I used to be an extremely pessimistic person, and I always thought it was just a matter of my own personality. Later, as I read and thought more deeply, I gradually realized: pessimism is not a flaw of a minority, but more like the default setting of the human species.

Bad news spreads more easily than good news, threats are remembered more easily than opportunities, and the psychological weight of a major loss far outweighs that of multiple gains of equal scale. From an evolutionary perspective, a reasonable explanation is that pessimism itself is a set of “genetic algorithms” that protected humans in ancient times but have gradually become mismatched in the modern environment.

If you were a primitive person out hunting and suddenly heard a noise in the bushes, would you choose to believe it might be a rabbit, or would you first assume it’s a beast? In an environment full of deadly risks, being too optimistic is actually a disadvantage. In the long run, individuals who are more cautious and more likely to overestimate danger have a better chance of surviving and reaching reproductive age.

The human cognitive system wasn’t designed to see the world clearly, but to “avoid fatal mistakes.” This underlying goal systematically produces several stable pessimistic tendencies.

First, loss aversion. The pain of losing $100 is far greater than the pleasure from gaining $150.

Second, availability bias. News of a plane crash subconsciously makes people feel that flying is dangerous, but they ignore the fact that, statistically, it is still one of the safest modes of transportation.

Third, over-attribution and self-blame mechanisms. People are more likely to attribute failure to “I’m not good enough,” but attribute success to “I was just lucky.” This is also the psychological soil in which imposter syndrome persists.

In modern society, this pessimism-biased cognitive system is further amplified by social media. Platform algorithms naturally favor fear, anger, and anxiety, as these emotions linger longer and spread more quickly. Our pessimism is not just self-generated; it is also continuously fed to us.

So, in the face of this pessimism that is almost hardwired into humans, what can we do?

The truly damaging aspect of pessimism is that our brains naturally adopt a “success or failure, safety or death” binary narrative. But in reality, most decisions are never simply binary choices; they are matters of probability. If we continue to interpret the world in terms of win-or-lose, we will almost certainly be repeatedly frustrated.

A more realistic perspective is that of expected value (EV) thinking.

Just like the example of plane crashes, crashes seem terrifying on an intuitive level, but in terms of expected value, the risk is far lower than our subjective feelings. Whether an outcome is worth pursuing doesn’t depend on “how terrible it would be if it failed,” but on whether its long-term expected value is positive or negative.

Expected value of success (EV) = probability of success × payoff of success − probability of failure × loss from failure.

When you find something where—even if you fail, the loss is bearable; but if you succeed, the reward is amplified—the truly rational choice is often not to agonize over whether to start, but to try several times.

Musk once said that as long as an idea doesn’t violate the laws of physics, then with enough time and effort, it can theoretically be achieved. This may be the most thorough statement of optimism I’ve ever heard. Its true value may not lie in guaranteeing success, but in refusing to declare something impossible before it’s been tested.