《嫉妒乐观者，不嫉妒天才》：作者 Janan Ganesh 说，不管是为了职业晋升（这样窄的事情）还是“活下去”，认知能力到了一定程度后的边际回报远不如性情。能够从一堆坏消息中挑出好消息，愿意格外关注好消息甚至编造好消息、重新解读坏消息，是“成功”和“活下去”最重要的能力。对 FDR 的一个评价是他有二等智力、一等性情。

“Optimism” is the crispest word for it, but it gives a banal ring to what is a complex and eerie mental gift: the sifting for good news among the bad, the willingness to magnify and even invent some, the reinterpretation of adverse events as what one had wanted all along.

It can border on self-deception. But it also gets people through the night. And the most underrated component of success is continuing to show up.

Optimism is, in part, what Oliver Wendell Holmes had in mind when he called Franklin Roosevelt a “second class intellect” with a “first class temperament”.

...

This is just the narrowly careerist case for giving optimism its due alongside intellect. The other is that there is no navigating a bleak phase of history without it. Since 2016 or thereabouts, millions of us have used mostly unconscious psychic tricks to absorb a torrent of distressing or at least shocking events.

www.ft.com/content/a8feae6a-790e-4af4-ade2-49061d20bad0