I have to agree with most of what you wrote, but i respectfully disagree with your point that

> But even a small amount of pessimism leads to fatalism.

Although it being an understandable point of view on the matter, Fatalism doesn't necessarily go hand-in-hand with pessimism. My great grandmother is from the Silent Generation, with a very strong fatalism oriented view, and she is far from pessimistic in her views of the world. In fact, she is the total opposite. Same goes for every family member i know are pessimistic and show the opposite of fatalism in their beliefs about the world, they do not hold the belief that a higher force drives their destiny.

The motivation to seek out holes in naturalism based on the discomfort of facts of reality sounds exactly like going into denial bc facts of life and society are uncomfortable. Not every answer in life is comfortable, regardless of if someone believes in the supernatural or not. It is how life is, it isn’t perfect, it isn’t always happy. To me, that motivation is antithetical to humans maturing from childhood and adolescence

To be clear, I'm definitely not saying you should believe something you have no justification to believe. That would be foolish- agreed. I'm saying the implications of naturalism should spark motivation to seek out holes in naturalism, to seek to disprove it, even if you remain convinced for the time being.

"Besides, no human being will be around for the heat death of the universe. The sun will go supernova in 5 billion years"

Funny enough, I agree! I'm not even sure we'll make it that far. Some naturalists I've spoken to have been rather...optimistic about our future as a species, which is why I point out the big kaput (heat death).

I think some people are talking in the comments about the caricature of pessimism, instead of the "hopeful pessimism" that the article tries to advance.

If a stupid, pink, hairless monkey can figure it out, you can too!

It's optimists hijacked by their capitalist masters, yes. It's still the "wanting to believe without or against evidence" part that leaves optimists open for being taken advantage of. Like saying religion isn't bad, just extremists. The extremists wouldn't exist without the religion. Maybe they'd find something else to take to it's fullest extent, but it wouldn't be violent, morally questionable fairy tales.

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> we still have 'optimists' trying to run around and say everything is fine!

I hesitate to assume it's optimists saying that, but rather self-interested financial elites that are distinctly invested in pushing pessimism to avoid necessary changes.

That is some solid "Monkey Logic".

A naturalist is in all likelihood a supporter of science, and science is not based on answers we find comfortable. Not liking a fact in front of us and deciding to believe something else solely bc it is more comfortable is not a persuasive argument. There isn’t anything prudent about it, it feels more immature than anything

Besides, no human being will be around for the heat death of the universe. The sun will go supernova in 5 billion years, a time frame 1 million times longer than human civilization has existed

If science is used to better our world away from the interference of political ideology or reliance on miracles, and a consequence of that is knowing of the end to the universe being so far away that the human mind cannot even comprehend a time scale that large, where any life is long long gone, I and many people are perfectly okay with that

I do not consult Amazon reviews at all, theyre not verifiable. Realistic optimism isn't a thing. It's just optimism. It's often used like faith, as belief that the best outcome will prevail without evidence. Demonstrate a reason for optimism and we can talk, but declaring now the time for optimism after optimism is what got us to this point is silly. Like I said in the beginning, general optimism is weaponizing you against your own self interest.

Skeptical/critical logic does. Pessimistic logic is just depression.

I mean, on naturalism we will lose the universe to heat death. That's about as bad as it gets. In light of that, do you see why I would think it's prudent for the naturalist to try and disprove his/her naturalism?

You're right. I should've said honed by criticism/skepticism. Edited.

Yes. Blind faith can be dumb, but optimism and a more positive headspace does wonders.

Pessimistic logic helps free people from the yoke of religion.

Example: Thoughts and prayers and magical thinking

Naturalism only has infinite loss if you are starting with the axiom that there is an afterlife. It doesn’t matter if your argument isn’t literally the exact framing of Pascal, it is rooted in the exact same logic

I think it’s important to distinguish pessimism from being critical or skeptical.

No problem! Sorry if I wasn't clear.

