Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · chapter 1 · id zero-to-one-c1-03-the-indefinite-vs-definite-opt

“The 'indefinite vs. definite optimism' framework: a 2x2 matrix where the US shifted from definite optimism (1950s-1960s) to indefinite optimism (1982-present).”

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Jason Crawford, Roots of Progress Institutesource alive

Even the Apollo program -- Thiel's exemplar of definite optimism -- required a series of experimental steps to prove concepts and technology. Many major discoveries (Watt's steam engine, Perkin's synthetic dyes, Pasteur's germ theory) came from undirected or accidental work that

James C. Scott -- Seeing Like a State (1998, Yale University Press)source alive

Scott's 'high modernism' framework (1998, predating Thiel by 16 years) covers substantially the same territory as Thiel's 'definite optimism.' Scott's conclusion is opposite: high modernism/definite optimism leads to planning disasters (Soviet collectivization, Brasilia) when it

Albert Hirschman -- The Hiding Hand (1967, Harvard)source alive

Hirschman argued planners tend to be 'unrealistically optimistic' but this is sometimes beneficial because a 'Hiding Hand' conceals obstacles. Cass Sunstein and Bent Flyvbjerg later showed (2015) that the 'Malevolent Hiding Hand' -- where excessive optimism leads to failure -- is

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