we just don't know

Drumm Academy battle tactics

Jamil Zaki is one of the biggest researchers in this area. He describes both pessimism and blind optimism as flawed viewpoints that demonstrably obscure how we see the world.

Research shows that even though our society tends to view a cynical viewpoint as smarter or even more moral, cynical people are worse at problem solving and cognitive tasks, worse at telling whether someone is lying, have measurably worse physical and mental well being, and are less likely to vote, protest, volunteer or otherwise take steps to make the world better.

Instead Jamil Zaki advocates for "hopeful skepticism".

Skeptical in the sense that you evaluate people and events from a neutral place based on evidence and personal experience, not on fitting them into an assumed narrative of "people always bad, things will always inevitably get worse" or "people always good, things will always inevitably get better".

Hopeful in the sense of knowing it is possible to make things better than they are now, curious to see possible paths to a better world, and understanding that we all have agency to move the needle in a better direction.

Social media and mainstream news do not provide a hopeful skeptic perspective--they are almost always a barrage of pessimism. This is on top of the already formidable human negativity bias. Most of us have to go looking for sources of positive news and intentionally shift our focus to see the good in other people to balance out the negativity.