"But this is just Pascal, again. “If there is permadeath and I don’t pray, I die. If there is permadeath and I do pray, I die. If there is an afterlife and I don’t pray, I die. If there is an afterlife and I do pray, I live. Therefore, I should pray bc I lose nothing but possibly gain everything”

It's similar, but only insofar as it is a pragmatic approach to the issue of infinite gain/loss around beliefs and such. To compare:

Pascal's Wager more or less says one should believe in God because doing so entails infinite gain if correct and only finite loss if wrong. Meanwhile the atheist position entails only finite gain if correct and infinite loss if wrong (hell). So the rational person should believe in God and/or Christianity.

My argument has a different conclusion. In short, it says naturalism (if correct) entails infinite loss. This is less preferable than worldviews that don't entail such loss, so it should motivate one to seek to disprove naturalism.

"I don’t know how many naturalists would deny others of the comfort of a metaphorical life jacket to permadeath, but if someone is frantically searching and finding nothing, then it seems reasonable for a naturalist to help them come to terms with the situation instead of living in eternal panic."

I can see why that would be a course of action in non life or death circumstances, but when perma-death is around the corner, there's nothing to be gained by coming to terms. Panic, despair, frantic searching, and even crying out to a God all make sense to me! If there's even an infinitesimal chance that naturalism is incorrect, it would worth investigating for the naturalist.

Blind faith/"toxic optimism" is bad, but so is full-on pessimism.

Realistic optimism seems more like what we should push for, since we know that there's a level of optimism that does well by us before it gets to that point.

Since you think I'm strawmanning, then it's clear you believe I'm arguing in bad faith. I guess I should leave it at this then, unless you wanna try and explain how the heck I was strawmanning... I mean, would you buy a product on amazon with no or terrible reviews?

You don't need any conception of physics to arrive logically at the conclusion that the common conception of "free will" is an absurdity. The best arguments deal solely with what we know of the way minds work and their connection to what we know of the brain and biological life in general.

Additionally, I find the comparison to the experience of color quite bizarre. The experience of color has a quite clear physical basis. We may not know the ins and outs of how physical events lead to mental states, but we do know that they in fact do so.

Nothing about our knowledge of the world provides a basis for the experience of free will. In fact, there is no experience of free will at all. Free will is not a sensation, but a conclusion we draw about our sensations. So it is very very different than our experience of color. Arguing that because our experiences can't be directly described in terms of physical events, we don't need to tie free will to physics doesn't really get you anywhere here.

Nonsense. Humans have been convinced they are living in the end times at every point in history. Doom and gloom has always been the popular stance.

If people don't believe progress is possible, they won't work towards it.

Nice, the strawman I predicted you would pull from your back pocket!

How about just admitting that optimism isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread and an acknowledgement that it's not the best way to go about dealing in the world? That's all you have to do, but nah, you look at where all the ambitious optimism has us and decide we need more! Lol....

I don't even disagree that blind faith/"toxic optimism" is an issue. I just don't think devolving into full-on pessimism has served anyone very well, especially judging by my experiences in social media over time.

As has been discussed elsewhere, pessimism has had good effects, but not in and of itself.

Optimism should be honed by skepticism/criticism. So we can identify and feel optimistic in a realistic path forward.

I apologize, I edited my comment entirely once I realized what you were saying and I didn’t get it done before you saw and responded. I’ll repost here

My bad, perhaps I’ve just continually misinterpreted you if you only discussing the purely metaphorical permadeath bc I kept thinking you were arguing both the metaphor and the literal. I got lost in the metaphor in that case

But this is just Pascal, again. “If there is permadeath and I don’t pray, I die. If there is permadeath and I do pray, I die. If there is an afterlife and I don’t pray, I die. If there is an afterlife and I do pray, I live. Therefore, I should pray bc I lose nothing but possibly gain everything”

I don’t know how many naturalists would deny others of the comfort of a metaphorical life jacket to permadeath, but if someone is frantically searching and finding nothing, then it seems reasonable for a naturalist to help them come to terms with the situation instead of living in eternal panic