#pangloss — Public Fediverse posts

There's nothing wrong with being cheerful

It doesn't make you foolish, it doesn't make you less foolish either

#optimistic
#pangloss

I think each time I’ve read #Candide I’ve identified with a different character. This book endures because it flows along with you, twists with your fate & #philosophy, ages like wine, remains sickeningly relevant. #Pangloss can be read, of course, as philosophical optimism but is seen all too often in actually existing #Capitalism as a merely deferential shrug. The horrors persist, objective and unimpeachable, but #Voltaire doesn’t even try to fully preach cynicism / skepticism…

@johnwehrle Here's my earlier discussion of E.R. / GCR, and the Posner quote:

https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/109712403433781694

I'm finding it holds up well.

That's actually an argument against another form of idiocy: panglossianism, particularly of the Steven Pinker variety. But the underlying mechanism is more or less the same: getting confounded with exhibited probabilities (nil, in the case of CGRs Not Yet Realised), or potential impacts (infinite, in the case of GCRs generally), and failing to consider other dimensions of the question:

• Chains of causality in arriving at some specific risk.
• Scope over which a given risk is "existential". (The "existence of what exactly?" question.)
• Potential exogenous bounds on growth, capacity, and/or attainment regardless of the risks in question.

If humans are bad at addressing risk generally, we are globally, catastrophically, existentally BAD at dealing with global catastrophic and/or existential risks.

#Risk #GlobalCatastrophicRisk #ExistentialRisk #Pangloss #Panglossianism #StevenPinker #StevenPinkerIsAnIdiot #MyInfinityIsBiggerThanYours

I'm curious: What have the panglossians such as Stephen Pinker had to say about the Russo-Ukranian war and all that jazz?

#StevenPinker #Pangloss #Cornucopians #Ukraine #War