Thread by @s_r_constantin

2x2 idea: weird/normal, optimist/pessimist.

Normal Pessimist is like cops and soldiers: “life is harsh and dangerous so stay on the straight-and-narrow; individual whims are a luxury you can’t afford.”

Normal Optimist is like superhero movies, upbeat pop songs, “Everything is fine, or would be if those damn malcontents didn’t make it DIFFICULT! Just like things and don’t dislike things, okay?!”

Weird Pessimist is the malcontents. Edgy, nihilist, sarcastic, making art about how fucked up things are.

Weird Optimist is absurdist whimsy. It seems kind of a missing affect these days, but I remember it from, say, Flaming Lips-era indie pop, or early BoingBoing. “Whee! So random and bizarre! I love it! The squares are missing out!”

Today a lot of Weird Optimist stuff feels cringey and clueless. Sex-positive 2000’s blogs? Yikes, you can’t just talk about how great sex is, it *isn’t* great for rape victims. And that’s true, but...now there’s a positive side of the human experience you don’t hear from.

Twee, poetic, absurdist aesthetics (think Decembrists or peak Wes Anderson)? They feel “pretentious” or “self-indulgent” today.

Weird Pessimist stuff can read as “what a perverse jerk”; Weird Optimist stuff reads as “what a clueless prat”. Foolish. Silly.

Safety Dance and Weird Al are Weird Optimist.

Stoner and raver culture are Weird Optimist.

Most online content I see is fights between different factions of Weird Pessimists, with Normal Optimists stepping in to tell others not to be so “negative” or to add jokes, cute animals, or promotional materials.

Once in a while Normal Pessimists pipe up to tell everyone how much they suck.

HPMOR and the LessWrong Sequences were firmly Weird Optimist, which is why I think they’ve gotten so much flak in recent years. Robin Hanson, though, has always been Weird Pessimist, like most public intellectuals. And EA is a Normal Optimist movement.

Crooked Timber and Harper’s are Weird Pessimist publications. Most academics in the humanities are Weird Pessimists.

Reply and I’ll categorize your Twitter.

Anybody who hates “kitsch” or “platitudes” or “sanitized” content is a Weird Pessimist. The people who produce that content are Normal Optimists.

Normal Optimist things: most mainstream media, Disney, corporate PR, technocracy, performing personal excellence (like fitness or mental/emotional health), explicitly calling for “positivity”, etc.

Neo-Nazis are Weird Pessimists but Hitler’s Nazis were Normal Optimist/Pessimist hybrids.

Triumphalist aesthetics are Normal Optimist. If it’s in primary colors and has the Imperial Eagle on it? Normal Optimist.

Normal Pessimism is pretty rare in discourse but very common in real life. Anybody who is busy working hard to survive and has little patience for nonsense is Normal Pessimist.

Though it's not always practiced by people in conditions of danger or scarcity, I think some of the ethos of engineering and physical/mathematical sciences is Normal Pessimist. Intense conscientiousness. (There's also a Weird Optimist madcap creativity aspect to those fields.)

Weird Pessimism judges people for being disingenuous or unreflective. Normal Pessimism judges people for being incompetent.

Another way of looking at this: Weird Pessimism criticizes things. Normal Optimism tries to make itself impossible to criticize. Normal Pessimism has bigger problems to worry about than criticism. Weird Optimism is too engaged/happy to worry about being criticized.

Yet another way of looking at it: There are social gradients that push towards stupidity. Normal Optimism has a sense of those gradients, and enthusiastically goes with the flow. Weird Pessimism has a sense of those gradients and hates them (but is still kind of trapped in them.)

Normal Pessimism is locked out of those gradients by necessity; it “can’t afford to be stupid.” And Weird Optimism ignores or is unaware of those gradients.

My own cards on table: I was raised by Normal Pessimist parents (self-made immigrants) and respect Normal Pessimism but don’t always like it; I’m a Weird Optimist by nature, but I’ve flirted with Normal Optimism on and off; most of my friends are Weird Pessimists.

I think the best hope for the future is probably the Weird Pessimist/Weird Optimist/Normal Pessimist alliance.

Normal Optimism is Winnerism. Support whoever is winning, believe whatever gives you relative social power. Follow and amplify incentive gradients. Of course it’s healthy to want to win — and a fair critique of Weird Pessimists that they have an unhealthy resentment of success.

But throwing all resources into a zero-sum conflict destroys the possibility of any future for humans.

There’s a Normal Optimist thing that’s *just* being supportive and encouraging, without trying to take resources or status away from anybody else, and I think it’s mostly good, just unlikely to be very influential.