Future Perfect

The incredible progress made in health, safety, and material wealth over the past few hundred years is not to be denied. But these are statistics about the past, not the future. And that’s where hope inevitably must be found: in our visions of the future.

call tech progress, capitalism, public awareness, and responsive government the “four horsemen of the optimist.”

Matt Ridley wrote in his book The Rational Optimist: A constant drumbeat of pessimism usually drowns out any triumphalist song ... If you say the world has been getting better you may get away with being called naïve and insensitive. If you say the world is going to go on getting better, you are considered embarrassingly mad. If, on the other hand,

the psychologist Steven Pinker has argued that good news tends to unfold slowly, while bad news is often more sudden.

second approach worth considering, one that grew out of the quality movement; it’s an approach that helps explain why flying in an airplane has become so incredibly safe. Whenever there is an airplane accident, or for that matter, a number of near-accidents or other problems, the customary response is to try to redesign the plane to make such probl