As PS already mentioned before, Ferguson had a small advantage in the start but Schwartz made his point brightly.

I would like to add that I agree with Ferguson both on his thoughts about being pessimistic on the future, and specially, on his position about the role of technology on it’s modification (or lack of power to do so).

I wish the format had been different. If they’d been given a certain topic (unknown to each beforehand) to bat around, I would’ve gotten better insights into their ways of thinking. I’m imagining a broad topic, such as China or the EU, hell maybe even the notion of progress, which each has certainly spent time considering.

I think one must be pessimistic to work for a decent future. Consider climate change - is the good work being done by those who think it’s not a problem or by those who think it is? Be pessimistic about the future but work towards a better one, which also seems to be behind Ferguson’s liberalism [or conservatism, for American readers].

The bright futures don’t take care of themselves. They are the result of a lot of work by people who exhort others, and who go to jail, and who march, and who become martyrs. A single book, if engaging enough and with the right amount of invective or hyperbole, can turn people away from disaster, or help innoculate against it. The book “1984″ didn’t match reality partly because it existed. “Silent Spring” helped avoid a Silent Spring.

I suspect one reason good futures happen is that they work from the bottom up. Leaders appreciate Machiavelli’s warning about starting new things. India became an independed democracy because many people stopped trains by sitting on tracks, and Gandhi went to jail and stopped eating. Ferguson thinks more top down.

Also, seeds take time to grow, and predicting which ones survive is difficult. A particular crucifiction in Jerusalem didn’t make any news at all in Rome. The difference today is that there might have been something about it on the Internet. Bottom up is getting easer to do.

Of course, not all bottom-up moves are good. The fascists came up from the bottom. So did the Ku Klux Klan.

From reading the above, the point that sticks out most for me is the “Optimism Vs Pessimism?” question… it brings to mind all sorts of sci-fi-y/time-travel-y thoughts along the lines of “What we do if we could know the future?” and “What if we could change the past?”

If we are optimistic about the future, we have to generally believe that things will turn out okay… but would that then make us complacent and therefore less likely to put so much effort into reversing negative or harmful trends? It could be a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy in reverse…

On the other hand if we are too pessimistic, we could end up believing there is no point in attempting to instigate positive change, because nothing we do will make any difference…

Like many things in life, I’d say that striking a balance, arriving at a sort of mid-point, is the way to go… a Pessimistically Optimistic or Optimistically Pessimistic approach! We need to be aware of how badly things could go, but at the same time believe we can change things for the good… learn from the past, but believe in the future! :)

However, when one speaks in terms of our species, I could see how one could be pessimistic about its long-term future and feel optimistic about one’s own short-term future.

Perhaps, Ferguson should have said, “We must focus on worst-case scenarios, and history will teach them to us.”