A cynic is someone who makes emphatically negative estimates without sufficient evidence. A naïve optimist is someone who makes emphatically positive estimates without sufficient evidence. Both represent illogical positions. Both the cynic and the naïve optimist act out of prejudice (the word comes from the Latin praejudicare, “to judge beforehand”), because they make up their mind about a particular matter before it has been fully encountered and seriously engaged with, not to say intelligently assimilated.
