Choosing optimism

With all the bad news that the media is pushing upon us about war, missiles and other misery it's easy to lose perspective on how far we have come as a species and how fast we are currently advancing.

If I could go back in time to the time when I was a little kid, I wouldn't believe the technological advancements we have made.

AI is diagnosing cancers earlier than any human doctor ever could. Gene therapies are curing diseases that were once considered death sentences. A child born today has a fundamentally different biological destiny than one born just 30 years ago.

On the tech side, we carry supercomputers in our pockets, we're building autonomous systems that handle the dangerous and the tedious, and AI models are compressing decades of scientific progress into years.

The pace isn't slowing down. It's accelerating.

And yes, acceleration is uncomfortable. It disrupts. It challenges old structures and old ways of thinking. But the alternative isn't stability. It's stagnation. And stagnation kills just as surely as any missile, just more quietly.

I choose to be optimistic. Not naively, but deliberately.

Because the data supports it. Extreme poverty is at historic lows. Child mortality has plummeted. Renewable energy is now the cheapest form of power ever produced. We landed a reusable rocket on a drone ship in the middle of the ocean and we barely even flinch anymore.

Don't let the noise drown out the signal. That's why I share this video from Pieter Levels, one of my idols.