Tag Archives: optimism

A Prophetic Film from 1940

Posted on July 25, 2014 by Santi Tafarella

It’s title: To New Horizons. The logic is sunny and simple, but it has proven (thus far) to be pretty much dead on.

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My “Candide” Retort to Margaret MacMillan

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Santi Tafarella

It’s 2014. A hundred years ago, the assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand initiated a series of calamitous events that brought on World War I. And the way WWI ended (with the Versailles Treaty) led to yet another series … Continue reading →

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Robert Wright Claims History is Moving Toward More and More Non-Zero Sum Games

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

Every day, in a lot of ways, are we really getting better and better?

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Increasing Knowledge Does Not Increase The Peace

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Santi Tafarella

That, at any rate, is John Gray’s thesis, and he has a new book out. In a recent interview at The Spectator, he had this to say: [K]nowledge can never eradicate the conflicts of the human world, or produce harmony where … Continue reading →

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2012: The Best Year In All Of Human History?

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Santi Tafarella

It sounds like a joke, but that’s the thesis of the lead article in The Spectator’s 2012 Christmas issue: Never has there been less hunger, less disease or more prosperity. The West remains in the economic doldrums, but most developing … Continue reading →

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Thinking and Apocalypse: Heuristic (Shorthand) Thinking vs. Critical Thinking. Should We Be Optimistic About Our Future?

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Santi Tafarella

Given the paucity of sustained critical thinking in our culture, science writer K. C. Cole reflects on our prospects for collective survival in a recent (and I think important) review at the Los Angeles Review of Books: No one in … Continue reading →

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Gray on Pink(er): Because of Our Evolution, the Irrational We’ll Always Have With Us

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Santi Tafarella

John Gray thinks Steven Pinker’s thesis in his new book—in which Pinker argues that the world is progressing toward an ever less violent future—is deluded. In the Jacob-wrestle between Enlightenment rationality and our evolution-formed imperatives, Gray is betting that our … Continue reading →

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2012 On the Brink: Our Networked Human Future

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Santi Tafarella

We live in interesting times: the end of the “dumb society.” A great short documentary on our collective (and hopeful) future:

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A Bit of Happy News for the Weekend

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Santi Tafarella

Willem Buiter is Citgroup’s chief economist, and here’s CNBC today reporting his forecast for the global economy over the next 40 years: “We expect strong growth in the world economy until 2050, with average real GDP growth rates of 4.6 percent … Continue reading →

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Cheer Up?

Posted on January 9, 2011 by Santi Tafarella

A bit of optimism for a Sunday:

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Think Mind Wells, Not Oil Wells: Is Where You Live a Brain Drain or a Brain Collector?

Posted on November 23, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

If you want to be hopeful about the human future (including America’s), think about this: free minds and strong exchange economies are positively correlated. It’s not that there is a one-to-one relationship between them, but wherever you have free minds the odds are good, … Continue reading →

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My Predictions for the Human Future

Posted on July 26, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

My daughters are four and six, and barring a severe catastrophe (personal or civilizational), my guess is that they’ll have lifespans that might double that of the average person living today. By the time they hit about the age of 50 (around … Continue reading →

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How do you spell relief? R-E-L-I-G-I-O-N?

Posted on July 10, 2010 by Santi Tafarella

According to ScienceDaily, researchers are finding strong links between anxiety and religious extremism in individuals: Across all studies, anxious conditions caused participants to become more eagerly engaged in their ideals and extreme in their religious convictions. In one study, mulling over a personal … Continue reading →

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Cosmic Pessimism v. Cosmic Optimism

Posted on September 3, 2009 by Santi Tafarella

The universe appears to be lacking in purpose in some ways, but not in others. For example, the Holocaust and the panda’s “thumb” would seem to suggest that we live in a historically contingent universe indifferent and blind to both suffering and … Continue reading →

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Mental Health Break (after Thinking about George Bush’s One Million Iraqi “Commas,” Here’s a Song for the “Period”)

Posted on February 2, 2009 by Santi Tafarella

At the end of the line, after perhaps a number of clauses, and commas marking their course, there should be a PERIOD, and there it is.

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