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A common idiom used to illustrate optimism versus pessimism is a glass filled with water to the halfway point: an optimist is said to see the glass as half full, while a pessimist sees the glass as half empty. In ordinary English, optimism may be synonymous with idealism—often, unrealistic or foolish optimism in particular.
Josiah Stamp is often given credit for introducing it in a 1935 speech, but although he did help to popularize it, a variant regarding a car's gas tank occurs in print with the optimism/pessimism connotations as early as 1929, and the glass-with-water version is mentioned simply as an intellectual paradox about the quantity of water (without ...
Pessimists tend to focus on the negatives of life in general. A common question asked to test for pessimism is "Is the glass half empty or half full?"; in this situation, a pessimist is said to see the glass as half empty, or in extreme cases completely empty, while an optimist is said to see the glass as half full. Throughout history, the ...
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is among the world’s wealthiest individuals, with a net worth topping $100 billion. While a number of factors explain his success, one might simply be his optimistic nature.
Voltaire was the first European to be labeled as a pessimist by his critics, in response to the publication and international success of his 1759 satirical novel Candide; [40]: 9 a treatise against Leibniz's theistic optimism, refuting his affirmation that "we live in the best of all possible worlds."
Melancholy by Domenico Fetti (1612). Death, suffering and meaninglessness are the main themes of philosophical pessimism. Philosophical pessimism is a philosophical tradition which argues that life is not worth living and that non-existence is preferable to existence.
In the philosophy of science, the pessimistic induction, also known as the pessimistic meta-induction, is an argument which seeks to rebut scientific realism, particularly the scientific realist's notion of epistemic optimism. The pessimistic meta-induction is the argument that if past successful and accepted scientific theories were found to ...
A learned optimism test (developed by Seligman) is used to determine an individual's base level of optimism. Being in the more pessimistic categories means that learning optimism has a chance of preventing depression, helping the person achieve more, and improve physical health.