I have a few Google alerts to monitor some keywords when used in net speech. Oddly, one of the alerts today was to a post I did three years ago. How does that happen?

I read the old post and discovered that it was a New Year's day rumination about optimism that I still rather like and think it is worth repeating.

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Edge has a variant of the hoary old year-end custom of evaluation of the old year and prognostication about the coming year:

The Edge Annual Question — 2007

WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT? WHY?

As an activity, as a state of mind, science is fundamentally optimistic. Science figures out how things work and thus can make them work better. Much of the news is either good news or news that can be made good, thanks to ever deepening knowledge and ever more efficient and powerful tools and techniques. Science, on its frontiers, poses more and ever better questions, ever better put.

Brockman's stable of thinking/writing/talking heads each take a whack at the question. I checked out a few, and may read more later, but my first impulse was to scrutinize the question: What is optimism anyway?

A dictionary definition such as this one is that optimism is "a general disposition to expect the best in all things ". The word seems to have had slightly different meanings and usages over time. In the 18th century these great expectations were predicated on a doctrine that the actual world is the best of all possible worlds, in which the creator accomplishes the most good at the cost of the least evil.

The creator influences a smaller percentage of humans now, even though his flock may be larger in absolute terms since population has increased. But the sentiment persists with a twist noted by Kevin Kelley in his response to the Edge question.

to remedy currently perceived ills, we keep creating new good things.

Some of these new solutions are often worse than the problems they were supposed to solve, but it is my observation that on average and over time, the new solutions slightly outweigh the new problems. As Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi once said, "There is more good than evil in the world—but not by much." Unexpectedly "not much" is all that is needed when you have the power of compound interest at work—which is what culture is. The world needs to be only 1% (or even one-tenth of 1 %) better day in and day out to accumulate civilization. As long as we create 1% more than we destroy each year, we have progress. This delta is so small that it is almost imperceptible, particularly in the face of the 49% of death and destruction that is in our face. Yet this tiny, slim, and shy differential generates progress.

We are the creators in Kelley's formulation, but the notion is otherwise much the same. Given Kelley's previous work there is a greater difference that can be unpacked from his answer. "We" will not work this progress by debating and persuading one another to do this or that, and act as a group. We will each muddle through as best we can, poaching from another to be sure but maintaining independence. Some will blunder as well as muddle, and so produce the modern equivalent of evil, contributing to the 49+% of death and destruction. Others will do better and be part of the 51-% that creates more than it destroys.

This is largely faith since it is very, very difficult if not impossible to predict. But even someone temperamentally pessimistic can find things to be optimistic about. Oliver Morton answers Brockman's question this way:

I am not, by default, optimistic; it is an attribute that I take on as a duty more than out of temperament. Left to myself I do not look out at the world and see a hopeful place – and did not do so even when the geopolitical state we are in was not so dreadful. But I have been convinced over the years that an outlook that gives play to hopefulness is by and large a better tool with which to help improve the future than the alternatives. You are more likely to find solutions if you believe they are there than not. The trick for those of us without the sunny state of mind naturally suited to such an outlook is to find objects for our optimism that make the duty feel less dutiful.

I like that. Optimism is a mental tool that increases chances of success. It does not guarantee success, but it may make a difference and tip the scales toward Kelley's 51-%. Thus faith is demystified a bit and so made accessible to those who have neither the habit of faith nor a sunny disposition.

That's me. I'm more of a second law type:

• You can't win.
• You can't break even.
• You can't get out of the game.

But I am blessed (or cursed?) with the animal will to life and a certain zenish skill for savoring the eternal moment. I will lose, but I can prolong the game, delay the inevitable, and count that as victory enough while enjoying a seemingly unending series of ecstatic moments. It's not continuous ecstasy to be sure, but it is repeatable.

Happy New Year.