The case for optimism in uncertain times

In the near term, the sheer scale and complexity of the challenges we face—from geopolitical instability to the climate crisis and rapid technological disruption—can appear overwhelming. But if we take a longer view, there are strong reasons to believe that the underlying forces of progress will continue to expand prosperity, improve living standards, and widen the frontier of what is possible.

Human progress has been extraordinary over the past few centuries. It has never been linear or evenly shared, and many challenges remain unsolved, but the long arc tells a clear story: Our capacity to solve problems and expand what is possible has consistently outpaced our ability to foresee the future.

It is sensible, then, to assume that the future will continue to be shaped by breakthroughs we cannot yet imagine. Crucially, believing this is vital to making that future unfold as Karl Popper once suggested: We are all equally responsible for the future’s success. That is why optimism really matters.

Allow me to explain.

Optimism is not blind positivity

Optimism is often confused with assuming things will work out for the best regardless of the evidence. Taken to that extreme, this kind of blind positivity can be irrational and often disastrous. Acting on optimistic expectations when the odds of success are clearly low is rarely wise. Yet judging those odds is not straightforward. The Dunning–Kruger effect shows that people with a lower ability in certain areas often lack the skills to assess their own competence, making them more likely to overestimate their chances of success.

Optimism is also not the same as having a sunny disposition. Thomas Malthus, one of history’s most famous pessimists when it came to high population growth and resource shortfalls, was apparently a very cheerful person. Winston Churchill, by contrast, struggled with depression, yet combined a clear-eyed view of harsh realities with a deep confidence in eventual victory—confidence that played a decisive role in history.

Optimism, uncertainty, and the cost of being wrong

When the hard facts are largely known, an optimistic view that ignores them can seem irrational—aside from rare cases, such as fighting a major illness, when optimism can strengthen resolve.

A more common situation, identified by behavioral psychology, involves low-probability outcomes with high potential rewards. Here, it’s worth considering the cost of being wrong. Buying a lottery ticket and believing you’ll win the big prize is harmless; betting everything on winning is not.

But when the facts are not known, pessimism can be just as irrational.

An old tale illustrates this: A thief sentenced to death by a tyrannical king makes a bizarre proposal to teach the king’s favorite horse to sing a hymn within a year in exchange for his life. Asked why he made such an absurd promise, the thief answers, “A lot can happen in a year. The king may die or lose power, the horse may die, or the horse may sing.” Unlikely as these outcomes may be, they are clearly preferable to certain death.

The power of optimism to shape the future

In the face of uncertainty, optimism oriented toward a longer time horizon is valuable and fundamental. It does not deny what we don’t know, but begins by acknowledging uncertainty with humility. Many influential figures have argued, correctly, I think, that long-term optimism is not just descriptive, it’s generative: it helps to shape a better future by motivating the search for solutions.

History supports this view. Malthus’s pessimistic predictions seem so ludicrously wrong today, not because the concerns they addressed were foolish, but because they underestimated the power of human ingenuity. Of course, there are also many long-range optimistic predictions that have overestimated progress. Yet, on balance, pessimistic predictions have missed the mark more often, and in nearly every case, acting on them would have prevented valuable progress.

Optimism in the face of uncertainty does not ignore risk. It acknowledges that the path forward will most likely include serious challenges and unforeseen crises. But it also accepts that uncertainty cuts both ways: Just as new and unknown risks may emerge, so too may new solutions we cannot yet imagine. Crucially, being optimistic does not absolve us of our responsibility to act when disasters are in plain sight. On the contrary, it assumes that better outcomes depend on sustained individual and collective action. This is not the passive optimism of bystanders, but action-oriented optimism—the kind that drives leaders and their teams to confront problems, seek better solutions, and keep pursuing progress.

The prospects of a century of plenty

A new book by my colleagues Sven Smit, Chris Bradley, Nick Leung, and Marc Canal, A Century of Plenty: A Story of Progress for Generations to Come, offers a compelling vision of what long-term optimism could look like in practice. I highly recommend it. The central argument is simple, yet powerful: A far more abundant future is within reach. The book is anchored in strong evidence. It argues that sustained growth is good, that there is enough for all, that it’s up to us to build the future, and that how we think and talk about the future really matters.

The book explores a scenario in which global GDP grows 8.5 times by 2100, lifting the poorest countries to a level roughly equivalent to today’s Swiss standard of living. That is, not just Switzerland’s plentiful annual income per capita ($82,000), but also its broad access to education, healthcare, safety, and opportunity. Getting anywhere close to that would represent extraordinary progress.

