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Optimism is Not Insane

2013-05-31 · letter vlog · Hank · 4:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Global development (also: Personal life, Science & nature) · mode: Personal essay · tags: self correction

Hank says his earlier video on humanity's impact on Earth was paralyzing and wrong in spirit: our brains overweight bad news, humans keep solving problems together, and working for a better future comes from optimism.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Pre-congratulations on John's baby; jokes about John relaxing on paternity leave while Hank fixes the world

  • ★★ Hank pre-congratulates John on his baby, due any day, and jokes that John will be relaxing on paternity leave while Hank fixes all the world's problems. (playful) — 00:00:00 · John Green, Alice Green

00:00:25 — Earlier Earth-impact video failed; cognitive biases toward bad news; humanity is not a cancer; health-and-wealth graph; we adapt; we are the superhero together

  • ★★★ Hank says his video a few weeks ago on humanity's dramatic changes to the Earth, meant to inform and inspire, miserably failed: it was overwhelming, made people hate being human, and paralyzed them. (hedged) — 00:00:25
  • ★★★ Hank says our brains are bad at this: we overestimate our ability to handle what we control and underestimate our ability as a species to affect what we can't control individually. — 00:00:49
  • ★ Hank jokes that he thinks he can run five businesses and pop over to Seattle to help kickstart a space telescope without going crazy. (playful) — 00:00:56 · Kickstarter
  • ★★★ Hank cites a known cognitive bias: we remember and decide based on negative experiences more than positive ones; it takes about 10 positive experiences to outweigh each negative one. — 00:01:08
  • ★★★ Hank says you are being lied to by your own brain, by society and Fox News, and to some extent by him in his earlier video. — 00:01:18

  • ★★★ Hank says humanity is not a cancer: deforestation happens because people want better lives for their families, and rivers run dry because we irrigate crops so children don't starve. — 00:01:26

    “Humanity is not a cancer!”

  • ★★★ Hank says humans constantly solve huge problems without noticing or celebrating: disasters happen all at once, while successes come slowly and continue despite disasters. — 00:01:35

  • ★★★ Showing a graph of health and wealth of every country from 1900 to 2011, Hank says every country is better off, and some African countries now do better than the US did in 1900. — 00:01:51 · progress, United States
  • ★★★ Hank thinks we see a graph rising toward a disaster point and assume we have only years left, but usually we adapt: capitalism, technology and even Congress adapt. (hedged) — 00:02:04 · climate change, capitalism, United States Congress

  • ★★★ Hank says every year we avoid the apocalypse not through one superhero but by working together as activists, scientists, writers, politicians and even bureaucrats: we are the superhero, together. — 00:02:27 · collective action

    “We are the superhero! None of us individually, but all of us together.”

00:02:51 — Trip to Seattle's Museum of Flight to help launch Planetary Resources' space-telescope Kickstarter

  • ★★ Hank's trip to Seattle's Museum of Flight to help Planetary Resources launch its space-telescope Kickstarter inspired him: crowdfunding a telescope, artifacts of great shared projects, dedicated people. — 00:02:51 · Kickstarter

00:03:20 — All of us working together; better futures come from optimism; sign-off

  • ★★★ Hank says it is not just super-smart people but all of us working together to make the world work; we are good at solving problems, but they do not solve themselves. — 00:03:20 · collective action
  • ★★★ Hank concludes that working for a better future comes not from wanting to avoid an inevitable apocalypse but from optimism, and there are a tremendous number of things to be optimistic about. — 00:03:30 · optimism

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Hank writes that one of the people behind the space-telescope project wrote a book that heavily inspired this video, calls it really good and very interesting, and suggests viewers buy and read it. — video description
  • ★★★ Hank clarifies that he does not think humanity is safe: we are in a significant mass-extinction event and are badly damaging the planet; but there is a very good chance humanity will still be creating and solving problems thousands of years from now, the two things we are best at. (hedged) — video description · optimism
  • ★ Hank credits Gapminder for the moving graph of countries' health and wealth. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: collective action · negativity bias · optimism · progress

Also: People: Alice Green

Organizations: Fox News · Kickstarter · Museum of Flight · Planetary Resources · United States Congress

Concepts: capitalism · climate change · crowdfunding · human impact on the environment

Places: Africa · Seattle · United States

Only in the description or credits: Extinction event · Gapminder

Also centred on negativity bias: A Few Of My Favorite Things · The Golden Gate Bridge Didn't Collapse!! · When to Attack a Moose · i said yep

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