When we ponder a big project, Hirschman observed, we routinely fail to see the number and severity of the challenges the project will pose. This ignorance makes us too optimistic. And that’s a good thing, according to Hirschman. “Since we necessarily underestimate our creativity,” he wrote, “it is desirable that we underestimate to a roughly similar extent the difficulties of the tasks we face, so as to be tricked by these two offsetting underestimates into undertaking tasks which we can, but otherwise would not dare, tackle.”
