by Zack Beauchamp
Andrea Anderson reports on "optimism bias." Christopher Mims isn't happy about it:
[S]tudies have found that lacking the optimism bias is a reliable indicator of depression and anxiety. Humans, in other words, are built to see the world as a sunnier place than it is — it’s a survival instinct. This sort of reasoning made sense throughout most of our evolution, when the majority of causes of misfortune — bad weather, communicable diseases, freak accidents — were beyond our control. But now, for the first time in history, we can predict, at least in broad strokes, the decades-hence consequences of our actions. Too bad our brains aren’t constructed to do anything about that information.
The Dish 