It's not hard to be intellectually honest and negative. Negativity also performs better than optimism on social media.

Much harder to be intellectually honest and optimistic with bias for action, willingness to fail, learn, ability to find the appropriate amount of signal in all feedback and then discard remaining noise, and most importantly, not quitting.

I’d disagree with “it’s not hard”. I think it boils down to ability to acquire a certain level of understanding in the world, enabling intellectual honesty. Being negative is practically a survival instinct, but intellectual honesty is not, it’s acquired. 

The acquisition of it is on a bar held by institutions and society, in ways that make it hard for certain socio economic classes to reach it, even if it’s freely accessible. 

Too many are bogged down with just surviving that they don’t ever know how to attain “intellectual honesty”. 

The rest I definitely agree.

i think dwr is talking to himself here. we shouldn’t shame people for beeing less intellectual than average middle school education