no breakthroughs. On the other hand, using that oil to generate knowledge benefits everyone. Now let's be clear. I'm not encouraging waste, far from it. The point is, when it comes to humanity's future, pessimism isn't just unhelpful, it's historically inaccurate. First, the pessimists' predictions have never been right. Second, even if they're right, someday their proposed solutions still won't work. The best attitude for survival isn't to be a foolish pessimist, it's to be a rational optimist.