Re:The fallacy of mood affiliation (2011)
by xyzzy4 on Sunday January 17, 2016 @01:07PM
(#10920247)
This reminds me of how Peter Thiel said extreme pessimism and extreme optimism are both problems because they both lead to inaction. Why do anything if you believe the world is getting really good or really bad?
[ Parent
| on HN ]
The Thiel quote you're referencing is from an interview with the author of this blog post, Tyler Cowen. Thiel was answering an audience member's question about the desirability of life extension[1]:
> We accept that we’re all going to die, and so we don’t do anything, and we think we’re not going to die anytime soon, so we don’t really need to worry about it. We have this sort of schizophrenic combination of acceptance and denial, like extreme pessimism and extreme optimism. It converges to doing nothing, and I’d like us to just fight it a little bit more for its own sake.
1. https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/peter-thiel-on-t...