Cruel optimism and lazy pessimism
Every so often essays posted to HN really hit home and this is one of those times. I feel like this topic has been central to a lot of frustrations I&#x27;ve had in recent years.<p>A lot of the discussion here seems to be focused on individual agency and how much people are responsible for their circumstances or not, but for me many of the underlying issues are really about lack of understanding on the advice-givers.<p>Sometimes someone is capable of changing their circumstances, but just doesn&#x27;t know how to go about it. They just never were taught how, or whatever, and when they turn to others for help, they get bad advice. The people they turn to might really care about the person and want to help, but just aren&#x27;t good mentors.<p>The avocado toast example is important as a flawed position not necessarily because of broader issues about individual versus societal responsibility, but because it illustrates how completely ignorant people can be about their fellow humans&#x27; circumstances. This has a whole host of consequences that are extremely powerful, including not providing advice that would actually help, to not recognizing that good people sometimes just make mistakes, that good or bad mentoring actually does matter, and so forth and so on.<p>So maybe someone is entirely capable of improving their financial situation. But is telling them it&#x27;s because they&#x27;re eating avocado toast too much really going to help them? No, because the worldview that avocado toast is causing financial ruin is just as flawed as the worldview that everyone is a completely helpless victim. Cruel optimism isn&#x27;t just cruel optimism, it&#x27;s ignorant optimism, and proves the point by its very nature that the system is broken in some way: a person who believes avocado toast is the source of financial distress themselves probably is not sound in their financial reasoning, and if they are not in financial distress, it&#x27;s probably not because of their sound financial reasoning, but rather, other factors.<p>If you cannot correctly identify the systemic impediments to someone improving their situation, and offer realistic advice to them in those circumstances, you&#x27;re part of the problem, or at least, you&#x27;re not recognizing the problem. Avocado toast is kind of a perfect example of opportunity costs applied to moral reasoning or something: it&#x27;s not that it blames the victim, it&#x27;s that the advice is actively harmful if for no other reason that decent advice is not being given, and then becomes an example of the very thing it&#x27;s trying to argue against.