why hope is smarter than cynicism

cynicism sounds smart. but what if hope makes you smarter? there's a psychology professor at Stanford who studies the cynical genius illusion. it explains why losing our faith in humanity is used as a mass tendency to categorize two people: the goofy, naive, hopeful optimist, and the intellectually superior, psychological, cynical. but in psychological studies, we actually see cynicism makes you a worse detector. it makes you less smart and of course, less happy. and the worst is that it makes us complacent. obviously, in a world where we see tragedy every day, we don't want to become blind to it. but hope is a radical act. an answer offered is to become a hopeful skeptic. hope is neither stupid nor naive, but it actually helps us see people and build better communities that are able to create radical change. the truth is we often underestimate how good people are. and maybe the smartest people are the most goofy and hopeful of all. if we really want to build our future, our hopecore future, our solar punk hopecore community, we need to become hopeful.