Looking back over the past century underscores four points that, while offering no guarantee of the future, are nonetheless foundational for optimism about what the next hundred years could bring:

• The scale of progress has been extraordinary. Across almost any measure of human well-being, the past century has seen an unprecedented acceleration in progress. In the 1920s, only about 20 percent of the world’s population had access to electricity; today, over 90 percent do. Real income per person has risen more than sevenfold, while extreme poverty fell from around 60 percent of humanity to about 10 percent. Child mortality declined to 4 percent, from 32 percent. Life expectancy more than doubled to 73 years, from 34. Literacy rose to nearly 90 percent, from 32 percent. Schooling years increased sharply, while women’s participation in the workforce more than doubled, and average working hours fell by over a quarter. That represents broad improvements in both prosperity and quality of life.
• The drivers of progress were largely unpredictable. Few in 1925 could have anticipated the specific forces that would shape the next century. The decisive drivers of progress—semiconductors, antibiotics, mass education, women’s expanded economic roles, global trade integration, or the digital revolution—were either nonexistent or peripheral at the time. Equally unpredictable were the geopolitical configurations that enabled or constrained growth, from postwar reconstruction to the rise of new economic powers. Progress did not follow a predetermined blueprint; it emerged from complex interactions among science, institutions, incentives, and historical contingencies that defied linear forecasting.
• Progress was uneven, fragile, and frequently disrupted. Despite its magnitude, progress was far from smooth. The last century included a devastating financial crisis, two world wars, and many other geopolitical crises, pandemics, and periods of stagnation that reversed gains for millions. Growth rates varied widely across countries and decades, with long stretches of disappointment alongside bursts of rapid advancement. China and India have grown at staggering rates over close to half a century, but with little growth before the late 1970s. Because the period between 1929 and 1945 was especially tough, negative predictions in 1925 (of which there were many) seemed to have gotten it right until the postwar boom started, and even then, it took much longer to reach the majority of the world population.
• The unfinished agenda remains substantial. Significant challenges remain. While extreme poverty has been declining by 100,000 people every day for several decades, only a small share of the global population enjoys economic security. Inequality remains high within and across countries, and access to quality education, healthcare, and opportunity is far from universal. Aging and lower fertility rates present new challenges while technological trends continue to offer new solutions alongside new problems. Even where material living standards have improved, the challenges of inclusion, fairness, safety, and sustainability persist.

The lesson of the past century is not that progress is inevitable, but that it is possible against all odds. Progress offers wide benefits, but requires constant work. As David Deutsch put it in his ambitious 2011 book, The Beginning of Infinity, there are three laws of the human condition: Problems are inevitable, problems are soluble, and solutions create new problems.

Keynes’ optimism nearly a century ago

In 1930, after a shocking capital market collapse triggered a devastating economic depression, John Maynard Keynes wrote the essay “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren.”¹John Maynard Keynes, “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930),” reprint, Yale University. He began with a striking observation: “We are suffering just now from a bad attack of economic pessimism. It is common to hear people say that the epoch of enormous economic progress which characterized the 19th century is over; that the rapid improvement in the standard of life is now going to slow down.”

Rather than dwell on the immediate crisis, Keynes decided to look ahead optimistically to the long term and imagine what economic life could be like by 2030. He explained the power of capital investments and how they compound to improve the standard of living, which he predicted would rise by between four and eight times by 2030. He acknowledged some human insatiability for an increasingly higher standard of living (and social superiority), but remained hopeful that most people’s needs would be satisfied or within reach. His analysis was fully correct on economic growth and partially correct about how widely the benefits would be spread.

Keynes then turned to a deep question: What happens when scarcity is no longer the central concern?

“Thus, for the first time since his creation, man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem—how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.”

He didn’t expect an immediate utopia. He recognized that abundance could bring its own challenges: a lack of purpose, insufficiently challenging careers, and the difficulty of adapting to a world with more leisure, shifting morals, and fewer constraints. Eventually, he expected most people would adapt to the new attitudes toward accumulating and spending money. Some people will remain intensely focused on their relative wealth and success, unable to find purpose elsewhere, while many others would take advantage of greater economic security to enjoy more leisure time.

We still have a few years before 2030, but even the biggest AI “boomers” think this transition will take more time. It’s likely that for most people living today, Keynes’s optimistic vision is still only a possibility for their grandchildren. But we have come a long way, which is a reminder that progress is real—and that the power of optimism is part of what keeps us moving forward.