Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

by Peter H. Diamandis

“First, as anchoring shows, there’s a direct link between imagination and perception. Second, we’re control fiends and are significantly more optimistic about things we believe we can control. If I ask you what you can do to get a better grade in math—well, you can imagine studying harder, partying less, maybe hiring a tutor. You have control here. And because of this, your psychological immune system makes you feel overconfident. But if I ask what you can do to solve world hunger, all you can imagine is hordes of starving children. There’s no sense of control, no overconfidence, and those starving children instead become your anchor— and crowd out all other possibilities.” And one of those other possibilities is that we really do have some control over world hunger. As we shall see in future chapters, because of the growth of exponential technologies, small groups are now being empowered to do what only governments once could—including fighting famine. But before we get there, to really understand all the psychological impediments to such progress, we first have to explore how our brain’s architectural design and evolutionary history conspire to keep us pessimistic.