What is intelligent optimism?
The last thing we need is blind, lazy, and uninformed optimism. It’s more important to be optimistic based on reason and by facing facts. Intelligent optimism is all about being thrilled, excited, and optimistic about the future in an informed and rational way based on statistics, data, evidence, facts, science, and empirical evidence.
Through thinktanks, workshops, debates, newsletters, and an active social media outreach, our hope is to encourage people to be more proactive about making the world a better place. The idea is to get everyone excited about the future by highlighting the rapid progress we have made and recognising the tremendous potential humans have to find solutions and solve problems.
There are remarkable people out there achieving remarkable things. Intelligent Optimism requires us to pay more attention to the well-deserved good news. It’s about understanding that the future is what we make of it and through science, technology, reason, and rationality, we have the potential to make extraordinary things happen.
Click here to watch a video intro to Intelligent Optimism
More info:
A Case for Intelligent Optimism
“Think of an exciting, ecstatic, desirable future, and pull the present forward to meet it.” – Imaginary Foundation
Intelligent Optimism is a global community initiative of SciFest Dubai™
Intelligent Optimism is part of The HUMAN Project curriculum
The Intelligent Optimism movement has over 400,000 followers on Facebook
Lifespan
In the last 100 years, we've seen a 90% decrease in infant mortality, a 99% decrease in maternal mortality, and a 100% increase in the average human lifespan
Healthcare
We now have vaccines for a host of diseases, including measles, mumps, rubella, rabies, tetanus, ebola, whopping cough, and much more.
Goods & Sevices
We have massively increased our access to goods and services, information, education, transportation, and means of communication
War
Colonial wars have disappeared. The number of civil wars is at its lowest. Interstate wars have reduced. The average number of deaths per war is at its lowest ever.
Murder
In previous centuries we had on average over 100 murders per 100,000 people in a given population. Today, in many countries we have 1 murder per 100,000 people. That's a 100-fold decrease in the murder rate.
Education
World Literacy is at its highest. Higher than it has ever been. Anyone with a smart phone and the internet has access to colossal amounts of free online courses.
Rights
We've made massive strides in the rights revolution: rights for women, rights for children, civil rights, LGBT rights, animal rights, and rights for criminals.
The Long Peace
We are now living in what’s known as the Long Peace. This is the longest period that has passed without the world powers going to war
Technology
We are seeing exponential growth in the fields of Genetics, Nanotechnology, Robotics, Computing, and Brain-mapping and brain-scanning.
The Rising Billion
The poorest of the poor are now coming online, joining the global discourse, and transforming themselves into an emerging market force.
Intelligence
In every country, IQ has been rising by three points a decade. This is known as the Flynn Effect.
Techno-philanthropists
There are more philanthropists alive today who've pledged more money for charity than ever before in the history of our species.
Poverty and Techno-philantrhopists
The number of people living in extreme poverty has been halved. There are more philantrhopists today who've pledged for charity than ever before.
Maverick Innovators
Today, small groups of motivated DIY’ers can accomplish what was once the sole province of large corporations and governments.
Freedom
The global democracy index is at an all-time high. More than sixty percent of the world’s population now lives in open societies, the highest percentage ever.
" Imagine a world of nine billion people with clean water, nutritious food, affordable housing, personalized education, top-tier medical care, and non-polluting, ubiquitous energy. Building this better world is humanity’s grandest challenge. What follows is the story of how we can rise to meet it.” - Peter Diamandis